As a guarantee for our work standard and quality we humbly try…

1. To force the truth out of the clay mud – the old way

Shunning innovation, automatisation and mass production we resort to the good old German traditional techniques that defined pre-industrial ceramic manufacturing. There is enough tech out there to artificially speed up our lifestyle, so let us do our work the slow way.

We build traditionally crafted coffee stoneware in limited numbers and small batches that bear the signature of the maker through their birth marks and distinguishing irregularities.

2. To fire our ceramics to last for 4000 years.

Each piece is created in a slow and intensive manufacturing process that produces the highest quality of German ceramic ware, finished with stoneware glaze and fired at least at 1,200°C (2,192°F) – transforming clay into vitrified stoneware – a material we call „fossil of beauty“ because of its longevity and robustness. In fact archeological findings reveal stoneware items that date from 2,500 B.C.

3. To dedicate form to function only

When designing our products we take refuge in utmost simplicity and keep it dead-functional.

Discarding all ostentation and glamour as superfluous we propose a simple timeless design that holds value for our collectors and is appreciated by aficionados of enduring aesthetics.

We don’t follow the short lived Instagram fuelled fast forward copy paste ceramic fashion trends, and stubbornly continue to regard form and function as one. In fact we are totally dedicated to what design philosophers call „free and open form“ – best represented in our Lotus cup that derives its shape from a simple bowl: the most ancient, natural and iconic dish of mankind. It reminds us of two hands formed together to scoop water – an act our species performed in a life saving daily routine for millions of years. From these water scooping hands the potters invented the bowl for food, and from that bowl hartmud studio invented the Lotus for coffee, as perfect symbol of the adage „form and function are one“.

4. To quietly refine the craft coffee spaces worldwide

In a world that is continually and increasingly coerced to expose, desecrate and sell itself, we choose to remain a hidden champion and a veiled beauty. No oversexed product collabs. No generic hipster bullshit. You have found us, that is all we ever need.

Instead of investing hard in seductive marketing to get more and more publicity and sell more and more cups at any price, we have decided to remain entirely „hagakure“ – an old samurai term meaning „hidden under the leaves“. Silently enriching and refining your daily experience of drinking coffee and making those rare moments of peace sacred again, we create the coffee ware for a generation that regards the culinary realm as a heartfelt passion and who feels an uncompromising commitment to quality and environmental sustainability.

5. To use only natural materials.

Put very simple: for our rare hard German stoneware we use only earth (best fat clay from Germany’s Westerwald region), heat (efficient techniques from sustainable energy sources) and natural stoneware glazes (silica for vitrification and various metal oxides) – nothing more. The result is a strictly food safe, hard as stone, beautiful every day product you can use all your life and pass on to the next generation.