Bramble Pottery is the two of us, Ellen and Mark, and it has been since 1989. We make stoneware pots by hand in a converted dairy barn behind our house on Mill Road, on the edge of Hadley Falls, and we fire them in a gas kiln we built ourselves. Everything we sell we made. No molds, no kits, no help except the dog, who is no help.

We make pots that are meant to be used every day: mugs that fit your hand, bowls for cereal and soup and the big salad, plates that go in the dishwasher and the oven and the microwave without a fuss. Nothing on this page needs to sit on a shelf. If it chips in ten years, you'll have gotten your money's worth, and we'll make you another one.

We're not much for computers (this page was typed with two fingers, mostly Mark's) but the kids talked us into it, and it turns out it's a nice way to let people know when the sale is. So here it is. Come see us.

Stoneware, which means a clay body that fires hard and dense at a high temperature, so it holds up to daily use and doesn't soak up water the way low-fired earthenware does. Ours is a buff-colored clay we buy in 50-pound boxes from a supplier two states over, and it fires to a warm toasty brown where the glaze leaves it bare.

Cone 10 reduction. "Cone 10" is a potter's way of saying the top temperature of the firing, around 2,350 degrees Fahrenheit. "Reduction" means that partway through the firing we starve the kiln of oxygen a little, and the flame pulls oxygen out of the clay and the glazes instead. That's what gives our glazes their depth and gives the bare clay its color. It's the old way of firing, and it's the reason our pots don't look like the ones at the department store.

Two glazes, mostly. A deep blue that breaks lighter over the edges, and a warm tan with darker speckles that comes from iron in the clay. Both are food-safe, both are our own recipes, both have been the same since 1993 so that the mug you buy this year matches the ones you bought before. Sometimes there's a green, if Ellen's been experimenting. Ask.

The regular line: mugs, cereal bowls, soup bowls, serving bowls, dinner plates, salad plates, pitchers, a big casserole with a lid, a butter dish, and a batter bowl with a handle and a spout that Ellen designed and that we can't keep in stock. Everything is dishwasher, oven and microwave safe. Not the stovetop, please. Not the broiler.

Prices are the same at the studio, at the fairs, and by mail. Shipping is extra by mail, and we pack very carefully, but we'd rather you came and picked it up so you can hold it first. A mug you've held is a mug you'll use. Seconds (pots with a small flaw that doesn't affect use) are half price and live on the shelf by the door.

Once a year we open the barn, put every pot we've got on the tables, plug in the coffee pot and the cider, and let people wander. This is the one where you get first pick of everything from the fall firings, including the big bowls and casseroles we hold back all year, and where the seconds shelf is at its fullest. Kids welcome. The dog will be there. Cash or check.

The wheel will be running both afternoons if you want to see a pot thrown, and Mark will open the kiln Saturday morning around 11 if the last firing cooperates, which is always worth watching.

Finding the barn: we're on Mill Road, about a mile and a half past the covered bridge, the white farmhouse with the red barn behind it and the sign at the road. There's parking in the field if it isn't raining and along the road if it is. E-mail us and we'll send directions from wherever you're coming from.

Between sales, we do a handful of craft fairs a year. This fall:

• Harvest Craft Fair at the Grange Hall, Hadley Falls - Saturday and Sunday, October 16 and 17. Our home fair. We're in the back left corner by the pie table, as always.
• Riverside Artisans' Weekend, on the green in Deerfield Center - Saturday, October 23. Rain or shine; we bring the canopy.
• Holiday Artisans' Market at the Armory, in the city - Saturday and Sunday, December 4 and 5. The big one. Sixty-some booths. We take the mugs and the place settings and sell out of mugs by Sunday noon every year, so come Saturday.

The rest of the year, the studio is open by appointment, which just means e-mail us and tell us when you'd like to come by, and one of us will be in the barn. Weekends are best. If you're passing and the sign at the road says OPEN, it's open.

A few shops in the area carry our mugs and bowls too: the general store in Hadley Falls, the bookshop on the green in Deerfield Center, and a kitchen shop in the city. The prices are a little higher there, which is fair; they have rent.

