Issue 29 was a porcelain egg cup by LA-based artist Ricky Swallow. It was conceived alongside Ricky's SHAKER BELL, a limited edition project for THE THING. The starting point for both objects was the shaker peg, originally designed by Shakers to adhere to their guiding principles of simplicity, utility, and honesty. As in all of his work, Ricky hand-constructed the original forms out of ordinary materials - cardboard, tape, and glue, in addition to the wooden pegs which were added to the objects as intuitive handles.

The object related to Ricky's recent sculptures in bronze, which drew on the intimate scale and materiality of domestic forms.

The egg cup was made with North Carolina-based ceramic studio Haand, who used traditional slip casting methods to reproduce the original object in porcelain. We worked closely with them to retain the texture of the object’s original materiality and to leave traces of seam lines and trimming marks, incorporating the entire production process into the visual language of the final objects. A custom stamp bearing the initials TTQ/RS was pressed into the bottom of each cup, and a fold-out poster was enclosed in each issue.