Kiln, the Newcastle café where the tableware is on the menu too

Kiln is not your average café; less a café than a “live gallery,” as co-owner Richard Cullen calls it. In this restaurant, pottery studio and ceramics shop in the Ouseburn Valley, a trendy quarter of Newcastle upon Tyne, flat whites and meze, shakshuka and lamb kofta are served on tableware that has been thrown and fired by resident potter Jun Rhee in full view of the diners. 

Each of Rhee’s bowls, plates, mugs and jugs (from £23) has a distinctive earthy hue and simple silhouette. Customers can also attend sessions to learn how to make them (from £10). 

I try to ignore my education while Jun embraces his own

Cullen, a north-east native, studied for a degree in contemporary art in Devon before taking night classes in pottery. His first job was making ceramics to sell to restaurants. Today, he owns and manages Kiln with business partner Geffen Yoeli-Rimmer. Rhee trained as a commercial potter in his South Korean homeland. “I spent 12 hours every day for six years making exactly the same thing,” he says of his early work experience. Any bowls that differed from a set shape would be thrown away. Cullen was introduced to Rhee via Instagram: the latter was working his way around Europe in an effort to meet different artists. Cullen invited him to join Kiln as co-founder and resident potter, and they opened in 2017.

Cullen has a huge respect for Rhee’s practice. “I rigorously ignore [my education] where Jun rigorously embraces his,” says Cullen, who adds there is “a greater sense of ego in the west” compared to the east where pottery is understood as the culmination of “micro-contributions by hundreds and hundreds of generations”. Rhee most admires 19th-century English makers such as William Morris and John Ruskin, while Cullen named his German shepherd after Japanese studio potter Shōji Hamada. Kiln is the result of this merging of influences: “the inventiveness you get from spontaneity combined with that diligence and embracing of history”, says Cullen.

Kiln sells its wares not only to the public but also to upscale restaurants. Cullen started out “travelling around the country with a rucksack of ceramics, trying to cold-call Michelin-starred chefs”; today, the studio has supplied tableware to restaurants including Tom Sellers’ Restaurant Story, Claude Bosi at Bibendum and Fitzrovia’s West African venue Akoko. Such renowned chefs are tough customers, Cullen says. They want “handmade” tableware, with “the inconsistencies that make it characterful and idiosyncratic”, but they also seek “the consistency to retain their Michelin star”.

The restaurant at Kiln reflects Yoeli-Rimmer’s Middle Eastern heritage (their arayes, flatbreads stuffed with feta and Swiss chard are a particular favourite) as well as Cullen’s love of coffee shops (the two business partners met in one). And, of course, it’s shaped by Cullen’s experience of selling pottery to other businesses; he wanted the care that goes into the making process to be part of the experience. 

Both Cullen and Rhee agree that mugs are their favourite item. While Rhee just likes the word (“it sounds like a hug, and both make you warm”), Cullen is obsessed with crafting the perfect handle, and agonises over details such as stability, grip and comfort (together they have settled on teardrop-shaped handles, positioned at the bottom of the mug). “We’ve all got mugs in our cupboard that we like more than others,” he says, “and we don’t think about it. Our hand just goes to the one that we want to spend time with.” 

This focus on pottery as something to be used, rather than looked at, is at the centre of Kiln’s philosophy. As Rhee says, “We don’t want to make beauty. We want to make everyday life more beautiful.”