Three Mugs and Some Musings on Making
My evening cup of tea is decaff, but still Yorkshire because why would I want to drink any other kind. The tea is robust, just how I like it, I can feel the tannin on my teeth, the milk takes the edge off. The mug is big (I am mortally offended by small mugs and - this may be an unpopular opinion - cups are the worst!) but for all its size it is delicate. This mug is special, I had hankered after it for months and bought it while holding my breath and telling myself it was an investment which would last longer then the equivalent cost of a bottle of very good gin.
This vessel is made of pale - almost white - clay, glazed the bluish grey of the thin clouds of springtime, with a swooping swirl around itself and a dot of un-glazed white clay in one corner. It was made by an artisan potter of great skill (Katie Coston, Illyria Pottery) It is a delight to me, this mug, if I make a bowl of my hands it fits in perfectly; if I use the handle it is perfectly balanced and doesn't feel so heavy that it might be taken slowly down by gravity, spilling the tea before it is drunk.
Grey Mug - Illyria Pottery, Oxfordshire
This is such a beautiful piece I almost didn’t want to use it, but I’m glad I did, it’s a pleasure to drink from, and holds a lot of tea!
Katie Coston, who is Illyria Pottery, had the most beautiful shop in Jericho (complete with a shop cat) and now works from her studio in the equally beautiful countryside just outside Oxford.
(The bee skep teapot here was a gift from a friend, and the little white vase is by me. Postcard from Imperial War Museum North)
Earlier in the day, around half past nine if I can last that long, I have my only coffee of the day. Out of the many mugs we own I have a particular favourite for this. I bought it from Boscastle Pottery in (they don’t seem to have a website) on a holiday to Cornwall with good friends, probably 11 or so years ago. I did buy two, but one of them got dropped on our very hard tiles kitchen floor, so I only have it’s twin. I think the two mugs were both on the ‘seconds’ shelf, but I loved them anyway and quite like a bit of imperfection, so I got them. I now can’t imagine life without this lovely blue mug, who’s pattern echoes the ripples in the harbour of the town it is from, I find a very reassuring object - but I believe if we surround ourselves with things we love we do feel happier (they don’t have to be handmade, that’s what speaks to me…you may love those much too tiny white IKEA coffee mugs beloved of holiday cottage owners!).
Blue Mug with ripples - Boscastle Pottery, Cornwall
It looks like the sea! Which is all right and proper, and has a beautiful swoopy handle.
(we did go in the Wirchcraft Museum obviously, where my friend mistook her husband - who was standing very still, in a corner of the darkish stairs - for an exhibit, and the then very small boy laid down in the middle of the floor and declaimed “oh museums are SO BORING why do grown ups like them SO MUCH!”)
I am not a mug making potter, I have tried ‘production potting’ and it is not for me, but I can recognise the skill and art in these otherwise utilitarian pieces of kitchenware. Theses mugs are washed with care and the Illyria one does not hang from a hook by its handle, as all our commercially made mugs do. Instead it is on the shelf next to the tea and coffee containers, and the several cafetieres and stove top coffee makers we've accumulated. And no-one else uses it but me.
When I started making pottery I thought I would eventually spend my time at the wheel (you know, when you’ve managed to stop the clay flying off, Generation Game style, each time you sit down to it). What actually happened is I fell for hand building, and for the textured clay, the stuff with bits in it, cranky (like me, occasionally) and sturdy stuff. This is not what mugs are made from.
I expect if I spent the next ten years throwing pots I could get there, in the meantime I’ve hand built a couple of mugs, which I tend to refer to as my ‘gardening mugs’ - they seem to fit very happily outdoors, accompanying a bit of light border planting or pruning. They are very far from perfect (and aren’t even entirely cylindrical) but they are huge and have a big enough handle to accomodate gardening gloved fingers, you just have to get someone else to feed you the ginger nuts.
Handbuilt mug with tenmoku and white glaze - by me.
RUSTIC is the word I use for these, and sturdy. I do love tenmoku glaze too. Hand built from three slabs I guess - the walls, the base and even the handle are cut from rolled out clay.