THE MUG MAKING PROCESS

A BIT ABOUT THE MUG MAKING PROCESS

Each of our mugs takes approximately 4 weeks to complete. Pottery is a slow, time consuming craft, that has taught us patience, resilience & to let go of expectations. 

Firstly, each mug is wheel throw from Australian stoneware clay & then dried for approximately 3-6 days, depending on the weather. From here, they are loaded into the kiln & bisque fired to approximately 1000 degrees celsius. The kiln takes roughly 2-3 days to heat & cool before we can unload it. 

After unloading the kiln, we stamp the base of each mug with our Liquorice Moon logo & dip them into hot wax. This stops glaze from absorbing into the base of the mug & 

protects the stamp from smudging. After stamping & waxing we hand decorate each piece in the desired style & dip glaze them in large buckets of liquid glaze. When we have enough pieces to fill a kiln, we carefully wipe & clean each piece & load them into the kiln for their stoneware firing, of approximately 1280 degrees celsius. This firing takes around 3-4 days to heat & cool. 

Next, it's time to unload the kiln again. Once unloaded, we sort our pieces into styles & hand paint them with real gold lustre. This process usually takes us a week to complete. Gold is tedious to paint & if a mistake is made, it cannot be rubbed off easily. All of our crescent moons, leaves, rainbows etc are painted free hand. We don't use stencils or decals, so each one is unique!

Now it's time to load the kiln again...Bear with us, we're almost there! This firing is the lustre firing...The best bit in our opinion! This takes only about 1-2 days to heat & cool as the max temp is around 750 degrees celsius. This burns away impurities & leaves us with gorgeous shiny gold on our finished pieces! Unfortunately, because the real gold is a precious metal, it can't be put in the microwave & it isn't dishwasher safe, but we think it's worth the 'hassle'! Here, we unload the kiln a third & final time & begin sanding. Each piece is hand sanded, to create a smooth base, wiped clean & then sorted into market stock, online stock or to go to one of our Australian stockist. 

We hope you enjoyed reading this simplified run down of our pottery making process & that it gives you some insight to the time & love that goes into each of our handmade pieces.

x Eve