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The Clay Hole University · Glazing

Logging Your Pottery and GlazesPrintable pottery guide

A record you will actually keep, on paper: the four things worth writing down about every pot, what else earns a place later, a test tile that tells you the truth, where to keep it all, and a log to write in.

$5.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Beginner
  • 18 printable pages
  • 2 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 Logging Your Pottery and Glazes printable guide?

It is the free “Logging Your Pottery and Glazes” lesson rebuilt for paper: the four things worth recording, what else is worth adding once the habit sticks, what a useful test tile has, where to keep the record, how to make it a habit, what people get wrong, and two videos on making tiles. Built to be printed, kept beside you and written in.

Prefer to read it online first? The “Logging Your Pottery and Glazes” lesson is free, and always will be.

  • 18printable pages, US Letter
  • 8quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 2hand-picked videos, each with a QR code
  • 9glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
For anyone who has lost a glaze they loved

Fifteen seconds now, or a mystery later.

Everybody has a pot they loved and could not make again. The information that would have saved it took about fifteen seconds to write down, and nobody wrote it down. The glaze is not the problem. The wait between glazing and seeing the pot is, because memory does not hold that long.

The guide is the short list. The clay body, the glaze and the order, how many coats and how they went on, and the date. Then what else is worth adding once that habit is sticking, and a test tile with a vertical face and an edge that shows what a glaze will do on a real pot.

It also gives you something a web page cannot: a log to write in, with a line for every pot. The clay, the glaze, the coats, the date, and the one change you would make while you are still looking at it. Paper that lives next to the pots is the record you will keep.

Look inside

Real pages, for beside you at the bench

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

  • Page 3 of the “Logging Your Pottery and Glazes” printable guide: before you begin, shown with the sample watermark
    Before you beginOne page before anything else: what you will learn, what you need, what is worth knowing, the common pitfalls, and what a good result looks like.
  • Page 8 of the “Logging Your Pottery and Glazes” printable guide: what people get wrong, shown with the sample watermark
    What people get wrongThe six mistakes that end most pottery journals, from a twenty column template to never looking at it again.
  • Page 11 of the “Logging Your Pottery and Glazes” printable guide: every pot, and how you made it, shown with the sample watermark
    Every pot, and how you made itA log to write in: the pot and its clay, the glaze and the order, the coats, the date and what you would change.
  • Page 14 of the “Logging Your Pottery and Glazes” printable guide: test yourself, shown with the sample watermark
    Test yourselfA short quiz on what to record, why the clay body matters and what makes a test tile useful. The answer key explains every answer.
Flip through the free sampleEight pages, free, no email required.
Why this one belongs on paper

A record that lives next to the work

A note you can see is a note you will write. Paper suits that.

  • The idea on one page

    The four things, what can wait, what a good tile has and how to keep the habit going sit on a single page you can pin up at the bench.

  • A reason for every rule

    Each claim comes with its reason: why the clay body changes the glaze, why a flat tile lies about running and why a note written later is guesswork.

  • A log for your own pots

    Columns for the pot and its clay, the glaze and the order, the coats, the date and the one change. A few pots of notes beat a memory of what you did.

  • It does not mind a dusty bench

    A page stays where you put it. It does not lock its screen, it does not need charging, and you can write on it with clay on your hands.

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.

  • Read against our other lessons

    We checked the lesson against the studio’s own rules and our lessons on dipping, test tiles and the full pottery process. Where they differed, the guide now says what those pages say.

  • Tiles that fire the way ours do

    The tile list now says every tile goes into the glaze firing like any piece, on a kiln cookie or glaze catcher, and it counts thickness in coats rather than in dips.

  • No number that may not be true

    The guide says there is a long wait between glazing and seeing the pot and does not quote a turnaround, so it stays true wherever you fire.

  • Video notes that say what the video shows

    Each of the two videos has a note checked against its description and chapter list, so the guide promises only what a video covers.

  • A quiz that explains itself

    A short quiz, and an answer key that gives the reason behind every answer rather than only the letter.

  • Codes that keep working

    Every link is a short Clay Hole address. If a page moves, we repoint the address and your printed copy still goes to the right place.

Why the University is free

The lesson is free. It always will be.

All of the teaching in this guide comes from the free “Logging Your Pottery and Glazes” lesson, and that lesson is not going anywhere.

Everybody has a pot they loved and cannot make again.

A record that fits on a scrap of paper is the one you will actually write.

