How to duplicate this?

[Dust Devil]

The AMACO site has the following image to show how their layered glazes look. I'm not convinced their colors are totally accurate, but I really like the vertical yellow stripes because they make it look like the mug is glowing from the inside. The clay is buff-colored, so I doubt they look that yellow, so I was considering an underglaze. Any thoughts as to the sequence of steps? My guess is a dip into the base coat, top coat poured over, with a wax resist around the rim. I'm not sure about the vertical stripes....scraped off?

 

[liambesaw]

I think the stripes are the glazes breaking over texture.  It looks fluted.  Amaco glazes are really predictable and if you follow the directions you should end up with something similar.  Have to be careful to read the directions for each bottle though, some say to paint 3 coats, some say to paint 1 coat, some say to paint over another glaze, etc.

 

[Dust Devil]

Thank you...fluting does make more sense. Do you think AMACO provides directions for achieving this effect? They don't on the website.

[oldlady]

there is a website for potters who use commercial glazes.   i think it is something like   "cone 6 pottery" or some such.  it does say cone 6 in the title.

[JohnnyK]

While the Amaco glazes and layering suggestions are pretty predictable as Liambesaw suggests, you have to do your own experiments to get the results you might like. Their website does have images submitted by their users with the # of layers used for a particular combination of glazes and I think these are a better indication of results you might expect. As for the image above, they do use a fluted cup, but the way the glaze combo breaks is unpredictable. One method you might use to get a similar effect would be to use an underglaze to provide the yellow stripes, cover them with wax resist, then do the layering combo. It looks like the second layer is started below the rim in this case. I've been layering Amaco glazes for about 5 years now and have come up with some pretty spectacular FX. Go to my profile and check out my album...

JohnnyK

[Dust Devil]

12 hours ago, oldlady said:

there is a website for potters who use commercial glazes.   i think it is something like   "cone 6 pottery" or some such.  it does say cone 6 in the title.

Could it be "Cone 6 Pots" ?

https://cone6pots.ning.com/

[oldlady]

glad you found it.  

[Dust Devil]

12 hours ago, JohnnyK said:

Their website does have images submitted by their users with the # of layers used for a particular combination of glazes and I think these are a better indication of results you might expect.

Great thought....but they still don't provide enough detail for a newbie. For instance, when they say three coats, are they brushing, dipping, or pouring? For dipping, my instructor said for a thicker coat, keep the item submerged longer. Why would you ever need more than 1 coat of the same glaze? I've got three books on glazing techniques and, to my mind, they gloss over (ha!) some of the details that newbie really needs to know. My fantasy book would take a single mug and glaze it with 100 different techniques.

12 hours ago, JohnnyK said:

As for the image above, they do use a fluted cup, but the way the glaze combo breaks is unpredictable.

Could they be brushing to help control where the glaze goes? I saw an AMACO video where Karen, who does the glazing on AMACO advertising pots, brushed everything on.

 

12 hours ago, JohnnyK said:

I've been layering Amaco glazes for about 5 years now and have come up with some pretty spectacular FX. Go to my profile and check out my album...

Some stunningly beautiful work!

 

[Chilly]

There is also a Facebook group for Amoco 5/6 and for Potter's Choice.  I was a member of PC, but got bored so left.

 

[Dust Devil]

5 minutes ago, Chilly said:

There is also a Facebook group for Amoco 5/6 and for Potter's Choice.  I was a member of PC, but got bored so left.

 

Just joined, thank you!

[JohnnyK]

59 minutes ago, Dust Devil said:

Great thought....but they still don't provide enough detail for a newbie. For instance, when they say three coats, are they brushing, dipping, or pouring? For dipping, my instructor said for a thicker coat, keep the item submerged longer. Why would you ever need more than 1 coat of the same glaze? I've got three books on glazing techniques and, to my mind, they gloss over (ha!) some of the details that newbie really needs to know. My fantasy book would take a single mug and glaze it with 100 different techniques.

Could they be brushing to help control where the glaze goes? I saw an AMACO video where Karen, who does the glazing on AMACO advertising pots, brushed everything on.

 

Some stunningly beautiful work!

