Soluble salts

[ATauer]

I am just getting into using soluble salts for pitfiring, saggar firing, and raku. I am having a really hard time finding most of them- I randomly found from the previous owners of my house that they left a 20+ year old 2lb bottle of copper sulfate, which is great, and I got a pretty good deal driving 4 hours to Dakota Pottery Supply to get some cobalt sulfate. They were out of stannous chloride, I did buy a gallon of ferric chloride. Steven Branfman’s books on raku have a very small amount of information about fuming during raku, he gives some recipes called Biz’s Peacock Blu and Biz’s Ruby Red that have the same materials just different ratios- Stannous Chloride, Strontium nitrate, and Barium Chloride. He also has Biz’s Opal fuming recipe which is Stannous chloride and Bismuth nitrate. I am having a very hard time finding most of these materials. US Pigments has Stannous Chloride for quite a bit more than Dakota’s Pottery Supply usually sells it for, but the others US Pigments doesn’t have. Googling I have found some materials, and other soluble salts (I have been reading Arne Ase’s Water Color on Porcelain) in very small amounts for very high prices. I’m interested in doing fuming as well as using some of these soluble salts to paint/glaze on to porcelain…Arne Ase’s book is great but he did all his testing in reduction and I can only do oxidation, and he also tended to use slightly different materials than I have available..like cobalt chloride instead of sulfate. If anyone has some suggestions for chemical companies that may sell some of these I would really appreciate it- I am not having good luck with finding them for the most part at pottery stores. 

If any of you have done the raku fuming with Biz’s various concoctions, since the book gives me pretty much no guidance and just says to experiment- well I love experiments, I am a scientist, however these are very expensive materials so I’m less inclined to just do a bunch of guessing until I hit on the right way to do it and when those fuming recipes will actually make the colors they claim, so any advice on the best way to use them would really be appreciated. For a lot of these salts I intend to spray or paint or sponge them on to bisqueware before putting them in saggars or pitfires with other colorants and combustible materials to try to get a variety of beautiful shades, to fume glazed and maybe unglazed ware in raku, and if I can find enough to decorate porcelain with them…at that point I definitely would have to do some experimentation to see what colors they make in oxidation. Thanks for any help!

[Min]

@ATauer, I would suggest you send @Marcia Selsora pm and ask her where she buys hers from. Marcia has a really good article on Saggar Firing with Soluble Salts in the 2020 Sept/Oct Pottery Making Illustrated magazine. Article is behind a paywall but you can access 3 articles a month for free if you want to read it. Link here to it. 

[oldlady]

thanks, min.  it will be my next read.

[ATauer]

Thank you, I have actually read Marcia Selsor’s article a number of times, and it is very helpful, but because of space limits there was only so much information she could give about the colors the soluble salts make in a sagger, which it sounded like in the article hers was partially oxidized- not completely sealed so the atmosphere was completely reduction. It would be great if she would let me know where she buys her chemicals….I’m putting off silver nitrate until I’m really good because it is so expensive and I’ll just waste it on some ugly pots in the beginning! Since she is getting colors that do have some reduction, but not complete I wonder if she would be able to give me an idea which salts make certain colors in oxidation in regular firings. She very kindly included a list in that article of some of the salts and what colors they would make at what temps, but specifically for saggar firing. Which I will be doing a whole bunch of as well, I already was into saggar firing but her article really got me more excited about being able to have more color! I very much want to paint on porcelain panels and tiles in particular with the salts as well, Arne Ase really gave me the bug for doing watercolor effects, and nothing can do these kind of watercolor effects except the salts, Certainly underglazes and stains/oxide washes can’t approach this!   Okkkk…only posted once before so let’s see if I can find out how to send message to someone.

[Babs]

In members, or in a post, cluck on Marcia's avatar which should allow you to dm or pm her.

@Marcia Selsor

[PeterH]

Weakly related, and use at your own risk  ...

Aluminum Foil Saggars: An Easy Alternative to Traditional Clay SaggarsLearn a quick and easy way to create saggars!
https://ceramicartsnetwork.org/daily/article/aluminum-foil-saggars-an-easy-alternative-to-traditional-clay-saggars/

 

Aluminum Foil Saggar Firing
https://vincepitelka.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Aluminum-Foil-Sagger-Firing-Ken-Turner.pdf
... Potassium dichromatic has long had a reputation for causing contact dermatitis (progressively sensitising uses). More recently its carcinogenic properties have heavily reduced its use and availability (shared with all hexavalent chromium compounds).

Introduction to foil saggar
http://www.marjonceramics.com/pages/Adobe/2022 Foil Saggar and Terra Sigilatta.pdf

PS There was an article trying various copper-red glazes in foil saggars, which I cannot find at the moment. Perhaps somebody else has a link? If it stirs anybody's memory I think the tests were on extruded hexagonal pieces.

