Caring for Handmade Ceramics

No two of these are ever quite the same, so the real question isn't whether a piece is dishwasher safe, it's whose hands made it.

Ceramics is the one category on the site where "handmade" doesn't mean one thing. A Villa Bologna jug and a Heidi Bishop dish are both handmade and both wrong to treat the same way.

Know what you're holding. Villa Bologna (Malta) is glazed earthenware made for daily use, ten artisans hand-painting a design language that's been in production since the 1950s. Villa Bologna's own guidance is dishwasher safe on a low-temperature cycle with a liquid detergent, but not microwave or oven safe. That's about as forgiving as ceramics gets here.

Laetitia Rouget (Lisbon) is glazed and hand-illustrated in small batches. Hand wash it, mild detergent, nothing abrasive on the glaze. It'll survive a dishwasher physically, but the printed detail and colour won't thank you for it over time.

The Exvotos (Seville) and Adil Can Güven's Iznik pieces (Bursa) read as sculpture as much as tableware, glazed ceramic heads and centuries-old Ottoman decoration. Treat them that way. Dust with a soft dry cloth, hand wash only if you actually need to and keep water away from any unglazed base.

Heidi Bishop (London) finishes delicate porcelain with 18-karat gold lustre, painted on with one of the smallest brushes there is. Hand wash only, lukewarm water, no dishwasher, no scrubbing. Gold lustre doesn't come back once the heat and detergent have dulled it.

The general rules, whichever piece you own. A little crazing, those fine hairline lines in an old glaze, is age showing through, not damage. Avoid sudden temperature swings, a cold piece straight from the fridge under a hot tap will crack before you notice what happened. Give pieces room when you stack them, and put something soft between anything painted or gilded so glaze doesn't rub against glaze.

That's the whole discipline: know which maker made it, then treat gold and paint gently and let the sturdier pieces earn their keep at the table. We've made the case for that kind of imperfection before.