Author: Paul Hagopian

After a nearly year-long collaboration with some of the most talented ceramicists across the country, we're so excited to introduce this year's Mugs52 collection. Supply is limited, so get your hands on your favorite pieces ASAP.

1. A Question of Eagles

• Location: Broad Ripple, IN
• What was the inspiration for your design? Color was forefront on our mind this year, so we took a deep dive researching holiday decor rooted in more European traditions. There, we found lots of stripes and bold colors to inspire us for our mug. We think it exudes a cozy charm for drinking hot cocoa in your snow covered cottage. Just add a plaid tablecloth for maximum pattern play.

2. Andrew Molleur Studio

• Ceramicist: Andrew Molleur
• Location: Kingston, NY
• What was the biggest challenge of designing this mug? The biggest challenge to designing this mug was achieving the proper proportions. For example, the handle is large enough to slip at least two fingers behind, fits the mug body, and doesn't feel uncomfortable to hold and drink from when it is filled with liquid.

3. Base Ceramics

• Ceramicist: Catalina Parra
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? What many don’t realize is that each mug is hand-painted using layers of colored clay, giving the colors a rich depth, and making every piece truly one-of-a-kind.

4. Beginner Ceramics

• Ceramicist: Jesse Hamerman
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• Other than drinking coffee or tea, what’s another way someone could use your mug? The size can be perfect for ice cream, cereal, even a homemade warming chicken broth. You can also use it as a planter for a succulent, a pen holder, a container to make custom candles—there's so many possibilities.

5. BG Ceramics

• Ceramicist: Bennett Graves
• Location: Pittsburgh, PA
• What was the inspiration for your design? I drink a lot of matcha lattes at home and wanted to create my ideal mug for that occasion. The glazes are inspired by the colors and textures of a glacial pool and felt like the perfect backdrop for the vibrant green of matcha.

6. BKLYN Clay

• Ceramicist: Laura Vogel
• Location: New York, NY
• What was the inspiration for your design? Our inspiration was vintage travel mugs. They were made to keep your coffee on the dashboard while driving, which we think is very cool.

7. Bombabird

• Ceramicist: Chelsea Erdner
• Location: Pittsburgh, PA
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? The mug is made from a white stoneware and finished in a custom glaze, mixed in my studio. The interior of the mug has a satin robin’s egg blue glaze while the exterior is dipped in a more textured pale blue with some speckles. Each glaze is a different hue of blue but I love how well they compliment each other.

8. Carved Color

• Ceramicist: Taylor Suchy
• Location: Newport Beach, CA
• What was the biggest challenge of designing this mug? The biggest challenge this year was keeping the lines on the design clean. The secondary clay body on the outside is more textured and rough so the glaze slips in between the tape when masking it off.

9. Connor McGinn Studios

• Ceramicist: Connor McGinn
• Location: Tarrytown, NY
• What our team loves about this mug: The shape and color—it's a combo that begs us to drink coffee from it.

10. Earth + Element

• Ceramicist: Elizabeth Gold
• Location: Los Angeles, CA
• What was the inspiration for your design? We drew inspiration from the cozy, timeless appeal of fall plaid for this mug design. Each cup is meticulously hand-painted with subtle iridescent matte stripes, which, when fired, softly blur to create a beautiful, one-of-a-kind effect. This organic variation makes every mug truly unique, reflecting the touch of our three talented local artisans in our Los Angeles studio.

11. East Fork Pottery

• Location: Asheville, NC
• Other than drinking coffee or tea, what’s another way someone could use your mug? This mug is perfect for pouring a cold one.

12. Ekua Ceramics

• Ceramicist: Sara Todd
• Location: Long Beach, CA
• What was the inspiration for your design? I wanted something warming but familiar. I think the oxblood glaze and the pink really complement each other while also not being too boring.

13. Elizabeth Benotti

• Ceramicist: Elizabeth Benotti
• Location: Eliot, ME
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? This mug is hand built from porcelain slabs instead of being wheel-thrown. Each piece is carefully assembled, with the blue underglaze hand-painted, and then the herringbone pattern is carved out in a process called sgraffito.

