Another Coffee Related Post

We've talked about our fixation with coffee in the past.

We've since discovered, to my horror,  that not all of our staff actually drink coffee, but prefer tea.

Needless to say both the coffee and the tea drinkers need mugs to drink out of.

So today we took delivery of some new mugs.

These aren't your "common" or "garden" variety mugs. No. These are serious mugs.

See photos below:

The photo shows a couple of the mugs before they left Owen "mugmaker" Dearing's workshop in Oregon.

So how did we end up with these custom mugs?

How come we got handmade mugs all the way from Oregon?

I was looking for something "original" and "cool" to put our branding on. I was hoping to find something that would combine originality with affordability, though I wasn't overly disappointed when I failed to find a solution. During the process I came across Owen's site and I really liked what I saw. I bookmarked it and continued on my way.

As I continued my research I kept finding myself coming back to Owen's site, because there was something truly special about what he was doing.

Owen's business isn't massive and it most definitely isn't "faceless".

When I sent him an email asking about shipping details to Ireland and a few other things I got back a very helpful and friendly reply from him.

So I decided that it would be a nice idea to get a few of the mugs for the Blacknight staff. They're attractive and functional and it's a nice way to say "thanks" to them all for their hard work (it will also make it easier to track down people who don't clean up after themselves!)

Owen, who strikes me as  a very cool guy, kept me updated on the progress of the mugmaking via email and Twitter.

Here are shots of the mugs before they were glazed and fired (a process that took more than 24 hours!):


And another one:

Owen also does Twitter mugs, so I simply had to get one of those as well!

The only problem now is that the mugs are so big that you end up making a double coffee to fill them!