Mabian:
A Horse Whip from Inner Mongolia, Reframed.
A six-plait horse whip, hand-braided in a village in Inner Mongolia. Equipped by Graedance into a charm for the Year of the Horse.
Some artefacts sit in the in-between. Their original intention morphs and adapts through new placement, new hands, and the cultural meaning that shifts as stories travel.
We are calling these Grae Objects. A series where we take talismans from somewhere specific and place them into spaces they would not otherwise enter. 01 Mabian is the first.
The Year of the Horse
2026 is the Year of the Horse. We wanted an object that held the steed across both eastern and western traditions, in the in-between of the two.
Tashuur º The Whip as Guide
A six-plait horse whip, hand-braided by a Mongolian craftsman in his village in Inner Mongolia. Raw untreated cow leather. Ebony wood.
For the Mongolian people, the whip (tashuur / ташуур) is not for striking. It is a guide for their horse partners, carrying destiny, luck, and fortune.
Mabian extends that same meaning into a portable form. A charm for serendipity, prosperity, and fortuity.
What Arrives in the Studio
Each whip retains the patina and oil from the craftsman's hands. No two feel or look the same.
In our Melbourne studio, we designed the configuration, hand-selected the components, and assembled each key charm individually.
An Eastern and Western Conversation
The orbs reference an ancient Greek tradition of horse hair plaiting, pairing a western ornamental language with an eastern one.
What arrives is a conversation between his craft and ours.
