I recently unloaded a kiln load of work that included bunches of handled cups and mugs with varying and new decoration, and decided to group them for pix, which immediately and delightfully felt like family portraits. I like the idea of capturing my current cup designs and glaze color palette at this arbitrary point in time. Meet my cup family!

Above are my Stamped mugs decorated with slip-trail and stamps I design and make. Because my ongoing goal is to make pots that are “ornately elegant for everyday,” I refer to these as mugs because it addresses their durability, utility, and size in one word. These are not Grandma’s teacups! This portrait also pictures two from my ongoing Colorized series (the blue flowers and dogwood blossoms) in which I completely fill two to four of the stamps with hand-brushed underglaze color creating lovely focal points. I explain more about my stamped cup making process as well as two-piece handle origin in this old blog post here.

Late this summer I began a new mug series combining my stamping with the inlay line work and polka dots I have been incorporating on other pots. The result feels very Art Deco, so I’ve been mentally referring to these as Deco Stamped mugs.

The other style of handled drinking vessel I make is a Clover cup, which became Deluxe Clover cup when the decoration went from minimal slip-trail to lots of everything! I explain the full origin of this cup in a blog post from last year here. I refer to this as a cup vs. mug because the inward alteration makes the volume it holds less than my stamped mugs. Above are my Polka Dot Deluxe Clover cups.

Polka dots led to stripes, and lots of stripes equals Super Stripes Deluxe Clover cups!

Around this time last year, I began adding inlay lines (and this year, circles) to my slip-trail and underglaze deco which lead to these multi-layered cuties. And since that is exactly what I thought when I made them, I still refer to them as Cutie Deluxe Clover cups.

At the same time I started the Deco Stamped mugs, I started drawing similar arched line work into these cups too, and the Deco Deluxe Clover cups were born.

So here’s the handled-cup family! This group shot illustrates most of the cup styles and the range of my current glaze and underglaze color palette. I’m in the midst of eliminating a couple colors (Cornflower blue and Violet) so that despite a wide range of designs, my colors relate to each other and feel collectively vibrant when viewed as a group… like in my online shop! Which is exactly where you can find all these lovely ladies right now.