Notes from the studio

What Makes Ceramics High-End? An Honest Answer

“High-end” gets attached to a lot of ceramics that are simply expensive. From inside a studio, the word means something more specific — and more testable.

The Difference Between a Bowl, Yunomi, and Tea Bowl

Three forms that look related and serve completely different lives: the bowl, the yunomi, and the tea bowl. A short guide to telling them apart.

Making Ceramic Work for Daily Use

The highest compliment a cup can receive is being used every morning for years. Here is how work is made to survive that — and why it should be.

How Glaze Changes the Character of a Cup

The same thrown form, glazed three different ways, becomes three different objects. Glaze is not decoration on a cup — it is half the cup.

The Quiet Work Behind a Finished Bowl

For every minute a bowl spends on the wheel, it spends hours in work nobody films: wedging, drying, sieving, loading, waiting, judging.

Why Handmade Ceramics Are Never Identical

Variation in handmade ceramics is not a marketing line. It is physics: clay, hands, glaze, and fire all refuse to repeat themselves exactly.

From Clay to Cup: The Making of a Small Stoneware Piece

A small cup passes through seven distinct stages and two firings before it is finished. Here is the whole sequence, and where it can go wrong.

Icelandic Light and Japanese-Inspired Ceramics

Iceland and Japan are far apart on the map and close in sensibility. Working between them is less a style than a discipline: leave things out.

What Makes a Handmade Cup Feel Good in the Hand

You judge a cup within a second of picking it up, before you can say why. The reasons are physical: weight, balance, wall, rim, and surface.

Trimming a Ceramic Bowl: Why the Foot Matters

Turn a handmade bowl over. The foot — the ring of bare clay it stands on — is where a potter's honesty shows. This is how and why it is trimmed.

How a Handmade Yunomi Cup Is Thrown

A yunomi is a tall, handleless tea cup. This is how one is made on the wheel, from a lump of stoneware to a form that fits between two hands.