Enjoying Simple Pleasures

Nothing is more satisfying than sipping your morning coffee from a beautiful, well-crafted handmade mug. It’s like a morning meditation, a simple and inexpensive pleasure like no other.

My favorite mug is pot belly shaped and glazed in a soft Shino, a traditional Japanese glaze that is a speckled burnt orange and gets creamy where it pools and sooty black where the kiln flames lick it under the rim. It’s an earthy, fiery color that is energizing but also softly soothing to me. It was one of my favorite glazes to use when I made pottery.


This particular mug has a nice thick handle with two ridges running down the length and a bit of pooled thick glaze on the foot rim which bubbled in the fire, then froze when the kiln was done. It has a darker “finger” line of orange around the mid section where the potter swiped their finger through the wet glaze as a kind of statement that a human hand touched this piece. The middle of the cup is rounded out and fits inside my other hand like the belly of a warm puppy. It feels comforting and familiar.


It’s not perfect in a traditional sense, and I would never want it that way. Too many things are perfect these days and perfect is quite boring.


When I drink my morning coffee it’s like I am having a conversation with this potter; a Marti from Lincoln, Nebraska. That is all I know about him/her, but I am connected through their handmade creation. I know that a person, with a life, with a love of clay took time and made this. I know that this was made with love because you don’t make handmade pottery for the money! You make it because you love working with soft malleable clay, you love to give your creations over to the fire and let it have its way with them. You love the surprises that you encounter when you open the kiln. And you love that you are making something that will be used and cherished for a long time even though you know that eventually it will go back to the earth from where it came.


If you don't have at least one handmade mug in your cupboard, go out and get one, it will make your morning special.