What drew me to this project is the plan behind it: the maker threw a set of porcelain cups and then passed them along to another potter, who gets to glaze them however she wishes before selling or giving them away. Handing finished forms over to someone else's glazing instincts feels like a generous way to work.
The making itself is a satisfying watch. Each cup is centered, opened and pulled up on a motorized wheel with a plastic splash pan, shaped with hands, a yellow sponge and ribs, then refined inside and at the rim. A green heat gun firms the rotating walls before each piece is lifted off the wheel, which matters a lot, since without that step the cups apparently deform badly on lifting. Trimming waits two or three days, and the maker trims when the porcelain is quite dry, because humid porcelain tears and crumbles.
The improvised setup is the standout for me. The cups are trimmed upside down on the wheel head, with handheld metal loop tools shaving the base and sides and a flat metal rib smoothing the bottom. A conical terracotta-colored jig with a spacer ring sits on the cup base, and the centering rig is delightfully scrappy: a tiny flowerpot inside a mug, with an upside-down spinner locked on with its knob screwed in from the other side. Everything is done by eye, with no measurements, and the four finished white cups each show a narrow raised foot ring, an angled lower body and that wavy, uneven rim.
The one honest open point: the maker says thinner walls are possible but admits being afraid to push it, and nobody has yet tested whether the cups nest into the next size up.