Handmade gifts for coffee lovers

Huge Hand-Thrown Mug in Shale

by North Carolina pottery

For someone whose coffee always goes cold. The large format in shale gray rather than brownstone.

Identical to the huge brownstone mug in size and construction, in the cooler glaze. Listed separately because glaze choice is the entire decision here and getting it wrong on a fifty-six dollar mug is a real waste. Gray for a modern kitchen, brown for a warm one.

Hand-Thrown Coffee Mug in Brownstone

by North Carolina pottery

For the everyday mug that replaces all the others. The brown glaze from the same North Carolina wheel, for people who dislike gray.

Brownstone is the warm half of this maker range and it is the better choice against wood, copper or brass. Everything else about it matches the shale mug: hand-thrown, stoneware, and the same forty-two dollars. Pick on color alone, because there is nothing else between them.

Handmade Stoneware Mug, Cobalt and Purple, 8 oz

For espresso, cortado, or a lighter mug. A smaller 8 oz handmade stoneware mug, which is a tea size rather than a coffee one.

Eight ounces is the size a cup of tea actually wants: enough that you are not refilling, small enough that the last mouthful is still hot. Most handmade mugs are sized for American coffee, so a genuinely small one is harder to find than it should be. Cobalt and purple over stoneware.

Handmade Flower Ring Dish and Spoon Rest

For the wet teaspoon problem. A tiny handmade dish that does two jobs depending on which room it lands in.

Ring dishes and spoon rests are the same object with different placement, which makes this an unusually forgiving gift: it works for a jewelry wearer and for someone who cooks. Eighteen dollars, handmade, and small enough to post cheaply.

Decorative Wooden Serving Tray with Handles

For carrying two mugs without a hand under them. A handled wooden tray, handmade, in the size that actually gets used daily.

Trays are the most-used and least-gifted object in a living room: they turn a soft surface into a hard one and they make everything on them look deliberate. Handles matter more than looks here, because a tray without them cannot be carried with anything on it. Under fifty dollars from a Handmade storefront.

Woven Macrame Cotton Coasters, Pair

For a desk that gets rings on it. Nine dollars for two hand-knotted cotton coasters — the cheapest way to finish a gift box.

A board, a mug and a candle is a good gift box and a hard one; it is all hard edges. Two cotton coasters change the texture for under ten dollars. Absorbent and washable, unlike cork or slate, which is the practical argument for cotton coasters generally.

Turquoise Falls Hand-Thrown Mug

by North Carolina pottery

For someone who wants the mug to be an object. A running turquoise glaze that pools differently on every piece.

A falls glaze is one that moves in the kiln: it runs down the form and pools where it catches, so the pattern is decided by gravity and heat rather than by the maker hand. That makes each mug genuinely unique in a way most handmade claims are not. Buy it if their kitchen can take a strong blue-green.

Huge Hand-Thrown Mug in Brownstone

by North Carolina pottery

For a genuinely oversized daily mug. The oversized version, and for some recipients it is the only correct one.

There is a specific kind of coffee drinker for whom a standard twelve-ounce mug is an annoyance, and they will tell you about it. This is the answer. Same wheel, same glaze, considerably more of it, and the extra fourteen dollars over the standard size buys a gift that is unmistakably chosen for the person rather than the category.