This International Women’s Month, our annual series Conversations with HER brings together three women artists across 3 coffee expressions: PURE, AURA, and NOVA. Each artist reflects the spirit of a range, from clarity to emotion to exploration.

Through conversation, we explore how craft and creativity intersect with coffee.

Move Beyond the Familiar

Nova celebrates coffee in its most innovative form. A range defined by exploration and transformation. It can be seen reflected through Hannah Bhatt of Uncanny Valley Studios, whose practice embraces unpredictability and change. A reflection of what happens when we choose to beyond what's familiar.

103 COFFEE

Describe your creative process when it comes to creating a new piece. Do you start with intention, or do you let the material lead you?

HANNAH BHATT

I begin by emptying my mind. The only intention I carry into the studio is to express whatever I’m feeling that day. Sculpting started as survival. Two years ago, I was going through a difficult season and realised I needed somewhere to place emotions I couldn’t articulate. Clay became that place. It still is.

When I sit at my table, everything pauses. The world quiets. My hands move before my thoughts do. Yes, the material leads. You have to negotiate with it. Sometimes it’s too wet. Sometimes it collapses. Sometimes it resists. My hands are always in conversation with the clay: adjusting pressure, responding to shifts.

I may start with emotion, but the final form is a collaboration. Clay has its own will. We meet somewhere in between. Sculpting, for me, is less about control and more about listening.

^I03 When you’re shaping something that hasn’t fully revealed itself yet, how do you stay grounded in that uncertainty?

^HB I’ve always lived in uncertainty. When people ask me where I see myself in ten years, I genuinely don’t know. I never built my life around fixed milestones. Even as a child, my ambitions were abstract. I wanted to grow up to be kind. To be generous. That felt more important than a title.

So uncertainty doesn’t frighten me. It feels familiar.

Of course, there are moments when not knowing becomes overwhelming, when you want to see the end of the tunnel. In those moments, I pray. I meditate. I surrender. There are forces larger than us, and some things are simply not ours to control.

With clay, uncertainty becomes play. Everything is possible at the beginning. That openness excites me. The chaos is not something I fight, it’s something I welcome.

I don’t need to know the outcome. I just need to trust the process.

^I03 How do you decide when to push a form further versus knowing when to stop?

^HB It’s instinctive. If a piece feels too safe, I push it. I disrupt symmetry. I introduce tension. I let it become slightly unsettling.

But I don’t stop when it’s perfect. I stop when it feels resolved. There’s a subtle shift, a quiet internal “enough.” Not because it cannot be improved, but because it has said what it needed to say.

Perfection is not the goal. Emotional completion is. I stop when the work stops asking for more.

¹⁰³ Ceramics involve fire, pressure, and unpredictability. What draws you to such a versatile medium?

^HB Ceramics demand surrender. You shape the form, choose the glaze, prepare it carefully and then the kiln takes over. Fire transforms everything. Sometimes beautifully. Sometimes mercilessly.

I’m drawn to that loss of control. I don’t enjoy rigid certainty. I like flow. I like mystery.

My forms are rarely symmetrical. They’re curved, bumpy, imperfect. You can see where my fingers pressed, where they hesitated. Clay remembers touch. It records presence. That physical imprint feels deeply human to me. The kiln humbles you. And I think humility is good for art.

¹⁰³ Are you drawn to experimentation in your cup, as much as in your studio?

^HB Absolutely. I’m drawn to complexity, coffees that evolve as they cool, that reveal new notes with time. The way processing and roasting can transform the same bean into something entirely different fascinates me.

It’s very similar to clay. Change the atmosphere in the kiln, adjust a glaze, and the outcome shifts dramatically.

But experimentation, to me, isn’t recklessness. It’s exploration with care. It’s pushing boundaries with understanding, not ego.

True experimentation is disciplined curiosity.

¹⁰³ Being a Malaysian artist often means carrying something beyond yourself. What stories or traditions do you feel you’re representing through your craft?

^HB As a Malaysian artist, I carry multiplicity. I grew up surrounded by overlapping cultures, languages, and contradictions. That layering seeps into my work, in ornamentation, in excess, in forms that bloom and rupture at the same time.

I don’t represent a single narrative. I represent hybridity. The in-between. The coexistence of softness and strength. I also carry stories of womanhood, motherhood, grief, resilience not as declarations, but as quiet undercurrents.

My work isn’t about one identity. It’s about many identities existing at once.

¹⁰³ What do you wish someone had told you when you were just starting out, especially for women who feel like they don’t belong in creative spaces?

^HB I wish someone had told me that belonging is not something you wait to be handed. Creative spaces can feel intimidating especially if you don’t see yourself reflected in them. But you do not need permission to take up space.

You will doubt yourself. You will compare. You will feel late. Make anyway.

You don’t have to be the loudest in the room. You just have to be consistent. Your voice sharpens with time. And softness is not weakness. Sensitivity is not fragility. They are tools. Use them.

Hannah Bhatt as NOVA

In Hannah's hands, uncertainty is not a barrier, but a beginning. A perspective that echoes NOVA: where change, experimentation and the unknown are all part of what gives each cup its character.

Experience the same perspective through the curated selection of beans under our NOVA range. Learn more about Hannah through Instagram @hannahhhbhatt @uncannyvalleystudios.