Care & Use
Everything here is vitrified stoneware fired to 1260°C. It is meant to be used daily, put in the dishwasher and stacked in a cupboard. Here is what will and will not damage it.
Yes, all of it. The glazes are stable and the body is vitrified, so there is nothing for water to get into. Two practical notes: load pieces so they cannot knock each other — chips almost always come from contact in the rack rather than from the machine itself — and skip the rinse-aid on Ash, which can dull its surface over a year of daily cycles.
Yes. There is no metal in any glaze we mix, including Tenmoku, whose colour comes from iron oxide rather than metallic iron.
Serving bowls and platters will take a warm oven — up to about 150°C to keep food hot. What no stoneware likes is a sudden change: a cold bowl into a hot oven, or a hot plate under a cold tap. That is thermal shock, and it cracks pots. Warm things up and cool them down with the oven, not against it.
Nothing we make is designed for direct heat. No hob, no grill, no open flame.
Fine lines in the glaze surface, like a map. It happens when the glaze contracts more than the clay as it cools, and it is a normal feature of many glazes — on our Ash it is there from the start and intended.
The inside of a much-used mug will develop a warm tone over a year or two. It cleans off with bicarbonate of soda and a damp cloth if you want it gone. Do not use bleach on Ash — it lifts the surface sheen and it will not come back.
Most people start with two mugs, come back for plates, and end up with a table of pieces from four different firings. That works, and it is how we would do it — but two honest notes:
Tell us what you already own when you order and we will pull from the closest batch on the shelf.
Things break. We keep a record of what you have bought, and a single replacement piece can usually be thrown into the next scheduled firing rather than waiting for a batch — three to four weeks rather than three months. Email the studio with your order number and, if you can, a photograph, so we match the glaze year.
Every firing produces pieces that are sound but not right: a glaze skip, a warped rim, an ash run ground off the foot. They go on the shelf by the workshop door at about a third off, and they are the same pot to eat off. We do not post seconds, because the disappointment rate by photograph is high and by hand is nil.