Why buy handmade pottery?
What’s wrong with IKEA cups and bowls and plates?
Nothing. They’re great. Some lovely designs, really attractive shapes, well made, skandi design for everyone, super cheap - there’s nothing not to like about IKEA. But you do miss out on some things that you don’t know until you know, if you kno… oh stop it. There are just some lovely things that makers of handmade pottery can do and take into consideration that will just never be part of a mass produced design. Here are a few of them:
Does handmade pottery feel better than mass produced?
Ergonomics - I think most potters making functional ware to be used by people’s hands in day to day life are pretty obsessed with how those pieces will feel in other people’s hands. We can’t know for sure, we won’t get it right for everyone, and we should probably check in with a few people with differing physical dimensions than ourselves, but we do think about hands an awful lot. This is one area where I actually think a lack of consistency can kind of be a good thing in the right circumstances: if there are a few mugs in front of you and each handle has a slightly different size, shape and profile, you will almost definitely find a favourite if you audition them all. And that’s personal, a connection between maker and owner. You won’t find that in IKEA, no point in doing much auditioning over there.
Other than the odd rib or shaping tool, the vast majority of handmade ceramics have been shaped by fingers. I love those lug handles on big serving dishes that have been attached with thumb smears and when you put your thumbs in the smears you can tell what the movement was that formed them. The lines down “pulled” handles where you can feel how it was gripped in the making. The bevelled lip of a cup where a fingertip has run round at the end of throwing. None of these features exist in factory cast wares. They don’t make or break the functionality of a cup, but I don’t think many people really live their lives from the perspective of pure optimised functionality, and a lot of people enjoy character and connection.
Weight - a big thing for potters. When you first start making items, they all kind of weigh too much. There are sneaky spots where we all accidentally leave extra clay that doesn’t really need to be there resulting in small pots that feel like they’re made of cast iron. If you make a mug, it’s really nice for it to be as light as possible without compromising strength - we hold them for, they’re full of liquid, liquid gets pretty heavy if you don’t have a coffee table to hand and you’re chatting away with a friend, let’s not make having a cup of tea harder work than it needs to be. So we potters try to make things lighter wherever possible/appropriate - so light that we sometimes break the walls making them because we tried to go a bit too light. BUT, hang on! That little vase that was too heavy in the early days - that was so STABLE. You could brush against the flowers in it with your elbow passing the hollandaise across the table and it didn’t fall over - pretty useful, right? Handmade pottery will have (hopefully) been made with its weight optimised and incorporated into the design as a practical consideration. Vases, lamp bases, display bowls - they can all benefit in practical terms from having stability and a bit of weight down at the bottom. Mugs, cups, jugs, bowls - they all get handled a lot so quite nice if they’re a bit lighter. Plates - they’re not going to tip over anyway, and in our house they get handled rather roughly sometimes, so I feel like making super thin plates isn’t the most practical move. And if you pick up your plate to lick it? Well, you’ve got more to worry about than lifting a few extra grams…
Will handmade pottery last longer?
Longevity - the lifespan of pottery and glazes is an area that most potters concern themselves with, doing some standard checks with lemon juice (acid resistance), heat (thermal shock related cracking), and cutlery (grey marks on surfaces which will see a lot of scraping). There are ways of predicting if a glaze is going to be hardwearing - they’re to do with glaze chemistry and firing temperature and these are definitely worth considering for certain uses but not necessary for all: a beautiful looking glaze might well be prone to cutlery scratch marks or change appearance if it makes contact with an acid like lemon juice or vinegar (this is also a safety test many potters use - if acid affects a glaze, that also means any toxic ingredients could leach out of it, bad news on functional ware) and this would be no good for the inside of a cup or a plate surface, but it would be totally fine for the outside of a vase where all it really has to do is look pretty on a shelf and not leak. So presuming the potter has considered the normal end use of the product, the clay and glaze will be as long-lasting as commercially mass-produced ware. Some commercial items have cheaply applied surface design that wears off, but the handmade equivalent will likely outlive it - most potters who do painted surface design potters seal their designs under a layer of transparent glaze - I think it’s fair to say the majority of potters respect the craft enough to want their pots to serve their owners for as long as possible and not let anyone down!
Why is handmade pottery so expensive?
This is an uncomfortable question to be asked directly - there’s always a flash of “oh god, have I messed up the maths…?” - but I’ve calculated it repeatedly, in various ways, at various points, and it always boils down to this: a handmade mug needs to cost about 25 quid or more. And that's a lot of money for a mug for a lot of people. I totally get it when people say, “is that price for ONE?!” to me at markets (and I also want the ground to swallow me up every time), but I’ve got used to just saying, “yeah they're pretty fiddly to make so it takes a while and firing a kiln is expensive”, but what I don’t bore them with is that when you’re a one person operation, the time and cost involved in every bit of cleaning the wheel, preparing the clay, cleaning the studio, moving ware boards round the studio to control drying times - it ALL has to be accounted for, it’s ALL work time when you’re a completely solo maker. It’s tempting to make a formula for cost that minimises everything and goes something like:
clay cost + glaze cost + proportion of kiln firing (x2 for bisque/glaze) + 4 mins throwing + 3 mins trimming + 1 min glaze dipping
Even if you give yourself a pretty healthy hourly rate for the time that appears to have been spent, it still starts to make items seem very cheap to do, but doesn’t really come anywhere near the actual amount of time that goes into making a ceramic piece. It doesn’t touch studio rent, general admin time, cleaning everywhere constantly, promotion (you have to get to the point where you sell the thing somehow). Even just dealing with clay condition eats up a frustrating amount of time sometimes - out of the bag from the supplier it’s rarely in just the right condition for throwing, so it often needs to be sliced, soaked, wedged, rested and aerated to just the right degree so a throwing session can run smoothly. It’s a truly horrible experience doing a run of work with clay that’s too hard - it tires your hands, causes unnecessary throwing failures, time down the drain. You obviously can’t directly charge the customer for that kind of wasted time, but my point is just that in a one-person operation these things will happen, and there is no chain of command where a minion gets sacked for messing up the clay prep, so all has to feed into the general cost of running the business. I realise this is starting to sound like a whinge, but maybe that’s to do with the fact that when you work alone and never get to say these things aloud they just circle your mind! It’s great to have the autonomy and do all these jobs - it keeps the profession incredibly varied and dynamic - but the cost of the work produced is unavoidably higher than factory made ware.
Does buying handmade pottery help local businesses/community?
When you buy from local makers, you directly support a network of individuals and businesses that benefit from and rely on each other. If the maker buys from local raw material suppliers, then stocks local markets, cafes and shops, it’s not hard to see how just one strand of pottery manufacture creates income, a perpetuation of culture and tradition, and a sense of pride and togetherness for a cluster of enterprises that all coexist symbiotically in whatever corner of whatever country they happen to be in. Where I live (in Bristol, UK) there is a lovely scene where maker’s markets and independent shops are incredibly encouraging and supportive, providing numerous outlets and opportunities to a potter like me. I can buy clay and glaze ingredients from suppliers within 10 miles of my studio, and stock shops and cafes and run market stalls all within 5 miles. I reckon this feels pretty good for everyone involved, and I guess thousands of little communities like ours will be functioning in their own ways all over the world - I like this thought, and take comfort in it.