As a coffee lover, I&#;ve always been fascinated by how the simple act of choosing a mug can transform my coffee experience. It&#;s not just about the brew for me; it&#;s the feel of the cup in my hands, the aroma in the air, and the vessel from which I sip. The debate between using a ceramic and a glass mug has been a personal journey, and here, I&#;m sharing my insights into this choice, comparing my experiences with the ceramic coffee mugs and the glass coffee mug.
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Labelling is a problem
There seems to be a huge disconnect with the effort involved in producing a mug, and the pricing of it. Transfer, sublimation, screen printed or decal mugs can be labeled as handmade, which I feel can really confuse consumers. You know the ones? These are mostly white bone china with a slogan/graphic/illustration printed on them. These mugs are nearly always made in a factory using the slip cast method and bought in by a maker who then adds graphic transfers by hand. I&#;m not saying that this makes these mugs any less lovely of course, they can still be beautiful & high quality but are made using a very different process than mugs thrown on the wheel from a ball of mud - and therefore they can be sold at a lower price without the maker being out of pocket. I think this reminds us that we need to be open about our processes and describe them as much as possible.
I&#;m not alone...
From the conversations that followed my post on Instagram its clear that potters who have a deep understanding of the processes involved in producing a mug will pay substantially more for an item, but unless us potters just want to circulate our money around and around within our own industry and subsequently stunt any kind of growth we need to encourage spend from outside of it too.
Tom Demeranville on Facebook put it nicely:
&#;There is a premium on 'art' purely because it's useless. Functional items suffer the curse of being useful and therefore, cheaper. Art is never priced by the amount of effort spent creating it. Still, I'm glad it's true. It's the only way I can afford to buy other potters work. A Lisa Hammond production mug is 30ish quid. A Lisa Hammond teabowl more like £300. You pay more for the lack of handle. Capitalism makes no sense.&#;
Is this because Lisa Hammond herself would not have made the production mugs? They would have been made by one of her apprentices - therefore what you are paying for with one of her tea bowls is actually for the makers touch - her years of experience, knowledge of her craft and the many, many, many pots which had to fail before she put that tea bowl out into the world. Still it doesn&#;t make a lot of sense when in most other industries we price by effort, time, quantity of materials. Maybe it&#;s because pottery spans both craft and art - which is a whole other argument.
Location location location
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Price is also location-dependent it seems. In the USA, Canada and Denmark - mugs are priced much higher. It&#;s not unusual for mugs to be sold for $50- $70 (£54 - £39), and I am not 100 per cent sure why this is the case - if anyone can shed light on this I would love to hear from you. Likewise mugs for sale in a gallery or a ceramic specialist market are often sold for higher prices than mugs in at generic craft market. Is this due to the patrons of those places being more likely to be informed about the making processes involved and therefore more willing to spend the amount the piece is worth?
People don&#;t cuddle up with a butter dish
Bruce Swan from Bruce Swan Ceramic Stuff on Instagram [@bswan61] puts my feelings about mugs into words beautifully:
&#;It&#;s funny when you understand that a mug or a cup is usually the most intimate of functional objects. On a cold morning a warm mug is actually cradled in ones hands. A drinking vessel is one of the few pieces you own that not only touches your face, but is actually kissed in the process of it&#;s use. People often have a favourite, comfortable mug that they go to over and over. Most of the mugs I make might be similar, but I like to make them as individual as I can. I think that enhances their value as an art work and enables me to promote them as such. Sometime(s) I think potters devalue their own work as &#;only a mug&#; because its a piece they seem to &#;mass produce&#;. Rejoice in your mugs and promote them. They&#;re awesome. People don't cuddle up with a butter dish.
So what does it take to make a mug?
Comments on my post revealed, to my surprise, that many potters don&#;t even make mugs as they are just too hard and they lose too many to faults or failures during the process. Mugs are one of my most popular items so I can&#;t imagine not making them - but I have certainly lost a few dozen in my time.
So, for any non-potters out there who may not know the amount of work which goes into one of my mugs allow me to briefly explain the process.
After I prepare the clay, I throw the mug on the wheel (it took a good few years to become good at keeping the walls of the mug thin and even - and that&#;s after months of learning to throw anything at all!). It is important to get the size right at this stage (clay shrinks 10-20 per cent on firing) so unless I want to make espresso mugs it is important to make the mug 10 - 20 per cent bigger than the final piece at this point.
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