This is us. We make these...
Standard Ware sits at a particular moment in the life of the studio. It emerged slowly, through repetition, testing, and review, rather than as a single decision or product launch. Looking back, it’s clear that what we were doing wasn’t simply making a range of pots - we were learning what sustained production asks of a studio built around teaching and learning.
The work became a form of pressure-testing, grounded in the steady realities of throwing, glazing, firing, and repeating those processes alongside everything else the studio was holding at the time. Forms were deliberately restrained: bowls, plates, and mugs - designs with very little to hide behind. Consistency mattered, but so did variation. That tension became part of the work itself.
This period was shaped by specialism. Chris’s work on materials and glaze research gave the range its backbone, while my focus sat with the wider structure of the studio - marketing, schedules, systems, and decisions beyond the pots themselves. We were working from different vantage points, but towards a shared question: how far can a small, specialist studio stretch without losing what makes it work?
What Standard Ware revealed wasn’t just what we could do, but what it cost - in time, energy, and clarity. Producing and teaching side by side required discipline, coordination, and continual adjustment. It also surfaced a challenge we remain attentive to: how to communicate clearly when a studio carries more than one form of expertise.
The pots themselves hold that history. They’re direct, functional, and materially resolved, shaped through months of testing and refinement. They reflect a commitment to making well. And while production no longer sits at the centre of the studio in the same way, the knowledge gained during that period continues to inform how we work - from glaze development to how we support others moving through learning over time.
Standard Ware was about gathering evidence, paying attention, and allowing the work to clarify what the studio is - and just as importantly, what it isn’t trying to become.
