I’m a leather worker, and I actually made Catherine’s mug out of leather and made a short about it. She was so happy it could actually be made lol, love that she’s getting more recognition!!

They look exactly like someone’s first time doing leather work.  The elements all look real.

Edit: I think you could skip that piece that covers the “seam” and just scribe a seam line, round each side to mimic leather that has been seamed together.  Then do stitches on either side of the line to mimic the fabric being stitched down.

The stitching looks so good, it makes me wonder if there's a way to do denim.

As someone who is fascinated by both leatherworking and ceramics, this project was such a joy to watch! Please don't be too hard on yourself, the end result is just so cool.

They look great! The "bowness" of the outside makes it look used, as in the weight of the water has enlarged the lower section of the leather. The inner glase (glaze?) also works because leather darkens with water, so it looks the part.

the red oxide looks like leather stain, and the inside looks like its a metal tumbler with a leather cover. Beautiful work!

It's so smart that you made 2 of them. Learn from your mistakes and apply it to the next one immediately!

I work at the same studio as Sarah!! Omg worlds collide. This is so exciting.

They look wonderful! I will say - for more realism, the line of stitching around the bottom should go on the "plate" part - so it looks stitched on to the walls of the mug. However, I think they look really convincing, and the overall effect is beautiful.

I have been teaching myself pottery with your videos. I don't have a wheel, so it's all slab and pinch! Mia, you're doing an amazing job and it makes me sad when you get down on yourself and lose confidence in your vision. If there's one thing this student can share with the teacher it's this; hurtle forth with reckless abandon, it's clay, not surgery. Failure is simply another way to learn how not to do something!

Keep up the excellent work!

Bringing a whole new meaning to "Leather Hard"

As a leather worker it looks just like leather I love them

There are some steins made of metal that you can get a leather wrap for. Maybe next time you can go for a regular mug and the illusion is that it has a leather wrap. You get to do the fun detail work, but the shape of the mug won't matter as much.

Epson salt to make the slip thicker.
Sodium Silicate to make the slip thinner.
Source of the above: Video on Vaughan Smith YouTube channel: "Everything you want to know about slips and stencilling ...". From 3. December 2023.

Brilliant! The glaze is perfect. I had a real leather pint mug. The inside was coated in pitch, a tar like substance, to make it usable and liquid proof. The finish was very much the same as your glaze!
You’ve really nailed the leather finish too!

Leather pottery effect is actually quite old, in 1895 Royal Doulton Lambeth did multiple faux Leather & Silver rimmed jugs. They are incredibly impressive

My father was an expert in leather-work so, I feel I'm expert enough, by association, to say these look fabulous!!!

I would get a metallic overglaze, like bronze, and overglaze the grommets. And I would reglaze the interior with a gloss black.

Voila!

you're so cool!! also leather scratches and discolors very easily irl so unless you polish it like crazy (like patent leather), natural leather will have some lines and discoloring and stuff so I think the throwing lines weren't that off.

I think they look great. It's worth remembering that none of us have the idealized picture in our head that you were aiming for (and that all artists fail to achieve because their idealized picture tends to get even better the more skill they have). Once I realized that only I knew what I wanted my art to be it got a lot easier to let the piece be what I could make it at the time and accept people's enjoyment for what it was. It also got a lot easier to stop telling people about the flaws I fixated on, since they (usually) don't care (and if they did, they're almost certainly the type of person to want to find flaws themselves, rather than let you hand them pre-found ones).

This looks so cool! I think a butted seam could have looked good instead of a patch. I don't think you needed to be worried about the color at all. Leather can start out the color of the whitest person you know and then it gets tanned and dyed to get all sorts of different shades. So any color can look like leather, but especially browns, tans, or black because they are the most popular. The bisqued stage actually looked best to me because that is so close to the color of the leather I remember my dad working with most. He was big into leatherwork