Imagination, before breakfast
Three one-of-a-kind coffee machines, inlaid by hand with mother-of-pearl, offered at auction in aid of Rainbow Centre.
Bidding closes at 2359h on Sunday, 25 October 2026 (SGT)
MORNING makes a machine for the first hour of the day, that small repeated act of looking after yourself. State Property makes jewellery that goes looking for the extraordinary inside the ordinary. Put side by side, the two ideas turned out to belong together.
Three machines have come of it, each the only one of its kind, inlaid by hand with mother-of-pearl in a motif from The Story of Everything, State Property's tenth anniversary collection. All three are black and shell and nothing else.
The Three Machines
The Cosmic Egg
Everything begins somewhere.
The pieces in The Story of Everything are egg-shaped, cosmic, holding whatever comes next. Look closer and each gemstone sits in a star, a setting of fine points that does the actual work of holding.
That star is what appears here, inlaid in mother-of-pearl and repeated across the side panels until it reads as a night sky, shifting as the light moves through the room.
Something to have beside you at the start of the day.
The Railroad
The route is rarely straight.
In The Story of Everything the railroad loops, doubles back, and arrives somewhere no map suggested, which is a child's idea of travel and probably the correct one.
Here the track runs in mother-of-pearl along both flanks of the machine, laid by hand, precise where it needs to be and playful where it wants to be.
Take the next turn.
The Toadstool
It started with a planet covered in glowing mushrooms.
State Property took its inspiration from the founders' child, Mika, who described it one evening as though he had been there himself. It became a jewellery collection, and now a coffee machine as well.
Here the toadstool is abstracted, pared back until only the pattern of its cap remains, cut in mother-of-pearl and set into black so that the glow comes from the shell itself.
A reminder to look twice at the things you see every day.
The Craft
Mother-of-pearl is the lining a shell grows to protect itself, and it has been cut into objects worth keeping for as long as people have made them. It is worked the same way here as it is at the bench: each piece cut to shape, laid by hand into a recess, levelled and finished so the surface reads as one.
No two pieces of shell carry the same colour. The motifs hold their geometry while the material refuses to repeat itself, which is why the panels change as you move past them.
About MORNING
MORNING is a Singapore-based coffee-tech company. Its machine brings the precision of professional equipment into the home, brewing specialty capsules to recipes set by the roasters themselves, so a cup tastes the way the person who roasted it intended.
The Auction
All three machines are offered at auction, open to everyone. Bidding closes at 2359h on Sunday, 25 October 2026, Singapore time.
- Opens: 13 October 2026
- Closes: 2359h, 25 October 2026 (SGT)
- Lots: three, each the only one of its design
Rainbow Centre
Proceeds go to Rainbow Centre. These machines were made on the belief that a good life is built out of ordinary days, out of routines and small competences and the people who notice them.
Rainbow Centre has spent nearly forty years acting on the same belief, alongside children and adults with disabilities and the families around them.
