The glaze shelf

Text: an original contemporary arts-feature-style practice extract.

The glaze samples occupied three shelves at the back of the ceramics studio. They were hardly impressive: thumb-sized tiles, each pierced with a hole and tied to a fading label. Some were glossy as boiled sweets; others had the dull surface of old stone. The record book beneath them looked equally uncertain. Its pages bulged with pasted scraps, and several recipes had been surrounded by question marks.

The tutor selected a dark green tile and began turning backwards through the book. The newest page gave exact quantities, but older pages carried a scattered conversation. “Too pale,” one potter had written twelve years earlier. A second hand replied, “Longer firing?” Farther down, a firm line crossed out that suggestion and directed the reader to another page. The margins argued, reconsidered and gradually agreed. Different hands had shaped a single set of instructions.

We followed the latest recipe and left our labelled tile to be fired. When I returned the next morning, its colour matched the sample on the shelf. Nobody treated this as a surprise. The tutor simply dated the page and added a brief note about the result. A fresh line had joined the older handwriting. The reliable instruction in the centre of the page had grown from years of attention around its edges, and it would remain reliable only if somebody kept adding what they observed.

Analyse how the writer uses language and structure to interest and engage the reader.

In your answer, consider:

• language features and techniques
• structural techniques
• the effect on the reader.

Support your views with detailed reference to the extract.