{"product_id":"nala-lobo-de-tierra-taza-interior-de-color","title":"Nala · Aardwolf · Mug","description":"\u003cdiv class=\"product-short-desc\"\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe rooibos stays warm in the mug while the next client waits in the barber chair. Nala mug with the aardwolf portrait, colored interior and matching handle. Ceramic, made for the pace of someone who works from three in the afternoon to two in the morning.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\n\u003c!-- LONG_DESC --\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Nala mug carries the aardwolf portrait on the outside: studded jacket, pink hoodie, spike collar, direct gaze. The inside is colored, the handle too. Ceramic. Standard size for coffee, tea, or whatever you drink while you work. For exact measurements and capacity in milliliters, check **Size and capacity**.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn the Maboneng studio there's a mug that always sits on the drawing table, between the ink jars and Koko's sewing needle that Nala doesn't use but won't move. It's a rooibos mug. Rooibos with nothing — no sugar, no milk. She makes it when she arrives at the studio at three in the afternoon, before cleaning the table and reviewing the day's designs. She drinks it in the first forty minutes. After that, between clients, she refills it. The rooibos goes lukewarm because Nala has no microwave in the studio — she has a lamp rescued from a dumpster at Arts on Main, a chair from a Jeppestown barbershop, a dentist's table, and a tattoo machine worth more than everything else combined. But no microwave.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe lukewarm rooibos is part of the ritual. Not the pretty ritual people talk about on Instagram: the one that means stopping three minutes between a dotwork session and the next, stretching the fingers, drinking something that isn't cold water, letting the hand rest before going back to puncturing skin for three hours. Nala caps her sessions at three hours. Never more. The aardwolf doesn't destroy the termite mound — it harvests and lets it grow back. Nala does the same with the bodies she tattoos and with her own hands.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe ceramicist two doors down sometimes brings her rooibos already made on Sundays. They don't talk much. Sometimes not at all. They sit at the studio door and drink in silence while Fox Street goes quiet. That's Maboneng on a Sunday afternoon: a place of light with no one watching.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe colored interior of this mug is the detail that connects it most to Nala without needing to explain it. The denim jacket covered in pyramid studs is the aardwolf's crest — pure display, visual intimidation, the look of someone you wouldn't approach without a reason. And underneath, the pink of the hoodie. The pink that shows. The one Nala lets show. The inside of the mug does the same thing: on the outside, the portrait with all the metal and all the attitude; on the inside, the color.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI'm not going to tell you a mug changes your mornings. It's a mug. It's for drinking. What it does have is an image that holds its own: the portrait of Nala by Yago Partal, printed on ceramic at the resolution of the original artwork, and a colored interior that doesn't fade because the print is part of the glaze, not a surface layer. In **Material and finish** you'll find the ceramic type and the process.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhat this mug has that others don't is that the image isn't clip art pasted on. It's a portrait with a story: a girl from Limpopo who saw someone tattooing for the first time at a Polokwane market when she was fourteen, who brought coffee to a tattooist three Saturdays in a row until he let her practice on pig skin, and who now has her own studio in a former tailor's workshop where her grandmother would have recognized the way of working — stitch by stitch, no rush, without destroying what you have underneath. The mug carries that story compressed into a single gaze. But you don't need to know it to use it. It's enough that you like how the aardwolf looks on the kitchen counter, or next to the monitor, or on the studio table where you work.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMade to order. Each mug is produced when you order it — no pre-made batches, no leftover units. That means a production lead time before shipping, a little longer than a warehouse delivery, but with the upside that not a single unit gets made that no one will use. Exact timelines and returns policy are in **Shipping and returns**, and where it's made is in **Origin, production and availability**.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you want to know who the one with the spike collar is — who tattoos at night and walks Fox Street at two in the morning listening to the city the way she used to listen to jackals in Limpopo as a kid — the [biography of Nala](https:\/\/www.yagopartal.com\/animal-kinhood\/nala\/) tells it from the beginning. The rooibos goes cold. It always goes cold. But the mug stays on the drawing table, between the ink and Koko's needle. If you like portrait mugs, there are [more Animal Kinhood objects](https:\/\/www.yagopartal.com\/objects\/) with other characters.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Yago Partal Studio","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57727823315269,"sku":"2344725_12578","price":19.0,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1052\/7830\/8677\/files\/nala_ak-mug-000.webp?v=1776696859","url":"https:\/\/checkout.yagopartal.com\/products\/nala-lobo-de-tierra-taza-interior-de-color","provider":"Yago Partal · Studio","version":"1.0","type":"link"}