Mug of the Moment Artist, 2026 Edition: Lisa Berczel
Meet our artist, Lisa Berczel; a maker whose creative life has traveled from high‑gloss ad campaigns to the quiet focus of the clay studio.
Lisa is a retired featured artist and product‑development consultant/educator in the food and cosmetic industries. For many years, her primary canvas was the human body: airbrush, black light, and hyper‑real makeup made her work instantly recognizable on mass‑market book covers, magazine fronts, international ad campaigns, music videos, reality TV, the runway, and live performers. When she wasn’t painting people, she was lending the same precision to more traditional surfaces, cars and motorcycles, race boats and surfboards, murals, theatrical props, artisan confections, and classic canvas.
Today, Lisa’s explorations are a bit quieter but just as intentional. She divides her studio time among lampworked glass beads, watercolor, sculpting, and pottery, while also serving as CEO of a boutique print‑design consulting firm.
Lisa's body of work throughout her artistic career
It’s never really felt like my artistic endeavors have had a “voice” of my own. True, a piece would have intent with a very specific story to tell, but technical execution was the tour de force.
Lisa's Claywork
Behind all of this is what she calls “the pursuit of adaptive techniques.” Rather than chasing a single, fixed “artistic voice,” Lisa is fascinated by mimicry and technical transformation: sugar that looks like glass, trompe‑l’oeil body paint that fools the eye, and surface treatments that slip between eras and cultures. Nesuke carving, Art Nouveau curves, Egyptian motifs, Tiffany glass, Chinese brushwork, Fabergé enamel. These influences circulate like familiar companions in her imagination.
2026 Mug of the Moment: Octopus
Her Octopus Mug is a deep dive into those classical influences. First inspired by Jacques Cousteau’s octopus documentaries and later revisited in an airbrushed illustration, the motif resurfaced when a slab‑built mug in 2023 seemed to ask for “a little more of something.” With a few more years of clay under her belt, Lisa set out to create a fully realized design: an octopus reaching up toward a mug, its tentacles interacting with the object rather than functioning as structural supports.
The form itself is all curves and quiet movement, meant to slip comfortably into a Craftsman or Art Nouveau collection while echoing the silhouettes of Roman vessels. The tentacles become a case study in elegant simplification; the color palette nods to classical Greek pottery; the overall form draws n Chinese and Japanese archetypes. It’s a small object with a global family tree.
Inspiration for February Design
Goals and Challenges as the Design heads into Production
Of course, “no plan survives contact with the build.” Scaling up on the wheel, throwing larger, more consistent forms proved its own challenge, and early tests stayed closer to cup‑than‑mug size. Hand‑sculpting four tentacles on every mug quickly became unsustainable, prompting a return to plaster casting and sprig molds to balance repetition with variation. Even the suckers demanded problem‑solving: they wanted to pop off when piped onto firmer leather‑hard clay, leading Lisa to Dremel small recesses to increase surface area and adhesion. By comparison, glaze testing has been almost suspiciously smooth.
The result will be a mug that embodies Lisa’s love of adaptive technique and illusion, a piece that feels at home in several historical traditions at once, while still carrying the quiet drama of an octopus reaching for its prize.
Final glaze color assignments went fairly smoothly until it was time for the suckers. It took several more test tiles to find just the right shade that would fume the same as the tentacles. Sticking with the same glaze brand helped. Glazing each sucker as a “donut” ensured the center stayed dark and recessed.
Inside the mug is a crashing open water storm wave revealing the inky-blue deep. This is where the happy accident of making test tiles really paid off.
At the very bottom of the mug is a star fish that was bisque fired separately and then glaze-glued into position. I started by just placing the glazed starfish into position, but test mugs showed that a bump here or there and the starfish would end up a-kilter, resulting in a gap underneath that would be decidedly non-food-safe.
Reflection What surprised me the most over the course of the project was the growth in confidence. My mugs started out as espresso cups, but by the end they were twice the size and capacity. Thinner bottoms, and more refined. It just happened. The more I threw, the more relaxed the process became.
Time per mug was cut in half, but I didn’t feel as though I was rushing.
New tips and tricks were figured out along the way. The project was also an evolution into what may become my “signature” style - at least for the moment. I’ll continue to explore purposeful design that highlights the clay body itself while maintaining a nod to a Revival aesthetic.
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