I sit writing this piece in York train station, and I sit in a Pret because it’s England and my train is cancelled. Looking down at the smooth paper coffee cup in my hand—even though I’m sitting in to drink it—the contrast hits hard. The absurdity of our relationship with these objects feels impossible to ignore. Sitting in a coffee shop, but being given a takeaway cup feels like any and all human contact has been sanitised. Quick convenience, eventual landfills. I don’t know why I still buy coffee from there. 

India currently ranks as the second most polluted country on the planet, after Bangladesh, but it is also the home of one of my greatest friends. When I asked him about why India seems so dirty to our Western eyes, he said, “People are not educated enough and don’t care, but most importantly, they lack basic civic sense. If you look to the South, most cities are actually clean, people are polite and not weird at all because the South has a higher literacy rate. But it’s usually the north where people lack civic sense.” He spoke about it as a lost cause, a chaotic mess best avoided. But while he saw an overwhelming wall of noise and negligence, I was becoming more and more obsessed with finding pockets of beauty hidden within, where people were still tethered to the earth and entirely undisturbed by the chaos around them. With this in mind, naturally, I did what he wouldn’t advocate for, and I researched the north. 

Even amidst heavy urban pollution, North India’s wild landscapes offer undeniable beauty. The region of Ladakh is home to some of the world’s most striking high-altitude scenicscapes and wildlife, immortalising the native fauna of elusive snow leopards and migratory black-necked cranes into regional visual art. Traditional Tibetan thangka scroll paintings and detailed Indian miniatures elevate species like the black-necked crane into sacred symbols of good fortune and cosmic balance, proving that no matter how chaotic a place seems, art is always there if you look for it. 

Likir Pottery Studio sits on a farm, sourcing its clay from nearby mountains at an altitude of 3600 metres high—a practice refined over centuries, and holds deep ecological knowledge and respect for the land. For the people of Likir, pottery is a living ecological record more than it is a practice and aesthetic choice. Against the backdrop of a nation choking on its own pollution, their ancient craft of clay is an accidental protest. At 3600 metres, the air is thin, cold and dry. Clay behaves differently under low atmospheric pressure and freezing temperatures; the drying and firing processes require extreme patience and seasonal precision, dictated entirely by Ladakh's climate rather than human convenience.

Their pottery is pit-fired using dried cow dung and mountain shrubs as fuel; firewood is scarce in their region. The raw clay bears fingerprints, ash marks, and smoke gradients from the cow dung fuel. Every pot is an indexical mark of the laboured attribute and the bonfire's specific temperature that day. Shapes are smoothed and beaten using paddles made of local wood, stone, and leather rather than complex machinery found in a conventional ceramics studio. Pottery would be done in small villages, where these pots would then be sent to the king. In those days, village people did not have plastic or silver utensils, due to which utensils made of terracotta, copper and brass would be used. During the reign of the Namgyal dynasty, the Ladakhi Kingdom operated under a feudal system of specialised village labour. Rather than every village trying to produce everything, the King assigned specific crafts and duties to different villages based on their location, resources, or royal trust. Because pottery was not originally native to the region of Likir, ancient kings invited master Tibetan artisans to Likir to train the local villagers, turning the region into a central ceramic hub. 

The pots sent to the King and local monasteries were not luxury, elaborate and elegant objects meant for display or social status. They were functional, essential objects, used for storing food, brewing chang, burning incense, cooking, and anything the human brain is capable of doing with such an object. The craft existed to serve the collective spiritual and physical life of the kingdom, not to be marketed or sold on an open shelf. Knowing that Likir potters once supplied the King highlights the stark shift in value; what was once a prestigious, kingdom-sanctioned obligation that sustained an entire village has dwindled down to a single surviving family carrying the entire heritage on their hands. Just as the potter feels the heavy, dense pull of mountain clay in their hands, they carry an equally heavy weight on their shoulders: the obligation to keep an entire royal legacy alive.

Photo by Amrit Das

Likir is one of the last villages in Ladakh to practice this ancient art. An artisan, seated on a woven mat, is engrossed in their work, their hands covered in the same earth that forms the pots drying around them. The scene is a rich tapestry of texture and colour, from the raw clay to the vibrant textiles, telling a story of heritage, skill, and cultural preservation.

The workspace is beautifully, unapologetically messy. The mat is faded, tools are scattered, raw clay is in plastic bags that don’t match each other. In Western ceramic studios—or at least the ones here in Britain—mess is curated, packaged into an aesthetic brand built on minimalism, designed to signal intentionality, wellness, lifestyle branding, and what looks most appealing for a new Instagram post. But Likir has no brand to sell. There is no curated image, no lifestyle marketing, no attempt to make the process look clean or artfully rustic. When I first saw this image, I was immediately struck by how normal it looked. There is no staging, just the ceramics how they normally sit. The man sits where he normally sits, crafting his clay as he normally does. But maybe the truth lies in the fact that they simply do not need branding. Where so many of our British ceramic studios produce neutral clay that does not stand out from the rest, Likir’s identity is already baked into the clay and its heritage. The uniqueness is inherent; it doesn’t need to be marketed. It simply is beautiful in its mess—real mess, I mean. 

Next time you find yourself deciding whether to sit in a Pret, holding a disposable paper cup of frictionless, single-use trash that is engineered to be discarded in twenty minutes like I unfortunately did, think about the ceramics of Ladakh. Think about mountain clay, dried cow dung fires—though the thought can seem a little unfamiliar and squeamish—and the artisan seated on a woven mat as they press their thumbs into the wet, unrefined clay; the beauty to drink from something shaped by human hands. The modern world has a lot to learn from ancient traditions such as Likir’s—where utility is rooted in reverence, every object carries a story of the soil it came from, and slow, deliberate craft beautifully defies the hyper-convenient, disposable nature of modern life.