Dinnerware sets. The thing people ask for most is a full set: service for six or eight, all matching. We're glad to do it. Because every piece is thrown by hand, "matching" means the same glaze and the same shape within about a quarter inch, not identical, and that's the point. Allow six to eight weeks; a set has to be thrown, dried, trimmed, bisque-fired, glazed and glaze-fired, and we fire the big kiln about every three weeks. Half down, half when you pick up.

Wedding registries. We keep a card file. The couple comes out to the barn (or e-mails us) and picks what they'd like: the glaze, the pieces, how many. We write it on a card. Friends and family call or e-mail or stop by, tell us the names, buy what's left on the card, and we check it off. We wrap it, and we'll ship it if we have to. It's simpler than the big stores and nobody ends up with three gravy boats. We've done nineteen of these since 1994 and we're told the mugs are still in use in every one of those kitchens.

Other things. A dozen mugs with a name or a date stamped on the bottom for a family reunion; a big bowl for a retirement; a particular blue for a particular kitchen. Ask. We'll say yes to most things and we'll tell you honestly if we can't.

People ask this at every fair, so here's the whole trip, from the box of clay to your cupboard. Takes about a month, start to finish.

1. Wedging. The clay comes in 25-pound blocks. We cut off a chunk and knead it on a plaster table, the way you'd knead bread, to push out the air bubbles and get it even all the way through. An air bubble in a pot can blow it apart in the kiln. Ten minutes of wedging is the best insurance there is.
2. Throwing. A ball of clay, about a pound for a mug, goes on the wheel. Center it (the hard part, took Mark a year to learn and he still has bad days), open it, pull the walls up in three or four pulls, shape it. A mug takes about four minutes once you know how. A big bowl takes fifteen and all the concentration you've got.
3. Drying and trimming. The pot dries a day or two to "leather hard," firm enough to handle but still damp. Then it goes back on the wheel upside down and we trim the foot, that ring on the bottom, with a loop tool. Handles are pulled from a wet lump of clay, stretched between wet fingers, and stuck on now. Then the pot dries all the way, a week or more, till it's bone dry and chalky-looking.
4. Bisque firing. The dry pots go in the kiln for a first, lower firing, to around 1,730 degrees. This turns the clay from dried mud into a hard, porous ceramic that can be handled and glazed without falling apart. Takes a day to fire and a day to cool.
5. Glazing. Glaze is basically ground-up glass and minerals in water. We dip each pot, hold it a count of three, pull it out, and wipe the bottom clean so it doesn't stick to the kiln shelf. The blue looks gray-brown going in. The tan looks like milk. Nothing looks like anything until it's fired, which is why potters are patient people or become them.
6. Glaze firing. The big one. Pots are loaded into the gas kiln, shelf by shelf, then the door is bricked up and lit. It takes about fourteen hours to reach cone 10, with the reduction part of the firing starting somewhere around 1,800 degrees. Then two full days to cool. You don't open it early. Everyone has opened it early once, and only once.
7. Unloading. Best morning of the month. The bricks come out of the door, and there's all the color that wasn't there before. We check every pot, set aside the seconds, and put the rest on the shelves. Then we start wedging again.

For the first three years we fired in a little electric kiln and drove our best pots forty miles to rent space in somebody else's gas kiln. In the summer of 1992 we decided that was enough of that, borrowed a set of plans from a potter friend, and built our own behind the barn. It took most of June and July and every dollar we had.

It's a downdraft gas kiln, about 30 cubic feet inside, which holds roughly 250 mugs or one very good month of everything. The walls are soft insulating firebrick, the floor and the door are hard brick, and it sits on a slab Mark poured in May. Two propane burners underneath. The flame comes up the sides, goes across the top, and is pulled down through a flue in the floor and out a chimney, so the heat moves through all the pots evenly instead of straight up and out. A damper in the chimney lets us choke it down for reduction. We laid every brick ourselves and our hands were a mess by August.

First firing was September 3, 1992. We overfired it, and about a third of the glazes ran off the pots and onto the shelves. Second firing was fine. It's fired about every three weeks since, going on 120 times now, and the only things we've replaced are the burner tips, some shelves and a few bricks in the door. It's the best thing we ever built, and we built the barn floor.