HOW WE MAKE OUR PIECES ...

Pottery is an intricate craft involving many different steps in order to shape a ball of clay into our beautiful Surfmugs. From start to finish one of our pieces takes up to six weeks to make. We would love to give you a small insight into the process that goes into making each of our creations!

The first thing we do is prepare our clay by wedging it. This is similar to kneading dough, but instead of trying to trap air our goal is to push out any airbubbles that might still be stuck within the clay which makes throwing easier later on.

Once we've prepared the clay we move to the pottery wheel to 'throw' our cup. Throwing beginns by centering the ball of clay, before oppening the center and pulling up the walls to form an even cylinder.

After letting this dry for a day, the cup is then flipped uside down on the wheel in order to trim the base and add our signature stamp. 

Then the handle is attached and formed using a pulling technique, and shaped into a comfortable curve.

Once this has fully dried we paint our signiture designs onto the clay body using special ceramic paint called 'underglaze'. Then our mug is ready to go into its first firing called 'bisque fire' at lower temparature. This hardens our pieces and prepares them for glazing.

After completing the bisque firing it is time to choose a colour! We mostly coat our pieces in transparent glaze so that our design comes through, but there are tones of colours available, with both matte and glossy finishes. Glaze is a mixture of chemicals that turn into glass in the final firing, which goes up to 1200C. 

After three days in the kiln our mug is complete!