How to Care for Handmade Ceramics at Home

People are often more nervous than they need to be about handmade pots. If you want to care for handmade ceramics properly, most of it comes down to three habits and a bit of common sense. The rest of the worry you can put down.

Washing, and when the dishwasher is fine

The question people ask first when they want to care for handmade ceramics is whether the dishwasher is allowed. A fully glazed piece with no metal on it will survive a dishwasher. The glaze is glass. It does not care about detergent. What it does care about is knocking against other things during the cycle, and that is where most dishwasher damage actually comes from. If a bowl has a rim you would be sad to chip, wash it by hand and be done with it.

Warm water and a soft cloth are enough. Skip the scourer. A green scouring pad will dull a satin glaze over time and you will not notice until you put the piece next to one that has been hand washed.

Gold lustre never goes in the dishwasher

This is the one hard rule. Gold, platinum and any metallic lustre is a very thin layer fired on at a low temperature. Dishwasher detergent is abrasive and alkaline and it will take the shine off, then take the gold off. The same goes for microwaves, where metal will spark. If a piece has a gold rim or gold detailing, it is a hand wash item for life.

Crazing is not a crack

Crazing is the fine web of lines that appears in a glaze, sometimes years after a piece was made. It happens because the glaze and the clay body underneath shrink at slightly different rates. It looks alarming and it is usually cosmetic. Plenty of collectors like it. Learning to care for handmade ceramics partly means learning which marks are damage and which are simply age.

Where it matters is with anything that holds liquid for long periods. A crazed vase can weep very slowly through the lines, which you will find out when you lift it off a wooden surface and see a ring. If you are using a crazed piece for flowers, put a coaster or a felt pad under it and check it after a day.

Tea staining

Crazed lines pick up tannin. A crazed mug used daily for tea will develop brown lines within a year. Some people love that and some people hate it. If you hate it, a soak in warm water with a little bicarbonate of soda lifts most of it. Bleach also works and I would not use it, because it sits in the crazing and comes back out later.

Where to put things

Part of learning to care for handmade ceramics is deciding where they live. Direct sun will fade some glaze colours over years, particularly reds and pinks. Heat is a bigger problem than light. Do not put a pot on a sunny windowsill above a radiator and then wonder why it cracked.

Shelves want to be level and pieces want a bit of room. Tall vessels are top heavy when they are empty and a passing sleeve will take one off a shelf. If you have a tall piece near a doorway or in a hall, museum wax under the foot costs almost nothing and holds surprisingly well.

When something chips

Small chips on a foot ring or an unglazed edge are not worth repairing. Sand the sharp point back gently with fine wet and dry paper so it does not catch, and leave it. A chip on a rim is more visible and can be filled by a restorer, but be clear about what you want. Invisible restoration is expensive and it is really only worth it on a piece that matters to you.

A clean break is often repairable. Keep every fragment, do not try to glue it yourself with superglue, and keep the pieces dry. Household adhesives stain the broken edges and make a professional repair harder. If you have something you consider important, the Australian Institute for the Conservation of Cultural Material can point you to a conservator near you.

A short version of how to care for handmade ceramics

Hand wash anything with gold. Keep pots out of direct heat. Put a pad under crazed vessels. Give tall work some room. That is most of what it takes to care for handmade ceramics well. The point of owning work made by hand is using it and looking at it, so once you have those habits, stop worrying and get the pieces out of the cupboard.

If you are building a collection, it is worth browsing the available work to see how different makers finish their pieces, because the finish tells you how the piece wants to be treated.