How To Care for Your Hand Made Ceramic Housewares

Purchasing handmade ceramic mugs, plates and platters is a wonderful and warming addition to any home. The care for handmade ceramics isn’t much different from manufactured pieces. But as each piece created at Mizzle is a unique piece, you may want to take greater care of the item, you may want the item to acquire the patina and wear of your daily life, or you may want to treat it with reckless abandon. Love your piece as you wish, but here are some pointers you may want to consider.

Unless stated in the item description, all of our housewares are microwave and dishwasher safe. The advice below is for all of our stoneware and porcelain goods as well as any items you may have taken into your home.

Heating-

Microwaving is perfectly safe. Though you should not microwave any pottery that has metallic glaze on it. We don't currently use gold or other metallic glazes on any of our home goods, but if you do have handmade or commercially made pottery with such detailing, it would be safest to keep them out of the microwave.

Our pie plates, mugs and casserole dishes are both microwave and oven safe.

Washing-

Hand-washing is always a good option, but we have to allow that in real life it isn't always going to happen. The only consideration before putting anything in the dishwasher is whether there's a delicate element, such as a thin handle that might get knocked off when things get jostled around during the wash cycle.

Glazes also may have hairline crackling running throughout as part of the texture. Sometimes this crackle texture is plainly visible and sometimes it isn't. Letting pigmented food or drink sit in hand glazed pottery will reveal whether this texture exists in your piece. As it ages with repeated use and washing, the crackling will become more visible and deepen in tone. I actually love the wabi-sabi nature of this, like fingerprints, that shows the special character of the piece. As with light colored unglazed clays, you can slow this process down by being diligent about washing it immediately after use. Hand washing will also slow this process down as many dishwashers use hot water cycles, steam disinfecting, hot air drying, or all of the above which will augment the crackle finish.