It was a tough question what to bring as a surprise gift for my parents at the short New Year reunion we've held this time - again, like the previous one, in Istanbul. But I got lucky that Kate @Katerisa introduced me to hand-crafted ceramics in her studio in Gracia. With Kate's help I was able to produce these masterpieces:

These coffee cups a made entirely by hand, in a newbie-friendly technique of "molding from a lump". Neither a wheel nor even a rolling pin was involved! The handles were formed separately and then glued in position using slip (liquified clay). Resulting blanks were sintered for the first time to harden them before glazing.

^ the blanks are posing before going to the furnace

At the glazing stage each cup got two different sorts of glaze, for the inner and outer part. The law of thumb is to use lighter tones for the inside of a cup, since cup users would often like to see what they are drinking. Moreover, we expected the handprints' texture (occurring naturally when molding from a lump) to emphasize color gradients even within the areas with the same glazing. That expectation was justified quite a bit!

^ the glazed no-longer-blanks. The medallions are testers of colors and tones of each (inside and outside) glaze after sintering... and that's quite a change!

The second sintering resulted in the glaze melting and forming a glass-like surface. The outcome was already quite nice! However, it showed a problem I had with the blue cup: the layer of the glaze I'd applied to its outer side was too thick and appeared very dark. So Kate put another contrast layer of glaze on top, and off they went into the furnace for the final time.

^ very nice, almost perfect

After all those stages spanning over a couple of weeks in total, I was holding exceptional attributes of the morning coffee rituals:

I especially love the way the outer side glaze interplays with the inner-side one in layer close to the edge. The textures on the walls are also awesome!

Of course after all my efforts I demanded proofs of the cups being in use.

^ and the demand was satisfied