Two people, two wheels, one opinionated kiln.
Kiln & Ember started in 2019 in a drafty garage in the Blue Ridge foothills, with a secondhand wheel and a kiln that came with a name already painted on her door: Bertha. We kept the name. She earned it.
Maren throws. Theo glazes and fires. Between us we make somewhere around two hundred pieces a month, and about a hundred and forty survive the trip through cone 10 — the rest teach us something on their way to the shard pile.
Everything in the shop is stoneware, fired hot enough that the glaze and clay become one thing. That's why the colors look the way they do: iron speckle, honest drips, surfaces that feel like river stones. No decals, no factory white, nothing we wouldn't put on our own table.
How a piece gets to you
- Thrown — every form starts as a ball of North Carolina clay on one of two wheels. No slip-casting, no molds.
- Trimmed & dried — a week under plastic, then a week in the open air. Rushing this step is how you make expensive gravel.
- Glazed — Theo mixes every glaze from raw materials. The recipes live in a notebook that is, frankly, held together by tape.
- Fired — Bertha runs to cone 10 (about 2,350°F) roughly twice a month. What comes out decides what the shop looks like.
- Packed — double-boxed in recycled cotton batting, labeled by hand, walked to the post office on Fletcher Mill Road.
Why "payment on delivery"?
Because we're a studio, not a platform. When you place an order, it lands on our workbench — literally, we print them — and we confirm it by email within a day. Payment is arranged when your pieces are ready to ship. No card is charged on this site, ever. It's slower. It's also how we'd want to be treated.
Visit
The studio is at 41 Fletcher Mill Rd, Asheville, NC — visits by appointment, seconds shelf included. Write to hello@kilnandember.shop and Maren will find a time.