Working with clay bodies and glaze materials is not unlike the pleasure one gets from cooking and baking. To pick a sweet melon, you learn to use your nose, while to pick a perfectly ripe avocado, you learn to use a gentle squeeze test. Once you understand your ingredients, you learn to add the herbs, spices and combinations that delight the senses. And in sharing your finds, you honor those that have so generously taught you, share a gift of yourself to those that follow, and elevate the entire art to new levels of experience, understanding, and appreciation. It is with great pleasure that I share these materials and recipes with you, if you are at all interested.
My clay body is a mid-range porcelain, bisque fired to cone 06 and glaze fired in an electric kiln to cone 6. Most often my work is multi-glazed fired for the depth in colors I love. In addition, I sometimes add luster and/or metallic and fire these to cone 018. While I have recently been using a Tucker Clay #C-050-005, I most often use a body I developed with low expansion, thermal shock resistance, plastic and minimum shrinkage as follows:
LANCE’S CONE SIX WHITE PORCELAIN:
Grolleg 25
Kentucky Ball Clay 15
XX Sagger 25
AP Green 10
Petalite 9
Custer Feldspar 5
Talc 1
Flint 10
Construction techniques I use to create my work is dependent on what I am trying to accomplish. Many pieces, such as the frog mugs, ram mugs, and bloodroot bowl, start from the wheel and are altered, with handbuilt embellishments added. Honey spoons, tulip mugs and flutes, butterfly fish trays are all handbuilt using slabs, coils and/or pinching. Oval serving dishes start on a plaster hump mold. The large budded vase was coil built, while the ‘lifted spirits’ vase started out slumped on canvas draped over two precut plywood forms.
At the time I am typing this document, there are 261 tupperware-like containers of colored glazes on my shelf, and 22 containers of colored slip. I had not counted them before this! In addition, I use 24 different colors of commercial lusters/metallics and 57 of Amaco’s Lug and Velvet underglazes. The glaze tiles on the walls of my studio reflect those that work for me. In the basement is a collection of test tiles that are duds, but someday may become mosaic material for paths through my gardens! I love glaze testing as much as I love using the occasional good, unctuous color results.
All of my glazing is done with a brush, with the exception of a cone 6 majolica I have developed. This is the only glaze in a bucket, and where the work is dunked. Then it is finished with oxides and brush work.
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There is no material in my studio that contains lead. While I do use Barium Carbonate and some Manganese in my glazes, it is only for outside surfaces that do not come in contact with food or lips! I also use a lot of textured glazes, and the same thing applies. So please, before you use these glazes…..test them….and use them responsibly. Keep in mind that my clay body is a low expansion body, and I've used or modified glazes to fit.
Many people need to be thanked for these recipes….Val Cushing, Linda Arbuckle, John Hesselberth and Ron Roy (in their book ‘Mastering cone 6 Glazes”), and so many others that have shared their recipes either directly or through publication. Several, of course, are from my own research.
Lots of Crystals
Custer Feldspar 18
Potassium Carb 3
Ferro CZ108-3 50
Zinc Oxide 29
8 Mason Praseodymium Yellow
Yellow crystals in cream but RUNS like crazy.
Try only one coat first.
Floating Blue
(Pottery Making Summer 01)
Neph Sy 47.3
Ger Borate 27
Flint 20.3
EPK 5.4
2 RIO
1 CO
4 Rutile
Iron Saturated #8
RIO 14
Whiting 19
Cornwall Stone 19
EPK 24
Flint 24
12 Ferro Frit 2195
5 Bone Ash
Margo’s Sixth
Kona F-4 32
Flint 25
Ferro Frit 3124 12
Whiting 8
Strontium 7
Magnesium 6
EPK 10
10 Spectrum Nectarine Stain
McDermott Clear
Gerstley Borate 50
EPK 17.5
Flint 32.5
Custer 20
Beautiful clear for over underglazes and colored slips
My Zinc
Neph Sy 36
Wollastonite 13
Zinc Oxide 10
EPK 10
Flint 31
5 Mason Golden Ambrosia
Also
5 Mason Fawn, 2 Zircopax
Nutmeg
(Ceramics Monthly 10/04)
Dolomite 23.3
Frit 3134 6.8
Spodumene 23.3
OM4 23.3
Flint 23.3
2 Bentonite, 1 RIO, 3.25 Yellow Ocher, 5 Tin OX
MORE TO COME!!!