Ok so in the last newsletter we explained what slipcasting is and why we use that method for our monster mugs, But wait there’s more!

Even among artists and potters who have chosen to slipcast their products everybody is a little different. We have chosen to do things the way we do for a variety of practical, philosophical reasons. Also just plain old because that’s what we want to do.

A lot of artists making slipcast pottery work in what is called an edition. That is in series of a limited number that is usually numbered and signed. An edition is a sort of a promise to the people who buy your artwork that their piece is special because there are only a few of them.

So why don’t we do editions?

Well actually we tried that, we started with editions you may even run into a few early peices that were numbered. The edition model just never worked for Herman, the guy that makes the monsters.

There was a practical concern, Herman is dyslexic and numbering the peices was just asking for trouble. If the numbers get scrambled up, an edition doesn’t do its job. Fundamentally though editions just don’t make sense with the way the monster mugs get made. Most of the people who do numbered editions prepare several duplicate molds and make hundreds of peices.

We don’t, we make 1 mold from a sculpture and that’s it. Plaster molds don’t last forever they wear out with use. Our monster pottery is naturally limited by our process. About 50 casts is as many as we expect out of a mold. We don’t have room to keep all those molds, or extra hands to fill em. And Herman would just rather be sculpting another cool monster than building more molds or casting hundreds of something.

Another issue with making an edition is though each individual object is still hand made they should be as identical as possible. The way Herman paints is too complex to be repeatable enough for a consistent edition. It was either simplify the process or abandon the idea of an edition.

Lastly the idea of an edition just doesn’t sit right with us, essentially it is about a assigning value to the product by making it more rare. We are dedicated to making the coolest stuff we possibly can, that means lots of work done by hand. That sort of thing is never going to be cheap, but we don’t think it a sandbox is fundamentally any better just because fewer people get to play in it.