 

All of the PC glazes are designed for brushing and, yes, you can control where the glazes go to a limited extent. In the case of the cup in ??? I would say that the ironstone was started below the rim and lightly brushed in the lighter colored flutes (maybe one or 2 coats instead of 3). The only way to get a feel for what may happen is to glaze a number of pieces in different patterns to see what the outcome is. For the most part, I have found that they should be brushed in the consistency that they come in the jar with a few exceptions … PC31Oatmeal is one. It comes pretty thick in the container and could be thinned a little with water to make it easier to brush. It looks really good over PC33 iron lustre! Test, test, test!

Good Luck... JohnnyK

[Dust Devil]

Argh, I see that you meant that the flutes are where the Ironstone ran into, not the unglazed part. That makes so much more sense. I couldn't figure out how the Ironstone managed to run down between the flutes with flowing into them.

Thanks for your insight.

1 hour ago, JohnnyK said:

All of the PC glazes are designed for brushing and, yes, you can control where the glazes go to a limited extent. In the case of the cup in ??? I would say that the ironstone was started below the rim and lightly brushed in the lighter colored flutes (maybe one or 2 coats instead of 3). The only way to get a feel for what may happen is to glaze a number of pieces in different patterns to see what the outcome is. For the most part, I have found that they should be brushed in the consistency that they come in the jar with a few exceptions … PC31Oatmeal is one. It comes pretty thick in the container and could be thinned a little with water to make it easier to brush. It looks really good over PC33 iron lustre! Test, test, test!

Good Luck... JohnnyK

[Min]

On 11/4/2018 at 10:30 AM, JohnnyK said:

All of the PC glazes are designed for brushing

Pssst, there is a line of Potters Choice dry glazes for dipping also. 

[Dust Devil]

13 hours ago, Min said:

Pssst, there is a line of Potters Choice dry glazes for dipping also. 

I noted that those tend to cost a few hundred $$.

This subject isn't well-handled by the AMACO website. While I'm sure it's obvious to those of you with experience, it never occurred to me that the pre-mixed glazes were primarily designed for brushing, or that they might be formulated slightly different from the dipping glazes. Likewise, it never occurred to me that the example pieces they displayed were brushed, rather than dipped or poured, or that multiple coats suggested brushed glazes.

Part of my blindness is due to our using dipping exclusively in my pottery class, which  made me think of it as the primary means of glazing pottery, with brushing relegated to special situations.

 

 

[liambesaw]

Yeah I'd say most people who mix their own glazes dip n pour, while most people who buy mixed glaze are painting them on.  With the price difference between mixing and buying, I don't think I could ever buy a commercial dipping glaze.  Woof!  I'll save that money for underglazes and stains!

[Min]

1 hour ago, Dust Devil said:

it never occurred to me that the pre-mixed glazes were primarily designed for brushing, or that they might be formulated slightly different from the dipping glazes. Likewise, it never occurred to me that the example pieces they displayed were brushed, rather than dipped or poured, or that multiple coats suggested brushed glazes.

Brushing glazes have additives like gums in the glaze. The gums help the raw glaze flow from the brush onto the bisque easier (they slow the drying down) and more evenly than glazes without gums. If you try brushing a dipping glaze onto bisque you will find the brush will just want to grab onto the pot and stick, very hard to get it to flow without a added brushing medium. Both brushing and dipping (and sprayed or poured) glazes can have more than a single layer but brushing glazes do need more than one coat whereas dipping glazes can be fine with one dip.

Dipping glazes will sometimes contain a gum to help with powdery glazes or hard panning but not an amount high enough to make them suitable for brushing.

Would have to do the math to figure out how many pots you get with a dipping versus a brushing. An advantage brushing has is you don't need a large volume of glaze like you do when dipping a pot. Either way, commercial glazes are going to be more expensive than mixing your own.

I would suggest making up some vertical test tiles, flute them like the cup in the example in your first post. Try different thicknesses and combinations of the two glazes and leave a wide unglazed area at the bottom of the test tiles for the glaze to run.If you have the bottled pre-mixed glazes they will be for brushing, if you have powdered they will be for dipping. I think the Deep Sienna Speckle will break to that yellowish colour over the fluting on a buff colour clay, a little lighter on white clay, I don’t think you need to use underglaze.  

[Dust Devil]

Min, this is a great post for someone trying to make sense of the glazing landscape. I wish I'd had it last week.

I'm not sure that I want the flutes...my guess is that I'd have to make a heavier cup with thicker walls to accommodate them and I think I'm shooting more for a lighter, coffee mug sort of thing. I'll have to play around with a number of options.

