Lafayette Avenue Ceramics
Kitchen tables are a place of connection. A place where warm memories of family dinners, traditions, and celebrations all gather. These days as we navigate busy lives, we find ourselves missing these nostalgic times. We hurry through meals to get to soccer practice or family members are focused on work or school. Disposable plates and plastic wrappers fill trash cans because we want food to be quick and easy to clean up. Moments are rushed when they could be slowed down and savored Lafayette Avenue Ceramics strives to bring back mealtime memories and help set our tables with dishes that are sustainably handcrafted, beautifully designed, and made with love.
After studying ceramics in college, Jillian took her love of clay and her own fond memories from growing up and started Lafayette Avenue Ceramics. She was inspired by her own family meals and wanted to create beautiful, practical, and sustainable ceramic dishes that could bring families back to the table for mealtime. Using the desert landscape of Tempe, Arizona as her muse, Jillian intentionally designed her dishes to be used for preparing, cooking, and serving food.
While Jillian maintains a role as the creative director, new owner Emily continues to pour love and energy into their ceramic line creating high-quality, heirloom pieces.
After studying ceramics in college, Jillian took her love of clay and her own fond memories from growing up and started Lafayette Avenue Ceramics. She was inspired by her own family meals and wanted to create beautiful, practical, and sustainable ceramic dishes that could bring families back to the table for mealtime. Using the desert landscape of Tempe, Arizona as her muse, Jillian intentionally designed her dishes to be used for preparing, cooking, and serving food.
While Jillian maintains a role as the creative director, new owner Emily continues to pour love and energy into their ceramic line creating high-quality, heirloom pieces.
Handcrafted Heirlooms for Everyday
Lafayette Avenue Ceramics believes in a sustainable lifestyle. This is why they mold sustainability into every aspect of their process and are always working to improve.
All of the ceramic dishes from Lafayette Avenue Ceramics are handcrafted in small batches. This helps to ensure high-quality pieces as each one is thrown, glazed, sanded, and packed by hand. A smaller-scale operation means less energy consumption and a true dedication to each individual piece. Each step of the ceramic process is done with care and love knowing the result will make its way to become someone's favorite mug or cherished dinner plate.
Lafayette Ceramics starts with earthenware clay, a traditional raw clay that is easier to use and recycled scraps during production. Other clays are not only harder to work with, resulting in more waste during production, but require firing at higher temperatures that expend greater energy.
This earthen clay is either hand-thrown or added to molds. Once pieces are ready to be fired, they are placed in a big enough kiln to fit many pieces at once, thus reducing the number of firings done in a day. The kiln fires at a lower temperature and is structured in a way that less heat is lost in the overall process.
Each piece is then hand glazed using lead-free water-based glazes to keep each dish food-safe and protect the glazing team from inhaling harsh chemicals.
In their dedication to creating sustainability throughout their supply chain, Lafayette Avenue Ceramics has moved to plastic-free packaging for every order, no small feat for goods that are fragile! From the recyclable geami paper used to securely wrap each product to the plastic-free tape on each box, Lafayette makes sure their recipient's new dishware and the planet are protected.
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