Started working on crystalline glazes this past week. I decided to try 15 different glazes,
thinking that I get lucky with at least one of them. I mixed up 200 gram batches of each glaze;
they all have the same basic ingredients but vary slightly with the
amounts. I added water and painted my
test pieces, and let the kiln rip. I was
pretty excited to see the results, and when I first looked in the peep hole and
saw some crystals I got really excited. I
was so excited in fact that I pulled all the plugs and cracked the lid, even
though the kiln was still at 900 degrees Fahrenheit. Which isn’t the smartest thing to do with a
glaze firing, it could possible cause the glazes to crack or might even crack a
pot. But this was just a test firing and
I wasn’t that worried about them cracking.
Here are a few pictures of what came out of the kiln this time.
I sorted the results into three categories, no crystals, few
crystals, and good crystals. It worked
out that there were five in each group.
The next step is to take the best five glazes and make big batches of
them and start testing them with colorants.
So stay tuned for these crystalline glazes live in Technicolor, or
something like that….