Thank you!

 

3 hours ago, Min said:

Brushing glazes have additives like gums in the glaze. The gums help the raw glaze flow from the brush onto the bisque easier (they slow the drying down) and more evenly than glazes without gums. If you try brushing a dipping glaze onto bisque you will find the brush will just want to grab onto the pot and stick, very hard to get it to flow without a added brushing medium. Both brushing and dipping (and sprayed or poured) glazes can have more than a single layer but brushing glazes do need more than one coat whereas dipping glazes can be fine with one dip.

Dipping glazes will sometimes contain a gum to help with powdery glazes or hard panning but not an amount high enough to make them suitable for brushing.

Would have to do the math to figure out how many pots you get with a dipping versus a brushing. An advantage brushing has is you don't need a large volume of glaze like you do when dipping a pot. Either way, commercial glazes are going to be more expensive than mixing your own.

I would suggest making up some vertical test tiles, flute them like the cup in the example in your first post. Try different thicknesses and combinations of the two glazes and leave a wide unglazed area at the bottom of the test tiles for the glaze to run.If you have the bottled pre-mixed glazes they will be for brushing, if you have powdered they will be for dipping. I think the Deep Sienna Speckle will break to that yellowish colour over the fluting on a buff colour clay, a little lighter on white clay, I don’t think you need to use underglaze.  

[Gabby]

I have used Amaco PC a lot. One thing I have learned is that most of the glazes need to be applied very thickly. They have some color samples on the website for each glaze showing you the difference between light, medium, and heavy coats.

Of course when you are beginning you cannot know how heavy is heavy! I would do samples with each glaze separately to see how they will look before trying your layering experiments. 

All the Potters Choice sample things on the site are on white stoneware. I use red clay, so my things automatically look different.

What I did was take one red stoneware cup and applied vertical stripes in maybe eight colors that interested me.  After that I had a reference for later glaze applications.

People have mentioned breaking over texture. It is helpful to use some sort of stamp or something for your tests if you want to see what the breaking over looks like.

[Dust Devil]

16 hours ago, Gabby said:

One thing I have learned is that most of the glazes need to be applied very thickly.

I read another thread here on brushing and sounds like it should be applied similar to how you apply shellac; the brush serves to lay the glaze on, letting it do most of the leveling itself.

[Chilly]

I think the clue is in the size of the pot of glaze.  Small pots are for brushing, large buckets/kilos of dry glaze are for dipping.  You could never dip into a 4oz pot.  Well, maybe beads, but not a cup!

[Dust Devil]

The smallest container of AMACO glaze is a pint (16 oz), but still, yes, not much can be dipped in that. Could be poured, though.

Or, it could have been concentrated, like cans of soup, requiring dilution.

11 hours ago, Chilly said:

I think the clue is in the size of the pot of glaze.  Small pots are for brushing, large buckets/kilos of dry glaze are for dipping.  You could never dip into a 4oz pot.  Well, maybe beads, but not a cup!

[Rae Reich]

3 minutes ago, Dust Devil said:

The smallest container of AMACO glaze is a pint (16 oz), but still, yes, not much can be dipped in that. Could be poured, though.

Or, it could have been concentrated, like cans of soup, requiring dilution.

Just read the label.  

 

[Dust Devil]

I don't have a label.

 

14 minutes ago, Rae Reich said:

Just read the label.  

 

[Rae Reich]

On 11/8/2018 at 4:31 PM, Dust Devil said:

I don't have a label.

 

Cute, but somewhere there's a description of your glaze (website?) and/or that line of glazes which will say if it's a brushing glaze and how best to apply it. Generally, with brushing glazes three thin coats are applied, one of which is brushed in the opposite direction to the others. Making a few tests before you use any unknown glazes is always a good idea. 

[Dust Devil]

Well, there' s not, or it's not placed where the typical reader would find it. If it had been, then I would not have been confused.

Seriously, it's a bad teaching strategy to attempt to cast the learner as incompetent for asking a question.

 

 

1 hour ago, Rae Reich said:

Cute, but somewhere there's a description of your glaze (website?) and/or that line of glazes which will say if it's a brushing glaze and how best to apply it. Generally, with brushing glazes three thin coats are applied, one of which is brushed in the opposite direction to the others. Making a few tests before you use any unknown glazes is always a good idea.