Robert Knox says he has been living on coffee for the past 40 days. 

Fortunately for him, he has the perfect cup for it. 

Last week, the Whitefish craftsman placed his first orders for the travel coffee mug he invented after a successful Kickstarter campaign raised almost $65,000. The Cortica, which is Portuguese for cork, is a 12-ounce porcelain travel mug wrapped and insulated in cork. 

The first shipment should arrive in Northwest Montana by early October.

Knox, a custom contractor and carpenter, spent most his adult life searching for the perfect coffee mug. When he couldn’t find one, he decided to make his own. 

“I’ve been looking for the coffee cup I wanted to drink from for a long time. Every time we’d go somewhere I’d always go look at their coffee cups and try to find one. I never liked the taste of metal and didn’t like to use plastic,” Knox said before taking a drink of iced coffee on Tuesday from his Cortica prototype at the Red Caboose in Whitefish. 

“Mostly, I would travel around with a porcelain cup with the handle broken off and risk burning my hands.”

The inspiration for the mug came to Knox on a Saturday morning in February while he was building fly rods. After grabbing a cup of coffee, he looked down and saw the cork he was using to build new fly rod handles.

“That’s when it hit me. I was like, ‘This is it. This is exactly what I’ve been searching for. I want a porcelain mug wrapped in cork,’” Knox said.

The idea was so simple that Knox was sure somebody already made one and did a quick Google search to buy one. After he couldn’t find one, he decided to order the materials to build a prototype.

“I started making some at first just for myself. Then friends saw it and clients saw it and everybody wanted one and that’s when I knew I had something,” Knox said. 

Knox quickly went to work building better prototypes, applying for patent-pending status and securing an American-based manufacturer. Once this was done, Knox started a Kickstarter campaign in early June asking for $35,000. He said he believed that this was a realistic goal and the minimum he needed to order the mugs. 

The mug is functional — the porcelain maintains the flavor of the coffee and the cork protects the mug from breaking — and it is environmentally conscious, which is just as important to Knox.

“Basically this whole thing is decomposable, except for the shards on the glaze. The rest of it is clay, it goes back to dirt. The cork is wood, basically bark. It’s going to decompose. So the whole product, besides the plastic inset lid, is earth-friendly,” Knox said.

Knox has always enjoyed working with his hands and solving problems. 

As owner of Knox on Wood, a custom contracting business, he is always creating devices and coming up with ideas to make the work easier.

“I have always been that kind of guy that can think that way and come up with solutions. It’s just the way my brain works,” Knox said. 

Knox started his contracting business nearly 20 years ago and watched it become very successful. But one day he woke up and realized it had grown too big and he was spending more time managing people than working with wood.

He closed the company and his family, a wife and two sons, spent the next six months building orphanages in Cambodia and Thailand. When they returned, Knox started up his business again but on a much smaller scale. Building the orphanages was a highlight of his life and he is hoping sales of the Cortica mug will allow him to do more work like that.

“My goal is that this will grow to the point where I’m able to do less construction work for money and more construction as a community service,” Knox said. “Our goal is to take a month or two a year for work like that.”

The 12-ounce Cortica mugs are expected to arrive in October and will retail for $25. Knox is still working on lining up local distribution. 

For more information, visit www.corkcoffeemug.com.