Fall 2022 Mugs

Latest Mugs, Fresh from the Kiln – Mugs from September and October 2022

Over the summer, I made many, many mugs – getting stocked up for the holiday season!

It proved challenging, as a hot summer and a ban on in-window air conditioning in my townhouse complex made my home studio really hot, and I struggled with my work drying too fast (a challenge in Calgary in the most moderate of weather) and ended up chucking a lot of my work into my reclaim buckets. Cracked handles plagued me to the point I was *scared* to check my work each time.

To counter this, I did my best to slow down the drying, and changed my handle design slightly to alter one bend that seemed to be the most crack-prone. I also started trimming my mug bases more, reducing the chance that too-thick clay along the foot was a contributing factor. All in all, that did the trick, my fail-rate went from around 30% back to “normal” (for me, that’s about 5% – it’s something that all potters deal with) and I think that made my mugs even more finished looking.

During this period, I was using a lot of reclaimed clay – that’s leftover bits and pieces that are too wet or too dry to use, as well as mistakes, that I toss in a bucket, then blend, dry, and “reclaim” to use – as I had so much of it. With my micro-studio, I need to keep on top of it so I don’t run out of storage. I have a white clay bucket and a brown/any colour bucket (each 5 gallons). I tried a box of granite clay in the spring, and because it had a lot of large particles I’d been keeping that reclaim quarantined, so I had a small bucket of that as well that I processed.

As well, I experimented with 3 Mason Stains – Bright Blue, Robin’s Egg Blue, and Celadon, which turned out as more of an olive green than I thought. These I also blended into white reclaimed clay, since its wet consistency made it easy to mix the colour in before drying and wedging. Along with these, I was using Plainsman M390, a deep chocolate brown clay, Plainsman M340, a buff clay that’s a staple in my practice, and some M370 and Tucker’s Bright White, white clay bodies. These I either used alone or layered together with each other in my marbled agateware.

Mugs made with Mason-stained coloured clay

Thank you for taking a look! These mugs are all available as of this post. I’m planning on taking many of these to in-person sales in Calgary in November and December, but they haven’t been listed on Etsy yet. If you’re interested in anything pictured, please contact me.