I was pleased with the cafe's forty-eight bowls until I saw them stacked.
They were pale green, with a thumb-wide rim and a slight inward curve. Alone on the studio table, each one looked right. I photographed them on a gray sheet beside a pear. They went to a cafe that served lunch on four small tables and took most of its orders through a side window.
The owner sent a photograph on a Tuesday. Six bowls leaned on her shelf. She had wedged a folded menu under the bottom one. There was no angry message. She wanted to know if a replacement would fit the same way.
I took my six remaining bowls off the shelf. The third caught inside the second; by the fifth, the pile tipped toward my kiln. I had spent weeks getting the green glaze right. I had never put more than two finished bowls together.
My first thought was to tell her they were individually made. I typed that phrase and looked at it for a while. It would have explained the wobble beautifully. It would not have given her back the space beside the sink.
I had started Tern & Clast eleven months earlier, in the back room of a former curtain shop. My drying boards still had curtain measurements written along their edges. I liked making a cup without a matching saucer, a plate with a broad, empty rim. When I unpacked a firing, I carried each piece to the table separately. I wanted to see the glaze in daylight before I put it away.
I offered to replace the order and collected the originals. Then I canceled the next batch, already promised to a shop across town. That Saturday I wrote emails while forty-eight green bowls sat between me and the wheel. The shop owner had paid for photographs of the collection. I paid her photographer's invoice as well. I had expected to spend that money on a second wheel.
The new bowl started with six cardboard circles and the height of the cafe's shelf. I widened the foot and took the inward curve out of the wall. The first version looked squat to me. It also let six bowls sit together without one getting caught halfway down the stack.
I asked the cafe owner to try them before I glazed a batch. She put them in the sink, carried them to the window and back, and showed me where her thumb landed when she lifted two at once. I changed the rim again. This time I left the trial bowls with her for four days. A bowl can look comfortable in somebody's hand while you're standing there waiting to be told it is.
The replacement took five weeks. She accepted it and did not place another order. I kept six original bowls for display and put a note on their shelf: stack six. The note is still there, though the green glaze has changed twice since then.
Before we offer a piece now, it spends a week at the sink in the studio kitchen. A cup has to fit under our low tap. Plates go into the drying rack with the chipped plates we already own, because that is where they will end up in somebody else's house.
If you visit the studio, you can try the green bowls at the counter. Take two from the stack. There's a tea towel beside them if your hands are wet. Bring a bowl from your kitchen if you like. We can put it underneath and see how they sit together before you buy.