The "The Horse with Nine Red Manes" Phin: The World’s First Titanium Phin

“What would a ceremonial Phin look like?”

"The Horse with Nine Red Manes" Phin was born from that very question. If the Phin was once a ritual, a quiet but essential part of Vietnamese daily life, then why couldn’t it become a ceremonial offering? And if it were to be an offering, what form should it take, what spirit should it carry, and who would it be meant for? "The Horse with Nine Red Manes" Phin is our answer.

In legend, The Horse with Nine Red Manes has never had a single, fixed image. Some say it bears nine strands of crimson mane. Others imagine nine blazing shades of red. Still others picture a mane made of nine shifting hues, almost otherworldly. To us, the most beautiful image of a noble horse is not when it stands still to be admired, but when it is in full gallop: free, powerful, confident. Its mane swept to the side by the wind, carrying an unmistakable sense of pride.

Before beauty, though, comes function. Especially with a Phin. Anyone who has brewed with a Phin long enough, pressed the filter countless times, knows the discomfort of touching thin, sharp, cold metal edges. So the real question became: how could The Horse with Nine Red Manes be not only beautiful, but also a gentle point of contact in everyday use? How do you design it so holding it with one finger feels right, two fingers feel right, three fingers feel natural? Instead of your hand meeting harsh metal, every press of the filter becomes a soft, almost intimate gesture, like stroking a precious horse. That kind of pleasure, honestly, is something only those who brew with a Phin every day truly understand.

The very first horses weren’t made by machines, but by hand, from clay. They were shipped off in boxes, only to arrive with heads and tails out of place. That’s when we had to turn to a special kind of sculpting clay, one that could “freeze” its form. Its strength was that once shaped, it stayed perfectly still. Its weakness was time: if you didn’t work fast enough, it hardened, and there was no fixing it.

Once the answer was clear in our minds, everything else fell into place. If this was to be a gift, then the most important moment would be the moment of opening it. Instead of placing The Horse with Nine Red Manes on the outside for everyone to see, we hid it inside the body of the Phin, resting atop the filter: discreet, intimate, and reserved only for the brewer.

As the water draws down, the legend appears.

In the legend of Sơn Tinh and Thủy Tinh, the waters rose as high as the mountains grew. After countless failed attempts, Thủy Tinh withdrew, conceding Princess Mỵ Nương to Sơn Tinh. In "The Horse with Nine Red Manes" Phin, a fragment of that story is reenacted in every brew. As the water level inside the Phin recedes, The Horse with Nine Red Manes slowly emerges: proud, victorious, echoing Sơn Tinh’s triumph. With each brew, the water rises and falls. And in that fleeting moment, the horse reveals itself. Every extraction becomes a retelling of the legend, where ancient folklore quietly flows into modern life.

Placing a ritual into a material of the future.

Titanium is a material of the future. It’s used in medicine, in aerospace, in environments where durability and stability are not luxuries, but necessities.

Bringing titanium into a traditional coffee-brewing ritual isn’t about showing off technology. It’s about answering a deeper question: how do you help an old ritual travel farther, last longer, and remain relevant in the modern world?

"The Horse with Nine Red Manes" Phin might well be the first Phin capable of brewing coffee on the Moon. But more importantly, we believe it could be the first Phin to carry a Vietnamese cultural story out into the world and beyond.

Only 54 "The Horse with Nine Red Manes" Phins exist. Each one sits at the crossroads of legend and technology, of inherited memory and an unnamed aspiration.

And if we return to that first question if today you’re looking for a truly special Phin to gift someone truly special, "The Horse with Nine Red Manes" is the one.