On the ocean floor, communities of organisms settle in layers over deep time — and are sometimes retrieved by researchers as core samples. Joan Lederman, already a potter for two decades, got their excess and learned that most sediments melt into a ceramic glaze, each with its own character.While glazes concocted from refined materials can be exquisite, sediment glazes have a different voice. They are released by nature. During firing, they become another version of themselves. Nobody formulated them. Nobody predicted them.This book follows one artist's 20-year inquiry into what happens when scientific material meets an artist with stubborn curiosity. How does a mind fathom deep time while fondling buckets of mud? How does that become a livelihood? What was repeatable — and what wasn't? How did mistakes become design parameters, and how did the early internet shape an entirely lateral career?Quirky, yes. Formulaic, no. This is not a glaze recipe book. It is a field guide to following something strange all the way.
