Haand-iversary Glazes: Vespertine & Turmeric

 

When we started making plates for restaurants in 2014, we also began to create custom glaze colors for our clients to help them flesh out the design of their spaces. When honing in on a color, we would often make seven or more variations per color to make sure we got it right. In glaze chemistry, things can be really unexpected and magical- you try to make a green but end up with pink, or end up with a green apple when you wanted emerald tones. 

We should introduce Matt Welch, who is important to Haand in many ways, but if you are going in chronological order of importance, he is the person who introduced Chris and I. My original home-room teacher felt I was a “handful” so I got moved into another homeroom mid-year. In that homeroom sat Matt, and we were sitting together in detention mere days later. We became fast friends when he felt guilty about getting us both Saturday detention for laughing in detention. 

Chris and Matt have been friends since diapers, and so during that fateful Saturday School, I was introduced to Matt’s friend, Chris. We really cemented our friendship when Chris and Matt helped me make a fake id to get into a Paul Oakenfold show using the computer lab- yes, the year was 1999 if you were doing the math. Fast forward to 2014, and Matt was one of our very earliest employees. He now runs the Materials Department, where he heads up glaze development. I will come to him with a handful of leaves or a picture of an elk leather jacket from 1890 and he will nod thoughtfully and say, “Yeah I can make a glaze that color.” 

Chris and I wanted to do something for Haand’s anniversary that celebrated the joy we find in the unexpected nature of ceramics, so we went back through our catalog and selected colors that we loved but discontinued or never went into production with- Chris chose Vespertine and I chose Turmeric.

-Mark Warren, Co-Founder and Creative Director, Haand, May 2022

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