Issue 39 · Sunday, February 23

"You don't need another algorithm. You need a kiln schedule and someone who gets it."

Kiln is a weekly letter for working potters — the ones who trim at midnight, price their work in a spreadsheet on a market Sunday, and still haven't solved that crawling glaze. We write about technique, selling, and the slower questions.

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A weekly letter that arrives like a quiet morning in the studio — hands still dusty, glaze samples drying on the shelf, the kiln ticking as it cools.

For working potters selling through Etsy and weekend markets. For hobbyists who just upgraded from their first wheel. For ceramic artists navigating the distance between craft and fine art. Kiln is written by someone who fires the same kiln you do and has the same glaze notebooks, the same late-night trimming sessions, and the same stubborn faith that making things by hand is worth doing carefully.

We believe in trimming slowly.

Every issue treats technique the way a good teacher does — unhurried, without shortcuts. The kind of knowledge that moves hand to hand across a workbench, not link to link across a feed. When we write about centering, we mean the clay and the person. When we write about feet, we mean the ones that will carry a piece for decades. There is no hack for a well-trimmed foot ring. There is only practice, and the patience to care about the bottom of a pot that most people will never see.

We believe the market is part of the making.

Selling your work is not a compromise of the craft — it is an extension of it. The Etsy listing, the market table, the conversation with a stranger who picks up your mug and turns it over: all of it is the work. Kiln covers pricing, photography, the psychology of a well-curated booth, and the harder question of what it means to value something you made with your hands. We take the business of ceramics as seriously as the chemistry of the glaze.

We believe craft and fine art are the same conversation.

The distance between a production potter and a gallery artist is not a hierarchy — it is a spectrum, and most of us move along it depending on the week. We write for the person who fires a hundred mugs for a holiday market and also for the person who just got their first residency. The questions are the same: what are you making, who is it for, and does it hold what you put into it.

From the archive

Read before you subscribe.

Three issues, unedited. If the voice is right, the subscribe field is at the bottom of the page.

Issue 14·January 2026

On the weight of a good mug

There is a mug in my cabinet that I reach for every morning without thinking. I bought it at a market in Vermont six years ago from a woman who had clay under her fingernails and a card reader held together with electrical tape...

Issue 22·March 2026

Glaze chemistry for people who hated chemistry

I failed high school chemistry twice. I now spend approximately four hours a week thinking about molecular ratios. This is the part of pottery that nobody warns you about — that the glaze room is a laboratory, and at some point you will start caring about silica-to-alumina ratios the way you once cared about nothing at all...

Issue 31·May 2026

Pricing your work without apologizing for it

Someone at my last market picked up a yunomi, turned it over, saw the price, and put it down with a small noise that was not quite a word. I have been thinking about that noise for three weeks. Not because it hurt — it did, a little — but because of what I did next: I almost apologized...

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A single-page PDF with four tested cone 6 glazes — a satin matte, a celadon, a tenmoku, and a shino variant that actually works in an electric kiln. Each recipe includes the molecular formula, application notes, and a photograph of the fired result on both porcelain and stoneware.

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Satin Matte

Celadon

Tenmoku

Shino