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The Clay Hole University · Project Guides

Creating a Ceramic Chess SetPrintable pottery guide

The whole set on paper: the king that decides every number, the gauge that keeps sixteen pawns honest, the shrinkage arithmetic, and a board of tiles that lies flat.

$10.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Advanced
  • 24 printable pages
  • 5 video picks
  • 8-question quiz + answer key

Flip through the free sample
  • Instant download
  • Prints on any printer
  • The lesson stays free
The printable, at a glance

What is the Creating a Ceramic Chess Set printable guide?

It is the whole project on paper: how the king’s height sets the other five and the size of every square, how to turn fired sizes into wet sizes, the gauge and the paper template, how many of each piece to make to keep a full set, the tops and the knights, and the tiled board with its grout. Built to be printed, ticked off at the bench and written in.

Prefer to read it online first? The “Creating a Ceramic Chess Set” lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 24printable pages, US Letter
  • 8quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 5hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 16glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
For a set that has to match

The horse is not the hard part

Everybody asks about the knight, and the knight is one piece in thirty-two. The hard part is that sixteen pawns have to look as if one person made them in one afternoon, and that a board of tiles has to end up the size the pieces need after the kiln has taken a tenth or more off everything.

That comes down to a few decisions made on paper before any clay is weighed: how tall the king is, how wide its base is, how wide the square is, and what shrinkage does to each of them. The guide puts every one of those next to a tick box, so you are not holding a measurement in your head for weeks.

None of the steps is new. It is throwing off the hump, modeling a head onto a base, rolling a flat tile and choosing two glazes, done many times to a gauge. The guide is the arithmetic and the order of work that stops the second half of the set drifting away from the first.

Look inside

Real pages, for a bench with a stick on it

These are actual pages from the guide, shown here with the sample watermark.

  • Page 3 of the “Creating a Ceramic Chess Set” printable guide: before you begin, shown with the sample watermark
    Before you beginOne page before you touch clay: what you will learn, what to have on the table, what is worth knowing, the pitfalls, and what a matching set looks like.
  • Page 6 of the “Creating a Ceramic Chess Set” printable guide: what you need on the table, shown with the sample watermark
    What you need on the tableSix things, and the first is a stick with pencil marks on it. Step one starts underneath, with the numbers to decide before the first ball is weighed.
  • Page 10 of the “Creating a Ceramic Chess Set” printable guide: five videos, five potters, shown with the sample watermark
    Five videos, five pottersA QR code beside each film, so you can watch on your phone and keep your hands on the page. None of the potters is one of us, and each note says what the film really shows.
  • Page 17 of the “Creating a Ceramic Chess Set” printable guide: every piece, against the gauge, shown with the sample watermark
    Every piece, against the gaugeA log to write in: the kind, the wet height, the fired height, the base width and whether it matches. Two pieces in and the second set starts from your own shrinkage instead of the number on the bag.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Why this one belongs on paper

A set is thirty-two measurements

A chess set is a lot of small numbers, decided early and used for weeks, with clay on your hands in between. Paper suits that.

  • The numbers sit beside the tick boxes

    The king’s height, the square, the wet sizes and how many of each piece to make are each next to the step that needs them, not buried in a video.

  • It holds still

    A page stays where you left it while you weigh, throw and model. It does not time out, and it does not need slip wiped off the screen.

  • A log for the kiln’s answer

    Write down what each piece measured after the glaze firing, and the second set starts from your clay’s real shrinkage instead of a guess.

  • One page for the wheel

    The one page summary has the six moves, the numbers, how many of each piece to make and what to check when it goes wrong. It pins up beside the wheel.

How this one is built

Rebuilt for paper, not printed from a web page

Every guide in the series is set from scratch for print. Here is what that meant for this one.

  • A count, corrected

    The lesson said to make four knights and keep two, which would leave a set with two. A set has four, so the guide says eight made to keep four, and the free lesson now says so too.

  • A cost claim, corrected

    The lesson said one big slab costs more to fire than everything else together. At the studio’s prices it does not, so the guide says tiles are the safer board and not the cheaper one, and shows the arithmetic. The free lesson says so too.

  • Videos described as they are

    Four of the five video notes described things the video does not show. Each film was watched and its note rewritten, so the guide tells you what you are about to spend a quarter of an hour on.

  • A mask that counts

    Grout is a cement product and its dust is silica, so the guide says to mix it in a mask rated N95, P100 or FFP, not a one strap mask with nothing printed on it.

