It is December of the studio's sixth year. We have made a lot of small adjustments in those six years — the silk thread weight changed in 2024, the photograph timing moved from afternoon to morning in 2025, the clasp engraver moved to a new workshop in 2027, Wei joined in 2028, the inbox software changed twice. Most of the work, in the day-to-day sense, has been a long series of small changes.
But there are several things I have not changed, deliberately, and at this point I am unlikely to. I want to write them down. I think the things you decide to not change are at least as defining as the things you choose to update. A studio is, in part, the set of its constants.
The linen square
The piece of cream linen I lay every bracelet on for its photograph has been the same physical square since piece #007. It is creased now. It is slightly faded along one edge where the sun has hit it for six years. I have not replaced it. I will not.
The creases are visible, very faintly, in every SENMOMO photograph in the archive. They are the only continuous visual element across the entire body of work. If you laid every piece's photograph in chronological order on a long table, the only thing that would not change frame to frame is that linen square.
I think of it now as a kind of registration mark. Every piece passes through the same fabric. The fabric ages with the studio. When it eventually wears out, I will not replace it with a new piece of linen; I will mend it. The mended version will keep the history of the unmended.
The tea cup
I have one ceramic cup that I use at the bench in the morning. It is small, glazed celadon, with a slightly uneven rim that you can feel against your lip. I bought it at a market in Quanzhou in 2023, before SENMOMO existed. It cost the equivalent of $4 USD.
I have used the same cup, every morning, for six years. It has not chipped. The glaze has acquired a slight warm tone where my fingers always hold it. If I broke it tomorrow, I would not replace it with a new cup; I would put away tea drinking at the bench for a while, and then probably buy something second-hand from a similar maker, and call that the next cup, and treat it as a chapter change.
The wearers who visit the studio have noticed the cup. One asked me, once, if she could touch the rim. I said yes. I think she wanted to verify that something physical and small could survive that long, untouched by the brand's growth. She found it comforting. So do I.
The bench arrangement
The bench faces east. The window is to my left when I am seated. The lamp is to my right, off the floor, on a small wooden table that we have not moved. The trays sit in a specific order — warm tones on the left, cool tones in the middle, neutrals on the right. Within each section the stones are arranged by intensity. The moonstone tray is always closest to my left hand, regardless of season.
I have not changed this arrangement once in six years. Wei tried to suggest, in her second month, that perhaps the cool tones should be closer to the window for color verification. I considered it. I considered it for about an afternoon. Then I said no, and we have not revisited.
The reason is that the arrangement was not arbitrary; it was the arrangement my hands had memorized by piece #019. If I changed it now, I would have to retrain my reach. The slight friction of moving against a memorized arrangement is exactly the kind of friction that introduces error. The arrangement is right because my hands know it is right.
Wei has, since, memorized the same arrangement. We share it now. I think she likes it too.
The morning order
Wake at 6:15. Sit for ten minutes without checking the phone. Walk to the studio (it is two minutes away from the apartment). Put the water on for tea. Open the trays in a specific sequence — the moonstone tray first, the warm tones tray second, the silk thread drawer third. Pour tea. Sit at the bench. Look at the morning's first piece in progress for one minute without doing anything. Then begin.
This order has been the same since late 2024. I have changed almost nothing about how the morning begins. I am 36 now; I expect to keep this order until my body stops allowing it.
The reason for the consistency is, again, friction. Mornings are when I make the most pieces. Anything that interrupts the rhythm of the first hour costs me more than it would later in the day. The known order is the easiest thing to repeat. It accumulates depth through being unvaried.
The signature on the clasp
Every 925 silver clasp on every SENMOMO piece is engraved with the same studio mark. The mark was designed by my sister, who is a typographer, in late 2024. It is a small abstract — three lines suggesting a bracelet curve, with the letter "S" implied beneath them. It is invisible unless you look closely. Most wearers do not notice it for months.
I have not changed the mark. I have been offered three times — by branding consultants, by wearers, by myself in moments of doubt — the idea of refining it, modernizing it, adding the date, simplifying it further. I have said no every time.
The mark is the mark. If we change it, the mark stops being a mark and becomes a logo. The difference is that logos can be redesigned without consequence; marks accumulate weight by being unchanged. A piece from 2024 and a piece from 2029 share the same mark. A piece from 2049, if I'm lucky enough to still be here, will share it too. That continuity is most of the mark's value.
The way we close each year
Every year on December 23rd — the day before mo's mother's birthday, and the closest weekday before the end of the calendar year — we close the studio for ten days. The last piece of the year ships on the 22nd. The first piece of the new year ships on January 4th. No exceptions, including for wearers willing to pay more.
The ten days are not a vacation, exactly. They are a quiet. mo cooks. mo reads. Daisy returns to Guangzhou to see her parents. Wei returns to Hangzhou to see Mrs. Yang, who is now mostly retired. We do not check the inbox. We do not photograph pieces. We let the work breathe.
I have not changed the closure since I instituted it in 2024. I think it has produced more value than nearly anything else we do in the calendar year. There is something specific about coming back to the studio on January 3rd that feels different from coming back on January 2nd. The day matters. The breath matters.
The thing I have changed about not changing
I want to be honest. There is one place where I have allowed change to enter the "things I do not change" list.
The way I review a piece used to be: I looked at it for five minutes on day fourteen and made one decision — ship or remake. Since Wei joined, the review is no longer mine alone. I look. Wei looks. We compare notes. Sometimes we disagree. (I wrote about one of those moments in the June entry.) The review is now two-person; the standard remains one-person.
I list this here because I think it is the kind of change that should be listed, separately, with care. Not everything I have not changed is a thing that should stay unchanged forever. The review evolved because the studio grew. Other things, listed above, have not evolved and likely should not.
Knowing which is which is a separate practice. I am not always sure I get it right. But I try to think about it explicitly, once a year, around this same December break.
What this means for what you have bought
If you wear a SENMOMO piece, your piece passed across the same linen as a piece made in 2024. It was reviewed in light from the same east window. It was knotted on silk that has been tested by the same hands as every piece before it. It carries the same clasp mark as a piece that will be made in 2034. None of this is decorative. It is the actual material continuity of the work.
I think the wearer who buys from a studio gets, in exchange for her money, two things: the specific piece, and the continuity behind it. The continuity is what makes the piece feel like an heirloom rather than a transaction. The continuity is what these unchanged things produce.
That is what they are for. That is why I have kept them. That is why I will continue to keep them.
Happy December. The studio reopens on January 4th. The first piece of 2030 has already been selected; it is going to a wearer in Cape Town who has been on the waitlist since the year SENMOMO opened publicly. I look forward to making it. I will look forward to the next one, and the next one, and the next.