Hand-Thrown Coffee Mug
$28.00
Wood Firing & Stoneware
João Pessoa
Évora, Portugal
Working since
2002
With Terra & Sol
Nov 2024
João spent twelve years apprenticing in a wood-firing collective in Tuscany before returning to his family's land in the Alentejo and building Forno do Vale around a single-chamber anagama kiln. He fires three times a year, each firing taking thirty hours of continuous stoking. The ash glazes — drifts of cream, ember, iron-oxide — are unrepeatable: every mug carries a unique signature of where it sat in the chamber and how the flame moved that night.
The Studio
Forno do Vale
An open-sided rural studio built around a wood-fired anagama kiln on João's family's land outside Évora.
Est. 2008
Herdade do Vale, Estrada Nacional 18, 7000 Évora
Studio hours
Visit the atelier.
- Mon08:00 – 16:00
- Tue08:00 – 16:00
- Wed08:00 – 16:00
- Thu08:00 – 16:00
- FriToday08:00 – 12:00
- SatClosed
- SunClosed
The Process
How the work is made.
In their words
Q & A.
Why an anagama? It must be brutal to fire.
Thirty hours of stoking, yes. But no electric kiln will give you what wood and ash do — and the rhythm of a long firing changes how you make pieces all year.
How do you decide where in the kiln a piece goes?
You watch the kiln for a few seasons and you start to know which shelves the flame likes. Mugs go in the back where the ash drifts deepest. Bowls catch the front for the cleaner ember.
What changed when you came back from Tuscany?
I stopped fighting the kiln. In Italy I tried to control every variable. Here I let the kiln make a third of the decisions. Those are the pieces I'm proudest of.
Gallery
From the atelier.
Pieces by João
In the collection.
Wood-Fired Anagama Bowl
$88.00