How We Make Your Urn

For those of you not familiar with pottery, I'll try to offer you a brief and simple explanation of the very complicated, exacting and time consuming process....OK, it's not brief, and it might not be that simple, but after you order your urn, you'll have plenty of time to come back and read this, over and over, as you wait for your urn to arrive. It takes about 8 weeks, but can take longer depending on how complex your particular pet's urn is, and on how things are flowing in the studio. We work our urns through in batches, it takes a couple dozen to fill a kiln, and a kiln must be filled before it's fired. If something happens to knock an urn out of its place in line, it must fall back to the next kiln load behind it, which results in 

Basically, pottery shapes powdered rock in the form of clay, and melts the finished sculpture into glass at very high temperature.

 We start with a lump of mud. Ann is a terrifically skilled potter with many years of production experience, watching her take that formless lump of clay and work it on the wheel is a beautiful thing to watch. Someday, if I get good enough at making websites (this is my first), I'll include a downloadable video of Ann at work on the pottery wheel. Even the lids are fun to watch being created, they're not your average treat-jar lid, they're a surprisingly complex shape which Ann designed specifically for our pet urns.

After your vase and lid are formed, they are set aside to dry for a day until the clay hardens sufficiently to be handled. At this point your urn is stamped and carved, we use stamps that we make and design ourselves, either out of clay, plaster, or out of rubber (a new process you're going to be hearing more about later...), we also use molds, called sprigs, to make clay decorations like doggie-biscuits or flowers, which we then adhere to the sides of the vase. If your urn involves a carving, the artwork is first edited and printed out on computer, then Ann traces the rough outlines of the photo onto the clay, and from there will sculpt/carve the original design onto and into the urn.

 I promise to have more pics of all this soon!

If your urn involves an inscription, even just a name and dates, I (Jon, Ann's husband, partner in clay, web designer and personal chef) make them into rubber stamps and then press them into the wet clay for a neat, professional looking inscription in a variety of font styles. This is a new feature, added in October, 2005. 

After your pet's urn is finished being crafted, we set it aside to dry in a process that takes a week or two, and sometimes longer depending on the weather and outside humidity as well as the complexity and design of the individual pet's urn. This is a crucial stage and can't be rushed, particularly if your urn involves sculpting and adhering additional clay onto the original pot.

Once it is completely dry, the now extremely fragile urn is then given its initial, called "Bisque" or "Biscuit" firing to about 1900° F. At this point, the pot is "half-baked" This is done to harden the clay for easier handling and to prepare it for glazing. At this point, the pot can still absorb water, the tiny particles of clay have not yet melted and fused together.

 Glazes are powdered minerals and raw chemicals that are mixed with water into a chalky paste which looks nothing at all like it will after it is fired and turned into a glass. They are tricky to apply and can be totally unpredictable in the wild atmosphere of a kiln at 2200°F, the temperature at which it is then fired in its final, called glaze, firing. It can take many hours to glaze and wax just one of our more complex pet urns. (waxing is a method used to keep glaze from adhering to a pot in places, such as the bottom where it will sit on the kiln shelf) The simple urns can be glazed and waxed in minutes.

It is important to understand the nature of pottery before you consider ordering custom pottery. Pottery is never perfect. We promise to spell everything right, and to get the dates right, but we ask that you allow for the many subtle imperfections inherent in pottery in general, and common to our pottery!! Glazes run, colors hardly ever come out the same way twice, and sometimes contaminants in the clay body itself can lead to slight pitting or bubbling. The stuff you find at places like the Pottery Barn is not handmade. What we are doing here is not the process known to many as "Ceramics", although that's exactly what it is, as all pottery falls under the broader category of ceramics, but the low-fired, cheesy, slip-cast pottery that was all the rage in the 60s and 70s is what people generally think of when they hear the term. We're real potters making handmade, high-fired pottery in a real pottery studio, and like most potters, we barely make enough to enable us to not have to work real jobs!

 That's why you can pay $50 for a handmade pottery coffee mug (ours are much less!) when a perfectly serviceable mug can be found, brand new and flawless at World-Mart for a buck.

Most all of our customers love their urns (at least, they tell us they do!), and we won't ship one that we're not happy with. The small imperfections and flaws, we honestly think add to a pot's charm, they are the handprints of the potter and evidence of its one-of-a-kind nature. If you are not satisfied with your urn, return it to us in one piece and you will not be charged for anything other than the cost of sending it back to us. 

Another factor to consider before ordering a custom pet urn or pet memorial from Cheers' Pottery is time. 

We have added a series of pre-made, ready-to-ship urns to our existing lines of custom pet urns for those of you that want a handmade Cheers' Pottery Pet Urn but don't want to wait for something which is custom made. If time is a factor for you, you may wish to consider browsing our current selection. 

 We're a tiny operation and we work hard to do everything just right. Go easy on us! We're working hard and doing our best, but we're only a small pottery. Hopefully, this adds to the value of the piece. We like to think it does ;) and while months may seem a long time to wait, your urn is something we hope you'll cherish for a lifetime. 

Generally speaking, simpler urns are faster, we can do a rack of simple urns in the time it takes to do one carved urn. The carved and sculpted urns that we still offer are a bargain, but you must be prepared to wait additional time for a more complex or challenging design.

 Really, if time is an issue, you're better off not ordering a custom urn, they can't be rushed. Our pre-made, ready to ship urns are a very nice alternative for those either pressed for time, or for those that are just plain impatient! That being said, a simple urn can be done in as little as 2 weeks, and while this kind of turnaround time is unusual, it can happen. Most orders are filled within 6-8 weeks.

 Occasionally, we get a glut of orders for carved or sculpted urns and this can back things up as well. If you're concerned about how long your urn is taking, please feel free to touch base with us to make sure everything is OK. I know doing business over the internet can be very risky, we've been ripped off more than a couple times ourselves. 

Ann has been in business as Cheers' Pottery for more than ten years, and we've been online for about 5 now, that's long enough to establish a fine reputation, and long enough for a bad reputation to have shown itself. (check the BBB website any time you have questions about a business, and file a complaint with them whenever you feel you've been wronged!)  Remember, you won't be billed until your order is ready to be shipped! We do this because we know how difficult it is to wait for something so important, it makes it worse if you've paid for it in advance. So, we'll take the risk, we trust you. 

We're very proud of our customer service orientation. We want you to have something you'll cherish forever. You can rest assured that we will put all of our skills and love into your pet's urn. We love our work, and we feel that it shows. Our urns help people heal their grief, that's special medicine, and something that marks both Ann and myself very deeply. We love our own pets so much, we currently have 5 cats and 4 dogs (1 boston terrier, 3 pugs), they are our only children and as such are the lights of our lives. We've gone through what you're going through before, and we'll be going through it again. This is a truly special business, and  we feel honored to be doing it.

 Our main concern is that you understand all that is going on here, and that you be prepared for the unique experience of helping to design your pet's urn by working directly with the artists themselves. The biggest problem we've faced thus far is our inability to crank these things out like a factory. Most people aren't used to ordering custom made items anymore, you buy what is offered on the shelf, and you know what you're getting before you get it. Pottery is always a surprise, and, it takes a lot of time, skill and expensive machinery to make! If you're prepared to go on this journey with us, we guarantee that you end up with a beautiful, one-of-a-kind work of art, made just for you, which you helped to design, AND offered at a great price! Where else can you find that?

Shipping adds additional time, (though not much, we ship using priority mail) so when you're ready to order or have questions, please fill out our online order form so we can arrange everything and start working on your order today.

Cheers!

Jon & Ann

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