The birth of a mug

I thought I would share the process of making a mug from start to finish. It will be interesting to some, maybe not to others. I will inject some humour into it so that might help. There are pretty photos though so even if you don't want to read about the intricacies, you can just have a look.

If anything, it gives a picture of all the time, steps and processes involved in making an everyday object that most of us depend on to wake up or get through the day once it's filled with hot caffeinated liquid.

Day 1: Throwing

The first step to any pottery is throwing. This is where you turn a lump of clay into a vessel, be it a cylinder, bowl, vase or bottle. Here are two cylinders I threw to make into mugs. The clay shrinks a lot so you have to make them much bigger than you want them at this stage. I tend to leave a decent amount of excess clay at the base so it's easier to lift off the wheel and the shape doesn't get distorted. 

Day 2: Turning

All that excess clay needs to go and the bottom needs to be tidied up. This is done by turning/trimming the pot upside down. Using a sharp tool, you trim away the clay while the wheel is spinning. I was taught that it should be spinning at top speed so you are maintaining the profile. But this is dangerous as your pot could go flying. It happened to two of these but it's just one of life's hazards when you are potter (we'll cover more as the days go by). 

Day 3: Assembling

This can be done on the same day as turning if your pot and handle both have the same moisture content. The handles I've made for these mugs are extruded. An extruder works just like that Play-doh hair cut toy but the holes are at the bottom. It's kind of fun to use and makes really consistent handles but just like the toy version, it's no fun to clean up. 

To attach the handles - or a spout or anything else - you need to score both pieces and attach them using slip. Slip is made by adding water to dried powdered clay. It is somewhere between a liquid and a solid and it is basically glue made of clay.  Then you have to smooth is all out so there are not cracks or air holes and generally so you don't have a messy join on an otherwise smooth mug. Sometimes with all the care in the world, the handles still crack off if they dry the wrong way (another hazard).

Day 4: Drying

You cannot fire a pot if there is even a drop of moisture still in it. If you do, it could explode in the kiln. This would suck for you but it could also destroy other people's work and in a community studio, that's kind of frowned upon (and another hazard). So here they are with the handles attached taking up nearly all of my meagre shelf space with other pots helping me stack them up vertically.  

Day 5: Glazing

Once the mug has been through the first firing, it's known as bisque or biscuit fired. They both make it sound appetizing but it's just dry, hard porous clay. For things like plant pots, you might want to stop at this stage because porosity is good for plants. But this little mug isn't stopping here.

The first stage involves glazing it all over with transparent. Then the base needs to be cleaned off or else the pot will stick to the kiln shelf (hazard alert). At this stage I also brush a layer of iron oxide all around the rim. The aim is for this to melt into the glaze and run down both the inside and outside of the mug. 

After that's all dry, it is then dipped into a second glaze of my own secret mix. It is only dipped to halfway down the bottom of the handle. This means you will get a little band of white clay (with transparent glaze) right at the base. Because of the minerals glaze is made with, the raw colour has absolutely nothing to do with how it will look once it's fired. These are a dull pink now but they will be a glossy pale green when they emerge.  

Even if you've used the same glaze 400 times, there is still no guarantee it will come out the way you expect. Where it sits in the kiln can affect it. What it's sitting next to can affect it. Even dust that collected on it while it was waiting to go into the kiln can affect it (yet another hazard). 

Day 6: The finished mug (finally)

Once the kiln reaches 1235º C, the glaze will mature. This takes a long time. Then it has to cool back down to 40º C before you can even open the kiln. This also takes a long time. Is it clear yet how long it takes to make a mug? Don't worry, I'll say it again before the end of this post. Here you can see that the oxide behaved, running down and melting like I wanted it to. Sometimes things do work out.

So, many days of work go into making a mug by hand. Most commercially produced mugs are cast and no hand ever touches clay. The rest of the steps are probably done by a machine as well. So please think about how much thought, skill and labour go into hand made pottery and don't just think, 'but I could get mugs from Ikea for £1 each'. And if you do think that, please don't tell any potter. It's too upsetting. 

We definitely understand that not everyone can afford hand made pots (most of us can't either) but that's not the same thing as assuming they should be as cheap as mass produced stuff. Fortunately for me, a nice woman commissioned me to make these mugs for her so I never have to convince anyone what I think they are worth.

The Ferrous Collection

Ever since I started foraging for sand and rocks to use in my pottery, I've become interested in the chemistry of when and how metal melts. If I'd realised earlier that this would be relevant to my interests in life, I probably would have approached high school science in a different way. But it's never too late to learn.

My particular interest right now is iron. Iron has been used for thousands of years by potters. Traditional celadon glazes, used throughout East Asia, are made using a small amount of iron oxide which turns green when fired in a reduction atmosphere. Pottery studios in cities tend to have electric kilns, which produce more uniform glazes, often in bold colours. This means that urban potters who prefer the look of glazes fired in gas or wood burning kilns have to develop little tweaks to make things a bit more interesting.

