How to hand-build a ceramic toast rack set using templates.

Want to make your own ceramic toast rack with matching plates?

I created this hand-building project after searching for pottery templates to make one myself and finding precisely nothing useful. So I did the annoying bit - worked out the shapes, dimensions and construction, tested it multiple times in clay and turned the whole thing into a printable pottery template.

I believe this should actually be called 'how being irritated by breakfast turned into a many-page pottery project' but I've been coerced by SEO discovery whatsits to keep it predictable :)

This really all started because I didn’t want to wash up massive plates and I was overall sick of the breakfast routine - mentally and physically.

Every morning I was making toast and putting it on a small round side plate because getting a dinner plate out for one slice of toast hurt my soul.

I should add that aside from plate-gate, breakfast in our house needed all the help it could get.

During the summer holidays everyone seemed to have plenty of time to argue about what they wanted for breakfast (or more accurately didn't want). Then term time arrives and suddenly you’ve got approximately four minutes to get food into children who have completely forgotten that eating is something humans need to do to function (but mostly to be less hangry).

I wanted something that would make breakfast more fun and crucially add a distraction to get everyone to sit down and bloody eat (and this was cheaper & easier than getting a dog). So I made a plate shaped like toast.

As you do.

And whadya know, it worked.

The kids wanted to choose which colour toast plate they were having (yes a fight, but a manageable one as the colours are all epic if I do say so myself). Breakfast became a tiny bit more interesting and something as mundane as eating toast suddenly had its own piece of pottery.

But.

Obviously the toast plates then needed somewhere to live

Once I’d made the plates, sure, I could have stacked them in a cupboard like other people, but normal, schmormal.

I wanted them out on the shelf where we could actually use them and a little ceramic rack seemed considerably more whimsical than another stack in a cupboard - they're here to be adored.

So the toast rack appeared.

There are six plates because we’re a family of four, six gives everyone a choice, there are spares for guests and — importantly — six actually makes the whole thing look like a proper object.

It stopped being somewhere to store toast plates and became a piece of pottery in its own right.

And that is pretty much my favourite kind of thing to make; something useful that has absolutely no intention of fading into the background.

Drawing around bread is now product development.

Designing a plate that looks like a slice of toast should be fairly straightforward but I've since learned isn’t.

I started by literally drawing around slices of bread. Then I tried different loaves because of course I take toast research very seriously.

Then there was clay shrinkage to account for.

I went through four or five prototypes. The first rack was too big. Then it was too small. The early plates weren’t quite toast-shaped enough, which is a surprisingly irritating problem to have.

Originally the plates were completely flat, too. Eventually I started turning the corners upwards because they looked better and caught crumbs (each tiny bread morsel bouncing onto the table is a miniature step closer to sending a mother of 2 at 7am over the edge before the day has begun).

Form follows function. Occasionally by accident.

Eventually I had six toast-shaped plates that fitted properly into a ceramic rack and still fitted after firing.

Result.

Then other people wanted one, I’d originally made the set for us. That was it, but then I posted it online.

The response made me realise that quite a lot of other people also thought toast deserved its own crockery and that's when I thought this might actually make a really good pottery project.

The fiddly part had already been done. I’d worked out the dimensions, tested the shapes, allowed for shrinkage and discovered all the little things that didn’t work.

It seemed a bit of a waste for all of that working-out to result in one toast rack sitting in my kitchen, so I turned it into The Toast Project.

And then spent an inordinate amount of time making the actual guide.

In Microsoft Word - because apparently I enjoy making life difficult for myself.

Is it difficult to make (the project, not the word doc)?

No.

It looks like quite a substantial hand-building project but none of the individual techniques is particularly difficult.

You don’t need a wheel.

You don’t need a slab roller.

You don’t need a studio full of specialist pottery tools.

If you already hand-build you’ve almost certainly got everything you need. If you haven’t, quite a lot of what you need can be found in a kitchen drawer.

The whole set takes roughly three hours of actual making time, although you don’t have to make it all at once. Clay is quite happy to wait for you if you keep it properly wrapped and moist.

The trickiest bit is judging when the clay is firm enough to hold itself up but still soft enough to work with.

Too wet and your beautiful straight walls slowly start heading south.

Too dry and you’ll swear at them for entirely different reasons.

Sponges, screwed-up kitchen roll and assorted household objects are extremely useful for supporting things while they firm up and the best pottery tools aren’t always pottery tools.

What clay should you use?

I use Valentine Clays KGM body. I like working with it and, importantly for a project where several separate pieces need to fit together after firing, I find its shrinkage predictable.

But you don’t have to use my clay, you can make the project with the clay body you normally use. You just need to know roughly how it behaves and how much it shrinks.

Because six beautifully made toast plates that no longer fit into their rack after firing would be… suboptimal.

What do you actually get?

This isn’t just a toast-shaped outline and a cheery GOOD LUCK. I wanted The Toast Project to take you through the entire thing.

It covers what you need, preparation, full-size printable templates and measurements and then the complete build with step-by-step photographs.

I’ve also included troubleshooting, glazing and firing information because I don’t want you getting halfway through it and having to disappear down a Google rabbit hole trying to work out what I’ve failed to tell you.

Basically, I’ve done the annoying bits for you, YOU get to do the fun clay bit.

Please don’t make mine - this is possibly the most important part.

I don’t want everyone downloading the project and producing an army of identical BamBam toast racks. Make yours.

Change the colours. Stamp things into the plates. Add words. Use decals. Paint them. Change the details on the rack. Keep the plates flat if you prefer them. Turn the corners up. Make all six completely different.

I’ve made a set with different toast-related phrases punched into the plates and there are approximately a million other directions you could take it.

The template deals with the maths.

You deal with the experimenting.

Who’s it for?

Anyone who wants to make something a bit more interesting than the usual pottery suspects.

You don’t need to be an experienced potter. You only need some basic hand-building skills - and if you’re new to clay, there’s nothing here that you can’t learn.

Equally, if you’ve been making pottery for years but occasionally fancy a project where someone else has already spent far too long working out the measurements, this is for you too.

Because ultimately this entire project exists because I looked at a perfectly serviceable side plate one morning and thought:

Toast deserves better.

And quite frankly, I stand by it.

If you'd like to make your own, click here