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

A handmade cup looks like a single object, but it is really the survivor of a sequence. Between the bag of clay and the finished piece there are seven stages, two firings, and several weeks. Any stage can end the piece. This is the whole sequence, briefly and honestly.

1. Wedging

Clay from storage is not ready to throw. Wedging — kneading the clay in a rocking spiral on the bench — evens out its moisture and pushes out trapped air. An air pocket that survives wedging can burst in the kiln months later. It is unglamorous work and it is never skipped.

2. Throwing

The weighed ball is centered on the wheel, opened, and pulled into a cylinder. This is the stage people picture when they think of pottery, and it is genuinely the fastest part — a small cup might be five to ten minutes on the wheel. I described the throwing of a handleless tea cup in detail in how a yunomi is thrown.

3. Trimming

After a day or two the piece is leather hard, and the base is turned upside down on the wheel and carved: excess weight comes off, the outer curve is completed, and the foot ring is cut. Why the foot matters has the full argument, but in short: trimming is where a heavy lump becomes a resolved form.

4. Drying

The trimmed piece must dry completely, and it must dry slowly. Uneven drying builds stress into the clay: a rim that dries days before the base will often crack, sometimes invisibly until the fire finds it. In an Icelandic winter, with the studio air dry from heating, pieces are dried under loose plastic to slow them down. Patience here is cheaper than losing the work later.

5. Bisque firing

The first firing takes the bone-dry clay slowly up to around 950–1000 °C. Chemically bound water leaves the clay; the piece becomes hard, porous, and permanent — it can never return to workable clay again. The porosity is the point: bisque ware drinks glaze evenly.

6. Glazing

Glaze is applied by dipping or pouring, and the wet piece shows almost nothing of its final surface — most glazes go on as dull grey or chalky pastel liquids. Glazing is done by judgement: how long the dip lasts, how the glaze runs off the rim, where it is wiped back. The foot is cleaned of glaze completely, or the piece would fuse to the kiln shelf.

7. The stoneware firing

The glaze firing goes much higher — into the 1200s °C — and takes the better part of a day, plus another day of cooling that cannot be rushed. Inside, the clay vitrifies and the glaze melts, moves, and freezes into its final surface. This is where glaze becomes character, and where the kiln has the final word on every decision made before it.

What comes out either goes to the collection, back to the shelf for a second look, or — some weeks — to the hammer. The pieces that pass are photographed one by one, because after this sequence, no two are alike.