My first step was mixing my own glazes from the basic stock at my studio. Although I didn't pay attention in science class, I did pay attention in all my art classes so I know how to achieve different colours. Unlike with paint though, this is purely theoretical when working with raw glaze as the colour when it is unfired doesn't look anything like it does when it's fired. 


I managed to get the greens and blues I was looking for after some trial and error. But it seemed like I was still missing something. So I returned to the idea of the foraged materials and thought about how I could achieve something similar that didn't result in a rough texture, particularly on the rim. 

I tested a pot with a light brushing of iron oxide on the rim to see what would happen. I loved the way it melted down into the glaze, adding an extra dimension that took it one step further from the flat, uniform finish that the electric kiln so often produces.

The Ferrous Collection is a range of hand thrown table and kitchenware that incorporates iron in its various forms. Iron rich rock from La Gomera in the Canary Islands is ground down and added as red dust to the clay before throwing. This results in unpredictable iron blooms that only appear when the pot reaches glaze temperature.

For the pots that have iron oxide brushed on the rim, I apply this between glaze dips so it gets really incorporated into the finish rather than just sitting on top. Some other pots have rust I've collected around my studio added when the clay is still wet. My studio is based in an old railway arch and the actual metal arch is constantly shedding rust so I don't have to travel far to do my foraging.

All my work is for sale at my shop. Get in touch if you want to find out the story behind the particular pot you are interested in.  

Foraging for pottery

Set of two nesting bowls with sand from La Graciosa in the Canary Islands wedged into the clay.

Lately I've been trying to find ways to combine the things I enjoy doing. Maybe it's related to getting older. On the one hand, it's facing up to the reality that there isn't an infinite amount of time left. On the other, it's about making quality time the priority over the time spent on things that 'need' to be done. Either way, I've successfully combined three things I love into these pots.

The first and most obvious is pottery. The decision to take it more seriously required getting to the point where I believe that I'm good enough and that it's worth the effort. This becomes more difficult with as more time passes. It's also difficult without any formal education or training and before anything in the way of sales. Nevertheless, in September I took a job at my pottery studio, allowing me to work at my 'day job' one less day a week and focus more on working with my hands. I also started selling my work more regularly.

Vase with stripes made of clay foraged in Whitstable. Known as London Clay, this was traditionally used for brick making.

The second is foraging. I love searching for edible and medicinal plants when I'm out in the countryside. I've been faithfully looking for edible mushrooms I can confidently identify for years. Over the last year, I found and ate two delicious porcinis and one giant puffball, although chanterelles still elude me. It was only after a trip to Iceland a few years ago, where I picked up some beautiful black sand from a secluded beach near Húsavík when I figured out that I could also forage for materials to use in my pottery.

Bottle with sand from Húsavík in the north of Iceland wedged into the clay. 

So the third thing that is incorporated into these pots is traveling. I've started collecting sand, rocks and even clay everywhere I go. Whether it's on a day trip to Whitstable or an extended road trip around the Olympic Peninsula, I bring home weird looking baggies of unidentifiable stuff.  I'm sure being a white woman with an American passport is the only reason I'm able to get these odd things across borders without any fuss.

Bottle with large sand particles from Lake Crescent on the Olympic Peninsula glazed transparent.

The rocks and sand around Lake Crescent are high in basalt from ancient volcanic eruptions in the Olympic Mountains.

I've developed a particular interest in places with unique geography, especially volcanic and formally volcanic sites. The sand and rocks from these places do particularly interesting things in a 1200ºC kiln. They not only melt but spread out in beautiful patterns and react in unpredictable ways with the glazes.

Jade green glazed bottle with a trail of volcanic sand from La Graciosa in the Canary Islands.

There is a lot of experimentation involved and often the results are not great. With the initial excitement of seeing how the Icelandic sand looked, I wedged it into the clay so it was incorporated evenly throughout entire pots. I've moved away from that and started to use these foraged elements as more subtle details to enhance the shape of the pots.  All pottery for sale can be viewed in my shop.

Updated shop with pottery and wood

In addition to paper based arts, I've been working with clay for many years and have just started working with wood. I finally got around to updating my shop to include some of my hand thrown pottery. I'm making new pots on a regular basis and continually adding them to the shop.

  I've also started a new wood turning project called Swords in Plowshares where I turn the posts holding estate agent signs into useful things like dibbers and nostepinnes on the lathe. These are not for sale but will be available to trade with anyone who is willing to share a story of being messed around by an estate or letting agent.

 

At the moment, I'm only shipping the pottery within the UK because international shipping is prohibitively expensive and I want my work to be both functional and affordable. Have a look around and see if there is anything for you. If you live in London or are planning a visit, you can save yourself shipping costs and come pick it up from my pottery studio in Hackney, East London. 


All my zines are available in the shop and I can easily ship those anywhere in the world.