  • Written for any studio

    Our clay, cones and firing prices are named as ours and dated, so a reader working somewhere else knows which parts are one studio’s facts and which are rules of the craft.

  • A quiz that explains itself

    Eight questions, and an answer key that gives the reason behind every answer rather than only the letter.

Why the University is free

The lesson is free. It always will be.

All of the teaching in this guide comes from the free “Creating a Ceramic Chess Set” lesson, and that lesson is not going anywhere.

People see a chess set on a table and assume the hard part is the horse. It is not.

Look at the measurement. Write it down before you weigh a ball.

Go slowly. A bag between visits beats a weekend of panic.

Dan Pearce, founder of The Clay Hole
The series

Build a little pottery library

Every printable guide in The Clay Hole University series takes one free lesson and rebuilds it for paper, with workbook pages, a glossary and a quiz with a worked answer key. Each one keeps its number for good, so a guide you buy today is the same guide in the same place next year.

Put any five printable guides in your cart and the cheapest one is on us. Put in nine and the two cheapest are on us. It happens automatically at checkout, no code to remember.

See every printable guide

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Sits next to

Three lessons that pick up where this one leaves off

Each one is free to read online, and the codes in the guide take you straight there.

Questions

Good to know

How is this different from the free lesson?
The teaching is the same, and the free lesson is not going anywhere. The guide is that teaching rebuilt for paper: a learning dashboard at the front, a tick list at every step, a log to write in, a one page summary, a glossary and a quiz with an answer key that explains every answer.
Do I need a wheel?
No. The pieces can be thrown or hand built, and the gauge works exactly the same way on either. Throwing off the hump is the fastest way to get sixteen pawns that match, and hand building suits anyone who does not throw.
Is this too early for me?
It is marked Advanced, and not because any one step is new. Thirty-two pieces have to agree with each other, in two colors, on a board that has to be flat, over weeks. If you can throw a small piece you can throw a pawn; the guide is the arithmetic and the order of work.
What do I need besides clay?
A flat stick and a pencil for the gauge, a plastic lid for the templates, a scale, a slab roller or rolling pin, a ruler, a square and a knife, two boards to dry tiles between, a wooden frame and grout, kiln cookies, wax resist and felt pads. The guide lists all of it on the dashboard.
How long does it take?
The lesson’s own estimate is three to five studio visits for the pieces and one or two for the board, plus drying, bisque and glaze. It is the longest project in the series, and the guide is built to be picked up and put down between visits.
What does it cost to fire?
The guide works it out from the studio’s rule for small pieces sharing a kiln cookie, and it is honest about the board: tiles are the safer choice, not the cheaper one. The figures are dated in the guide, because a studio’s prices change.
Can I bake the set in a home oven?
Not with this guide, which is for stoneware fired in a kiln. One of the five videos builds a set from clay baked in a kitchen oven, and its note in the guide says so: use it for the shapes and not for the firing.
Do I need a fancy printer?
No. It is set for an ordinary home or office printer on regular US Letter paper, with nothing important near the edges, so normal printer margins cut nothing off.
Does it print in black and white?
Yes. It is designed to stay readable in grayscale, and the pages that matter most at the wheel, the tick lists and the one page summary, were checked that way on purpose.
Can I print just part of it?
Yes, and most people do. The one page summary and the log are the two worth having by the wheel. They are numbered pages like any other, so you can print those and leave the rest on a screen.
Can I read it on a screen instead?
Yes. It is an ordinary PDF and it reads fine on a tablet or a phone. The workbook pages are the ones that want paper, because you write on them.
How does delivery work?
It is a digital download. The link arrives by email and on the order confirmation page right after checkout, so you can have it printed and beside the wheel the same evening.
What happens if the guide is updated?
Every edition carries its version number on the last page. When we correct or improve one, the new edition replaces the old one in the shop, and we can send the updated link to anybody who already bought it.
Can I share it?
It is licensed for your own use. Print as many copies for yourself as you like, on as many of your own devices as you like. Please do not pass the file on, upload it or use it with a class or a group without asking us first.

Decide the numbers first, and the rest is repetition

Pick the king, work out the square, write the wet sizes on a stick and make the pawns first. Do those and the rest of the set is a rhythm you already know how to keep. Skip them and no amount of skill at the wheel will make sixteen pawns agree, which is why this one is worth reading before the first ball is weighed rather than after.

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