14. Erin Louise Clancy

• Ceramicist: Erin Clancy
• Location: Queens, NY
• What was the biggest challenge of designing this mug? The biggest challenge in designing this mug lies in the Mishima technique used to create its herringbone or knit/purl pattern. This ceramic method involves applying a contrasting color of slip into the grooves of an etched clay surface, requiring careful hand-carving and inlay with porcelain slip. Each piece demanded care and attention to successfully achieve the intricate surface pattern.

15. Fenway Clayworks

• Ceramicist: Sean VanderVilet
• Location: Golden, CO
• Other than drinking coffee or tea, what’s another way someone could use your mug? My goal is alway to make objects that can exist on a counter when not being used, and still provide an interesting visual element to a space. I think these mugs fit in that category. If not for coffee or tea, heck, use it for ice cream.

16. Fisheye Ceramics

• Ceramicist: Kim Gilmour
• Location: Catskill, NY
• What was the biggest challenge of designing this mug? I wanted to make a mug that could hold a substantial amount of coffee or tea, but that also felt light and comfortable and stable when held. Each mug is hand thrown, so it’s always a challenge to achieve all of that with each one. The handles are a particular challenge as you want to make it comfortable to hold for different hand sizes.

17. Franca

• Ceramicist: Sierra Yip-Bannicq
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? Each Cara mug is hand-painted, so no two mugs are identical. The subtle variations in brushwork and glaze application make every piece one-of-a-kind. Made in our Brooklyn-based women-owned studio, this mug is a celebration of both art and craftsmanship.

18. G’Day Thrillseekers

• Ceramicist: Hannah Groff
• Location: NY
• What was the inspiration for your design? I drew a lot of inspiration from my extensive tinned fish collection, and the classic Hudson River Estuary sign with the beautiful blue sturgeon on it that you see across New York.

19. Handmade Studio TN

• Ceramicist: Amber Durrett
• Location: Nashville, TN
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? Every single mug takes weeks to complete from start to finish. Each step is approached with care and love, from molding the clay, to impressing the texture, to firing in the kiln, to wrapping up and shipping to our customers! We hope you love them as much as we loved making them!

20. Heo Ceramics

• Ceramicist: Karent Tong
• Location: Los Angeles, CA
• What was the inspiration for your design? My studio Heo Ceramics takes its name from the Vietnamese word “heo” which means boar, or pig. I was born in the Year of the Pig, and the coil of a pig’s tail has always drawn my eye and made me smile. The handle on these mugs was designed to evoke that same feeling!

21. IIIVVVYYY Ceramics

• Ceramicist: Ivy Weinglass
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• Other than drinking coffee or tea, what’s another way someone could use your mug? One of my favorite things to drink out of my mugs is miso soup! When I'm at my studio and I need something nourishing and warm, I put a packet of miso soup with some hot water in a mug, stir and sip on it all day!

22. Jeremy Ayers

• Location: Waterbury, VT
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? The stripes on this mug are the raw clay of the mug itself. The color of the raw clay varies from mug to mug depending on where it was in the kiln.

23. Jessie Lazar

• Ceramicist: Jessie Lazar
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• What our team loves about this mug: Two things: Speckles and handle. The former's just fun—a playful reminder that your routine cup of joe is worth celebrating. And the latter, well, it simply feels really, really good in your hand.

24. Kendall Davis Clay

• Ceramicist: Kendall Davis
• Location: Fort Worth, TX
• Other than drinking coffee or tea, what’s another way someone could use your mug? You could always use my mug to secretly be drinking something stronger. You could also use the mug as the gift at a work related "gift exchange" party to be the star of the show.

25. Lauren HB Studio

• Ceramicist: Lauren Herzak-Bauman
• Location: Kingston, NY
• What was the inspiration for your design? The form itself was my starting point. I envisioned taking a line for a walk, meandering around the contours of the mug. I hope to inspire a sense of mental wandering while someone sips a hot beverage. It's about creating a moment of pause and reflection within the everyday ritual of enjoying a drink.

26. Lauren Lauzon

• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? The oranges motif is one of my first ever designs I put on a mug almost six years ago. For this project, it felt really fitting to nod to my beginnings as a ceramicist, while also featuring one of my newer handle styles.

