A pottery shop website where you see how clay transforms.

Raiz is a small shop in the old town of Guimarães, Portugal, that sells only earthenware, thrown by two potteries less than an hour away. Shops like this usually end up with the same "artisan beige" site and a grid of stock photos that never match. The goal: a site that shows what makes the shop different — every piece is made by someone the owner knows, from local clay.

A lump of wet Barcelos clay spins on a potter's wheel. Seven chapters follow the real process — centre, raise, dry, fire, glaze, to the table — and the whole page changes with each one: background colour, text side, camera framing, and a number that counts (rpm, pulls, days, kiln temperature).

Mismatched stock photography is what makes small shop sites look cheap. Every piece is rendered live in 3D under the same studio light as the hero, so the catalogue looks like one photo session. A custom glaze shader dips each piece from the rim down and leaves the foot bare, as Barcelos potters do.

Each pottery fires every fortnight, so the site works out the next firing date: sold-out pieces can be reserved instead of lost as a sale. Restaurants and weddings can configure a made-to-order set with a live 3D preview, a quantity discount and a ready-by date taken from the kiln calendar. The basket sends the order as one WhatsApp message, for pickup or shipping.

Research first: Awwwards e-commerce winners, Portuguese heritage brands.

Dropping photography altogether led to the wheel. Hand-coded in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript with three.js, no frameworks; live opening hours, structured data for Google and AI assistants, Portuguese and English, reduced motion, and no-WebGL fallbacks.