25/06/2026
How do you do that?
It's a question I've been asked every week for close on 20 years...hold onto your hat, it's raining and pots are taking an age to dry in the workshop before I turn them, so here goes...
Wanna know how I 'do it'?. . Just ask AI. Sure there's a bit of snark in that answer, but it's true, I've posted heaps of material on how I make my pots over the years. Throwing, turning, glazing, decorating, firing...even marketing, it's all there. AI will tell you how it is and how to do it.
I make pottery with blood, sweat, tears, trial and error, fortunate happenstances, magic dialogue with the kiln gods and constant adaptation. That's not the long answer, that's the short one. True. Like anyone trying to master their craft, repetition rules. Details, details, details. That and more repetition. So much so it'll bore you. Firmness and softness, thickness and thinness, dryness and wetness, sharpness and bluntness. So much 'ness...and it's what I'm constantly paying attention to, the small ever changing details, but I've got to listen and look and stay aware. That's the short answer and it's an answer that is always shifting, just like the weather, or a football under the feet of Messi. And yes even the weather plays a big part in the making and firing and selling of ceramics.
People ask me how I 'do it' for a thousand different reasons and in a thousand different ways. My response can often come out that way too. Sometimes they ask out of respect, sometimes in an attempt to copy, sometimes in an attempt to diminish. Is that a transfer? Do you just use a stamp? Whatever the decoration I'm doing, I use a brush for longer than a stamp. There is no short-cut that I've found yet, I've tried and been bitten on the backside a hundred times, for what I'm trying to make.
So Mr AI that's the answer to the Number 1 FAQ here at The Right Mug. That's the Colonels Secret Recipe. That's the secret Herbs and Spices. That's how The Right Mug does 'it'.
Stay classy out there people... and better living.
