"My Kiln Is Thirty-One Years Old. I'm Not Replacing It." — Why a North Carolina Potter Is Selling Off the Last Animal Mugs She'll Ever Fire

For twelve years, Janet Pruitt has been sculpting small ceramic animals into the bottom of her mugs — a cat, a penguin, a seal, waiting under the last swallow of coffee. This year she fires the last of them.

---

Seagrove, North Carolina. The workshop is a two-car garage that hasn't held a car since 1995. Shelves line three walls, loaded with mugs in every stage — raw clay, chalky white bisque, finished pieces glazed in deep greens and soft blues. A wheel sits in the corner under a lamp. On the workbench, next to a coffee can of trimming tools, a large orange cat is asleep on a folded towel where he is very clearly not supposed to be.

"That's Boone," Janet says. "He supervises."

She picks up a mug from the drying rack and turns it over in her hands, then holds it out, open end up. At the bottom, sitting upright and looking straight back at you, is a small ceramic cat.

It started with a boy who wouldn't finish his cocoa

Twelve years ago, Janet's grandson Wade was five years old and would not finish a cup of anything. Half a cup of milk, three sips of cocoa, and he was done.

"He was drawing penguins that whole year. Penguins on everything," she says. "So I made him a cup with a penguin sitting in the bottom of it. You couldn't see it until the cup was empty."

He drank the whole thing. Then he did it again the next morning, and the morning after that.

Wade is seventeen now. The mug sits on his desk with pens in it, chipped along one side.

What surprised her was who started ordering them. She made the first ones for children. The people writing to her were mostly her own age.

"I made them for a five-year-old," she says. "Turns out the folks buying them are sixty-five. They tell me it's the cup they reach for in the morning. I understand that. There's something about getting to the bottom and having somebody there."

"Not every animal fits in a cup"

Ask Janet why she makes cats, penguins and seals and nothing else, and the answer is pure craft.

"It has to sit," she says. "A cup is a round space with a floor. The animal has to sit upright, take up the room properly, and look up at you. Cats do that. Penguins do that. Seals do that — a seal is practically built for it."

Anything with long legs, a long body or a low head reads wrong at the bottom of a mug, she says. It looks like it fell in. So after twelve years of trying, the collection is three animals — and one of them in several poses, because customers kept asking for their own cat. Sitting upright. Curled up. Head tipped to one side.

And why so many cats? She laughs.

"I'm just a cat person."

Boone does not open his eyes.

Thirty-one years, one kiln, and one last box of parts

The kiln has been in the corner of the garage since 1995. It is an electric model that has not been manufactured in a very long time, and Janet knows its habits the way you know an old truck — which shelf runs hot, how long it wants to cool, the sound it makes when it's happy.

The elements, relays and controller for it stopped being available years ago. Last winter she tracked down the final set of parts she could find anywhere.

That set is what's left. And it can be counted.

Every mug goes through the kiln twice — once to fire the clay, once to set the glaze. The last elements will carry roughly 28 firings. That's 14 finished loads, at about 45 mugs a load.

She's done the arithmetic more than once, and she's not sentimental about it.

"A new kiln runs about eleven thousand dollars, once you've paid for the wiring," she says. "I'm sixty-seven. I'm not buying a machine I won't wear out."

"The kiln didn't decide for me"

This is the part she wants understood, and she says it plainly, without a trace of gloom.

"People keep asking if I'm heartbroken about the kiln. I'm not. The kiln picked the month. I'd already picked the year."

She's been throwing pots since 1995. Every batch means loading, firing, waiting on a cool-down, unloading, packing, and driving to the post office. Thirty-one years of running her week around a firing schedule.

Her husband Dale, 69, retired from the phone company, built most of the shelving in the workshop and still drives the packages into town twice a week. He's been quietly in favor of this for about two years.

"He hasn't said much," Janet says. "He's just been leaving brochures around."

She isn't closing in a hurry, and there's no sale on a deadline. When the last load comes out of the kiln, that's the end of it — and after that the mugs simply don't exist anymore.

What makes Janet's mugs different

Why they keep ending up as gifts

Janet says she can tell what a mug is for by how people order. Grandchildren get the penguin. Someone's sister gets the cat. The seal, for reasons nobody has explained to her, is the one people buy for their husbands.

"They're easy to give," she says. "Nobody has to guess what it's worth or where to put it. You hand somebody a cup and they use it the next morning. That's the whole thing."

They also tend not to be bought one at a time. Customers order one, then come back for a second — a different animal, or the same cat in a different pose, so a pair can sit together on a shelf.

What customers say

When the kiln goes cold

There is no successor lined up and no plan to hand the workshop to anyone. Janet says the honest version is that she doesn't want to.

"Thirty-one years is a good run," she says. "I'd rather finish while I still like doing it than keep going until I don't."

She picks up the mug with the cat in it again, checks the rim with her thumb, and sets it back on the rack with the others waiting for the next load.

Thank you, Janet. For thirty-one years of good cups.

Advertorial. This article is sponsored content published on behalf of the advertiser. Names and images may be illustrative. Product availability, quantities and pricing are subject to change without notice. Individual results and experiences vary.