Pottery at Home
Caring for Handmade Pottery at Home
Handmade stoneware needs less care than its owners usually assume, and the care it does need is different from what people expect.
The most common mistake with handmade pottery is treating it as fragile. Fired stoneware is a hard, dense, chemically stable material; it outlasts almost everything else in a kitchen. The things that actually shorten a pot's life are specific, and none of them is ordinary use.
Washing
A vitrified, glazed stoneware piece can go in a dishwasher. The glaze is glass and is unaffected by detergent, and the body beneath absorbs almost nothing.
Two qualifications are worth making. Unglazed areas, particularly a bare foot ring, are slightly porous and will take up water in a long wash and a long dry cycle; over years this can leave a foot looking dull or slightly stained. And pieces with any existing crack should be washed by hand, because a dishwasher cycle drives water into a crack and heat then expands it.
By hand, warm water and ordinary detergent are enough. Abrasive powders are unnecessary and will eventually dull a glossy glaze.
Marks that look like damage and are not
Grey or silver lines inside a bowl are metal marks, left by cutlery dragging across the glaze. The glaze is harder than the steel, so it is the spoon that is being worn away, not the pot. A little bicarbonate of soda on a damp cloth removes most of it.
Fine crazing lines across the glaze are a difference in expansion between the glaze and the body. They may have been there since the firing or may appear over the first years. On a decorative or serving piece they are cosmetic. On something that holds liquid for long periods, they allow slow absorption into the body, which is worth knowing but is not a reason to retire the piece.
A dull ring on the underside of a pot is wear on the foot from being slid across surfaces. It can be softened with fine wet abrasive paper if it is scratching a table.
Staining, and what to do about it
Glazed surfaces do not stain. Unglazed surfaces can. A bare foot that sits in tea in the bottom of a cupboard will darken, and a porous, crazed interior can pick up colour from strongly pigmented foods over time.
The usual treatment for a stained porous area is a long soak in warm water with a little bicarbonate of soda, repeated rather than intensified. Bleach is best avoided: it enters the pore structure of an absorbent body and is difficult to rinse out completely, which matters if the piece holds food.
Storage
Stacking is fine for bowls and plates and is what most stoneware is designed for. The risk is not weight but grit. A bare foot ring is slightly rough, and stacking pieces foot-to-glaze grinds fine circular scratches into the surface below.
A sheet of paper towel, a felt pad or a thin cloth between stacked pieces removes the problem entirely. It is the single most effective habit for keeping a set looking new.
Nothing wears handmade stoneware faster than storing it carefully in a stack with nothing between the pieces.
Hanging mugs by their handles is generally safe with a thrown handle that has been properly attached, but a shelf is safer for pieces with delicate or unusually thin handles.
Repairs
A clean break in a decorative piece can be joined with a two-part epoxy and will be strong enough to display. The repair will be visible, and that is unavoidable; the traditional practice of making the join deliberately visible, filling it with a contrasting material, is a reasonable response to that fact rather than a fashion.
A repaired piece should not be used for food, should not be heated, and should not be washed in a dishwasher. Those are permanent conditions, not temporary ones while the adhesive sets.
Chips to a rim can be smoothed with a diamond hone so the edge is no longer sharp. The piece is then perfectly serviceable, if no longer perfect.
The general principle
Use it. A stoneware bowl kept in a cabinet is not being preserved; it is simply not being used. The wear that comes from daily service is minor, slow and largely invisible, and the material was designed with that service in mind.
The exceptions are narrow and easy to remember: avoid sudden temperature changes, keep grit out of stacks, and treat any existing crack as a change in what the piece can be asked to do.