Posts Tagged ‘handmade mugs’

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Over Easy Cafe – Deneen Pottery Mugs

Monday, March 21st, 2011

A very close family friend, Anna Rachelle, sent me an email last week while on vacation in Florida.

“Walked into a lovely little cafe,sat down and exclaimed to my husband. ‘Hey this mug is was made by the Deneens.’ Sure nuf… met Trasi and she had talked to you even previouly in the week,” wrote Anna. Trasi, who is the owner of the Over Easy Cafe in Sanibel, FL has been using our custom handmade mugs to serve coffee and tea to her guests since 2007, and before that we made mugs for Amy Horton the previous owner.


Here is a picture that Anna’s husband snapped of Anna and Trasi in front of the cafe… In the busy months there can be a line of people waiting to have a delicious breakfast or lunch. It is always fun to talk to Trasi because she love trying out new colors for the handmade mugs that we make for her – We have 169 different glazes to choose from!?! Here is a picture of her mug display – How many different colors do you count?

Making restaurant proof mugs is great – Our mugs are so durable they can handle the abuse of busing, and the commercial dishwasher… “I swear by your mugs, I sell a ton of them – They are durable, we are tough on them and serve over 600 people per day,” Trasi once told me. Being able to feed 600 people in a single day it’s no wonder I get emails like this. “It’s been kinda crazy here I’ve lost track. I’m about out of mugs – So I need to put in another order in.” That is never a problem since our dedicated staff of 24 loves making custom stoneware mugs, especially for our friend Trasi!

If you own a restaurant, or have a favorite restaurant, that would love our mugs let us know!

Thank you for reading our blog!
Niles Deneen – CEO
Deneen Pottery

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Collecting Deneen Pottery Mugs

Thursday, March 17th, 2011

People are creatures of habit and collecting things is what we do. Yes, it is true, I have a huge collection of mugs in my office… In my house… and most of my mugs are made by Deneen Pottery – Strange, I know ;-)

I am not alone in this activity, as it turns out there are other Mug Collectors that seek out Deneen Pottery mugs. We started realizing this back in the early 80s when my dad would get calls inquiring about Inns that have our mugs. As technology continued to improve, and our ability to create a database and website, we started a map so that Collectors would easily be able to find mugs. Today that map looks like this:

“We had some guests stay with us for 2 nights last weekend to celebrate their anniversary.  Come to find out that the reason they chose us was because we sold Deneen Pottery mugs!  They found us on your “Collect them all” page of your website.  Apparently they bought mugs a few years back at an inn on the east coast, and loved them so much they wanted to buy more!” Julie McAferty who owns the Greenlake Guesthouse in Seattle, WA wrote this to me just yesterday.

Julie also went on to share that her guests, “purchased 2 of our mugs (and a bouquet of flowers) to have waiting in the room at check in.” While all B&B’s are different and unique there are some things that are synonymous – Excellent linens, privacy, warmth, delicious breakfasts, and maybe Deneen Pottery Mugs. Here is a picture of the dining room’s central table at Greenlake Guesthouse, you can see the Flare Mugs in our hunter green glaze, at each of the 4 places.

Making the best handmade mugs is what we love to do, and when we hear about guests that collect them, it just makes us feel so proud of our work… This is also something that our Innkeepers enjoy as well, and as Julie put it.

“Gotta love it!”

If you want to find out more about our company, or have questions about finding or ordering mugs, just give us a call 888-646-0238.

Thanks for reading our blog!
Niles Deneen, CEO
Deneen Pottery

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Durable Handmade Mugs…

Monday, March 14th, 2011

With Annie and Eloise up in Baudette with her parents for the next 2 weeks I’m feeling a bit down… Strike that, I’m feeling good. I just got off the phone with LaDonna from the Chestnut Street Inn, located in Asheville, North Carolina!

“My guests and staff just love our mugs, they are so wonderful and durable! In the 3 years that we’ve been serving in them we’ve only broken 1. They sell so well, and now with only 3 mugs in stock, I need to get another order! I remember one of our staff saying she was afraid of chipping our mugs, but we are still waiting for that to happen – They are just so durable!”


That is just such a nice thing to hear on a Monday morning… And knowing that the mugs that we make can handle abuse without chipping or breaking means that we’re doing a good job.

This is just a short blog – Once Annie and Eloise get back I’ll add the ‘Sweet’ part again.

Thanks for reading our blog!
Niles Deneen – CEO
Deneen Pottery

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Short and Sweet – Handmade Pottery Blog

Tuesday, March 1st, 2011

In the middle of our conference season, and coming off the Birkie (a 31 mile ski race from Cable to Hayward), I have found it difficult to remember to blog. If there is one thing that you are supposed to do with your blog – It is write often, put in pictures, and post them. So I’m going to keep this one really ‘Short and Sweet’…

The ‘Short’ part is about the Birkie – Annie and I participated in this Cross Country Ski event in 2009 and 2010 but with the birth of Eloise, Annie was sidelined this this year.

An exciting thing about the Birkie is that I contacted them in the summer and we were able to work with their staff in creating custom mugs  for their Trail Run event in the Fall, trophies for the age class categories for all the ski races, and a line of handmade mugs for retail! Here are just a couple of images of the mugs that we made. The artwork shows the 2 Norwegian warriors rescuing the infant Prince Haakon Haakonsson in 1205 – For more on the legend click here.

Although my time wasn’t as good as last year, I enjoyed myself… The air temps was about -3ºF at the start and maybe about 4ºF when I finished… Luckily after the race was over I got to drive back to MN and see my beautiful baby girl and amazing wife…

Now we enter the ‘sweet’ part of the blog, more pictures of Eloise!

A good friend and photographer, Becca Sabot, came over to our house 2 weeks ago and shot some amazing images of our baby girl. We talked about a few ideas and then began moving furniture and staging things – Eloise was great but didn’t exactly go along with our ‘plans’… She must be taking after dad. For the shots that we wanted to do with her asleep she would wake up, and then when we tried to go along with her being awake, she would… Yep you guessed it, she fell asleep. At any rate here are some of the favorites!

(more…)

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Handmade Mugs and Bread!

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

What a fun week it has been… We have a new Deneen in the family, Eloise Elaine Frohreich Deneen was born on 1/29 at 3:08pm and now Annie and I are proud parents!!! Being around the creation of so many handmade mugs is amazing, but being at the birth of your first baby girl is just INCREDIBLE!!!

Olive ‘the shop dog’ is doing a great job of being an older sister and we are all just staying warm these cold winter days. The only thing that we are missing is the bread that Annie used to bring home from Rustica, where she was a pastry chef. Now we have a loaf of wheat bread from the grocery store… And it just doesn’t touch the quality that we are used to!

And just today we are getting a new order of mugs in for another outstanding bakery that also makes everything from scratch – Earthly Kneads, located in Muskegon, MI. I’ve been working with Gail and today marks the official start of production. I’ve got to try their bread sometime, but for now I’m heading home to see my baby!

Here is the artwork that is going on the mugs and pitchers that we are making for Gail:

Thank you for reading our blog!
Niles Deneen VP, Marketing

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