Test tiles!
Hooray for summer break! And hooray for new glazes! Here are a few glazes that I recently tested:
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- Tomato Red
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- Jen’s Juicy Fruit with Iron
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- Jen’s Juicy Fruit
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- Cream Breaking Rust
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- MC6G Bone White with TiO2
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- FetishGhost ^6 Amber
Most are recipes that I found on the good ol’ world wide web. More technical info below:
Strontium Crystal Magic
This has been developed by Steven Hill to use with other glazes. He suggests applying glazes by spraying. I sprayed the two different versions of SCM onto test tiles with my Siphon Blower and dipped those tiles in each new glaze. I used the recipes from a free PDF from Ceramic Arts Daily. I think you have to sign up on their site to download the free files.
I didn’t use these glazes by themselves but I tried each version with every other new glaze that I tested. Mostly with great results.
Strontium Crystal Magic—Warm
Cone 6
Lithium Carbonate. . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5 %
Strontium Carbonate . . . . . . . . . . 12.6
Whiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17.3
Ferro Frit 3124. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4.5
Custer Feldspar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45.9
EPK Kaolin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15.2
Add:
Titanium Dioxide 13.8 %
Yellow Iron Oxide 2.8 %
Bentonite 2.3 %
Combine with iron-saturated glazes for rich
earth tones
Strontium Crystal Magic—Cool
Cone 6
Lithium Carbonate. . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7 %
Strontium Carbonate . . . . . . . . . . 12.4
Whiting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16.8
Ferro Frit 3124. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5.7
Custer Feldspar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.5
Nepheline Syenite . . . . . . . . . . . . 22.5
EPK Kaolin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14.4
Add:
Titanium Dioxide 13.5 %
Bentonite 2.0 %
Combine with glazes containing either copper
or cobalt to develop icy colors
Bone White with TiO2
This one isn’t exactly new. I mixed up a bucket of Bone White from Mastering Cone 6 Glazes a while ago. But it wasn’t quite what I was hoping for so I’m trying Titanium Dioxide instead of Rutile. (My original batch with rutile was more yellow than I had hoped, especially compared to my original test tile results. It was pretty similar to the images in the MC6G book though.) The TiO2 seems to have done the trick – more of a white than a soft yellow.
20 % Frit 3195 29 % Wollastonite 4 % Nepheline Syenite 30 % EPK 17 % Silica ----------------- Add: 6 % Titanium Dioxide
I also tried this recipe with 4% TiO2 and 8% TiO2 but 4% was too transparent and 8% started turning chalk yellow.
Cream Breaking Rust
I found a group of glaze tests on Flickr by Alisa Clausen. It looks like there are two similar glazes with slightly different recipes here and here. (I used the 2nd recipe.)
26.6 Feldspar–Custer
3.3 Strontium Carbonate
30.6 Frit–Ferro 3134
10.6 Wollastonite
2.3 Talc
8.5 Kaolin–EPK
18.2 Silica
100.1 Total
Additives
6 Iron Oxide–Red
13 Tin Oxide
It reminds me a little bit of a shino glaze but it’s pretty glossy. I wonder what it would look like with a controlled cooling or after another bisque fire with decals applied.
FetishGhost’s ^6 Amber
I think I’ve seen a recipe similar to this in other places but I like the FetishGhost blog and his fantastic work. Recipe found here.
30.27 Custer Feldspar
25.65 Whiting
36.53 Silica (325 mesh)
7.55 EPK
add 11.66 Red Iron Oxide
I like this glaze but I don’t think it is quite what I’m looking for. I might try one of those fancy triaxial/quadraxial/currie grids with one of the MC6G base glazes to see if I can come up with something I like even more.
Glazes by John Post
John Post has developed some really nice ^6 glazes and shares recipes on his site.
Jen’s Juicy Fruit
I’ve used a commercial glaze called Coyote Red Gold and it gave me some fantastic effects, especially when combined with other glazes. I’m hoping Jen’s Juicy Fruit will be similar. So far the version with iron seems to be pretty close.
EPK 300 10 %
Gerstley borate 270 9 %
Nepheline syenite 1470 49 %
Silica 360 12 %
Whiting 330 11 %
Lithium carbonate 270 9 %
-------- ------
3000 100 %
Soda ash 300 10 %
Titanium dioxide 150 5 %
Check out some variations here.
Jen’s Juicy Fruit with Iron
EPK 300 10 %
Gerstley borate 270 9 %
Nepheline syenite 1470 49 %
Silica 360 12 %
Whiting 330 11 %
Lithium carbonate 270 9 %
-------- ------
3000 100 %
Soda ash 300 10 %
Rutile 180 6 %
Red Iron Oxide 120 4 %
I found this recipe here. There is also another version here.
Tomato Red
Go check out John’s site for tips on firing. He uses a controlled cool down to bring out the red. I let my kiln cool naturally this time to see what the glazes would look like. As you can tell from the photo I got more of a “rotten tomato” or “tomato black” in my regular firing. While testing decals I noticed that some of my glazes changed drastically with the additional bisque fire and I wonder how similar it is to a controlled cooling. I’ll have to try some of this tomato red in an extra bisque fire to see if it brings out the red. Maybe I’ll even try some controlled cooling at some point.
Frit 3134 11 %
Spodumene 11.8%
Bone ash 7.9%
Magnesium carb 6.3%
Whiting 7.9%
EPK 21.6%
Flint 21.7%
Nepheline syenite 11.8%
————-
100 %
Bentonite 2%
Red iron oxide 10%
Conclusion
I’m pretty excited about these new glazes. Especially the Cream Breaking Rust and Jen’s Juicy Fruit. I’m looking forward to trying them on some real pots!
This turned into quite a post. I hope it will be useful for someone else but I do it mostly for myself. I don’t know how many times I’ve looked back at this blog to remember a recipe or what glaze I used or when something actually happened. If you have any tips or other great glazes let me know! Thanks for reading.