Art by Fuzzy

Pottery, Photography, Design - Brandon "Fuzzy" Schwartz

Glaze Tests – Early Summer 2012

Finally…

I finally have some glaze test results from early summer. I decided if I was going to share them I may as well go all out and make them useful for anyone else that might be testing ^6 glazes in oxidation. If you click one of the six images below you should see the full-size, more readable images.

All base glazes are from the fabulous book: Mastering Cone 6 Glazes (affiliate link).

High Calcium Semimatte Base 2

I’m interested in developing some semi-matte glazes to add a little surface variety to my work. Here are two groups of test tiles with the High Calcium Semimatte 2 from Mastering Cone 6 Glazes (pg. 89).

High Calcium Semimatte 2 Red Iron Oxide and Rutile

High Calcium Semimatte 2 Red Iron Oxide and Rutile

High Calcium Semimatte 2 Rutile and Red Iron Oxide

High Calcium Semimatte 2 Rutile and Red Iron Oxide

I was really impressed with these two groups of glazes. I plan to use at least a few of these in the future after some more testing. I have already tested this base glaze with some more colorant combinations. It should be noted that the first tile in the bottom image is the “Bone” glaze from the book and the third tile is “Raw Sienna” both mentioned on page 90.

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Glaze Tests – Spring 2012

My first attempt at mixing my own glazes!

After reading most of Mastering Cone 6 Glazes by Ron Roy and John Hessleberth, here are my results. (Finally!) I decided to focus on just one base glaze, the Glossy Clear Liner and then add some colorants to get some idea of what they do. Below are some photos of the finished Warm Brown Stoneware test tiles after being fired to cone 6. Click the images to get to a bigger, more readable version.

glossy clear liner 1

glossy clear liner 1

For Group 1 (above) I started with the Glossy Clear Liner on the left and then add some Red Iron Oxide and Rutile. The upper left corners of each tile were double dipped. The cups have the first glaze in the lineup poured inside and the last glaze brushed on the outside.

All percentages should be regarded as approximations. I’m pretty sure my measuring was accurate but I was working with small 200g batches.

glossy clear liner 2

glossy clear liner 2

Group 2 has the Glossy Clear Liner base glaze plus varying amounts of Cobalt Carbonate, Rutile and Copper Carbonate.

glossy clear liner 3

glossy clear liner 3

Group 3 has varying amounts of Cobalt Carbonate, Rutile and Red Iron Oxide.

After this first glaze mixing adventure I feel like I learned a lot. It was interesting to see the results but I feel like I learned how to make the process a lot more efficient. I recently mixed some more test batches and it seemed to go a little quicker. I also used larger increments when adding colorants. This first batch changed the colorant by 1 or 2% each time which doesn’t produce much difference from glaze to glaze. Now I hope to run some tests on my results and pick out a few to concentrate on. I’ll have to order some more materials to make some bigger batches.

I’ll try to post the results of the glaze fire that I just finished soon.