Every piece in this shop takes weeks to make and passes through my hands a dozen times before it reaches yours. Here's what actually happens between a bag of clay and the mug on your shelf.
1. Wedging
It starts with Standard 112, a speckled stoneware clay. Before anything can be thrown, the clay is wedged — kneaded by hand to drive out air bubbles and align the particles. Skip this step and a hidden air pocket can crack a piece in the kiln weeks later. It's the least glamorous part of pottery and one of the most important.
2. Throwing
Each piece is thrown on the potter's wheel — centered, opened, and pulled up by hand. No two come out identical, and that's the point. A mug takes minutes to throw and years of practice to throw well. The walls have to be even, the curve intentional, the weight right in your hand.
3. Drying to Leather Hard
Freshly thrown pots rest under plastic for a day or two until they reach the "leather hard" stage — firm enough to handle, soft enough to carve. Rushing this step means warping or cracking. Clay sets the schedule, not me.
4. Trimming & Handles
Back on the wheel, each piece is flipped and trimmed — excess clay carved away to reveal the foot and refine the form. Mugs get their handles now: pulled by hand, shaped, and attached one at a time. A handle has to feel as good as it looks.
5. Bone Dry & the First Firing
Pieces then dry completely over several days to a week before the first trip through my kiln. This bisque firing takes the clay to around 1,800°F, transforming it from fragile dried mud into porous ceramic that's ready to accept glaze.
6. Glazing
Every piece is glazed by hand from a small, carefully tested palette — a clear that lets the speckled clay speak, a soft green celadon, a deep tenmoku that breaks into oil-spot black, a quiet white satin matte, and a warm iron red. Glazing is chemistry and intuition in equal parts: too thin and it's dry and rough, too thick and it runs onto the kiln shelf.
7. The Glaze Firing
The final firing takes each piece to cone 6 — roughly 2,200°F — over the better part of a day, followed by another full day of cooling. At that temperature the clay vitrifies and the glaze melts into glass, fused permanently to the surface. This is where the kiln has the last word. Glazes shift, break, and pool in ways that can't be fully controlled, which is why every piece is genuinely one of a kind.
8. The Reveal
Opening a cooled kiln never stops feeling like a small holiday. Each piece is inspected, sanded smooth on the foot, and only then listed in the shop. What doesn't meet the standard doesn't make it here.
From wedging table to your doorstep, every pot is made start to finish by one pair of hands in Southern Pines, North Carolina. Thanks for supporting slow, handmade work.