Marrow Kiln

Overview

Marrow Kiln is a two-person ceramics studio making vases, bowls, and candle vessels in small firings. Each kiln load comes out a little different, and the studio had started treating that as a problem: forty glazes, forty label files, and a shelf where nothing looked related.

The brief was to make the range read as one family without hiding what makes each piece its own.

Approach

I started at the shelf, not the screen. We laid every form out on linen in the studio and sorted them by shape first, glaze second. The shapes held steady, so the identity hangs on them: six vessel outlines, drawn as simple line marks, sit at the top of every label.

Below the mark, one fixed grid carries the parts that change: glaze name, firing number, and care note. Glaze names are set in a single weight, so a new one only needs typing, not designing. The labels print in one colour on uncoated stock, which suits the matte glazes and keeps short runs cheap.

The boxes follow the same logic. Three kraft sizes cover the whole range, each with a window cut to the vessel’s shoulder, so the glaze does the selling. A small stamp closes the lid instead of tape.

Result

One label layout now carries 40 glazes, and adding a new one takes minutes. The studio prints labels in-house on the morning of a firing. At markets, the six shape marks have become the way regulars ask for things: “the round one in the oat glaze”.