27. Lost Quarry

• Ceramicist: Doris Josovitz
• Location: New York
• Other than drinking coffee or tea, what’s another way someone could use your mug? I love that my mugs can be art pieces—they’re perfect for styling on a shelf or even for practical uses like holding pens and pencils on a desk. In the bathroom, they work well to keep toothbrushes and toothpaste organized. In my studio, I use my sample mugs to hold ceramic tools.

28. Meltz Studio

• Ceramicist: Alexandra Meltzer
• Location: Newburgh, NY
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? The green color of the brushstrokes were created using something called copper wash. The copper used in ceramic colorants and the copper used to make pennies is the same element used in different forms.

29. Mondays

• Ceramicist: Jennifer Fiore
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• What was the inspiration for your design? There is a mug in the Etruscan Wing of the Metropolitan Museum of Art that is so perfect and simple and timeless. It was made thousands of years ago but manages to feel utterly contemporary. I want all of my work to have that same quality of not being clearly placed in time or following a trend.

30. Mondays

• Ceramicist: Nina Lalli
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• Other than drinking coffee or tea, what’s another way someone could use your mug? My mug is heavy! Some people may prefer an alternative use. It's great as a small vase, pencil holder, smoothie or milkshake cup (with a straw). It could even be a planter, with some pebbles in the bottom to help drainage, or cute as a utensil holder on the dinner table or buffet.

31. Mud Witch

• Ceramicist: Viviana Matsuda
• Location: San Francisco, CA
• What was the biggest challenge of designing this mug? I wanted something playful and functional. I like my mugs to look like they are a part of a cartoon. I wanted the handle to be like a large donut but I had to make the handle hollow or the mug would be too heavy. I had to throw it on the wheel then make a plaster mold to pour a thin layer of slip so the handle would be lightweight.

32. Myrth Ceramics

• Ceramicist: Abigail Smallwood
• Location: Providence, RI
• What was the inspiration for your design? Our mug design was inspired by the beautiful cascading light in our new studio in Providence, RI. Diagonal rays of light bathe our studio’s east-facing windows and this makes it a really lovely place to work every day. The light rays also reminded us of the texture of our Moon Vase so we combined the two ideas in a diagonal hand-carved surface on our mug.

33. Objet Aimee

• Ceramicist: Aimee McLaughlin
• Location: Portland, ME
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? That stoneware clay was invented approximately 1,250,447 days ago (1400 BCE) and this stoneware mug was invented approximately 64 days ago (September 2024).

34. Pepper Stone Ceramics

• Ceramicist: Anna Richardson
• Location: Charlottesville, VA
• What was the inspiration for your design? I love a vintage French Stripe—the pattern is timeless. But I wanted to bring a more relaxed tone to that with the imperfect, painterly style of the stripes that I think adds a level of cozy.

35. Personal Best

• Ceramicist: Whitney Simpkins
• Location: Baltimore, MD
• Other than drinking coffee or tea, what’s another way someone could use your mug? I love using this size mug for a big scoop of ice cream. I've also been known to water the plants in my kitchen by filling a random mug from the cabinet.

36. Pigeon Toe

• Ceramicist: Sam Hough
• Location: Portland, OR
• What was the inspiration for your design? The '70s! Pottery was full of warm tones, organic surface design, and interesting textures. We started with a custom-made brown clay, and contrasted it with bursts of melted glass crystals mixed into an off-white glaze.

37. Recreation Center

• Ceramicist: Josephine Heilpern
• Location: New York, NY
• Other than drinking coffee or tea, what’s another way someone could use your mug? I like to use my mugs for drinking broth in the morning. But outside of drinking anything you can use the mug to amplify sound! I mean it's not its main intention but oftentimes, when I'm in the kitchen cooking, I place my phone inside a mug to make my music louder. I guess it's maybe time I buy myself some speakers.

38. Rory Pots

• Ceramicist: Rory Shamlian
• Location: Burlington, VT
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? It was made in a studio in Burlington, Vermont by a very small team of women, a few blocks away from Lake Champlain, likely to the sound of a true crime podcast.

39. Ruth Easterbrook

• Location: Philadelphia, PA
• What was the biggest challenge of designing this mug? I throw each cup from a lump of clay so getting the dimensions and/or proportions the same each time is a challenge. Slight variation is inherently part of the handmade process but I am happy with how similar they turned out.

