Not a
brand, a
method.
KPCTY (刻瓷 · kè xiàn · "carved line") is a jewelry studio that restrings the oldest material culture in the Chinese world — beads for thinking — for a generation that never knew it was missing them.
We aren't trying to be an Asian version of anything. We aren't trying to go viral. We're trying to make pieces that your friends ask about and your grandmother nods at.
A slow timeline.
Imperial scholars start stringing agarwood prayer beads as an alternative to heavier amber malas.
Beads move from temples to desks — worn by poets, merchants, and officials during long meetings.
Considered old-fashioned. Grandmothers quietly keep wearing them anyway.
Ken (施豪居) inherits a strand from his grandfather, wears it on a Brooklyn subway, and gets 14 DMs that week.
29 one-of-one pieces, cut in Suzhou, knotted in Brooklyn. Which is where you came in.
Three rules.
Founder · Strung, and writes the letters
Brooklyn, NY × Suzhou, CN
"Everyone in my family had beads on their wrist. I thought it was corny. Until I didn't."
I was 11 when my grandfather gave me a strand of sandalwood beads. I wore it once, for a picture, and left it in a drawer until 2022, when he passed.
Cleaning out his desk I found his — smooth as a plum pit, dark as pine-tar. He had rubbed fourteen years of worry into them. I put his on my left wrist and mine on my right, and they didn't match, and that felt right.
KPCTY started with one question: why did I have to be 31 before anyone my age wore this? The stones are good. The stories are great. The only thing wrong was the packaging.
So we redid the packaging. We left the stones alone.