Made to be used.

A small pottery making tableware and vessels in reduction-fired stoneware. Everything is thrown on the wheel, one at a time, and everything is meant to go in the dishwasher and stay in the cupboard.

A / The work

Every piece below is drawn on this page from its own height and diameter. Change a dimension and the drawing changes with it, because there is no photograph to disagree with.

01 bottle H 310 Ø 150 1.92 L

Table bottle

For oil, for water, for one branch of something. The neck is sized for a hand, not for a label.

Tenmoku, iron break at the shoulder

02 bowl H 120 Ø 300 4.14 L

Serving bowl

Wide enough for a whole meal and shallow enough to reach the bottom of without tipping it.

Ash, celadon break

03 jar H 210 Ø 180 2.88 L

Kitchen jar

Flour, salt, the things that live on the counter. The shoulder takes a wooden lid at 96mm.

Shino, unglazed foot

04 cup H 95 Ø 84 0.31 L

Everyday cup

Thrown in runs of forty. Thin at the rim, heavy at the foot, so it sits still on a table.

Celadon over porcelain slip

05 vase H 340 Ø 170 3.16 L

Stem vase

The belly holds the water, the neck holds the stems upright. Nothing else is asked of it.

Ash over iron

B / Making

How it is made

Throwing

Every piece is thrown from a weighed ball of clay, so a run of forty cups holds the same amount of tea as the one before it.

Trimming

Turned on the wheel once the clay is leather hard. The foot is cut here, and the foot is what decides whether a pot sits still.

Glazing

Dipped, not sprayed. The glaze breaks where the form changes, which is why the shoulder of a bottle looks different to its belly.

Firing

Reduction fired to cone 10 over fourteen hours, then two days cooling. The kiln decides the last ten percent and it is never twice the same.

C / Classes

Classes

Six wheels, six people, eight weeks. You throw from the first evening, you fire what survives, and you take home whatever you would actually use. No experience assumed and none pretended.

8 weeks, 320 GBP, clay and firing included

D / Visit

Visit the studio

Unit 4, Ravensworth Yard Hackney Wick, London E9

Saturday 10 to 4, and by arrangement

hello@stoneware.studio
+44 20 7946 0412