Witness
Kiln Portfolio

Witness

Every pot, remembered.

A pottery journal that learns. Follow every piece from the first idea to the kiln opening — and let a year of firings tell you what to do next time.

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Thursday Night

The kiln has been unloaded. The pickup shelf is three rows deep with pots that all look a little alike, and somewhere in the second row is yours — the tall mug with the handle you finally pulled right.

It’s beautiful. The blue came down from the rim and melted into the dark brown, pooling in the throwing rings like water in a creek bed. Someone at the next table asks what you used.

And you don’t know. The studio tenmoku, probably. Then the blue. Or the other blue. Dipped twice? For how long? Your notebook, crusted with slip, says “mug — tenmoku + blue??”

Every potter has a pot they loved and can’t make again.

✦

Witness

A record that fills itself in.

Named for the witness cone — the small ceramic cone that sits beside the work in the kiln and bends at a known heat, the honest record of what actually happened. Witness is that record, for every pot you make — and a sketchbook for the ones you haven’t made yet.

The Life of a Pot
Weight and height at every stage, wedged to fired. Water loss, bisque loss, glaze pickup and total shrinkage — worked out for you, compared with every pot in the same clay.
Next Time
“For a 12 oz mug, wedge 880 g.” Throwing weights predicted from your own history — always showing the pieces behind the number.
Kiln Opening
What you hoped for, beside what happened. How far each glaze ran, what you loved, what you’d change — and photos from every angle. Unsuccessful pots become learning pieces.
The Glaze Atlas
Every glaze pairing on every clay body, as a grid of real results — with the untested pairs waiting in plain sight.
Find by How It Was Made
“Clear liner, Chun Blue over the rim on the top third.” Search in plain language, or find pots that simply look alike. All on your device.
Hands Covered in Clay
A new piece in three taps. Weights straight from a Bluetooth scale. “Log the weight in Witness” — and your phone never leaves the shelf.
The Studio Wall

Your studio’s test tiles, in your pocket. Community studios can publish each location’s tile wall, clay bodies, and glazes. Scan the code under any tile and it opens in Witness — with your own results beside it.

For studios

The Sketchbook

Where pots begin.

The other half of Witness is a place for what isn’t a pot yet. The bark on the walk to the studio. The handle you thought of on the drive home. The two glazes you keep meaning to try together.

  • Capture anything, in seconds. A photo, a voice note, a pencil sketch with Apple Pencil, a glaze pair, or the words from a book page. Photos bring their colors with them.
  • Boards, not a long list. Spring market mugs. Textures. Glaze ideas. A page can live on as many boards as you like, with tags, pins, and search that knows your glazes.
  • Make This. When an idea is ready, one tap turns the page into a planned piece with its form and glazes in place. Months later, the finished pot still points back to the page it started as.
Free, like every record in Witness
The Witness Sketchbook: pages with a photo of birch bark, a recipe from a friend, a pencil sketch of a mug, a glaze pair, and a voice note
Send it as a recipe

Someone at the next table asks what you used. Now you can tell them exactly. Send the piece as a recipe — every glaze layer in order, the dip times, the clay, the cone, a photo — through Messages or AirDrop, with your name on it.

It opens in their Witness with their own glazes already matched, ready to save to their sketchbook or plan as a test tile. No account, no feed, nothing posted. Just one potter handing another the answer.

A recipe received in Witness: Maya sent you a recipe, with her note, a photo of the mug, and three glaze layers in order

A Day in the Life

One idea, one mug.

Two Sundays before

At the studio’s tile wall, a glossy blue breaking over dark brown stops you. You photograph it into your Sketchbook, Chun over Tenmoku?, and drop it on your Spring market mugs board.

Tuesday, 6:40 pm

You open the page and tap Make This. You cut 794 grams of Speckled Buff, because that’s what made last month’s mug. Witness gives the mug a three-letter code, and you scratch it into the foot.

Thursday

You trim. “Log the weight in Witness.” The scale settles at 598 grams — down 24.7 percent, right on your usual number for this clay.

Glaze day

You say the layers out loud as you work — Tenmoku, four seconds; Chun on the top third, three — and write one line: what you’re hoping for.

The kiln opens

The Chun ran six millimeters past where you meant it to, and pooled in the throwing rings. It’s the best thing you’ve made. Surprise. Next time: dip it two seconds, not three.

A month later

Someone at the studio asks how you got that blue. You send it to them as a recipe. It lands in their Sketchbook, with their own studio’s Tenmoku already matched.

The kiln still decides. Now you remember what you asked it.

Be Honest

The notebook in your studio bag.

You bought it with good intentions. It’s mostly blank after page six, because nobody wants to write with slip on their hands.

The notebook
Witness
“mug — tenmoku + blue??”
Tenmoku, dip 4 s → Chun Blue, top third, 3 s
Weighed it? Maybe.
Every stage weighed — by scale, by voice, or by hand
Which pot was this?
A foot code, and every photo from every angle
Did it run? How much?
Ran 6 mm — Chun averages 4 mm for you
Ideas on the back of a receipt
A sketchbook page, on a board, one tap from a planned piece
“I think it was the blue one?”
Send the exact recipe; it opens in their Witness
Gone if the bag gets wet
Synced through your iCloud. Free export, forever.

Every pot, remembered.

Witness is coming to iPhone, iPad, and Mac.

Coming Soon
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