Sometimes you make a piece of fanart because you played hundreds of hours of Kingdom Come: Deliverance 1 & 2 and you just wanted to feel like you were having a tankard of ale at the tavern in Rattay with Hans Capon, but then you like so much how the fanart turned out that you enter it into a juried ceramic art show for a larf and much to your surprise it gets accepted into the exhibition and you’re getting ready to ship a mug to a gallery out of state and all because you couldn’t get enough of the love story between two men in a game about 15th century Bohemia. 🙂↕️
Okay I swear this is the last time I’m posting this mug (probably), but just wanted to share it with the poster for the show it’s being featured in! This is fourth juried exhibition I’ve had my work accepted into, and it’s always so exciting to see a piece of mine displayed alongside so many incredible artists. Once the show opens, they will have a webshop of all the available mugs, if anyone is particularly interested in getting their hands on a medieval tankard. 🤎
I adore these ceramic Kingdom Come Deliverance-inspired medieval tankards I made, and I can’t stop taking pictures of them.
I took inspiration from tankard styles in both games:
These have been a true labor of love, as each one is hand-carved and hand-painted, and I’ve included some process pictures and explanation behind the cut!
I use a pottery wheel to throw the mug “blanks,” and then I cut the handles out of a slab of clay (using a template I created) before attaching them to the mug body.
After that, I hand carve the wood grain texture as well as the leather wrap or metal bands (depending on which style). Then they get their first firing in the kiln to prep them for being painted with underglaze.
After painting them, they get fired for a second time in the kiln to set the first layer of underglaze. The next step involves using a black underglaze wash to pick up all the carved texture and give them a weathered look. The wash is painted over the whole body of the mug and then wiped away so that only what’s in the carved texture remains. You can see that in this picture with the slight gray cast (the wash gets much darker when fired):
The last step is glazing the interior of the mug to make them food-safe, and adding a thin layer of satin glaze over the “metal” bands to give them a slight sheen. Then they’re fired for a third and final time in the kiln.
I often have such a desire to reach out and touch things inside my favorite media, so this is just a small way I bring that to reality.
Sometimes you so badly want to have a tankard of wine (or ale!) with Hans Capon that you use all the ceramics skills in your wheelhouse to spend countless hours painstakingly crafting replica wooden-looking tankards from KCD out of porcelain…right? No? Just me?
Feeling ready to chug some wine out of these, Hans Capon-style. hbu?
KCD Tankards. Ceramic (porcelain). 2025.
Second round of these ceramic tankards, and this time I made some in both the style of KCD1 and KCD2. Was nervous about the KCD2 ones, but I’m happy with the finished product that came out of the kiln this morning!
People are out here feeling inspired to create and share their art and that is such a win for the whole community. I’m a big believer in “art begets art” and KCD feels like a work of art to me in so many ways. Art-making (in any medium) can be such fuel for life & living, but it can be lonely, too. Shared inspiration is such a balm for that.
The incredible quality of fics, illustrations, cosplay, textile arts, critical analysis, etc. has kept me invested in my own artistic inspiration even though, recently, that’s especially been a challenge. I’m grateful that people feel brave enough to share their art, when it can feel soooo vulnerable to put it out there. I don’t think I would’ve been inspired or motivated to make these if I hadn’t started seeing Hansry and all the other KCD fanart. It all allowed me to challenge my own definition of “fan art” to expand into my ceramic art, and it gave me a really fun challenge that pushed & expanded my skills, honestly. I suppose, in the end, it’s not only about finding safe spaces for shared inspiration and working hard to create your own peace within that space, but trying to foster & cultivate those spaces too.
