Pencil lead · Part reduced · Chocolate. Three colours, one clay, no pigment.
100% Handcrafted
100% Manipur Clay
0% Glaze, Pigment or Chemical Flux
01 · The material
Unglazed pottery is, almost everywhere, porous pottery.
It drinks. It stains. It holds the smell of what came before. That is why nearly every ceramic you own wears a glaze: a layer of glass, fused on to seal a body that cannot seal itself.
Ours does. Only a handful of places on earth have ever fired clay until it needs no glaze at all. Yixing in China has done it for five centuries, Bizen and Tokoname in Japan for eight. This one is India's.
Pieces set low, nearest the flame, are starved of air. Their iron turns the grey of pencil lead. Those above keep their oxygen and stay chocolate brown.
Nothing is painted on. Nothing is dipped. The kiln decides, and no two firings agree.
Earth
A proprietary clay body, dug and processed in Manipur. Nothing is brought in from outside the state.
Water
What makes clay yield to the hand. All of it leaves again in the drying and the firing.
Fire
The only thing that turns earth to stone. Once it has done its work, no glaze is needed.
Air
The pigment. Colour depends on how much oxygen the kiln is allowed: starved, the iron greys; fed, it stays brown.
Nothing else.
Finishes
Three colours, one clay, no pigment.
Pencil lead
Fully reduced. A dense pewter surface with a faint metallic sheen.
Part reduced
The midpoint. Warm grey drifting toward brown, uneven by design.
Chocolate
Fully oxidised. The iron keeps its oxygen and stays a deep copper brown.
03 · The range
Made to be used every day.
Tea ware, carved vessels, vases, sculptural pieces, lamps and contemporary forms. All are made from the same clay and finished only by fire.
It behaves like a glazed ceramic, without the glaze.
Ready to use
No soaking. No seasoning. This body does not drink.
Hot and cold alike
It will not seep, soften, or hold an odour from what it held before.
Wash as any ceramic
Scouring will not harm the surface. Two years of daily use proved it.
Nothing added
The clay body has been tested at CSIR–CGCRI. No lead or cadmium added.
Avoid sudden extremes
As with all fired clay, don't take a piece from cold straight to boiling.
Variation is the fire
Tone differs between pieces and between firings. It is not a fault.
04 · The makers
Thoubal has made pots for five hundred years.
The villages of our district have shaped clay by hand, without a wheel, for as long as anyone has counted. We work in that lineage, and we spent four years taking its material somewhere it had never been.
Every piece carries our mark and is made from our own clay, dug and processed within the state. Every firing is boil-tested before a single piece is packed.
Burnished by hand: the surface is made here, not applied
06
Dried slowly, then fired
07
Inspected, stamped and packed
Nothing is cast in a machine and nothing is sprayed on. Fewer than four pieces in a hundred are lost in firing, but every loss is carried in the price of those that survive.
Made in quantity
Handmade does not mean one at a time.
We fire up to 500 pieces in a single load, with under 4% lost, and keep dimensions within one per cent across a batch.
Wholesale, hospitality and gifting orders are made to order.
A terracotta cup lasts a season. Ours is meant to last a working life.
Follow the kiln
Firings, new pieces and the hands that make them.
We share every firing, from the clay pit to the opened kiln. Follow along.
05 · Enquire
Wholesale, gifting and bespoke orders.
We supply hotels, restaurants, retailers, government departments and corporate gifting programmes, and we make to order. Tell us what you need and we'll come back with quantities, lead times and pricing.
