The Craftsman’s Review ✦

Stories of Australian Craft & Kitchen

Advertorial · 3 days ago · By Tegan Moloney

“My kiln is cracked and I won’t buy another one. These are the last flowers I’ll ever make.” Why a 69-year-old home ec teacher is selling her last flower spoons at a special price

In a corrugated-iron shed behind her house in Mudgee, New South Wales, Carmel Pethybridge has spent her retirement making measuring spoons that look like a little posy, every flower shaped and painted by hand. Now she is stopping. Why is everyone suddenly asking about four little ceramic flowers? Because this is the last time they will ever be offered.

Carmel Pethybridge (69) in her shed in Mudgee, New South Wales. After 34 years in the classroom and five years at the wheel, this spring’s firing is her last.

Mudgee, October. The canola along the road into town has lost its yellow, the vines are pushing out new leaves, and the corrugated-iron shed behind Carmel Pethybridge’s house smells of wet clay and coffee. The shelves are full of little sky-blue pots, each one holding four ceramic flowers in pink, red, yellow and peach.

Carmel pulls the yellow flower out of a pot and turns it over. On the back of the green stem, pressed into the clay, it says ½ tsp. From the shelf you would never guess. From the shelf, it looks like a posy.

“Everybody smiles the first time. Then somebody who bakes picks one up, reads the handle, and says, ‘Oh. These are the real deal.’”

“I’m 69,” she says. “My wrists ache after an afternoon at the wheel, and in September the lid of my kiln cracked straight across. I’m not buying another one at my age.” She shrugs. “And the world has moved on. Everything in the shops is plastic and made by the million.”

34 years teaching kids to bake, and one little set for her granddaughter

For 34 years, from 1987 until she retired in 2021, Carmel taught home economics at the high school in Mudgee. In her classroom, every spoon got filled, then levelled with the back of a knife. “Baking isn’t cooking,” she told every class. “Soup forgives you. Cakes don’t.”

When she retired, she took a pottery class at the arts centre in town, then set up a second-hand wheel and a small kiln in the shed behind her house. The idea for the flowers came from her granddaughter Pip, who was five at the time and wanted to help with everything. “To a little girl, metal spoons all look the same,” Carmel says. “I wanted her to have something of her own on the bench. Something she’d want to reach for.”

So she made four little flowers, each one a different size and a different colour, and a small blue pot for them to stand in. It took her eleven tries before the whole posy stood up straight.

Every flower is painted by hand. After five years, Carmel could do it with her eyes closed, but she still checks every one twice.

Pip named them that first afternoon. The big pink one was “the grown-up flower”, the tiny peach one was “the baby”. “Red is a teaspoon, yellow is half,” she will tell anyone who asks.

Carmel took two sets to her stall at the monthly Saturday market, mostly as a joke. A woman bought both before nine. The next month there was a queue. Soon she was posting parcels to Sydney and Bathurst.

What makes Carmel’s flower spoons so special

Fill it, level it with the back of a knife, done. The way Carmel taught it for 34 years.

It isn’t only the colours. Each set is a little piece of pottery that just happens to be useful, not something off a conveyor belt.

Every spoon is its own flower, and every flower is its own size. The biggest is the tablespoon, the smallest is the quarter teaspoon. The size is pressed into the stem before the firing, so it can’t rub off. When you’re done, the flowers go back into their pot, and the pot stays on the bench like a small posy.

The whole set is small. The pot is just 6.8 cm tall, smaller than a mug, so it fits next to the stove or on the windowsill where nothing else would. Carmel is honest about the rest: “They’re ceramic. Drop one on a tiled floor and it breaks, same as a mug. Wash them by hand.” She is upfront about one more thing: the big pink one is a 15 ml tablespoon, the size used in most of the world. “Our Aussie tablespoon is 20 ml. So if an Australian recipe says a tablespoon, use the big pink one plus the red one.”

The result is a set of measuring spoons nobody hides in a drawer. It turns a corner of the kitchen into something pretty, and it makes the youngest bakers in the house want to help.

“Some of them came back to the stall just to say thank you”

Carmel keeps a shoebox of notes people have left for her at the stall. She pulls out a card from August and reads it out loud.

There is a simple reason people write: care instead of speed. Carmel works one set at a time. Every flower is shaped, dried, fired, painted and fired again. From wet clay to finished set takes her about a week.

The last sets from the spring firing. Every pot is checked with all four flowers standing before it is wrapped and boxed.

The end of the season, and one last chance

When Carmel opened the kiln after the September firing, the lid had a crack straight across it. Around 300 sets are left on the shelves. The last flowers that will ever come out of that shed.

To make sure they go to good homes, she has made a decision: one flat special price for every set that’s left, A$89 instead of the A$139 they sold for at the stall. The price holds until 30 November. After that, whatever is left is sold while it lasts. “I’m not doing this to get rich,” she says. “I want them in kitchens before Christmas, with people who bake. Half the people at the stall bought them as gifts anyway.”

Her daughter Belinda, Pip’s mother, is the one who put them online. “At my age I have no idea how any of that internet business works,” Carmel says, laughing. “Belinda answers the emails. I wrap the boxes.”

It was Pip who named the colours, too: Desert Rose for the tablespoon, Waratah Red for the teaspoon, Buttercup Yellow for the half and Peach Blossom for the quarter. The names stuck. For many families, the little pot has become a ritual: flowers out, flour in, and someone small on a stool to help.

What sets Carmel’s flower spoons apart:

Desert Rose, Waratah Red, Buttercup Yellow and Peach Blossom. Every glaze runs a little differently in the kiln, so no two sets are exactly alike.

What real customers say about Carmel’s flower spoons

“The nicest present I’ve given my mum in years”

Her customer Leanne M. (51) from Orange agrees: “I gave my mum a set for her birthday. She has baked for our family for fifty years. She held the little pot for a long time and said nobody had ever given her something for her kitchen that was made just to be beautiful. It hasn’t left her bench since, and she calls Carmel ‘the flower lady’.”

A flower spoon set as a present: for many customers, the gift that got the biggest reaction all year.

Where can you get Carmel’s flower spoons?

Carmel’s flower spoons are only available through her own little shop online, which her daughter Belinda runs for her. Only there will you get the original sets from her last firing. Cheap look-alikes have started to appear on Amazon and other big sites. At first glance they may look similar, but they are painted plastic, and they have nothing to do with Carmel’s work.

Only this spring, then it’s over

Carmel wants every set to have found a good home by Christmas. “After that, it really is the end,” she says. She looks at the shelves and smiles. “Five years of flowers. It’s been a lovely time.”

If you’d like one of the original sets from Carmel’s last firing, don’t wait too long. With the special price and this much interest, the remaining sets are not expected to last.

The verdict

Carmel’s flower spoons are the measuring spoons people fall in love with. They are made by hand in a shed in country New South Wales and feel like a small, cheerful posy on your bench, with four real measuring spoons inside that even the smallest baker can tell apart.

A piece with real heart: lovingly made, well thought through, and a small moment of joy every time somebody reaches for the yellow one. Thank you, Carmel!

Readers love Carmel’s flowers

Photos sent in by readers.

DISCLOSURE: The owner of this site has a material connection to the products shown on this page. Please review the full return policy before ordering. Testimonials reflect individual experiences and results may vary. Ceramic is breakable; hand washing is recommended. Images are for illustration; because each piece is finished and painted by hand, the final product may vary slightly.

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