A stroke of serendipity brought me from Singapore to Ipoh, where Singaporean potter Alvin Ng fired up his newly built Dragon Kiln for the first time. I looked into the raging inferno of over 1,300 degree Celcius, and fell in love with the controlled chaos.

There’s something about wood-firing that feels almost irrational to love. It strips away control, ego, all the neat intentions you start with. What comes out carries time, labour, and the imprint of everything that happened in that kiln. It teaches me a lot about letting go of control, and I keep going back because no two firings, and no two outcomes, ever ask the same thing of me.