I often get asked why it takes so long for me to make mugs, so I thought I'd walk you through the process of making a mug.

Step 1: Throw the mug body
Your mug starts as a chunk of clay cut off from a larger chunk of clay. Using a pottery wheel, I throw each mug individually. This process involves using water to minimize friction between my hands and the clay as the clay spins on the wheel.

Once the mug body is thrown, it is very fragile! Handling it can change its shape and will leave fingerprints all over it. Each mug body is carefully moved to a board, where it will be covered and allowed to dry for about a week.

Step 2: Trimming, carving, and adding a handle
Once the clay has dried enough to be "leather hard," it is hard enough not to get damaged when handled, but soft enough to carve and add things like handles, bear cutouts, and more.

I always start a trimming/carving session by first making a bunch of handles. These handles then have to dry enough to hold their shape before being added to the mug body.

If I'm making any Mama Bear mugs, I roll out the clay to cut out bears. Like the handles, the bear cutouts need to dry a bit before they can be added to the mug.

After that, each mug body is "trimmed," which means removing any excess clay from the base of the mug and addressing any shape issues. I also sign the bottom at this point.

Once it's trimmed, it can be carved, or things like bear cutouts can be added. These steps can take a while because I'm a perfectionist, and I want your mug to be perfect!

The handle gets added last.

Because the handle hasn't been drying for nearly as long as the mug, it has much more moisture in it. This difference in moisture can cause the handle to crack away from the mug if it dries too quickly. To prevent this, I cover the carved mugs, and let them dry for up to a week more under cover.

Step 3: Bisque firing
Once the mugs and handles have dried fully, they get bisque-fired, which requires heating the mugs up to 2,157 degrees. The studio I use takes care of this step for me. This also means that sometimes my work is in line behind many other things, so it may take a little while for the mugs to get through this step.

Step 4: Glazing
After the mugs are bisque-fired, they can be glazed. Different mugs require different glazing steps, but all the mugs I make take 20-30 minutes each to glaze well.

Step 5: Glaze firing
After the mugs have been glazed, they get fired one more time, this time up to 2,232 degrees. This melts the glass in the glaze and also triggers various chemical reactions in the glaze that create the final colors of the glazes, which are often quite different than their original, pre-fired colors. Like the bisque firing, my pottery studio handles this for me, which can also create delays if they have a lot of things to fire.

If you want a mug in a hurry, you're better off ordering from Amazon or swinging by your local makers' market to get a mug that's already made. But if you want a mug that was made specifically for you, and you're not in a rush, I'd love to make it for you!