Pottery Highlights: Custom Child's Tea Set

Hey there! Welcome to "Pottery Highlights" from Wild Bower Studio, where we celebrate the art of handmade pottery. We're proud to share our passion for pottery with you and showcase our unique creations, including stunning custom children's tea sets. In this series, we'll take you behind the scenes and share photos and stories about our creative process at Wild Bower Studio. From the techniques and materials we use to the moments of inspiration, we'll give you a glimpse into the world of Wild Bower Studio's handmade pottery. So sit back, relax, and let's explore the beauty of handcrafted pottery together!

Do you have a BFF that you've known since you were in first grade? Well, we do and let us tell you, our childhood was filled with dolls, tea sets, and endless imaginative play. Recently, we stumbled upon some of our old tea sets from the days when sunflowers, carrots, and roses were the height of tea set fashion. And, that got us thinking about creating something special for our dear friend.

Meet our first Custom Child's Tea Set, designed for a young girl (our best friend’s daughter) who loves to play pretend and host tea parties. She’s a great host and we thought she could use an extra special tea set .This set was created with the goal of making playtime even more fun and imaginative. After all, who says tea sets have to be boring and delicate?

Project Outline:

• Create a custom tea set that's fit for a 3-year-old tea party boss who loves cats and unicorns

• Make it easy for lefties to join in on the fun

• Ensure it can survive a good toss or two (or ten) during playtime

We used a Laguna white midrange clay body and threw all the pieces on the wheel. Trimming was followed by adding handbuilt elements like rainbows, butterflies, and raised areas. The painted pieces were fired twice, and we added some sparkle with gold and Mother of Pearl highlights. The biggest challenges were working with small pieces and dealing with our kiln, which got a little too excited and caused some excessive glaze dripping.

And, because every tea party needs a good picnic basket, we put together a basket to store the pieces, a table cloth, and a few napkins. We even found a few extras at yard sales!

We hope that this custom children's tea set will bring joy and imagination to Pea and inspire others to create something special for their loved ones. After all, life's too short to drink boring tea and have dull tea parties!

Fresh Peach Tart

Peach Tart served on a Wild Bower Studio Handmade Speckled Ceramic Oval Serving Platter

What an insane summer! Typically our April is super rainy but the summer has really soaked us. So our normal exploration on the weekends have been washed out quite regularly, which means that we haven’t been “picking our own" in quite a while! Well, ask/wish and you shall receive. We happened to be at the right place at the right time to receive a beautiful bag full of freshly picked peaches just waiting to be transformed into something sweet and delicious though I could have probably eaten each peach on their own.

We did a poll on our Instagram page to see what folks thought we should make. One of the big winners was the peach tart. Simple and sunny we found our Peach Tart recipe from Food52. I didn’t follow their crust recipe because I had plans to make pies and quiches so I just made extra pie crust but I did follow the rest.

Peach Tart served on a Wild Bower Studio Handmade Speckled Ceramic Oval Serving Platter

Peach Tart served on a Wild Bower Studio Handmade Speckled Ceramic Oval Serving Platter surrounded by Sun Ray appetizer plates and textured side bowls

Tomato Caprese Salad

I’ve never been a right off the vine type of tomato eater… until now. The first tomatoes to ripen this year were these adorable orange ones (don’t ask me the name because I have no idea). They are sweet and honestly taste a bit like happiness. Just look at these droplets of sunshine!

There are so many ways to eat tomatoes but my go to has been a simple caprese salad. Now let’s be honest, a Caprese salad might not be one of those things that require a recipe but here we are so I thought I’d share my favorite combo served on one of our newest sun ray textured dinner plates.

This garden has been a labor of love. When we purchased our home, the garden was located deep in the forrest. Last year we tried growing in that area but it was very unsuccessful. Since we love growing our own vegetables we decided that this year we’d have to move the garden closer to the house and into a much sunnier area. Though it was a lot of work building a new fence and getting the soil together, the garden did not disappoint. We’ve had a plethora of delicious treats come out of the garden from kale to squash to peppers and now tomatoes.

Squiggle Oil Cruet handmade by Wild Bower Studio sits along side a variety of textured bowls and beautiful cherry tomatoes

What you’ll need:

• Tomatoes - pick your favorite but we recommend fresh cherry tomatoes or beefsteak

• Fresh Basil

• Mozzarella or Burrata

• Salt & Pepper to taste

• Cobram Australian Extra Virgin Oil Olive (trust me, it’s the best)

Pick your favorite medium sized Wild Bower bowl. Cut up your tomatoes into halves or quarters depending on size. Chop or ripe your basil and Mozzarella. Add these ingredients to a bowl. Top with salt & pepper to taste. Finally add your EVOO and mix. Sometimes when I’m feeling a little wild, I’ll add a fresh jalapeño, garlic or red pepper flakes. Once fully coated plate your salad on your Wild Bower Studio dinnerware or eat directly from one of our bowls.

When I’m serving this meal to guests I’ll put the herbs & spices on the table in our ceramic catchalls along with the EEVO in one of our oil cruets rather than directly on the salad. It’s a nice addition to any meal and allows guests to really get into the process.

Our bright and beautiful tomato caprese salad is plated on our Sun Ray Dinner Plate along side our Squiggle Oil Curet with a variety of our ceramic bowls in the background.

Blueberry Handpies

Blueberry Hand pies served on Wild Bower Studio Sun Ray platter and dinner plates

 

While last year I was very focused on foraging, this year I’m all about pick your own. It’s so satisfying to fill a bucket full of delicious treats. Finally we’ve made it to blueberry season and let me tell you… blueberries are incredible right off the bush. It’s amazing how different food tastes in the store vs from the garden.

The past weekend we had some friends over with their young daughter, who loved blueberries. So we decided what better way to enjoy the day but to pick our own blueberries which we now call Bloobs. Off to Saunderskill Farm!

It was a beautiful day and a really easy ride over to the farm. We were part of a hand full of groups who had a similar idea so we all had a lot of space to really get into it. Fast forward and we’ve filled 10 quarts!!! Once we returned home it was time to start figuring out what to do with all these bloobs. Jam was obviously the first step in this process and then time to bake. We wanted to make something that our young picker could easily handle so we went with blueberry hand pies. These treats are super easy to make and really easy to take with you on the go. We used this recipe from King Arthur Flour as our general guide.

Blueberry Hand pies served on Wild Bower Studio Sun Ray platter and dinner plates with hand dyed napkins

Morning Coffee & a Rustic Cherry Tart for Breakfast

When we moved out to the Catskill Mountains, we dreamt of quiet moments in nature feasting on delicious treats like this Rustic Cherry Tart served on one of our White Swirl Speckled Serving Platters. They are match made in heaven.

The spring and summer out here produce some of the most amazing fruits and this week we dove into cherries. Have you ever had a fresh cherry?!? For me, it’s like a dream that transports me back to childhood. There is nothing like a perfect cherry, so we set out to bake something that elevated the sweet and delicious fruit.

My mom recently came out to spend the weekend with us and boy, was it fun to show her around and get some time to cook together. My mom has always been a wonderful cook and baker. Normally, we’re baking Christmas cookies but it’s not quite the season for that so we opted for fresh Cherries that we picked up from local Farm, Barthel’s in Ellenville, NY.

Check out the delicious recipe created by Sheila at Life Love and Good Food

We sipped our morning coffee out of our handmade Flare Mugs and ate the tart for breakfast. It was such bliss!

Once you’re out of coffee, use our ceramic Coffeepot to display all of your happy flowers (I’ve been watching a lot of Boss Ross). This flower arrangement came from local Florist, Little Pebble Flower Farm.

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