Pete Hornberger's Mug

I've finally started yet another blog, so that I can archive Hot Mud entries from my website, keep track of the happenings in the ceramic studio and track my process. I'm working in my home studio where I'm able to fire up to Cone 6, and I also now work at another local studio where they fire Cone 10. Even though there's a lot going on in the ceramic studio, there's a lot more going on snuggled in a guest room that my husband and I call The Treehouse, watching our latest big flat screen TV.

I have compulsive spurts of watching episode after episode of tv shows (there was the Charmed phase, the Northern Exposure phase, the Parks & Recreation phase, South Park forever phase etc..) but boy, oh boy have I become obsessed with 30 Rock on Netflix lately. It's such a fun show and I love, love, love Pete Hornberger's yellow mug! As a connoisseur of ceramics, I look for it wherever I go, including on tv. I take screen shots of stuff that I see so that I can look up the ceramicist and check out how it's made. It's kinda silly, but as a (somewhat) beginner I haven't developed my own style. I spend so much time getting excited about learning new techniques-- maybe one day I'll get to style. This week's excitement is Pete Hornberger's mug...

Here are a couple of screen shots of Pete Hornberger's mug from my awesome new tv that has "freeze" mode on it...(am I gonna get a cease and desist request from NBC for stealing their footage off my tv? I hope so. It's wrong of me to do that.)


It's a brave, unpretentious mug and I wanted one! I looked high and low to find out who the ceramicist is so that I could buy one, but I couldn't find it. Maybe it is just a child's mug from a ceramics class? Either way, it actually has a sophistication in its quirky playfulness, and I love seeing the hand of the artist in its dimples. It's unexpectedly handmade looking and so very yellow. If a child made it, that makes a lot of sense to me, because children are so free in their expression.

In my fruitless search to find the mug, all I came up with is this Interview with Scott Adsit discussing his mug:

"CP: And finally, what is up with that huge clay mug you are always using in 30 Rock? Is it a real-life thing for you? And, if so, are you into hand-turkey finger painting too? SA: Pete's clay mug is not his mug of choice. His mug of choice would be the grand, sexy, exciting, fast-paced mug of a jet-setting playboy with no responsibilities. As it is, he's obligated to use the leaky mug his daughter made for him."

I gave up the search and decided that I could likely make my own version. I sat in the Treehouse watching 30 Rock with a bag of low-fire Laguna EM-210 clay (regularly used with children in clay classes). I constructed it using a coil technique, with a very sloppy adhesion style. The yellow underglaze was painted on in greenware stage (once it dried). Here it is not shiny, before the kiln...

I have a rich fantasy life, and obviously not a very big social life (unless of course you include regular film premieres and a recent trip to Medieval Times), so I've now created a new personal ceramic challenge for myself, as gift for my imaginary friend Pete Hornberger-- I'm going to make him a "grand, sexy, exciting, fast-paced mug of a jet-setting playboy."