Intro to Ceramic Glazes, Meet our Glaze Sommelier!
What do you do when you find yourself running a pottery studio, and leading a pottery club? Well if you are anything like us you sign up or workshops, jump on the phone with your local clay distributor, and brushing up on your math skills.
Danielle, our club co-founder, studio manager, and honorary glaze sommelier is doing just that. As our studio manager, she helps facilitate club nights, maintain equipment, and oversee the Wheel & Slab glaze and grind room.
As an undergraduate student at Alfred University, studying ceramics, Danielle took a comprehensive glaze materials course. As an employee at the Turk Hill Craft School, she mixed, tested, and used multiple glazes. So why take the course again if she has experience already?
Because, as she puts it “glazes seem to have an infinite number of configurations, considerations, and exclamations.” And for her, understanding what makes the glazes work, is important to a community studio's success.
Adding “Ceramic glazes can crawl, craze, bloat and crackle. They can vary in color, and fire to a number of cones, and temperatures. They can be glossy or matte, underfired, and overfired.”
With glazes there always seems to be an opportunity to learn something new. The chemicals in our glazes interact, counteract, flux, and help form glassy surfaces we love. And the better we understand how the individual chemicals in our glazes interact. This makes troubleshooting easier, glaze exploration more fun, and glaze making much more fulfilling.
Lucky for us, Danielle was willing to take time out of her busy schedule to sit down and give us a primer on what glazes are and how they work.
Pictured: Danielle, with a sample mug glazes in her new Peacock blue glaze
An Interview with the our Pottery Studio’s Ceramic Glaze Sommelier
I jokingly called you a sommelier, but I mean, is that kind of what you do when are making, analyzing, and creating glazes, right?
Danielle: Kind of yeah. I’m a tastemaker. All I’m looking for are delicious surfaces. Surfaces that are super glowy, and have a lot of dimension and surface breaking.
So for those reading along, in the simplest way possible how would you explain what a ceramic glaze is?
Danielle: A glaze is a glass, with a crystalline matrix of clay. More simply, glazes are a glass coating that we apply to ceramics to create a more usable, and interesting surface on our piece. Not all glazes are equal, some are better for decorative purposes, while others are more stable and food safe.
So how do we apply glazes, is there more than one way to apply them?
Danielle: Glazes are typically applied to a pot by spraying, brushing, and dipping. But there are many other ways to apply a glaze, too many to count.
What is your favorite glaze or glaze combo?
Danielle: Currently my favorite glaze is my peacock glaze, that I made in the Ceramics Materials Workshop Class. It is a beautiful, dark blue that breaks well over textured surfaces. Revealing the detail underneath.
Are the glazes we use on pottery all made of the same materials?
Danielle: No, well yes and no. There are 5 key roles in a ceramic glaze at Cone 6 that need to be considered in materials. Cone 10 is a bit different. But with Cone 6 our glazes have to have Boron, Silica, Alumina, Alkali Metal, and Alkaline Earth. All of these things can be found on the periodic table, you know, that table that we all learned about and loved in high school. Now that I say that, it feels so long ago!
So what do these materials do, how do they work together?
Danielle: Without getting too confusing, simply put, each material plays a role in helping the glaze form. Some materials help make the glass form, others change the color of the glaze, and others help the glaze melt when the temperature isn’t high enough.
What are you doing to learn about glazes and improving your glaze recipe making skills?
Danielle: I’ve been taking some online courses with Matt Katz, to refresh my knowledge. The course covers chemistry, technical concerns, and chemical concerns while making glazes. I love it because it makes everything less of a mystery, and more of a science, and I believe in science.
Would you recommend others check out the course?
Danielle: I highly recommend it, it’s a very valuable course, and Matt and Rose do a great job putting the courses, workshops, and programs together. It has served as a great refresher for me, and I look forward to applying the concepts I have learned to the glazes we use at Wheel & Slab Pottery Club!
Interested in Learning More About Glazes?
If you are interested in learning more about glazes, how they are formulated, and how they work, check out the Ceramics Material Workshop. They offer a variety of courses, and cover a wide range of glaze related topics.
Stay tuned to our website and social media pages for more information about our pottery club, and the new glazes Danielle is working hard to create!
(Disclaimer, Please don’t taste the glazes. Really, don’t.)
Article Sources
https://www.ceramicmaterialsworkshop.com/. Accessed 4 December 2022.
