The glaze library is a wall of small rectangles, each stamped with a code that only its maker can read: a base, an oxide, a firing temperature, a date. Priya Raman has fired six hundred of them and calls the wall her dictionary. A test tile is a question asked of the kiln. Will the rutile bloom into blue? Will the ash crawl at cone ten? The tile answers without mercy, in pinholes and runs, in perfect greens and bitter browns. Her method is conservative: change one variable at a time, label everything, never trust memory. The failures are kept too — a wall of honest mistakes is worth more than a shelf of lucky accidents. A new glaze enters the library only after three firings on three different bodies. Slow, she admits. But a glaze that fails quietly for a year is cheaper than a glaze that fails loudly on a kiln full of pots.