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The Clay Hole University · Pottery Foundations

The Many Myths of PotteryPrintable pottery guide

Seventy things potters say to each other, fact-checked one at a time against manufacturers’ documentation, materials science, the FDA, OSHA and published archaeology, with all 117 sources printed.

$20.005 guides, 1 free
  • Skill level: Beginner
  • 63 printable pages
  • 22-term glossary
  • 8-question quiz + answer key

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

What is the printable edition of The Many Myths of Pottery?

It is the free lesson of the same name, rebuilt for paper: seventy claims you will actually hear in a studio, each with a verdict, what is really going on, why the myth sticks around, and its sources. On paper it adds Orton’s full cone chart, a kiln electricity table with a column for your own rate, a food-safety checker you can run on a mug from your own kitchen, and a checklist of all seventy claims to tick before you read.

Prefer to read it online first? “The Many Myths of Pottery” is free to read, and always will be.

  • 63printable pages, US Letter
  • 8quiz questions, with a full answer key
  • 11QR codes, each on a short Clay Hole address
  • 22glossary terms in plain language
  • 2workbook pages you fill in yourself
Why a printable, for this one

Good advice with the reason attached backwards

Most pottery folklore works. Wedge your clay and fewer pots blow up. Dry it under plastic and it cracks less. The advice keeps paying off, so nobody ever audits the explanation.

That matters on the day the rule does not fit, because the reason is all you have left to work from. Air bubbles do not explode pots. Cone 6 is not a temperature. Lead-free does not mean food safe.

This is the reference you keep near the kiln: seventy claims, four verdicts, every source printed, and the numbers laid out as tables you can actually use.

Look inside

Real pages, with the receipts attached

These are actual pages from the guide, shown here with the sample watermark. The full guide has none.

  • Page 7 of the “The Many Myths of Pottery” printable guide: which of these did you believe?, shown with the sample watermark
    Which of these did you believe?All seventy claims with a box to tick, so you can see your own before and after.
  • Page 9 of the “The Many Myths of Pottery” printable guide: chapter one, the clay itself, shown with the sample watermark
    Chapter one, the clay itselfTen claims about clay, each with a verdict and the sources we checked it against.
  • Page 15 of the “The Many Myths of Pottery” printable guide: a myth card in full, shown with the sample watermark
    A myth card in fullCone 6 is not a temperature, and the card shows the numbers, the reason and where they come from.
  • Page 59 of the “The Many Myths of Pottery” printable guide: the quiz, shown with the sample watermark
    The quizEight questions, with an answer key that explains the reasoning behind every answer.
Flip through the free sampleTen pages, free, no email required.
Paper beats the screen here

Why a reference like this belongs on paper

This is the guide you reach for mid-argument, mid-firing, or standing in a thrift store holding somebody else’s mug.

  • The cone chart lives by the kiln

    Thirty-six cones, three climb rates, one page. No searching, no signal, no screen to wake with dusty hands.

  • It answers the food-safe question properly

    Four questions and a table that tells you when a piece is fine, when it is decorative, and when the honest answer is go and look again.

  • It shows its work

    Every card lists its sources, 117 in all, so you can check us rather than take our word for it.

  • You can see what you believed

    Tick the claims you held before you read. Coming back to that page afterwards is the whole point of the guide.

How the guide is built

Built like a field guide, not an argument

Every guide in the series is designed as a workbook first and a document second. For the myths, that means:

  • Four verdicts, spelled out

    False, mostly false, it depends, and true but. Five of the seventy claims turned out to be true, and they stayed in.

  • Seven chapters you can read in any order

    The clay, the fire, the glaze, food safety, your lungs and your back, whether you can do this at all, and deep time.

  • Numbers as tables, not vibes

    The cone chart, the silica measurements, and a kiln electricity table with a column for your own rate.

  • A ten-question self-test

    The lesson’s own quiz, printed with its answers, plus the University quiz and a full answer key.

  • Codes that keep working

    Every QR code points at a short Clay Hole address, so a printed copy keeps working when a page moves.

  • Plain words for the jargon

    A glossary from heat work to respirable crystalline silica, written for a person rather than a spec sheet.

Why the University is free

The lesson is free. It always will be.

All of the teaching in this guide comes from the free “The Many Myths of Pottery” lesson at The Clay Hole University. No paywall, no sign-up, no catch.

We said a lot of these out loud ourselves, for years. Some of them last week. This is not a guide for feeling clever at the next table over, it is a guide for knowing why.

The University is free and stays free. The guides are where the work goes: every claim checked against a primary source, every card rebuilt for paper, every page tested. Buying one pays for that and keeps the free side free.

Thank you. Genuinely.

Dan Pearce, founder of The Clay Hole
Collect them

Build a little pottery library

Every guide carries a permanent number. This one is 01.03, the third guide in Pottery Foundations, and the biggest in the series so far. The guides are designed to live together in a binder, section by section.

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
Where this leads

The chapters, taken further

These lessons pick up the safety, firing and glaze chapters in full. Each one is free to read now.

Good questions

Before you buy

Is this different from the free lesson?
The teaching is the same, and the free lesson is complete. The printable adds the full cone chart and the other tools as printed tables, a checklist of all seventy claims, the University quiz with an answer key, and a glossary.
Is it going to tell me my instructor is wrong?
Sometimes, and gently. Where credible sources disagree, the card says so instead of picking the tidier answer. The point is the reason, not the argument.
I am not at The Clay Hole. Is it still useful?
Yes. Almost all of it is general: manufacturers’ figures, published research, FDA and OSHA limits. Very little of it is ours.
Is the food-safety part a substitute for testing?
No, and the guide says so plainly. It sorts most of the pottery in most kitchens, and it tells you when the honest answer is a lab test.
Do I need a fancy printer?
No. It is designed 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.
Can I print it in black and white?
Yes. Every page was checked in grayscale. The color makes it nicer to look at, but nothing depends on it.
Can I use it on an iPad or laptop instead?
Yes. Every QR code in the guide is also a tappable link, so on a screen you just tap instead of scanning.
How do I get it after I buy?
Right after checkout you get a download link by email and on your order confirmation page. Each link works up to seven times.
What if the guide gets updated?
Every edition carries a version number. When we correct or improve a guide, everyone who bought it gets an email with the new edition at no charge.
Can I share it with my class or studio?
Please don’t. It is licensed for your own personal use. Anyone can read the full lesson free online, and the printable is here if they want their own copy.

Seventy claims, one verdict each, all the receipts

Print it, tick the ones you believed, and keep the cone chart wherever your kiln lives.

Get the printable · $20.00

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.

You may not remove or obscure copyright notices, watermarks, attribution, or other ownership information, or sell, republish, or commercially exploit modified or derivative versions of the guide.

Purchasing the guide does not transfer ownership of its copyrighted text, photographs, illustrations, graphics, layouts, worksheets, or other original content. Those rights remain with The Clay Hole and their respective rights holders. Copyright law protects the expression contained in these guides, while ideas, methods, techniques, and processes may have different legal treatment.

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