"It all started over a cup of tea..."
Hugo & Kitty met in The Ferry Inn, Salcombe, in 2018. They are now engaged and have launched Salcombe Slipcast, a company that produces earthenware mugs, made in England. And it all started, over a cup of tea...
Victoria Quay.
In 2023, Kitty opened her pottery on Island Street. That winter, Hugo and Kitty were living in their friend’s cottage on Victoria Quay, where they spent most evenings looking over the wall at the harbour. They both agreed that Salcombe is obviously beautiful and fascinating, but that it is more often the little things – the things that go unnoticed – that make a place.
They realised that it wasn’t much more than a shared local memory that kept these things and thought that it might be nice to keep them somewhere else…
"a mug with a wide bottom, that doesn't fall over at sea..."
It was around this time that Hugo, a joiner, was repairing the wheelhouse on his friends fishing boat.
They had stopped for a coffee and were talking about Kitty's pottery, when his friend said that the only mug he took fishing with him had a taper from foot to rim. He said that the wide bottom stopped it from falling over too much at sea.
When Hugo got back that evening, he told Kitty what his friend had said... They sat down at the kitchen table and began to sketch lots of mugs with wide bottoms. Both had ideas about how they wanted it to look. Kitty wanted the handle to be, "this much", below the rim... Hugo wanted it to be "pretty... but not too pretty".
Making our mug
Once they had their mug down on paper, Hugo & Kitty then had to figure out HOW they could bring it to life.
They knew that they wanted to make their mug in England and this being the case, that they should look to Stoke-on-Trent.
Initially, they met with disappointment. The British Pottery industry has sustained real damage in recent years. The rising cost of energy and competition from mass-producing potteries overseas, has seen many an old name close its doors and most of the people Hugo & Kitty spoke to were skeptical.
But one day in early 2025, a man walked in to Kitty's studio... and this, was the opportunity they had been waiting for!
Now, Kitty & Hugo are proud to share with you their first run of Salcombe Slipcast mugs and it is all thanks to an incidental conversation over a cuppa back in 2023!