How Many Potters Does It Take To Make A Mug?

When Nancy and I began making pots together as Cold Springs Studio Pottery, the first order of business was to make mugs for our upcoming wedding. The plan was that we would make the mugs for the reception. We had washing stations so that as folks finished at the reception, they could wash their mugs, and take them with them as wedding gifts fro us.

We had a few glazes that we hoped would work at cone 6 and a kiln that wasn't happy getting that hot. While I could throw the mugs, it wasn't really a group effort... so we decided to handbuild the mugs for the wedding. Aurora was five years old and was trying to figure out her role in the studio. We decided on making soft-slab mugs with impressed/stamped decoration. Each of us designed stamps to decorate with, and chops to indicate who had made what pots. After a couple evenings of making mugs, Aurora went wild on this one, and used everyone's chops AS the decoration. From this angle you can see my AS chop, Nancy's bunny chop, and Aurora's killer whale chop. 

In addition to these handbuilt mugs, we made soupmugs and a few short thrown diner mugs. I think, for our 65 guests, we made a few more than 100 mugs. There were maybe 6 pots left after our wedding.Ten years later, there are only a few of these pots left in our collection. I think two soupmugs have survived the "pre-dishwasher" stage in our house. One of the last diner mugs from this time has a good sized chip in the lip. But this mug soldiers on.