Dreamy Garden

Dreamy Garden is the largest of our collections and the one closest to how NAF Ceramic started: a wheel, a jar of underglaze, and a habit of painting whatever was flowering that week. Wildflowers, poppies, dahlias, lilies of the valley, water lilies, butterflies and dragonflies all turn up here, painted freehand onto stoneware mugs, bowls, pitchers, plates and wall pieces.

What you will find in this collection

Most of the collection is drinkware — hand-painted ceramic mugs, tea cups, travel mugs and matcha bowls. Alongside them sit serving pieces and small objects for the house: pitchers and creamers, floral spoon rests, trinket and ring dishes, and botanical wall decor. If you are looking for a handmade floral mug, a botanical stoneware bowl or a hand-painted pitcher with real brushwork on it, this is where to start.

Every piece is one of a kind. When a piece sells it is not restocked, because it cannot be: the next one would be a different piece.

How a botanical piece is painted

The form comes first. Clay is wedged by hand, thrown on the wheel or built from slabs, then left to firm up before the surface is refined and the handle is pulled and attached. Only when the piece is leather hard does the painting start.

Flowers are drawn straight onto the raw clay with underglaze, without transfers, stencils or decals. That is the reason a poppy on one mug leans left while the next opens wider, and why the gold-detailed pieces carry a slightly different weight of line each time. The brush is loaded, the hand moves, and the piece keeps that record.

Where gold appears — a rim, the edge of a petal, the tip of a dragonfly wing — it is real 24K gold lustre, applied last and fired separately.

Stoneware, glaze and the 1200°C firing

Everything here is stoneware rather than earthenware. Stoneware is fired hotter and ends up denser and less porous, which is what makes a mug that can be used every morning rather than kept on a shelf.

Each piece is bisque fired, glazed, then fired again to 1200°C. At that temperature the glaze and the clay body fuse into a single hard surface. Pieces finished with gold need a third, cooler firing so the lustre sets without burning off. In total, a single cup takes about a week from wet clay to finished object.

The glazes are food safe, and the plain pieces are microwave safe.

Living with hand-painted ceramics

These are made to be used. Warm water and a soft sponge are all a piece needs; skip abrasive scourers and scouring powders, which will dull any glaze over time.

Two things are worth knowing. First, keep anything with gold detailing out of the microwave — metallic lustre reacts badly to microwaves, on any maker's ceramics. Second, avoid sudden temperature changes: no fridge-to-oven moves, and let a cold piece come to room temperature before you pour boiling water into it. Thermal shock, not daily use, is what cracks handmade ceramics.

Handled reasonably, a stoneware mug lasts decades. That is rather the point of firing earth at 1200 degrees.

Sizes and capacities

Because each piece is thrown by hand, no two are dimensionally identical. Capacities and measurements are listed on each product page — in millilitres and centimetres, converted automatically to fluid ounces and inches for visitors in the US — and should be read as close approximations rather than exact specifications.

As a rough guide: cups and tea cups tend to sit between 200 and 300 ml, everyday mugs between 300 and 450 ml, and matcha or serving bowls between 400 and 800 ml.

Choosing one as a gift

Botanical pieces make unusually good gifts because the flower can be chosen to mean something — a birth month bloom, the flower from a garden someone grew up with, or simply the one they would have picked themselves. Every order leaves the atelier gift-wrapped, and you can add a note at checkout.

If you want the piece itself to carry a name or a date, look at the Personalized collection instead, where pieces are painted to order.

Why no two are the same

Small differences in colour, brushwork, glaze pooling, height and weight are part of how these are made, not faults. Glaze moves in the kiln; a rim thickens slightly where the clay was pulled; a colour deepens where two firings overlapped. Each piece is photographed as it actually is, so what arrives is the piece you saw.

Everything is made in a small atelier in Kütahya, a town in western Türkiye that has been firing ceramics for roughly six centuries. Orders ship worldwide, packed by hand.