Saltglaze — the hard stoneware fired with salt thrown into the kiln at high temperature, producing a distinctive pitted "orange peel" surface — appears in poems about English and German craft as the texture of honest utility; A poem about a Staffordshire tavern in the eighteenth century might describe the saltglaze mug: "the surface pitted like hammered pewter, the grip sure — a mug that knew its purpose"; The saltglaze process — salt vapour bonding with silica in the clay at the moment of vitrification — gives poets an image of transformation: "the salt thrown in at the last moment, at the highest heat — the surface changed forever in an instant"; In a poem about Nottingham or Derbyshire stoneware, the saltglaze jug is the shape of working-class drinking: "no gloss, no painting — only the pits in the surface catching the light of the fire they had passed through"; The smell of saltglaze firing — hydrochloric acid gas produced by the salt — gives poems about industrial craft a sensory detail that reaches beyond the visual; A poem about the revival of saltglaze by studio potters might describe the deliberate choice of an old technique: "he threw the salt at white heat, as the old potters did — wanting the surface that could not be planned, only invited."