There is a particular satisfaction in opening the kiln in late November and knowing that the mugs inside are already spoken for. Christmas is the busiest selling window in most potters' year, and it rewards planning far more than it rewards ambition.

Whether you sell at craft fairs, through your own website, or simply want to give presents you have made yourself, the approach is much the same: choose a small range, make it well, and finish it in time. What follows is the practical version — what tends to sell, how to make it repeatable, and how to get it out of the door before the last posting date.

Choose a Small Range and Repeat It

The temptation in October is to make one of everything. Resist it. A tight range — three mug shapes, two ornament designs, one serving dish — is quicker to throw, quicker to glaze, and far easier to photograph, price and pack. Repetition also builds skill fast: the twentieth handle is always better than the first.

Before you touch clay, decide the details and write them down: capacity, wall thickness, handle style, glaze, finish on the base. Then ask yourself a few blunt questions:

• Can I make this in batches of six or more without resenting it?
• Will it survive a courier and a nine-year-old?
• Can I price it confidently, without wincing?
• Does it fit the shelves or table I actually have available?

Anything that fails two of those is probably a January project, not a December one.

A range of six things made fifty times beats fifty things made once.

Mugs: The Reliable Seller

Mugs are the workhorse of any Christmas range. They suit every budget, they stack, they post reasonably well, and people buy them in pairs and threes. Aim for roughly 300–350ml, a rim that feels comfortable to drink from, and a handle you can get two fingers through without your knuckles scraping the body.

What lifts a mug from ordinary to giftable? A little restraint. Speckled stoneware under a soft white glaze. A band of coloured slip below the rim. A stamped initial, a small sprig of holly pressed into the side, or a hand-painted star on the base. Personalisation sells well, but cap the number you accept — twenty bespoke mugs in the last fortnight of November is a miserable way to spend December.

Pull handles the day after throwing, when the body is leather-hard but still forgiving. Make a few spares. Handles are where most Christmas mugs go wrong, and a spare costs you five minutes.

Ornaments, Decorations and Small Tokens

Hanging ornaments are the easiest thing on this list to make in volume. Roll a slab to an even thickness, cut stars, trees, houses or birds, texture them with lace, hessian or a rubber stamp, and pierce the hanging hole while the clay is leather-hard rather than bone dry — a dry piece will crack around the hole.

They fire evenly, pack cheaply in tissue and a padded envelope, and sell well in sets of three or six. They are also the best possible use for offcuts that would otherwise go back into the reclaim bucket. Small bells, napkin rings and gift tags made from the same slab give you a low-price point on your stall, which matters more than you might think: it gives people who are not ready for a £40 dish a way to buy from you.

Serving Dishes, Platters and Tableware

Christmas is a food occasion, and food occasions sell tableware. A shallow serving dish, a butter dish, a spoon rest, a set of small bowls for olives or salt — these are the pieces people buy as house presents and as gifts for hosts.

Build thick, even walls and compress your rims properly. Thermal shock is what kills tableware, and an uneven pot is far more likely to fail than a consistent one. Only describe a piece as oven-safe or dishwasher-safe if your particular clay and glaze are rated for it; check the manufacturer's guidance and keep a note of the combinations you use. If a customer asks for care instructions, a small printed card in the box does the job neatly.

Glaze, Colour and a Note on Reds

Bright red glazes are famously temperamental — they often need careful thickness, and can crawl, pin-hole or go muddy if applied too thinly or fired a little cool. If you have not used one before, do not test it for the first time on a commission in December.

There are easier routes to a festive feel: deep green over a warm buff clay, cream with one narrow band of colour, or a clear glaze over a rich red-brown stoneware. Texture does more work than colour. Test tiles are cheap insurance, so make a batch and keep notes on every one.

Pricing, Packaging and Posting

Price for the whole job, not just the throwing. Clay, glaze, kiln time, your hours, packaging, card fees and the time you spend replying to messages all count.

1. Weigh finished pieces and work out a consistent rate for your time.
2. Buy packaging in November, not the week you need it — boxes, tissue, kraft paper, string and small care cards.
3. Double box anything fragile and use more padding than feels necessary.
4. Bundle pieces into sets to raise the average order without discounting.
5. Publish a clear last-order date for made-to-order work and stick to it.

If you are selling in person, keep a notebook or a simple spreadsheet of what goes and what lingers. That record is the most useful thing you will take into next year.

Marketing and the Christmas Calendar

Work backwards from your last realistic posting date, then add a week of slack. Firing schedules slip; glazes misbehave; people get ill.

What to do, and roughly when

• Late summer: decide the range, make test pieces, sort out glazes.
• Early autumn: batch-make. This is the heavy throwing period.
• Mid autumn: glaze and fire, then photograph everything in daylight against a plain background.
• Early November: list your work, open orders, start posting about the making process rather than only the finished pieces.
• Late November: markets and fairs. Take card payments, a price list and a mailing list sign-up.

Show the work behind the work — the wedging, the trimming, the rows of mugs on a shelf. Buyers respond to process, and it makes a handmade price feel reasonable. A simple email list built during the Christmas rush will serve you far better than any single market.

Plan Backwards, Then Stop

Write your last posting date on the studio wall and count backwards in weeks, allowing for drying, bisque firing, glazing and a glaze firing. Be honest about how much you can physically make. It is better to sell out of six lines than to apologise for twelve that never arrived.

Keep one or two pieces back for yourself, and set aside the last week for wrapping, posting and rest. Then, in January, look at your notes and decide what earned its place in the range — and what quietly gets retired.

Photo: karosieben / Pixabay