Santa Mug | Small | Pink & Gold

A nostalgic Santa Mug made using a rare vintage slip casting mould, white stoneware clay fired to cone 6 in an electric kiln. These pieces are a little different than my usual wheel thrown pieces, they are lighter and therefore more fragile. These are functional and fully food safe, but the gold will deteriorate over time if not cared for properly. These mugs are not dishwasher or microwave safe. The gold details are real gold that is fired on. 

Size: 3” Tall x 1.75” Opening, 170 ml/just under 6 oz 

Colour: Glossy Pink with Gold Details

All SarahBeePottery pieces are made by hand & are perfectly unique. No two pieces will ever be exactly the same, slight variations and minor imperfections are expected due to the nature of the medium. SarahBeePottery is not responsible for accidental breakage that may occur in the future, I wish I was Costco too but sadly I am not. 

Care Instructions

Pricing Transparency & Santa Mugs - Why do they cost more than your other pieces? 

There is often the belief that slip casted pieces are easier to make and take less time (I used to think this), and that hundreds can be produced in a very short time (I also used to think this). In reality, after over one month of preparation for this collection I have approximately 15 small and 15 large mugs available.  

So how are they made? Each slip casted mug involves pouring special clay into a mould, waiting thirty minutes, pouring excess clay out and then waiting approximately one hour to remove it. I store my mugs overnight in a special container that keeps them from drying out, and the next day I clean up the mug by smoothing all of the seam lines from the mould, and clean up the rim and any imperfections inside of the mug. 

All mugs then go through three kiln firings:

Bisque Firing (7.5 hours firing time, 24 hours cooling time)

Glaze Firing (8.5 hours firing time, 28 hours cooling time)

Gold Lustre Firing (3 hours firing time, 12 hours cooling time) 

All together between the time, effort, and supplies these mugs exceed the price to create (labor + materials) of a wheel thrown mug. The supply costs are especially high in this case so for the sake of transparency here's a simple breakdown:

-Clay, slip casting clay is unlike my wheel throwing clay so I bring this in specially this time of year. There is also some labor and additional equipment that goes into this.

-Glaze, I used my usual studio glazes for these mugs so these are considered equally in pricing to any other piece I make. 

-Overglaze, I only bring in gold lustre for these pieces and the bottle is $150 Canadian not including shipping. 

-Moulds, these vintage moulds were acquired from other countries and were a combined several hundred dollars. I have had them for a few years so the cost per use is fairly reasonable at this point but still considered. 

One final note. Why does size not factor into pricing? Aside from a customers perception, sizing doesn’t affect my pricing structure. The cost of materials is nearly the exact same between sizes, and almost all mugs take up the same amount of space in the kiln and require the same amount of labor and materials to create. There is a small price difference between the two sizes to reflect the differences in functionality, but truly they could be priced the same. It just felt right to discount the smaller size slightly so I went with my gut feeling on that one. 

If you made it all the way through this, congratulations I hope you enjoyed learning more about how/why a Santa mug is priced the way it is! 

-Sarah