Rather than rely on overt symbolism or festive motifs, Zhao focuses on the abstract, restrained and tactile, featuring soft curves, translucent surfaces and green glass that appears to breathe with light. The pieces are not decorative statements, but are designed to be held, used and felt.

“Reunion, reflection, and memory are not loud themes,” Zhao explains. “They appear through subtle experiences. I approached each form as a way of framing these gestures.”

“For me, the beginning of a new year is shaped not only by celebration, but by the subtle moments shared at the table—moments in which connection is renewed and felt.”

Jinya Zhao, artist

Her chosen material, glass, plays an essential role. For Zhao, it is a medium of dualities: solid and liquid, transparent yet reflective, fragile and enduring. “Glass allows me to work with time in a way that feels intimate,” she says. “Light moves through it, slows inside it, disappears and reappears. Few materials can hold these quiet transformations so precisely.”

Part of the three-piece set, Trace of Scent, is an incense holder designed to hold not only fragrance, but memory. “Incense is one of the few everyday materials that makes time visible,” Zhao says. “It burns slowly, leaving a trail that marks presence and then drifts into memory. I wanted to hold that sense of quiet passage — how a moment can expand, linger, and dissolve.”

“On a dining table, these moments appear in quiet and understated ways,” Zhao shares. “The pause when chopsticks are set down, a small glimmer of light reflected from a dish, or the lingering trail of incense in the air. These fleeting gestures became the starting point.”

Even the collection’s hue, a delicate Discovery Green, carries meaning. “Green often arrives in my life as a moment of encounter,” she reflects. “The freshness of new leaves after rain, the reflection of mountains on still water. It reminds me of quiet resilience and continual renewal.”

And yet, for all its symbolism and subtlety, Zhao’s intention is simple: to bring the viewer into the present. “If there’s one feeling I hope someone experiences through this collection, it’s a quiet sense of being present,” she says. “Not in a dramatic way, but in a small, delicate moment, the kind that makes time feel soft and close.”

In Zhao’s hands, the rituals that define Lunar New Year are distilled into forms that feel both timeless and entirely of this moment. This spring, as tables fill once more, Table Rituals offers no grand gesture, only an invitation: to pause, to reconnect and to begin again.