‘You can see the way the bowl is fired, how much oxygen is in the air’, Yuji mutters, gesturing carefully towards the middle shelf. A dappled ceramic plate is glazed russet red. Its surface is cracked, like cooled magma, holding minuscule fractures of time. ‘The less oxygen there is in the air, the deeper the colour’, he continues, ‘a plate like this is fired at 1250 degrees Celsius for over 24 hours.’