The curiosity
Every potter has looked at a surface on someone else’s pot and wondered what it was. The honest answer is that no photograph can tell you. But a photograph can narrow the search, and narrowing the search is most of the work.
What it does
Upload one to five photos of a fired surface, add the cone, atmosphere, or clay color if you know them, and it returns three to five commercial glazes worth testing, each with why it resembles your surface, how it may differ, and a suggested order to test them in.
The system
The photographs are compared against a small catalog of commercial glazes, verified by hand and filtered to your firing conditions. The output is a shortlist for the test kiln, not an identification, and it says so. It never assesses food safety from a photograph. The first analysis is free; after that, ten for nine dollars, charged only when results come back.
Cause and effect
Photographs of a fired surface go in. A short list comes back, with reasons and an order to try them in. The kiln decides the rest.
What changed
A question that used to end in a forum thread ends in a test tile. It is the smallest of these systems, and the one that most directly turns a curiosity into something in the hand.
Experience it
Try it. The first analysis is free.