Mug Mates is a curated subscription that showcases the work of selected potters from around New Zealand. Each round of the subscription consists of four mugs by four ceramic artists, sent out monthly over four months.
The invitation to participate in Round IV of the subscription was followed by an order of 50 mugs, plus a few spares. These were early days in my making journey, so the opportunity to produce a run of mugs to sit alongside the work of established potters posed an exciting challenge.
The resulting mugs were made at the Wellington Potter's Association and fired in the club's kilns. Each mug was sent out in January 2021 accompanied by the following bio:
Richard Beauchamp is a ceramicist based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara/Wellington. Drawing from a career in the coffee industry, Richard produces functional vessels that pay homage to daily rituals of hospitality. Richard currently works from the Wellington Potters Association, a pottery club which was founded in 1958. The club environment gives him access to reclaim material that has been collected and recycled by hand to form a unique, one-off clay body for Round IV of the Mugmates subscription.
