Hearts A Plenty

There’s something quietly satisfying about making a simple bowl. Just a simple, handmade bowl that fits in your palm and finds its way into everyday life. The kind you reach for without thinking, for olives or salt or a spoon rest.

Shout out to my dear friend Sue @windhamhillde signs for putting me in mind of these little bowls. She made over a hundred for a family wedding and I use mine as a spoon rest in the kitchen every day.

For these small bowls, I hand build, I roll the clay out flat and cut a rough circle—nothing too precise. Perfection isn’t really the goal here. The edges might be a little uneven, but that’s part of what gives each bowl its own character. Then comes the stamping with my own handmade stamps. The patterns are made with individual stamps, like doodling.

The clay is pressed into foam to create the curve and then I attach a ring to the bottom which is called the “foot”. I don’t know why but I always like a foot and I find it helps avoid warping in the glaze firing.

Once dry, the bowls go into the kiln for their first firing. When they come out, they’re lighter, more fragile than they look, and ready for glaze. Choosing a glaze always feels a bit like guessing. A color that looks soft and muted in liquid form might deepen or shift completely in the heat of the kiln. The stamped patterns can catch the glaze in unexpected ways, pooling in some areas and barely touching others, highlighting the texture you pressed in earlier. This is a good time for experiments with glaze combinations.

The final firing is where everything comes together. When you open the kiln, there’s always a small moment of anticipation. Some pieces turn out exactly as you hoped; others surprise you. Either way, each bowl carries the memory of its making—the pressure of your hands, the timing you chose, even the small imperfections you couldn’t (and maybe shouldn’t) control. It’s a record of that moment in time when it was made.

And then they go out into the world. A small bowl might end up on someone’s kitchen counter, holding rings by the sink or spices by the stove. It becomes part of daily routines in a quiet, almost invisible way. That’s the part I like most—knowing something made slowly, by hand, finds a place in someone else’s ordinary moments.