From Kunming carpentry, with aging in mind
Sandry Law first met the workshop in a back lane off Kunming’s Xiongda tea market, where the smell of fresh cedar mingled with the pu’er warehouses’ earthy breath. The maker — a third-generation carpenter from Qujing — had been building honeycomb cake shelves for local tea families for decades, understanding that pu’er likes air but hates extremes. Sandry, our Head of Procurement based in Yunnan, saw an opportunity to bring that quiet expertise to a global audience.
She worked with him to refine the 24-cake configuration: two rows of twelve, each cake tilted just enough to let the bamboo tong wrapper breathe. The cedar itself is the star — old-growth xiāng shān (香杉), felled in its fourth decade and air-seasoned for two years before shaping. Unlike cheap plantation cedar, the resin pockets here are few, and the wood’s natural camphor-like compounds haven’t been scorched by kiln drying. This means the shelf never outgasses harsh solvents that might taint a cake’s delicate profile.
Each ledge is cut with a slight upward lip so cakes stay in place, and the whole cabinet assembles with brass pins — no glue, no screws. Sandry inspects every batch personally at the workshop before crating, checking for straight grain and a gentle, even sand. She calls it ‘a quiet container for time’ — and it is, holding two decades of your collection steady as the seasons pass.