Before the bench. Before the box. These branches grew for fifteen years in the mountain crevices of northern China. Cold air. Thin soil. Slow growth. The density you feel in the finished bead began here — in the patience of a tree that had nowhere to hurry.

Before it is a bead, it is a branch. Cut it open, and the six ridges run from center to edge, like spokes in a wheel frozen in wood. You cannot paint this. You can only grow it.

Not a machine pressing them out by the thousand. Each bead begins as a rough cylinder, too large, too plain, too heavy. Then the first cut reveals a ridge. By the tenth day, the six paths are visible. By the fortieth, it is ready — not finished, but ready.