November Mug of the Month Progress Update: Shelly Dobi
- PennOhio Clay Guild
- 13 hours ago
- 2 min read
November Mug of the Month: Shelly Dobi
Each month, our Mug of the Month artists invite us into their studio process, successes, challenges, test tiles, experiments, and that moment when everything finally clicks.
For November, Guild member Shelly Dobi shares a reflective journey that mirrors the quiet, shifting colors of the season.
For this month’s design, Shelly began with a simple, clean mug form. Intentionally minimal so the surface itself could tell the full story. But the glazing? That’s where the real adventure unfolded. Shelly explored multiple glaze combinations on test tiles, trying to find the exact vocabulary of color and softness needed to evoke a sunset. Some of the tests looked lovely on their own, but they didn’t yet speak that impressionistic language she was aiming for.
Shelly wanted viewers to bring their own memories of sunsets into the experience, to see the fading light and warmth not through a precise rendering, but through a more atmospheric suggestion. After several rounds of testing, revisions, and reconsiderations, she landed on a palette and technique that finally carried the feeling she was chasing.
Shelly's Design and Glaze Testing Work in Process...
The snow fence challenge: One of the most memorable technical hurdles came with adding the snow fence silhouette, an anchor element in the design. Shelly’s early test tiles revealed that the fence posts were visually too heavy. She needed something finer, more delicate, more in harmony with the glaze’s soft transitions.
Her solution was smart and resourceful: she cut thin craft-foam stencils and applied slip with a palette knife to create a more refined, scaled-down version of the fence. This approach allowed her to balance suggestion with structure, echoing her overarching theme of impression over precision.
The test results speak for themselves: glaze can behave in wonderfully varied and unpredictable ways.
The Goal: a November mug that welcomes the viewer into a familiar landscape, quiet, glowing, and a little nostalgic. Shelly’s persistence through testing, refining, and re-imagining is exactly the spirit of the Mug of the Month project, and we’re thrilled to feature her work.
Shelly's final design choices and completed mugs will be presented soon.
Shelly's Design and Glaze Testing Work in Process...
Shelly's Design Inspiration
Her mug design draws inspiration from a place close to her heart: Presque Isle State Park on Lake Erie. “We vacationed there every summer for the first fifteen years of my life,” she shares. “The sunsets are breathtaking, and I knew I wanted to capture that feeling, that sense of peace and warmth; in a mug."
