New Glaze Tests

Glazing is the one pottery task that I have struggled to embrace.  I am always worried that I have messed up a beautiful piece and there is not much you can do about it.  In addition, waiting 24 hours to see if you did screw up is excruciatingly painful for a person not blessed with patience.  I have found that documenting my tests is making the process more bearable, even fun.  The tests below are done on a medium dark stoneware clay.  Some of the colors we use regularly and others are new.  As always, if you have questions or want recipes, just ask!

This is one of our favorites.  It is Celestial Blue over Red Gold.  It is drippy and runny often drips on our shelves.  But, if we are careful it makes beautiful pots.

 Red painted over Red Gold.  This combination is pretty stable and doesn't run.  It does vary in the redness.

 I was pretty excited to try this combination and a little disappointed in the results.  This is Moss painted over Red Gold.  It started as a stripe of paint, and as you can see, ended up a blob of color because it ran so bad.

 This tile is Celestial Blue.  We use this as an accent color a lot.  It is nice alone or on top of other colors.

 This is Tom Grey Red.  We love it alone or with other colors layered on top.

 Scapes.  This is a glaze combo that starts with Tom Grey Red as a base and has orange, red and blue layered on top.  It is slightly unpredictable as it can turn out with very vibrant colors or muted with lots of gold like the tile on the left.

 This is the most interesting test I did.  I think we may have mixed the glaze wrong.  This is called Field Mouse Brown.  It looks very black except for where the glaze broke over the number.  We will be mixing and testing this again.

 Spearmint with some alterations.  I love this color but it didn't photograph very well.  It has some hints of blue green in it.  I think we will be mixing another batch and see if we can lighten it up just a little bit.





This is Everglade.  It looks a lot like the Gun Metal Green that we already use.





I am already working on the tiles for my next glaze.   I am hoping in the next month or so we will have some new colors to put in our Etsy shop.

First Glaze of 2012

Our first glaze went well. The kiln fired perfectly after being repaired and the studio is getting back to normal. I have decided that as we expand we need to document our glazes better. Arne and I are always trying new glazes and we don't always remember which recipes we have tried and if we like them because we usually sell the little pots we test on.

I can spend hours looking for new glaze colors and it is hard to find pictures of glaze tests done

on the dark stoneware we use. I hope the tests I post will help other potters in search of glaze recipes with pictures. We use a combination of our own mixed and purchased glazes and fire to a true cone six. If you have questions about the glazes or recipes, just ask. We are happy to share.

This is Muted Gold. It is a stable glaze and doesn't run much. It is rich and we don't use it as

much as we should so I will be doing tests with this layered with other glazes.

Ron Roy's Sapphire Blue. Beautiful glaze

that is runny if applied too thick. I have

been experimenting with this glaze

as I have had requests for pieces

in this color. I have struggled

with it, but for some reason

it behaved perfectly in this firing and

I think I have figured out the trick

to using it!

Eggshell. This has a blue tint to it

and looks thin on our dark clay. It is not one of my favorites and now I remember why!

Antique Iron. I love this glaze because it breaks to a rusty brown and there are hints of green and blue. It is nice layered with other glazes (sometimes runny) and this picture does not do it justice.

Autumn Frost. You can't tell in this picture but this is a little iridescent. I wanted a base tile for this as I am going to experiment layering this with other colors.

Tile was dipped in Autumn Frost, dried and then dipped in Due's White. I wasn't impressed with the results.

This one is interesting and I am going to experiment with it more. It was dipped in Tom Grey's Red, dried and then dipped in Antique Iron. It isn't the honey color I was hoping for but I like it.

I tried a variation of this on a cup in an attempt to get a rustic looking red. It turned out almost gold. I haven't decided if I like it or not. The tile was dipped in Licorice, dried and then dipped in Tom Grey's Red.

The base on this tile is Shino. We use it a lot. I dipped this one in Shino and put a strip of Moss Green across the middle. Again, I was not impressed with the result.

Moss Green. I love this glaze and I will be doing more tests with it.

Eggplant. It has some interesting blue, purple and green in it. I am going to try layering it over some other glazes.

January Fire

The weather is still unseasonably warm here. There is no snow and the warm days have me thinking of yard and outdoor projects that can't be worked on until spring. We did take advantage of the warmer nights and built a fire on the deck -- one of my favorite things in the world. I could live by the fire on the deck. It is so awesome to me to look at the mountains, listen to music, watch the fire and drink a little wine with my sweetie. He isn't always up for my fire obsession -- but I usually end up convincing him.

The kiln is now fixed so pot production is slowly getting back to the regular schedule. Our test fire went well, so I re-fired the pots that didn't get finished when the kiln died. That didn't turn out so well. The colors were dull and some of the

glaze was grainy. Mcki was disappointed because she had been waiting so long for her cups and now it will be at least a week or so before I get new ones done. A couple of them turned out okay so at least I won't have to make as many.

Today we will get another glaze going and trim the pots that are drying. We are hoping to have enough pots to do our annual Valentine's show which is coming upon us very quickly. We are also doing some prototype cups for a local business that we hope will carry our pottery in their store.

My daughter, Amy, who gave us the best Christmas gift this year, baby Noah, needs to have surgery this week to have her gall bladder out. I am planning yet another trip to Idaho Falls to help her and also put together her baby shower with my daughter-in-law, Taunya. Because Taunya has already printed and sealed the invitations, we are hoping that we don't end up having a shower without the guest of honor!

January started a little slow but is being quickly filled with the chaos we are used to with our pottery business and growing family. We are so blessed that we have beautiful, happy (most of the time) children, a growing business and our little sanctuary in the beautiful mountains of Montana.

Weird weather and other random stuff

It is January 3, 2012. Arne and Mcki are both back at work and school and things feel like they are getting back to normal after a whirlwind holiday season. Except for the weather. It is a little unsettling that the temperatures are in the mid 40s and are expected to stay that way for the week.

It was a beautiful sunny, warm (for Montana winter) day yesterday and it put me into spring cleaning and purging mode, which is unsettling in itself to Arne who is always worried about what treasures I have thrown away. I now know to bury them deep in the garbage so he won't see them until he goes to the dump and empties the trash. When he finally does see them it is too late to dig them out of the landfill in front of the workers. :-) When I got tired of cleaning, I thought about skiing or snowshoeing but there is NO snow. How weird. I almost got my bike out. I went down to the studio instead.

The studio is still torn apart because our kiln needs a relay switch. Now the kiln is a person to me. Her name is Ursula and I talk to her all the time when I am in the studio about pots and the glazes they will be covered in. It is a little sad to see her laying there in need of attention (along with the pots that need to be re-fired) and our hands are tied because the Bray won't be open until Thursday. In addition, I have been thinking about changing the clay I use and it is driving me crazy. I want to use a lighter color to get some truer glaze colors, but because I primarily throw baking ware I am hesitant to change to a potentially weaker clay body. Nobody can tell me if the clay I want to use is a true stoneware.

In the end, I went upstairs to find new glaze recipes to see if I can find that perfect green that I am always searching for that will work on the dark stoneware I am using. Maybe today will be the day I find it.