1Learning from others' mistakes is always more efficient and less costly than committing them yourself. This book is packed with practical information that will enable potters to successfully complete the many steps in pottery production. Making functional pottery or ceramic sculpture entails different skill sets and processes in forming clay, drying clay, glazing, and firing. Any one of these steps can cause failures. As ceramics consultant Jeff Zamek points out, under ideal conditions a beginning or advanced student would be guided by a teacher at every step; mistakes and bad habits would be caught as they occurred and corrected. While such learning situations are rare today, this book fills the gap. As Zamek says, "This book offers you forty years of wisdom, generated by my students' and my client ceramics companies' issues with clays, glazes, and kiln firing." With its solutions to common problems, this guide helps potters to succeed.