How to look after your handmade ceramics

One of the most common questions at the counter: "is it dishwasher safe?" Here is the honest, slightly longer answer, plus everything else worth knowing about living with handmade pots.

Dishwashers: usually fine, with caveats. Our stoneware is fired to around 1240°C, which makes it dense and hard-wearing — a dishwasher will not hurt the clay body. What suffers over years of harsh detergent is the surface of some glazes, which can dull very slowly. If a piece has gold lustre or unglazed raw clay on the outside, hand-wash it. Everything else: bottom rack, normal cycle, no drama.

Thermal shock is the real enemy. Ceramics dislike sudden temperature swings far more than they dislike knocks. Do not take a mug from a cold cupboard and pour boiling water straight in on a frosty morning — warm it with hot tap water first. Never move any pot from fridge to oven directly. Cracks from thermal shock look like clean hairlines and often appear days after the event that caused them.

Chips and crazing. A chipped rim is not the end: food-safe epoxy fills small chips, or embrace it — pots are for using. Crazing (a fine network of lines in the glaze) is a surface effect in the glaze layer. On decorative pieces it is harmless character; on ware you eat from, retire heavily crazed pieces eventually, as the lines can harbour stains.

Stains and tea tannin. White interiors will pick up tea and coffee shadows over time. A paste of bicarbonate of soda and a soft cloth lifts almost all of it. For stubborn staining, an hour soaking in a weak Milton solution works — rinse thoroughly.

Unglazed bases. Handmade pots often have raw, unglazed foot rings. They can scratch wooden tables, so lift rather than drag, and check the foot is smooth. If one feels gritty, rub two pots' bases together for a few seconds — potter's trick, works instantly.

Treat them kindly and handmade pots outlive their makers. We have customers still using mugs from our very first firing — a little more careful, a lot more loved.