Learn to Make Glazes

When I first started doing pottery, long before I knew how glazes worked, bought this book called Techniques with Slip based purely on the front cover. I just love the look of those bowls by

Turned out they were the only thing in the book I actually liked the look of and even though Yo Thom had provided her recipes for the book, I was a noob and didn’t understand them at all.

However! I decided to have another look last night and not only are the recipes now clear as day, I already have all the materials for them in my studio.

So this is the slip coating - made from cobalt oxide, manganese dioxide, nickel oxide, red iron oxide and kaolin. It’s applied while leather-hard and then, after carving, it will be bisqued. Next step after that is applying a tin white glaze over the top.

The glaze recipe is high fire, so I made a plate and test tole from JB1, and the other, darker, plate is the I just made on the weekend. No idea what its firing temp is yet so it may need a different glaze recipe.

For the carving I used Kemper tool with a tiny loop and a Diamond Core football shaped diamond tip. The wild clay was a bit soft so the loop was better for it. While the diamond tip was fine for the commercial clay which was more leather-hard. Was easier to get straight lines with it too. It made more boogers, but they were easy to wipe away.

pieces glazed and fired. Just waiting for the kiln to cool now.

I wanted the same coverage as the 3 second dip on the tile but that’s hard to do when painting on. I did fill and pour the bowl but it wasn’t absorbent enough after painting the outside. Oh well, sometimes messy glazing leads to interesting results.

Glazes are Buttercream and Bamboo

      #セラミックス  #陶器        #陶瓷  #도기류  #도예

This is the test tiles group by glaze. In order they Buttercream ( ), Moon Rays ( ), Fondant ( ), Bamboo ( ), Copha ( ) and Smooth Matte White ( ).

Buttercream is my favourite and I think the most practical.

Fondant is interesting in that it cracked apart 3 tiles. It works fine on commercial clay. And none of them crazed.

 

We have from left to right , , , and . The second photo shows what each glaze is and how the clay looks unglazed. It’s amazing the colour difference glaze makes.

I’ll be doing a post on each glaze following this one.

These tiles were fired at cone 10 and the firing lasted 8 hours.

Glazes are Buttercream ( ), Copha ( ), Fondant ( ), Bamboo ( ), Smooth Matte White ( ) and Moon Rays ( ).

 

Six different glazes on 5 different high fire wild clays. I’ll fire them to cone 10 in the morning. Clays are and

Glazes are Buttercream ( ), Copha ( ), Fondant ( ), Bamboo ( ), Smooth Matte White ( ) and Moon Rays ( ).

 

This cake is a vanilla cake with peach mousse and brown sugar swiss meringue buttercream. The recipe is from Lomelino’s cakes, but I adapted it to be bento cake sized. Well, bento cake diameter. It’s taller than the previous cakes because of the mousse layers so It doesn’t fit in a burger box.

I need to work on my piping skills, but I have 2 more to decorate so hopefully I’ll get better.

This is DeBoos 137 It's a great example of the experiment. It's meant to be a satin matt, and it is at cone 10, but it actually looks nicer when fired to cone 6 - you can see why someone might think it's actually fine to fire at cone 6.

Plus the map predicts it will craze and is does, pretty badly, on both clay bodies. The only version that didn't craze ios the clear, which is way off to the right, well out of the crazing region. It's got a lot of bubbles though, so not a great clear gloss.

These 4 tiles are
1) the original glaze fired to cone 10
2) the original glaze fired to cone 6
3) adjusted to be a cone 6 matt ( )
4) adjusted to be a cone 6 gloss ( )

Copper Gloss is a great example of converting to cone 6 and matt.

The matt has a lovely texture - it actually feels more like a strontium glaze. It does have some crazing, but I think it would be worth pushing it up a bit to see how it looks further from the craze region.

These 6 tiles are
1) the original glaze fired to cone 10
2) the original glaze fired to cone 6
3) adjusted to be a cone 6 matt ( ) - neutral
4) adjusted to be a cone 6 matt ( ) - colourants
5) adjusted to be a cone 6 gloss ( ) - neutral
6) adjusted to be a cone 6 gloss ( ) - colourants

Clear durable is a basic clear glaze that converted really well to both matt and cone 6. It's a bit hard to tell, but it is slightly less glossy when the cone 10 recipe is fired to cone 6. I think by itself you'd think that tile was fine. But compared to the cone 10 tile or the cone 6 recipe you can see it's underfired.

These 4 tiles are
1) the original glaze fired to cone 10
2) the original glaze fired to cone 6
3) adjusted to be a cone 6 matt ( )
4) adjusted to be a cone 6 gloss ( )

Chance's Opal is a lovely opalescent glaze that makes great use of phase separation. My experiments with it here were not that successful, but they do provide some information. Like, underfiring this makes a huge difference. The cone 10 version fired at cone 6 is awful, and while my cone 6 version is better, it's kind of in between the 2.

So the sensible next experiment would be increasing the boron in the cone 6 glaze to get it to flow more. Though I think the clay body made a little difference too.

These 6 tiles are
1) the original glaze fired to cone 10
2) the original glaze fired to cone 6
3) adjusted to be a cone 6 matt ( ) - neutral
4) adjusted to be a cone 6 matt ( ) - colourants
5) adjusted to be a cone 6 gloss ( ) - neutral
6) adjusted to be a cone 6 gloss ( ) - colourants

This glaze is called Burgundy ( ) because the original is a dark tin/chrome glaze. These are all versions without colourants. I didn't test the cone 6 glazes with tin/chrome, but that would be interesting to do.

These 4 tiles are
1) the original glaze fired to cone 10
2) the original glaze fired to cone 6
3) adjusted to be a cone 6 matt ( )
4) adjusted to be a cone 6 gloss ( )

You might notice that the cone 10 version fired to cone 6 is glossy. It's not quite as glossy as the one fired to cone 10, but you probably wouldn't notice if you didn't have them side by side.

The "matt" one is very crazed - unsurprising for where it is. What's more surprising is that the cone 10 at cone 6 one IS crazed. I didn't anticipate that. Also, the matt one isn't matt at all. It can be tricky getting matts so low down on the map.

To really dial in this recipe as a mid fire matt would require testing with colourants so you could add a lot more alumina and see how that affected the colour. Alumina amounts is one of the many things that tin/chrome glazes are sensitive to.

This one is Bronze Chinese Strontium, though the cone 10 version doesn't have colourants in it ( ). Though I think I actually just messed up and only left out the copper.

These 6 tiles are
1) the original glaze fired to cone 10
2) the original glaze fired to cone 6
3) adjusted to be a cone 6 matt ( ) - neutral
4) adjusted to be a cone 6 matt ( ) - colourants
5) adjusted to be a cone 6 gloss ( ) - neutral
6) adjusted to be a cone 6 gloss ( ) - colourants

I find it interesting just how different the gloss is from the matt. How much the gloss crazed compared to the matt. How much the matt with colourants looks like the original and how different neutral is from my neutral cone 10 version (though that may be a mixing mistake),