40. Sarah Cihat

• Ceramicist: Sarah Grant
• Location: Nashville, TN
• Other than drinking coffee or tea, what’s another way someone could use your mug? I would definitely use it for ice cream, as I don’t like a big huge bowl of it. They’re also great for snacks like nuts or olives and could fit easily on a snack/charcuterie board, so be sure to buy multiples!

41. Sombra

• Ceramicist: Allison Shawn
• Location: Los Angeles, CA
• What was the biggest challenge of designing this mug? Balancing texture, form, and function was key to creating a minimalist but unique mug. I wanted a surface that invites touch without being too coarse, creating a texture that’s earthy yet refined; I sought to ensure a stable, stackable form that's comfortable to hold; and I wanted to remove any extraneous elements from the making process. Finding that equilibrium took time, but it’s what makes each piece feel so inviting.

42. Stone & Sparrow

• Ceramicist: Kate Marchand
• Location: Pittsburgh, PA
• What was the inspiration for your design? The inspiration for my design was really a matter of trial and error. I came up with this design while developing a series of pieces for a local coffee shop with a motorcycle theme (think Deus Ex Machina vibes). While developing something complementary to a "grease-spot" theme, I tried a lot of illustration patterns on the mug body surfaces. This one stuck!

43. Studiolo Artale

• Ceramicist: Isabella Artale
• Location: Union City, NJ
• Other than drinking coffee or tea, what’s another way someone could use your mug? Since we're in soup season, I think this mug makes for a great "bowl." You get the function of a vessel, but with the added ergonomics of a handle! Plus the height of the mug wall is nice for keeping the soup warmer for longer.

44. Studio Joo

• Ceramicist: Elaine Tian
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• What was the inspiration for your design? My mug is a Japanese chawan-style bowl. After an inspiring visit to Japan in 2012, I took some tea ceremony classes at the Urasenke Chanoyu Center in NYC. My work has been steeped in the wabi-sabi tradition since. Fun Fact: Urasenke Chanoyu Center is located in the former studio and home of Mark Rothko. They have a Zen rock garden, and some of the most stunning tea rooms outside of Japan. I highly recommend a visit!

45. Sunday Studio

• Ceramicist: Joanne Lee
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• What was the biggest challenge of designing this mug? I don't usually make mugs so landing on the right size was a challenge, to make it big enough but not too big. Clay shrinks about 12-15%, so something that looks the right size when it's freshly thrown can end up being kiddie-sized once it's gone through the final firing.

46. This Quiet Dust

• Ceramicist: Dubhe Carreno
• Location: Lake Forest, IL
• Other than drinking coffee or tea, what’s another way someone could use your mug? I actually love my new mug design as a flower vase because it can pick up the color of any flower as well as the greens of the leaves. I think it would also make an awesome brush holder or small utensil holder for shorter items like measuring spoons, vegetable peeler, pizza cutter, etc.

47. Utility Objects

• Ceramicist: Aleisha Duchateau
• Location: Atlanta, GA
• What was the inspiration for your design? Industrial soil compactors. If you see one you'll know.

48. Void & Form

• Ceramicist: Natalie Legg
• Location: Denver, CO
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? That's tough because I left this mug almost entirely bare so that you can see the color of the clay itself. But, one thing someone probably wouldn't know is that this mug was created from clay I recycled in my studio.

49. Wilcoxson Brooklyn Ceramics

• Ceramicist: Kevin Wilcoxson
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• What was the inspiration for your design? The inspiration was celebration, confetti, bright colors and simple pleasure.

50. Wolf Ceramics

• Ceramicist: Sarah Wolf
• Location: Hood River, OR
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? While I was throwing these on the wheel I was—probably—listening to Harry Potter on tape. It's a tradition every year in the studio. Once it gets dark and rainy and production starts ramping up for the holidays, we start listening to the series from the beginning.

51. Wonki Ware

• Ceramicist: Wonki Ware
• Location: Western Cape, South Africa
• What we love about this mug: It belongs on the dining table of your fanciest dinner party, the corner of your office desk, and everywhere in between.

52. Daniel Zunino

• Ceramicist: Daniel Zunino
• Location: Brooklyn, NY
• What’s something about your mug that someone wouldn’t know just by looking at it? I spent several months developing a custom glaze for this piece, continuing to iterate and test in order to land on the color and texture I was after.

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