Keeping a Pottery Journal Is Less About Inspiration Than It Is About Not Losing Your Mind
You fire a glaze you're proud of. You remember roughly what you did. Two weeks later, you need to reproduce it and you have no idea which kiln shelf it was on or whether you added a pinch of cobalt or a full gram. This is why people keep a Pottery Journal. It is a record. Not a diary, not a blog, just a system for tracking what you made, when you made it, and how you made it so you can repeat or fix it. I started keeping one because I threw away three good pieces of work in a row without knowing why. My glaze that looked perfect in the kiln came out dull and matte on the next firing. I had no notes. I spent a Saturday rebuilding a filing system for my glazes and I have not gone back to guessing since.
What a Pottery Journal Actually Contains
A functional Pottery Journal does not need to be elaborate. The core entries are the ones that survive real use. Date, piece ID, clay body, form, glaze recipe, application method, drying time, firing schedule, kiln, shelf position, and outcome. That is it. You do not need a section for sketches unless you want it. You do not need a section for philosophical reflections on the nature of earth and fire unless that keeps you motivated, which it did not for me. The piece ID is the part beginners skip and regret. Use a consistent naming format like YYYYMMDD-Form-Glaze-Number. When you write C-12-240518-FM-01 you can search it later in seconds. If you use a spreadsheet or database, the ID becomes a key you can sort, filter, and cross-reference against firing logs.
How to Set Up a Practical System
Most potters end up choosing between a physical notebook, a spreadsheet, or a dedicated app. Each has failure modes. A physical notebook is fast to write in and survives power outages, but it is hard to search and easy to lose. A spreadsheet is searchable and sortable but takes time to set up and you will skip fields when you are tired. A dedicated app can be convenient until it costs money, loses your data, or lacks the fields you actually need. I use a simple spreadsheet with a rigid template. It takes about four seconds per entry once you have the columns set. The columns I keep are non-negotiable: Date — always YYYY-MM-DD for sorting.
Get the Full Details
Piece ID — unique identifier. Clay Body — brand, type, weight, and moisture percentage if you measure it. Form — bowl, vase, mug, tile, sculpture, etc.
Dimensions — height, diameter, wall thickness where relevant. Glaze — recipe name, batch number, application method, number of coats. Drying — time to bone dry, any issues like cracking or warping.
Firing — kiln model, schedule, temperature, atmosphere, soak time. Shelf Position — which shelf and where on the shelf. Outcome — result, defects, improvements to try next time.
Anything beyond that is optional. People add photos and videos. I add them only when the defect is hard to describe or when I need to reference surface texture later.
The Entry Process I Actually Use
Right after you unload the kiln, before you wash your hands or check your phone, you write the firing and outcome row. While the pieces are still warm enough to handle, you note any immediate observations: crawl, shivering, pinholing, color shifts, glaze movement. You do not wait until the end of the week. You will forget which piece had the tiny crack at the foot ring. After you wash the ware, you fill in the rest of the rows. If you batch-glaze, you record the batch number and dip time rather than writing the same thing six times. If you reuse a glaze, you note the refreshments you added. The whole process takes about ten minutes per firing session if you are disciplined. It takes about forty minutes if you stop to think about whether you should add a notes column. Do not add the notes column yet.
Pottery Journal Workflow for Glaze Development
Glaze work is where a journal earns its keep. The beginner mistake is to change two variables at once and then wonder why the result changed. If you are testing a series, keep everything constant except one variable and record it clearly. I use a naming convention for glaze variants like BASE-10-COBA-0.5 where the suffix indicates the percent change. That way I can look at a row and know exactly what was adjusted without decoding a vague comment. Another thing people do wrong is recording glaze weight as a percentage of water without noting the batch density. Your batch will settle differently over time. Measure and record the specific gravity or the weight of a known volume. I record grams per 100ml along with the recipe. It sounds excessive. It prevented me from spending three firings chasing a problem that was just a thin application.
A Real Problem I Hit and the Workaround
About a year into using a spreadsheet journal, I ran into a mess I did not see coming. I was tracking twelve different variations of a celadon glaze across three clay bodies and two kilns. The data was there, but it was unreadable. I could not tell which combination produced the color I wanted because the outcome column was a paragraph of text and the kiln schedule column conflicted with itself when I edited old entries. The workaround was to separate the kiln schedule from the piece entry. I created a second tab for firing logs with a unique firing ID. Each piece entry linked to that ID instead of storing the schedule inline. I also standardized the outcome column to a short code system: G for good, M for minor defect, S for shatter, C for crawl, etc. Then I added a free-text field only for exceptions. This cut my lookup time from several minutes to about ten seconds and eliminated the editing conflicts.
Advanced Details Beginners Miss
Here are two things that are not obvious and will save you time. First, record the ambient humidity when you throw orGlaze if you notice variability. I did not think this mattered until I saw a correlation between my warping rates and days when the studio humidity dropped below thirty percent. After that, I added a humidity field and adjusted my drying covers accordingly. You do not need a hygrometer for this if you can feel the air, but a cheap one costs about fifteen dollars and removes guesswork. Second, record the age of your glaze batches. Some oxides settle or react over weeks. I had a blue glaze that shifted from bright to muddy after six weeks in storage and I spent two firings chasing a reformulation that was unnecessary. Now I record the batch date and note any changes at sixty-day intervals. Most recipes are stable. A few are not, and you will know which ones.
When a Pottery Journal Will Not Help You
A journal does not fix bad technique. If your wedging is inconsistent, your walls are uneven, or your kiln loads are random, writing it down will not improve the results. It will only give you accurate data about poor results, which is marginally better than inaccurate data about poor results. A journal also breaks down when you scale up production. The entry time per piece becomes unsustainable past a certain point. If you are making hundreds of mugs a month, you will need a simplified logging system or an automated solution. A barcode scanner linked to a simple database can cut entry time to two seconds per piece. I switched to that system when my output grew and I stopped trying to force a spreadsheet to do what it was not built for. There is also the question of longevity. Spreadsheets corrupt. Apps shut down. Paper burns. I keep three copies of my journal in different formats: the spreadsheet on my computer, a PDF export on an external drive, and a printed summary once a quarter. It is not glamorous. It is just insurance.
What to Do If You Want to Start Today
Open a blank spreadsheet. Add the columns I listed above. Create five test entries for pieces you already have made from memory. The gaps you find will show you what to prioritize. Do not try to digitize every piece you have ever made. Start with the last six months. Anything older than that you can approximate or skip unless it is a recipe you actively reuse. If you want a ready-made template, search for "Pottery Journal spreadsheet template" and pick one that matches your workflow rather than the one with the most features. The template with the most columns is the one you will abandon after two weeks. I have seen it happen. I almost did it myself. Write one entry per piece until it becomes automatic. Then write fewer words per entry. The goal is not completeness. The goal is a record you will actually use when you need it.
