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Making a glaze chart


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I currently use Amaco and Coyote cone 6 glazes. I'd like to make sample tiles of each glaze with a portion of the glazes overlapping, so I have really good examples of which glazes look the best together (and which ones I'll never want to put together again!). I've devised a system, but am still looking for a better way. My idea is to dip the top half of the tile in one color, the bottom in another, and then dip the top inch of the tile into the color that's on the bottom and bottom inch of the tile into the top color. I have assigned a number to each glaze and will write the number on the damp clay, and that way I'll also know which color is layered on top of which. Is there a simpler way to go about this? Am I trying to recreate the wheel?

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Here's the tile board we use in my studio. We have 14 class glazes, and this board shows all the possible double-dipping combinations, so 196 tiles. It's a basic X/Y axis. Each horizontal row has a glaze as the tile's first dip, for a count of 6. Each vertical column has a glaze as the tile's second dip, on the top half of the tile, for a 4 count. Each tile also has some grooves cut in on one side to show how the glaze breaks over texture. It's a lot of work, but well worth it.

 

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Great job Neil ... Very easy to understand. These kind of jobs are what makes pottery so glamorous! : - )

 

 

Thanks! A couple of my students did most of the work extruding and cutting the tiles. The first board we did, the one shown, several of us did the dipping, with inconsistent results. So I did all the dipping myself on our latest board. It is very much worth the time to do this. Any time my students have a question about how a glaze looks I just point to the board. The other great benefit is that they can really see which combinations tend to run more.

 

Now we just need to do another one with brown clay.....

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I had my students do an "experiment" to show them how glazes interact where they each took an 8 inch square tile and picked 5 different glazes and a stain to work with. I had them do one set of stripes with each going down, and then another set using the same glazes going across. So they got to see areas between the stripes as one coat of glaze, then where the stripes crossed, each glaze was shown on top of each of the others, and going the other direction UNDER the others as well as how a stain worked with the glaze as well as two coats of the glaze where they crossed. The results were then added to the classroom chip drawer. We've got a very small room and wall space is at a premium, but they're very useful and most of the students go back to them every now and then. Sort of works out the same as Neils, but flat. I will say I like the way his shows glaze movement because each tester stands upright.

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Thanks for your input. I love your tile board, Neil!

 

 

Love the board, the use of extruded tiles gives more dimensional understanding of the glaze. I did the same sort of board with my students using holes in flat tiles and screwing to the board. I used Ceramics 2 students to do the work-part of their course requirements. They had to do a double dip of 5 glazes with tiles where one dip did not completely cover the first dip. They also had to have some texture on the tile, and a wash over the texture. Test tile boards make all classes easier to teach, and allow the students to really see the glaze on the clay. When you use a glaze everyday, you know what it does, but when you walk into a new shop often you don't know beans about the glazes.

 

I would also hold discussions of every glaze load in front of the entire class. These would cover successful and unsuccessful glazed pottery. Too thick, too thin, overlapping glazes, one glaze over another, uneven due to poor technique or lack of cleaning, pin holing, and anything else that would show up. After a few sessions students would make much better choices and get more creative in their choices.

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