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

  • 5guides in your cart1 on us
  • 9guides in your cart2 on us
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 log to write in, a one page summary, a glossary and a quiz with an answer key that explains every answer.
Do I need my own kiln?
No. The guide works for anyone who glazes pots, in a studio or at home. Where a rule is only ours, such as how tiles are fired here, the guide says so, so you can tell a Clay Hole rule from a fact of the craft.
Do I have to keep a journal every day?
No. The guide is built around a record small enough to write in fifteen seconds at the bench, and it says that a gap is fine. The aim is a habit you can keep, not a diary.
Will it tell me how to make test tiles?
It tells you what a useful tile has: a vertical face, an edge, your own clay and more than one coat. For making a whole set step by step, our test tiles guide goes much further.
Is this too early for me?
It is marked Beginner. You do not need to have glazed anything yet, and the earlier you start the record, the more it is worth.
Notebook, phone or spreadsheet?
The guide’s answer is whichever you already use, in one place only. The log pages in the guide work if you would rather stay on paper.
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. The text, the tick boxes and the tables are black on white, and color is used for headings and small labels.
Can I print just part of it?
Yes, and most people do. The one page summary and the log are the two worth having beside you. They are numbered pages like any other, so you can print those and leave the rest on a screen.
Do the videos work on paper?
Each video has a short note and a code that takes you straight to it, so you can scan it from the page.
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 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.

Write it down while you still remember

Four things on a card, a photo when you collect the pot, and a log to keep them in. The guide keeps all of it in front of you at the bench.

Get the guide · $5.00

The Clay Hole University Printable Guide Terms

Licensing, safety, digital delivery, and refund terms

Your copy is yours. The guide is not.

Your purchase gives one individual purchaser a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable license for personal use only. You may download the guide to your own devices, print copies for your own use, write all over them, spill clay water on them, replace a coffee-damaged copy, and generally use the heck out of what you bought.

What you may not do is distribute the guide to anyone else, whether you charge for it or not.

That means you may not share, forward, email, upload, post, publish, copy, reproduce, resell, sublicense, redistribute, or otherwise provide the guide, or any substantial portion of it, to another person. You may not place it in a shared drive, group chat, membership library, online community, file-sharing service, studio resource folder, classroom packet, employee handbook, course, workshop, or other shared collection. You may not make copies for students, members, employees, friends, classes, studios, schools, groups, or organizations.

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If you would like to use one of our guides with a class, studio, school, team, or other group, contact The Clay Hole about permission or group licensing. Please do not make twenty copies and call it manifesting.

Pottery is wonderfully unpredictable. It also carries real risk.

We work hard to make The Clay Hole University accurate, useful, practical, and ridiculously thorough. But pottery is a hands-on craft involving countless variables that no written guide can completely control or anticipate.

Depending on what you are doing, ceramics may involve extreme heat, kilns, electricity, gas, flame, sharp tools, spinning machinery, heavy equipment, pressurized equipment, silica-containing dust, fumes, chemicals, raw materials, stains, oxides, glazes, combustible materials, hot surfaces, breakable objects, and other hazards capable of causing serious injury, illness, property damage, fire, or worse.

These guides are provided for general educational and informational purposes. They are not a substitute for hands-on training, competent supervision, your studio’s safety procedures, applicable laws or codes, Safety Data Sheets, or the instructions and warnings supplied by the manufacturers of your clay, glaze, chemicals, tools, kilns, equipment, protective gear, or other materials.

Studios, kilns, clay bodies, glazes, firing schedules, electrical systems, ventilation systems, equipment, environmental conditions, application thicknesses, material formulations, and individual techniques vary enormously. Something that works beautifully in one situation may fail spectacularly in another. That is part of pottery. Occasionally, it is a very expensive part of pottery.

You are responsible for determining whether any technique, material, combination, firing schedule, tool, or process described in a guide is appropriate and safe for your specific circumstances before using it.

Use appropriate protective equipment. Use adequate ventilation and dust control. Read manufacturer instructions and Safety Data Sheets. Follow your studio’s rules. Obtain qualified instruction when a process or piece of equipment requires it. Test materials and techniques before committing important work to them. If you do not understand how to perform something safely, do not proceed until you do.

Never assume that a ceramic surface, glaze, clay body, firing method, finished vessel, repair, decoration, or other result is food-safe, microwave-safe, dishwasher-safe, oven-safe, structurally sound, chemically stable, or suitable for any particular purpose solely because it appears in or is discussed in one of our guides. Verify suitability independently when it matters.

Ceramics also refuses to sign contracts promising beautiful results. Colors change. Glazes move. Kilns have opinions. Pots crack. Materials interact unexpectedly. Manufacturers reformulate products. Equipment behaves differently. The Clay Hole does not guarantee any particular aesthetic, functional, firing, glazing, structural, or other result.

By choosing to use the information in a guide, you accept responsibility for your own materials, equipment, workspace, safety decisions, testing, methods, and results. To the fullest extent permitted by applicable law, The Clay Hole and its owners, employees, contributors, and affiliates are not responsible for injury, illness, property damage, lost work, failed projects, kiln or equipment damage, financial loss, or other loss arising from or related to your use of, or reliance upon, the guide.

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Terms version 2026-09-19b