Tech Tuesday: Tips to Start Making Your Own Glazes
- , by Haley Stanaford
- 3 min reading time
After taking a semester of clay and glaze formulation, I have mixed my share of glazes. Mixing glazes, while seeming very scary, is not as hard as you may think!
Here are some tips to help get you started:
Be ready to fail (but in a good way)
Making and testing your own glazes comes with a lot of failures, whether that be the glaze looking not quite how you wanted, it coming out with defects, or any other reason. Through failing, you will learn so much about glazes, materials, ceramics, and how to move forward than any other way of teaching. Once you fail, you can try a new method and keep on testing!
Test. Over and over again.
Testing (unfortunately) is not a one and done thing. To get the results you want you have to test over and over again, changing factors each time until you reach your goal. This can be daunting and rough at times but you have to stick it out until the end to get your best results!
Ask for Help when you need it
You don’t have to learn all of this alone! Other people have probably done similar tests and have posted their results online. Do not be afraid to get advice from other people’s experiences and recipes they have made! Glazy.org is an incredibly helpful resource where other people post photos and recipes that people can use and test on their own.
Another incredibly helpful resource is digitalfire.com. Tony Hansen has created the best website with so much information about materials, recipes, and processes that I have seen. It is my go to resource when looking into anything in ceramics and has helped me countless times.
And don’t forget about books either! John Britt has two INCREDIBLE books about making glazes and recipes in Mid Fire Glazes and High Fire Glazes, both written by John Britt.
Get Some Proper PPE and be informed
Making glazes is dangerous. Make sure you always wear a mask and have proper ventilation when working with dry materials. In some cases, it is important to wear gloves as well for particularly hazardous materials.
Make sure you know the level of danger the material brings to you when working with it so you can take the proper precautions.
Keep the main ingredients around
I think it would be helpful to always have the most used ingredients around when making glazes, so you can be ready to use them if needed. Some common ones are G200, EPK, OM4, Nepheline Syenite, Whiting (Calcium Carbonate), and Silica 325 mesh. While this in no way is a compressive or universal list, I have noticed these are used a lot in glaze recipes. It is fully possible that for your practice, the list is different because of your different glaze usage but looking broadly at recipes, these are pretty common.
Haley Stanaford is currently a Post Baccalaureate student in ceramics at the University of Kansas where she is currently taking a Clay and Glaze Formulation taught by Colby Charpentier in addition to her studio practice. She also is a Sales Representative at Bracker’s Good Earth Clays in Lawrence, Kansas.
