Blank Story — The world's masks. Yours to paint.

What we make

We cast masks in plaster and send them out white.

Every ridge the original carvers put in is still there when the box arrives at your door. The tiered crown, the fold above the brow, the four teeth. What is missing is colour, and that part is left to you.

Inside: the mask, five pots of water-based paint and a brush worth keeping. The paint is non-toxic and comes off a wooden table with a damp cloth. We know this because we tested it on ours, more than once, and Stephanie still brings it up.

The relief is what makes it work for a seven-year-old and for somebody who paints seriously. Raised edges stop a loaded brush going where it should not, so a child gets a clean line without being careful about it. There is a card in the box with the traditional colours. Follow it, or throw it away. Nobody here will mind.

Plaster was not a design decision so much as the obvious one. It is what the dance masks here have always been cast in, it takes paint the way paper takes ink, and it has enough weight that the finished thing feels like an object instead of a toy.

Mapemonde Planisphère · Amsterdam, 1706

Every mask comes from a real tradition, living or ancient. Some are still danced every year. Some survive only as objects in museums. We read first, then go and look, then ask somebody who actually knows before anyone cuts a mould. None of it is licensed and none of it is invented to look exotic.

01 · The story

It started at a long wooden table.

Plate I · Ongcor Wat · Illustrated London News, 1868

Our two boys went along to one of the free art classes that run down the road from us. They came home with a Hanuman each, still tacky, and by the next morning they wanted another one.

There wasn’t another one. Not in the market, not in the shops off Pub Street, not online. We looked properly, for about a week, and found nothing you could buy and paint. Which is a strange thing to discover about a face that half of Asia grows up with.

So we made one.

The first mould came out soft and went in the bin. The second was worse. Sotharith got the third one right and we are still pouring from it. Somewhere around the sixth or seventh casting it stopped being a project for the kids and started being a company, which nobody in the house had planned for that month.

Once we had Hanuman we started reading about everybody else’s. Japan has Hannya, the jealous one. Korea has Hahoe, carved with a jaw that moves. Bali has Barong. Mexico has two different answers depending on which century you ask about. Eight to begin with, one at a time, in whatever order we can do them properly.

That is roughly one a season, and we are aware how slow it sounds. It is the pace a small workshop can hold without the quality slipping, so it is the pace we keep.

With love, the editors

02 · Who we are

Seven people and a house.

Blank Story is made at Peaceful Chaos, a working house on the Siem Reap River. Part store, part studio, part somewhere to try things before they are finished. The moulds live there, and so do the drying racks, which take up considerably more room than anyone allowed for.

There is no call centre and no agency in between. Whoever you write to is one of the people below, and they are usually within about twenty metres of the plaster.

**Kong Sarum**Sales Cambodia & Operations

03 · Where

On the Siem Reap River.

Cambodia has been making other people’s products for a long time. We would rather keep the design, the margin and the ownership here, which is a much easier sentence to write than it is to do, and is most of what the house is for.

Peaceful Chaos, 157 West Riverside Street, Krong Siem Reap. Monday to Friday, nine to five. The store is open. The rest is by appointment while we finish building it.

04 · Why

It goes back to the table.

A share of every mask sold funds the free art classes for children in this neighbourhood. The same classes our boys were sitting in when this started.

We did not add that afterwards to make the brand look better. The classes came first and the first mould only exists because of them, so it would be odd to leave them out now.

The collection

Eight faces, eight places.

Hanuman ships first. The other seven arrive through 2027 in batches, and we will not put a month against any of them until the moulds are cut and the first run is right. Same object, same box, same price, whichever one you take.

Hanuman01 · Cambodia Launching 2027

Hannya02 · Japan 2027

Hahoe03 · Korea 2027

Barong04 · Indonesia 2027

Khon05 · Thailand 2027

Luchador06 · Mexico 2027

Aztec07 · Mexico 2027

Inca08 · Peru 2027

Answers to the usual.

Yes. Water-based, non-toxic, and it comes off skin and off a table with a damp cloth. It was made for a kitchen table on a Sunday, not for a studio with a floor you can ruin.

Three things. The tradition has to be alive somewhere, the face has to be one people would recognise, and there has to be somebody we can ask. If we cannot explain every line on a mask, we are not ready to sell it, and that has already pushed two of them back a season.

Resin is cheaper to ship and it holds detail well, so it was tempting. It also feels like a phone case. Plaster takes paint properly, keeps a sharp edge on every carved line, and has the weight that makes somebody put the thing on a shelf instead of in a drawer.

Because the moulds, the paint and the packaging are all being finished here rather than sent out, and we would rather be late than ship a mask we are not happy with.

Yes, and we would like that. Wholesale pricing, case packs and terms sit behind a trade login. Write to us with the name of the shop and we will send you a code the same day.

Say hello

Come by the house.

Pre-orders, wholesale, press, partnerships and makers all arrive in the same inbox. One of the seven of us reads it, usually the same day, and you will not get a template back.