I'll start out by saying
that this is not a mug, it is a bowl with a "stabilizing" handle. I
first started making this type of bowl way back in the early 90s when a customer
showed me an old, redware bowl with a handle on it dating to the late 19th or
early 20th century. To be fair, it was a bit more like an oversized old
fashioned dinner coffee cup but it was intended as a bowl for soup or what have
you. I modified the general idea and added a straight sided collar to keep
things from sloshing out or spilling from the bowl while in use and added a
handle that was more about stabilizing the form rather than as a full on handle
though it functions perfectly well in that capacity. The customer was pleased
with the idea, I made six or eight for them and have been making them ever
since in some incarnation or another since that point. This one is of thrown
stoneware, impressed medallions around the belly and glazed in a temmoku that
has areas of a blue tint and breaks to a fine rust where thin. My wife and I
actually still have a terra cotta set that I made back in Cleveland and we
use them for everything from soup, chili, ice cream, stew and just about
anything else you can eat out of a bowl.
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