The Potter's Pocket Palette: A Practical Guide to Creating over 700 Illustrated Glaze and Slip Covers [Paperback]

A great book to have if you want to embark on the journey of making your own glazes. This book is so useful because there are pictures of test tiles of the glazes at alkaline, lead, oxidation, and reduction firings. Included in the pictures are tests of increasing strengths of oxides added to the base glaze recipes. Nine oxides, four glaze stains, and three opacifiers produce a broad range of color. Includes some raku examples as well.

The complete contents of this book comprise about half of Neal French's "The Potter's Encyclopedia of Color, Form and Decoration: The Comprehensive References for Today's Ceramicist". (The other half is his "Potter's Directory of Shape and Form"). Thus, that book is a better buy than this one. Therefore this book should be downgraded to two stars, but Amazon won't let me change it.

This book contains well organized photos of glaze samples, so that you can see the effects of different combinations, firing conditions and firing temperatures. The samples appear to be close to life size. For me the book is valuable in seeing what a single oxide looks like in various glaze/firing conditions. This is very useful to me for seeing the limitations of low fire kiln, and for understanding the kinds of effects I get when I do high temp firing.

It is not a "how to" book telling you how to apply glaze or ways of decorating ceramics. Its purpose is to give you mastery over using specific oxides for different color/texture effects. There are some quite detailed techical books out there which also cover this, but the visual immediacy of this little book is quite valuable. It is important to understand that each firing situation is different and just because they got a particular shade or texture, it doesn't mean you will too, but it is a good guide to help you figure out what you want to try.

Here are the nuts & bolts of the contents, to help you decide if this is the glaze sample book for you.

For each set of samples, four base glazes are used, two cone 04 low fire glazes (alkaline, lead), and two cone 6 high fire glazes (oxidation, reduction). Except for the reduction firings, all firings are oxidizing, as detailed in the firing section. The top of each column of samples is labeled by base glaze and firing-type, and rows of samples are labeled individually or by row as to ingredients.

The book covers 9 basic coloring oxides: copper, cobalt, red iron, maganese diox, chrome, rutile, vanadium pentoxide, nickel, ilmenite. For each oxide, there is a 6 page spread giving various test samples:
- 1 page of intro comments with example photos of use on pots
- 1 page of firings with different oxide strengths in each of the four base glazes (total of 12)
- 2 pages of cross-blends with the other eight oxides, for each of the four base glazes (32 samples total)
- 1 page (12 samples) of using the oxide in-glaze, under-glaze, & in slip, for each of the four base glazes
- 1 page (12 samples) of using the glaze with various opacifiers, in four base glazes.
The "How to Use this Book" section which is given in the amazon sample pages illustrates the first four pages of each oxide's entry.

Then there are stain samples: a page of four primary color stains in four glaze bases (16 samples), four pages of cross blends to mix intermediate colors (64 samples), two pages of in-glaze, underglaze, and slip coloring samples (32 samples).

Finally there one page of using oxides in a raku base glaze with raku firing (16 samples). This is minimal raku coverage and I would really like to see more.

All in all this is a very useful book. I'm giving it four stars only because I can imagine an even better and bigger book covering this kind of topic with more base glazes, more oxides, more cross-blends, etc. For what it is, it is five stars in quality, but I would like a wider scope.

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P.S. regarding other reviews:

I can't believe the reviewer who wrote "Useless pretty book" is writing about the same book. Every column and row/sample is clearly labeled as to glaze and firing condition. Along with the 7 glaze recipes on pages 8-9, and detailed firing sequences on pages 12-13, it is very clear how each sample was produced.

Again I wonder the same thing about the people who say they have the book in spanish, and they voted twice, but who can tell if it is really the same book or not since they gave no reasons.

The thing I love about this book is the visual examples of the results you should expect from your the glaze formulas & varying oxides. The results I have achieved frequently do not demonstrate the same results. That is not unexpected...but this book does not give any suggestions or recommendations for troubleshooting significant differences in results. It also does not allow for differences in clay bodies...expansion rates, etc. I've found the book to be a good general guide as to the impact of colorant combinations, but not much more in practice.