Cups are thrown off the hump: one big cone of clay on the wheel, about 5 kg, a cup pulled from the top of it, cut off with a wire and lifted away. Then the next. Twenty cups take about an hour.
Off the hump is faster than weighing out twenty balls, but the cups vary more. We weigh each one when it’s dry. Anything more than 15 g off its target goes back in the reclaim bucket.
The cup always says when it was made.
The next day, at leather-hard, each cup goes upside down on the wheel and has its foot trimmed. That’s where the stamp goes: the firing number, pressed into the raw clay, so the cup always says when it was made.
The cups in Firing No. 14 sold in four days. Firing No. 15 has eight cups and six mugs in it.
