The Quiet Pleasure of the Slightly Imperfect

There is a particular sound a handmade mug makes when you set it down on an old oak table: a soft, dull thud rather than a bright ring. That sound tells you something. A factory cup is identical to a thousand others on the same pallet; a thrown pot carries the pressure of a thumb, the faint wobble where the wheel slowed, the speck of iron that bloomed in the kiln. None of that is a fault. It is the record of a morning's work in a cold studio.

In British homes we have grown used to things designed for speed and disposal. Handmade ceramics offer the opposite: a plate that weighs what it weighs, a jug that pours in a slightly particular way, a bowl whose rim is a fraction thinner on one side. Living with these pieces daily, rather than keeping them for best, is where the pleasure lies. A pot used every morning for porridge becomes, within a year, one of the most familiar objects in the house.

Learning to Read a Glaze

Glaze is where a potter's character shows most clearly. Tenmoku glazes break from near-black to rust over a rim; celadon pools in the carving of a bowl, pale as celadon always is, and thins to almost nothing on an edge. Oatmeal and ash glazes are speckled and dry to the touch, and they flatter brown bread and dark tea. Tin-white maiolica is glossy and forgiving, and takes decoration beautifully.

When you pick up a piece, look closely at three things:

• The foot ring. A well-finished base is sanded smooth and sits flat without rocking. Run a fingertip around it; it should feel like a pebble, not sandpaper.
• The crazing. Fine cracks in the glaze surface are not necessarily a fault. On a stoneware pot fired high, they are often deliberate, and they deepen in colour as tea and coffee stain them over the years.
• The light. Hold the piece to a window. Good glaze has depth: layers you can see into, rather than a flat painted surface.

Earthenware, stoneware and porcelain each behave differently. Earthenware is softer and chips more readily; stoneware is robust and forgiving of daily use; porcelain is fine, light and surprisingly strong. For a working kitchen, stoneware is the sensible choice.

Building a Collection That Earns Its Keep

The temptation is to buy a matching set. Resist it. A more useful and more beautiful approach is to gather pieces slowly, in a restrained palette of three or four colours, so that anything can sit beside anything else. Cream, oatmeal, deep green and a warm brown will see you through breakfast, supper and a Sunday roast without ever looking assembled.

Buy in threes where you can: three pasta bowls, three mugs, three small plates for cake. Threes are useful, stack well, and leave room in the cupboard. Test a jug with water before you buy it, not after; a dribbling spout is a small daily irritation. And weigh a mug in your hand. A 300ml mug that is comfortable empty will still be comfortable when it is full of tea.

Everyday Rituals and Small Courtesies

Handmade pots change the way a table feels, and they gently encourage a slower kind of hosting. Warm the teapot first, then the cups, and pour the milk into the cup before the tea if you are using a delicate porcelain that might otherwise crack. Turn the handle of a cup to the right, at roughly four o'clock, so your guest can lift it without rearranging the table.

Offer a bowl of soup with two hands; it is heavier than it looks, and it deserves the respect of a proper grip. When passing plates, pass to the left and let each person serve themselves rather than plating up in the kitchen. A loaf on a wooden board with a handmade platter for cheese and a jug of water on a plain linen cloth is a more generous table than anything fussier.

Caring for Pots So They Last Decades

Handmade ceramics are hardier than people assume, provided you avoid sudden changes in temperature. A few practical habits will keep a collection in good order for a lifetime.

• Warm them gradually. Never pour boiling water into a cold pot straight from a stone shelf, and never move a hot dish to a wet or cold surface.
• Wash by hand for crackle glazes and anything with gold or lustre decoration; a dishwasher is fine for most plain stoneware, on a low setting.
• Lift tea stains with a paste of bicarbonate of soda and water, left for twenty minutes.
• Stack with felt pads or a sheet of thin card between plates, and avoid metal scourers, which leave grey scratches that never come out.

Where to find good pieces? Studio open days, county auctions, church fairs, antiques centres and house clearances all turn up treasures. Check rims for chips, hold a pot up to the light for hairline cracks, and look at the base for a potter's mark. Buy the one you keep reaching for. That is the one you will still be using in twenty years.