Every piece that leaves the studio starts as a wet lump on a spinning wheel. We have been asked, more than once, why we do not simply cast them.The honest answer is that a cast pot is perfect and a thrown pot is alive. The wall thickness shifts a little as it rises. The rim ends a millimetre off true. Those are not defects, they are the record of a pair of hands making a decision in real time.It costs us about forty minutes a piece. We think that is a fair trade for something you will hold every morning for a decade.

Why we still throw every pot by hand

We stripped the main bench back to six tools last spring: a block plane, a dovetail saw, two chisels, a marking gauge and a steel rule.Within a week the work got faster. Not because the tools were better, but because nothing had to be moved before anything could start. A clear surface is a kind of instruction.If you are setting up your own bench, resist the urge to fill it. Add a tool only when a job has genuinely stopped for want of it.

A workbench that earns its space

We started with onion skins because they were free and forgiving. Two large handfuls, an hour at a low simmer, and the linen came out a warm amber that no synthetic had managed.Madder was harder. The reds are gorgeous and the margin for error is thin: let the bath boil and you lose the clarity for a flat brick tone.Everything here fades a little, and that is the point. A dyed cloth that shifts over five years is telling you something a colourfast one never will.

Journal

Why we still throw every pot by hand

A workbench that earns its space

Notes on dyeing linen with what is in the garden