Your Cart is Empty
Ooh look what’s back! Our super popular and super cute travel soap and dish gift sets have made a welcome return to the Soap Folk dresser. Once again, it’s been lovely to work with Sophie of Starling Pots, who makes the mini ceramic dishes to compliment our gift sets. Here Sophie gives us a behind-the-scenes look at how she made our glazed soap dishes.
Sophie pictured outside the Soap Folk Studio
In contrast to Tom’s dishes, which are hand thrown on the wheel, Sophie hand shapes her soap dishes.This technique is well suited to smaller scale items, and gives each piece a unique tactile quality.
From the Clay Loft, Sophie creates pretty but highly usable ceramics from serving platters to candle stick holders, drawing from her interest of form and texture.
There’s a surprising number of processes involved in making. From prepping the clay to make sure it's pliable, to forming the dish, a first bisque fire, applying the glaze and then finally a second fire. Each stage presents its own set of challenges. Sophie and I call this the “botheration” factor, when things don’t quite go to plan. All part of the experience of being a maker!
Sophie applying the glaze in the Clay Loft Studio
For this latest batch, Sophie has introduced a new duck egg blue glaze this year to sit alongside the original tin white. Once again, small batch compared to mass production allows a much greater freedom of glazes and experimentation. For our dishes, Sophie wipes the glazes from the rim to expose a little more of the unglazed clay, a process she calls "toast" It's one of those little details which make handmade items really stand out.
These beautiful mini dishes have been paired with our popular travel soap gift set, but some of our All Kinds subscribers will find them popping up in their monthly boxes.
We are brewing a couple more ideas and who knows maybe even a new glaze? If you don't already, do sign up to the newsletter to be the first to hear of our plans.
Comments will be approved before showing up.
