How Much to Charge for Handmade Pottery: A Mug Priced From Clay to Kiln

October 26, 2026 · Selling products and running the numbers

To work out how much to charge for handmade pottery, add up the clay, glaze and kiln firing in one piece, spread the pieces that crack or come out as seconds over the ones you can sell at full price, add your making minutes at an hourly floor your year needs, then add a margin. In the illustrative mug below, materials and firing come to $5.51 per first-quality piece, your time to $31.63, and a 20% margin prices the mug at $47.43.

None of these are market prices. Every price, weight, kWh, loss rate and minute belongs to one made-up potter and is there to be replaced with your own receipts, kiln log and clock.

The pottery pricing formula

materials per piece  = clay + glaze + bisque firing + glaze firing
per first            = everything spent on a run / first-quality pieces
hours per first      = minutes per piece / 60 / share that come out first
cost per first       = hours per first x hourly floor
                       + materials per first + packaging
price                = cost per first / (1 - margin)

Step 1: your hourly floor

The example potter wants $30,000 a year kept after a 25% tax set-aside, carries $6,000 of studio costs, and is in the studio 25 hours a week for 48 weeks. 10% of studio time goes to reclaiming clay, mixing glaze and cleaning, so the year has 1,080 making hours. Revenue needed is $46,000.00, which makes the floor $42.59 per making hour. Counting every studio hour as making would give $38.33, too low. With 10 more unpaid hours a week of photos, listings and emails, the potter keeps $17.86 per hour actually worked. The freelance hourly rate calculator works through the same split.

Step 2: clay, glaze and firing in one piece

Clay. A 25 lb bag at $30.00 plus $5.00 delivery is $1.40 a lb. In the example, 1.5 lb of clay ends up in each mug, and 20% of all the clay opened is trimmings and slop thrown away rather than reclaimed. So each mug draws 1.875 lb from the bag, and its clay costs $2.63. Only what you throw away counts as lost; trimmings you reclaim and rethrow are not.

Glaze. Weigh a dry piece before and after glazing to get the grams it takes: 40 dry grams of the outside glaze and 25 of the liner here. Price each glaze per dry gram from its batch cost, allow 25% for drips, wiped feet and bucket dregs, and add $0.15 for wax and the rest: $1.06 a mug.

Firing. A bisque firing uses 30 kWh and a glaze firing 40, at $0.18 a kWh from the example’s power bill. A $300.00 element set that lasts 100 firings adds its wear to every firing. Split over a full load of 40 pieces for bisque and 24 for glaze, that is $0.21 and $0.43 a piece. Fire a glaze load with only 15 pieces in it and each one carries $0.68. Fire as the kiln maker directs; the arithmetic only splits the bill.

Step 3: count the pieces that don’t make it

That $4.33 is what a mug costs if nothing cracks. Follow 100 pieces through the example’s loss rates, each your own records:

Clay is spent on all 100, bisque firing on the ones that dry, glaze and glaze firing on the ones that survive bisque. The run spends $420.25, and only 76.30 pieces are first quality, with 8.48 seconds. That is $5.51 per first, 27% more than the nothing-lost figure. At these rates, 100 starts yield 76.3% firsts, so 66 starts are what it takes to expect 50 firsts. Money from selling seconds is not credited here; if you sell them, that is extra.

Step 4: your minutes and the price

Time a batch and divide. The example mug:

Those 34 minutes are spent on every piece started, including the ones that crack. Spread over the 76.3% that come out first quality, each first carries 0.7427 hours of making.

The insight: your minutes are the price, the clay is not

Your time is 67% of the $47.43. Materials and firing, losses included, are 12%, and the clay alone is 6%. Shaving a little off the clay bill barely moves the price; cutting minutes, raising the share that come out first quality, or filling the kiln all move it more.

Losses act through both lines. A crack after glazing wastes the clay, glaze and two firings already spent on that piece, and the minutes too. That is why the price is built per first, not per piece started.

Retail, wholesale or consignment?

Set the mug at $48.00 retail and compare what each channel leaves per hour of your time, making time plus selling minutes. Retail here loses an 8% selling fee; wholesale is 50% of retail and consignment leaves you 60%, both the example’s own terms.

Retail pays most per hour even after its photos, listings and messages, and even it, at $41.62, falls short of the $42.59 floor. $48.00 is above the $47.43 worked out in step 4, but that price covered making time only; selling minutes and fees come on top. For wholesale to pay per hour what retail does, the shop would pay $38.90, 81% of retail. The wholesale price walkthrough covers setting a retail price with room for a wholesale one.

Markets. A $85.00 booth plus driving and display supplies makes the example show cost $136.00. If the average piece sold is $55.00, costs $40.00 with its making time already paid, and loses a 3% card fee, each sale leaves $13.35. Then 11 sales cover the show and 39 also pay the 9 hours spent there at the floor. The candle pricing calculator runs the same market check for another craft.

How these were calculated

The floor is revenue needed (income / (1 - tax set-aside) + studio costs) over making hours (studio hours x (1 - non-making share) x weeks). Clay per piece is clay in the piece / (1 - share lost) x delivered price per lb. Glaze is grams per piece x price per gram / (1 - waste), plus extras. Firing is (kWh x price per kWh + element price / firings per set) / pieces in the load, for each firing. Losses are applied stage by stage, with each cost charged only to pieces that reach that stage, and the run’s spend is divided by first-quality pieces. Hours per first are minutes / 60 / share of pieces that are first quality; the price is (hours x floor + materials per first + packaging) / (1 - margin). Figures carried from one step to the next are rounded to the cent, as the spreadsheet shows them. Every figure was computed twice, once by the code behind the pack below and once by an independent program that follows the pieces stage by stage and counts market sales one at a time, and the two agree. All inputs are illustrative, not market prices, measured times or loss rates. Handle clay and glaze materials and fire your kiln as their makers direct. None of this is financial, legal or tax advice.

To run this on your own clay, glazes, kiln and clock, the pack below has eight linked calculators, from the hourly floor to the market booth.