Forget Netflix’s Is It Cake?, Yolkeye is asking its Instagram followers “Is it Kewpie or clay?” Still in its early days, the Aussie ceramics label is a hit on social media for its realistic Kewpie mayonnaise-shaped vases, yum cha magnets, and supersized dumpling and bao bun incense holders.
It’s the passion project of Melbourne-based couple Kim Shen and Jake Leahy. Originally from New Zealand, the pair met in 2018 before moving to Australia together. An electrician by day, Leahy wanted a creative outlet when he took up ceramics early last year. “I just have to be doing something creative,” he says. “Because obviously, I’m an electrician and that’s not very exciting.”
His early designs were colourful demon heads influenced by yokai, the supernatural spirits and creatures in Japanese folklore. The term also inspired the label’s name.
Shen, a graphic designer, wanted to refine the details in Leahy’s early works. It wasn’t long before she picked up the hobby herself. “Most people would assume I was the person who started this, as I have the more creative day job,” she says.
Enjoying to cook dumplings at home, Shen tried to mould some out of clay. Initially bite-size fridge magnets, the designs grew to include a 800-gram XXL incense holder, and an assortment of ceramic bao buns – a love letter to her parents’ Chinese culture and family recipes.
“My parents and I don’t speak the same language because growing up they were working all the time, so I didn’t get to learn the Cantonese language as much,” Shen says. “A lot of our communication was through food.”
But it was the duo’s Kewpie mayonnaise vase that earned Yolkeye a new level of online clout. “People like Kewpie mayonnaise, and the bottle is kind of iconic,” Leahy says.
Their dining room has been converted into a ceramics studio. There’s no space for a kiln of their own, so Shen walks to and from Northcote Pottery to have moulds fired, strapping the couple’s newborn to her while wheeling ceramics along in a carrier.
Leahy often makes plaster casts and moulds before handing the ceramics over to Shen for trimming, brushing and colour glazing.
“Every piece is touched by both hands,” says Shen. “It works so well because we each do the parts of the process we enjoy.”
Now the couple wants to make more pieces and build a website, which they hope to launch in a few months.
