The Studio
Boscean Workshops is a row of stone units above Cot Valley, five minutes from the sea and about as far west as it is possible to make pottery in England.
How It Started
Our founder took the unit in 2013 after eight years throwing production ware for someone else in Devon — the kind of job where you make four hundred identical bowls a week and get very good and very bored.
The whole idea of Emberkiln was to make fewer things and finish each of them properly. Thirteen years later there are three of us, still one kiln, and still a limit on how much can exist in any given month.
A batch is not made in a day, and understanding why explains most of what customers ask us about stock.
| Stage | Time | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| Throwing | 2 days | Everything for the batch, weighed and centred |
| Drying to leather-hard | 2–4 days | Slower in winter; forced drying cracks rims |
| Turning & handles | 2 days | Foot rings cut, handles pulled and attached |
| Drying to bone-dry | 5–7 days | Any water left in the clay will burst it in the kiln |
| Bisque firing | 1 day + 1 cooling | To 1000°C, which makes the ware porous enough to glaze |
| Glazing | 1 day | Dipped, waxed feet, wiped |
| Glaze firing | 11 hours + 2 days cooling | To 1260°C. Opening a hot kiln crazes everything in it |
Three weeks, and only one of those is a person making something. This is why a sold-out mug takes a month.
One of us throws everything over about two kilos and mixes the glazes. The second throws mugs, cups and side plates, and is faster at all three. The third handles glazing, packing and the shop, and is the reason anything gets posted the same week it is ordered.
The body is a grogged buff stoneware from a supplier in Stoke, chosen because it takes our glazes without fighting them and because they will sell us fifteen bags at a time. Ash comes from the workshop stove. Everything else is bought in dry and mixed here, which is unusual now and is the reason we can adjust a glaze rather than wait for a supplier to reformulate one.
A 240-litre electric front-loader, installed second-hand in 2013 and re-elemented twice. Everything Emberkiln has ever sold has been through it. When it eventually fails we will replace it with the same model, because thirteen years of firing data on one kiln is worth more than any feature on a new one.
Thursday to Saturday, 10:00 to 16:00. The unit is working rather than tidy, there is usually something drying on every surface, and the seconds shelf is by the door. Parking is on the road below.