A small dark green bud vase of wildflowers resting on a cedar rail above the water

North Vancouver, British Columbia

Handbuilt on the coast.

Slab-built stoneware, made one piece at a time. Fewer pieces now, and more carefully — each one pressed, pierced and glazed by hand.

See the work Enquire

01The work

Moving to BC slowed the studio. I make less often, and more carefully — curated pieces for people who will actually live with them.

02Featured piece

The Urchin Bowl

The piece the studio is known for. Built flat, curled while soft, pierced along every rib so the glaze has somewhere to gather.

Green Mist urchin bowl, three-quarter view

Urchin bowl on a cedar rail above a misty coastline

Form

Flat, then curled

It starts as a rolled slab. The ribs are drawn and pressed while the clay is still soft enough to move, then the whole sheet is lifted into a curve before it stiffens. Nothing is thrown on a wheel.

Pierce

Holes along every spine

Each rib is pierced by hand, one hole at a time. They are not decoration — they are where the glaze catches, beads and holds its darkest colour after the firing.

Glaze

Green Mist and Blue Depths

Green Mist breaks warm over the speckle: sage in the well, oat and rust where the rim runs thin. Blue Depths keeps all of its colour inside the bowl and gives up almost nothing from the outside.

Sizes

Eleven, ten, and three inches

The 11″ is the centrepiece. The 10″ suits a console or an entry table. The 3″ is for rings and earrings on a bedside table.

$360 CAD · 11″ Green Mist

Then

It goes somewhere

Shipping is included on pieces over $150 within Canada. Every bowl leaves with a note about which glaze it wore and which firing it came out of.

Ask about this piece

03Available & archive

Every piece,
one at a time

Each piece is uniquely made and finished by hand. Expect variation in colour, glaze, texture and finish — firing conditions and kiln placement leave their own mark.

Shipping. Included on pieces over $150 within Canada. Smaller pieces ship separately, calculated at the time of purchase.

Buying. Prices marked Enquire change with size, glaze and what is currently on the shelf. Send a note and you will get a real answer, not a form reply.

04How a piece is made

Four weeks,
two firings

Nothing here is quick. A piece is touched on maybe a dozen separate days, and the kiln still gets the last word.

An unfired stoneware egg tray, still raw grey clay — Greenware — raw, unfired, still shrinking

A bowl shown half raw glaze and half fired glaze — Left: glaze as applied. Right: the same glaze, fired

Macro detail of a crawling blue and cream glaze surface — A crawl glaze, close up — never twice the same

A finished urchin bowl on a cedar rail above the coast — Out of the kiln, and out of my hands

Roll, press, cut

Clay is rolled into an even slab, then textured with whatever earns its place that week — a hosta leaf from the garden, a length of vintage lace, a stamp I cut myself. Shapes are cut freehand, so no two rims land the same.

Dry slowly, then bisque

A piece dries for a week or more under plastic, slowly enough that the thick parts and the thin parts let go of water at the same rate. Rush it and it cracks. Then the first firing, which turns fragile clay into something you can handle.

Glaze, in the wrong colour

Glaze goes on chalky and almost always the wrong colour — a bowl that will come out cobalt goes into the kiln looking pink. Layering is done by feel and by notes from the last load.

Fire, and let the kiln decide

The second firing runs hot and slow, then cools for a full day. Where a piece sat on the shelf changes how it breaks. This is the part I do not control, and the reason two bowls from one batch are never twins.

Cassondra, the maker behind Slab Lab Pottery

05The maker

Hello — I'm Cassondra

A maker and a mother, working out of North Vancouver, British Columbia. Everything here is hand-built: no wheel, no moulds, no production runs. Just slabs, stamps, and a lot of waiting.

Moving to BC slowed the studio. I make less often, and more carefully.

Classes are paused for now while I stay close to home in this season of parenthood. In the meantime I have been folding 3-D modelling into the hand-built work — designing and printing my own stamps, and eventually teaching other potters to cut their own for pottery and for baking.

Based: North Vancouver, BC
Reachable: 8 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Monday to Saturday
Elsewhere: @slablabstudio

06Where they end up

The greatest honour? Knowing this bowl is heading to Quebec to keep the memory of a cherished West Coast life close.

A Blue Depths urchin bowl, found its home — 2025

New pieces are shown on @slablabstudio before they land here.

A Blue Depths urchin bowl photographed on sand, captioned as having found its home