Glaze Making

To date I have been using either commercial brush on glazes mainly Mayco or Amaco brand, or the glazes already mixed in the ceramics department. I knew I needed to have a go at making my own, it made sense for lots of reasons and I also know it’s an important step in my learning and development as a ceramic artist. 

Making glazes has always felt quite daunting to me, but having gone through the process of actually making a base glaze and adding different colourants, I realised how much it could teach me about understanding what the different materials involved in ceramics do. I referred back to what we had been taught in the glaze session, and had forgotten about how much maths was involved in getting the right mixture of ingredients. I have noted in my Blue Glaze note Book the recipe I used a simple white base glaze by Linda Bloomfield, then I added different oxides in varying percentages. 

I have added some images of the glaze test just for reference, it’s fair to say some worked better than others, some were boring and some just very lacking in character and interest. I did layer a couple together to see what would happen as well. I need to repeat the ones I liked and look more consistency in how they are applied in order to try and establish a body of glazes I can use in my work. Still lots to learn and a long way to go but I really enjoyed the process and even managed to operate the triple beam balance scales too!

As I had experienced problems with Black Clay body and glaze I thought it would be a good idea to test the glazes with black clay to see how they reacted, I also had applied white slip to one side of the black clay testers so I could get a sense of what the colour would look like when the Manganese in the black clay wasn’t dominating the reaction to the glaze.