[Jang-i] Mother-of-Pearl Bamboo – Sagunja Large Insulated Mug (700ml)

The bamboo bends but never breaks — a principle carried now in hand.

In Korean literati tradition, the bamboo (대나무, Daenamu) is the scholar's companion: hollow in its stalks — a mind open, unguarded by greed — and unwavering through the harshest winter. Jang-i's Sagunja (사군자) series draws from the Four Gentlemen, the quartet of plants that defined the moral imagination of Korea's Joseon scholar-class. The Bamboo edition honours that lineage with a body of double-wall vacuum-insulated stainless steel and an exterior inlaid, leaf by leaf, with New Zealand Abalone Shell using the traditional Najeonchilgi (나전칠기) technique. The nacre catches Pacific blue, its iridescence shifting with movement and light, making each 700ml mug a piece in motion.

At 700ml, this is not a small gesture. At a desk beside early-morning work — the kind of morning where the first hour matters most — it holds the full ritual without refilling. On a café table between meetings, the abalone exterior is the object that people notice and then keep noticing. Gifted to someone who values craft over convenience, carried daily as a personal standard, it travels as well as it displays. Available in white or black; few pieces exist at the intersection of centuries-old lacquerwork and modern thermal engineering.

Handcrafted in South Korea, where bamboo still means something.