Quiet instruments,
by hand.
Earthen Strings is the studio's quieter practice — a small line of ceramic string instruments made one at a time. The body is thrown in stoneware, the neck and bridge are walnut. Ninety days from confirmation to your hands.
01
Chiisaki Koe
Soprano ukulele · stoneware + walnut. Soft on the attack, slow to decay.
Read & commission
02
Oto no Utsuwa
Steel-string guitar · stoneware + walnut + bone. The body of a guitar is also a bowl.
Read & commission
03
Furuki Koe
Eleven-string oud · stoneware + walnut. An old shape, a new shell.
Read & commissionA clay vessel singing the way a clay vessel must.
Hand-thrown, slow-fired. Wall thickness optimised for resonance over rigidity.
Solid walnut, hand-finished, fitted to the ceramic shoulder.
Hand-cut. The points where energy passes between body and string remain in the materials a player expects.
A clay body returns sound to the listener differently than a wooden one. The attack is softer, sustain is shorter; the instrument prefers a quiet hand and a small room. Stoneware does not project the way thin spruce does — what it does is keep the sound a little closer to the player, and let it fade rather than ring.
The instrument is meant to be played close. It does not behave well at the back of a stage, and was never asked to.
Let's design your instrument, together.
Choose the form — guitar, oud, or ukulele — then the wood, the finish, the colour, the texture. The studio sketches a proposal; if you approve, the vessel is thrown the same week.
The same hand makes for brands too.
Industrial design and product development for SOURCE, CUBE, CAPRA, and others. A different language, a different tempo. Both worlds belong to one studio.