Who honestly doesn't have a favourite mug?

"how using a much loved cup or bowl can increase our enjoyment of what we eat or drink." Nigel Slater

I have just finished a perfect everyday kind of lunch. Snack lunch, not a proper sit-down lunch like we had yesterday.

So what did I have? Well leftover soup - a near perfect fridge raid soup that I made the other day. A kind of corn chowder I guess, although I had no milk, so the creamy part was sour cream - also leftover. Plus - potato, carrot, onions, celery, a whole corn cob - the current fresh food bargain - herbs and a touch of chilli I think. Maybe there was zucchini and capsicum in there too. I can't quite remember and there was no one dominant flavour. Perhaps the corn - but only just.

Today's portion was very small and I ate it from my very favourite cup, which is just right for a cup of soup, because you can cradle it perfectly in your hand as you sip. I really cannot describe, I just do not have the words, to convey the immense comfort I derive from these few simple moments, sipping home-made soup from a favourite mug.

There is no real nostalgia associated with this mug. So that is not the answer. I bought it many years ago now from a small arty crafty shop that was situated next to our local station. Long gone, it's a café now I think. At the time I was a working woman and we had coffee breaks for which we had to supply our own mug. Not having one at home I decided to treat myself and found this in that little shop. It followed me through three different jobs, maybe four. I can't quite remember now. It was so obviously hand-crafted and somehow beckoned to me. There were probably others by the same potter, but it was this one that stole my heart. The shape, the colours, bright, bright, royal blue, and a subdued almost green, but not quite. It was not precise in its design. The colour around the rim was wobbly as was the bottom line, and the base was just pure clay. Homely and yet a work of art. I fell in love, and bought it.

Today it is not much used. I do not have soup every day for lunch. Only very occasionally. I do not drink tea. My morning coffee is served in an insulated pewter mug, which is much more practical I guess, although it does have its own pleasing aesthetic. Besides it is a gift from David. And so I defer to a different kind of love.

The title of this post - "Who honestly doesn't have a favourite mug"? are the last words in a short essay from Nigel's latest book A Thousand Feasts entitled The potter's mark. I remembered that, a few times in that book he had written about his pots, cups, plates, bowls ... many of them expensive and from people at the top of the potter's tree. Mine was o obviously crafted, that I wondered whether mine had a potter's mark too - and after a little searching I found it - tucked away in that ridge of clay at the base. It's clear here, but you would not notice it if using the mug casually.

Isn't technology wonderful? First for the ability to take that close-up photograph - so clear that you can see the texture - on a phone. Who would have thought back in those years of my childhood, when Box Brownies were the only cheap cameras available to the ordinary man. Black and white film too? And secondly, and even more, amazingly, take your photograph, crop it so that you close in even more, and then drag that photograph into Google Images and hey presto - there is the man who made it. A modern miracle.

His name is Tony Barnes and he lives and works in at his Moonshine Pottery in Malmsbury, Victoria - a little way north of Melbourne, and not that far from here I guess. Eltham has a reputation for being arty crafty, as does Warrandyte - the next suburb, so I'm pretty sure his work would be on sale around here. He obviously produces on a fairly large scale, and has been working there for over forty years. The picture on the right is an exhibit at the current (2025) Warrandyte Pottery Expo, so he is obviously still going strong. According to the expo notes:

"He currently uses a fine stoneware clay decorated with copper red, cobalt blue, rutile and celadon glazes."

A more autumnal tone perhaps, and just a little bit oriental?

I reread Nigel's piece on the potter's mark and found a few more remarks that rang true to my own experience when it came to pots and plates:

"Holding that pot changed how I look at every bowl, plate and dish in my kitchen. Is it a delight to the eye? How does it feel in the hand? Does it flatter the food? More importantly, does it enhance the pleasure of what we are eating and drinking?"

As he admits - part of his work includes making food look good on a plate so that it can be photographed for books. So that it will entice us to buy the book and make the food. He also obviously has a large collection of pots, plates and bowls crafted by famous potters, and most likely costing a small fortune. My own hand-crafted mug, would not have been expensive. Besides I know very little about pottery. I do, myself, have a few hand-crafted plates and dishes, that have been gifted to me over the years. I do not use them enough. Which makes me somewhat ashamed. We even have what is now a vintage Arabia dinner set for twelve people, although there have, of course, been a few inevitable breakages. But it never gets used. Like the silver knives and forks that my grandmother occasionally got out to clean, but which very rarely were used.

Is it a lower class thing do you think? The 'best' cutlery, the 'best' dinner set than never gets used - indeed even the 'front room' which only got used at Christmas and which could, in fact, have been an extra bedroom for my sister or me.

Nigel went on to say that:

"I like choosing the right plate for the right food. ... There is no science behind this, it is purely a question of aesthetics, in the way that battered fish and chips 'tastes better' eaten out of paper or a Chinese takeaway does when eaten with chopsticks out of white waxed boxes that either does when tipped out onto a plate. It is why drinking a single espresso from a mug feels 'just wrong'.

But then Nigel has lots of different plates. Most of us, including myself do not. And so we mostly stick to plain white because most food looks at least halfway attractive on a white plate. Really the only options I have are Maxwell Williams classic white or that Arabia set from long ago. Which I definitely should use more often. It was made to be used, not stored and sold for more than it cost when the original owners have gone. The only options I have to experiment with plating, is with the few platters and bowls that I have. And alas they are mostly large and we do not have a need for 'large' much these days. And why, why, why didn't I buy more of those beautiful Provençal market pots? Yes I know it was a weight consideration but I'm sure we could have got around that somehow - posted them?

One last mug, which evokes the same feelings of guilt as that bottom reserve drawer from the other day. It is a gift from my beautiful almost daughter-in-law. It is lovely in a quite different way to my rustic soup mug. It is lighter, more ethereal, delicate as the flowers illustrated thereon. I guess it demands tea, which I don't drink. It's certainly not for soup - although maybe a pale, cool gazpacho or ajo blanco. Coffee? Not quite. Maybe a cappucino. It's almost too beautiful to be contaminated with food, so maybe I should use it as a small vase for dainty little carnations, or violets, or some such. I certainly shouldn't hide it away. It deserves a place in the sun. In my kitchen in fact.

POSTSCRIPT

Yesterday's lunch. Not quite 5 star if I'm honest, but almost. Thank you Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall for giving me the bread under plums idea for the dessert. It was a brainwave, as the mascarpone topping did indeed spill over from the plums, but it soaked into the bread below, making it sugary and crunchy and delicious. Thank you Ottolenghi and crew for yet another things on a mash kind of entrée which was just a little bit different. And finally thank you to Jamie for thinking of wrapping bacon around fishcakes made with smoked salmon and trout. It worked wonderfully well. Not my photos - I did not take any. I was enjoying myself too much.