There are some interesting comments in

... plus several references to comments by Norm Stuart (which I've been unable to find). His comment on ferric phosphate probably relates to this picture.

My own query to Norm seems to relate to this

Edited June 22, 2022 by PeterH

[ATauer]

Thank you! Yes, I’ve actually already been experimenting with foil saggars in addition to clay and metal ones, and soon (first in a pitfire before I try it in my kiln) I am going to try paperbag saggars covered in paperclay slip- I’ve heard some interesting things about them! They seem to last up to temps that are surprising. And since I’m obsessed with and make 90%+ of my work out of paperclay, I have plenty of its slip laying around. While I don’t have very many soluble salts, I do have ferric chloride, cobalt sulphate, and copper sulfate, and then of course with the saggars I put in all the various things, copper wire, steel wool, copper netting, yarn soaked and dried in salt, old cat food, banana peels (my family is not loving me saving weird food scraps and leaving them on a pile on the stove so they will dry out for my next firing), some seaweed that my mom buys as snacks that I can’t stand the taste of, fresher seaweed from the Japanese restaurant two blocks from my house (although definitely not the same as what other people tend to describe who live on the coast and have access to fresh seaweed, kelp, driftwood etc…makes me very jealous!), some traditional colorants like copper carbonate, RIO, sometimes a very small amount of cobalt carbonate but that is too expensive for me to use as much as I would like- the cobalt sulphate is great, I’m so excited to get blues, but it definitely has different coloring than cobalt carb. 

I bought a book in the fall on saggar firing in electric kilns, and was so excited, because while I love doing this kind of saggar firing at that time I really wanted to be able to fire copper reds in reduction without using SiC, as I’ve found a lot of the copper red SiC recipes don’t end up with the kind of glaze I’m looking for, and may have black areas around the edges or even within the glaze. Unfortunately it turned out her book said you absolutely couldn’t put glaze in the saggar, and to protect her elements she was very limiting in the amount of things she would put on her pots in the saggar- no salt of any kind, not even in tiny amounts, no soluble salts, just a few different oxides and some various combustibles.

It was helpful to read that she did one pot in a saggar for a year, every day, to learn as much as she could about getting the results she wanted, and has continued to do so since then, without any problems with her elements degrading. I’m a little more willing to take some risks with putting in maybe some small amounts of Epsom salts and some sodium soaked items that have dried, as well as the soluble salts, as my saggar firing kiln is a tiny 18 inch high kiln I got for free that it turned out was manufactured to only go to 1800*F! So I’m actually happy to have found some use for it with those lower temps (it is also a kiln sitter), I also use it to make Glazed Composition (the new, less offensive term for Egyptian Paste, but it is really mostly being used in museum circles so potters haven’t caught on to the new name yet for the most part) since my recipe for it has a broad range of about 010 to 06, and while I’m intrigued with the idea of making much larger sculptures with Glazed Composition, right now I’m still getting the hang of sculpting with something so non-plastic so everything I make is small enough to fit in my tiny I-was-too-new-and-uninformed-to-buy-a-kiln kiln. 

That was my long way of saying I would love to find out more about the person who fired copper reds in a saggar in an electric kiln. I had found a thread that is archived from a few years ago where someone posted that he had produced a very decent copper red in a saggar in an electric kiln, with picture of the pot, he claimed he had only put a small amount of powdered charcoal at the bottom of the saggar to produce carbon monoxide, and a small amount of RIO to provide some oxygen as needed for the reaction, dozens of people commented wanting to know a lot more information but he only posted twice at the beginning and then disappeared, leaving lots of hanging questions. Most people really did not think that it could be done the way he said he had done it, but no one posted that they themselves had tried it with any success or failure. I’ve been tempted to try it myself later in the summer, and just see. I was very strongly planning on converting my old big Skutt I got for free that needed a complete rebuild pretty much,  into Simon Leach’s downdraft conversion, but one of my mentors talked me out of it, especially as the only reduction glazes I really want to have fun with are celadons, Juns, and copper reds, which does not seem enough to merit having a gas kiln other than my raku kiln. I still long sometimes for a gas kiln. Celadons and Juns are much easier to get good results with SiC or with “faux” recipes, copper reds though just don’t look as good with SiC. So if I could make them in a saggar I would be ecstatic!

 

 

[PeterH]

If its of any interest:

Chemically Reduced Copper Reds In Oxidation
https://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/3158179980?profile=original
... IIRC fine-grain SiC is mainly sold for grinding (eg stone tumbling)

Haven't seen this idea talked about ...

... and a longer review of that paper

[PeterH]

I knew there was a version of Baggs & Littlefield that wasn't behind a firewall

Go to https://ur.booksc.me/book/9078584/3dc696

and click on the button

This (for me) downloads the paper in English.

[ATauer]

Thank you, the articles are fascinating. I use 1200 mesh SiC which seems standard on Glazy, I get it from a lapidary shop that sells it very affordably, I actually do sculpt in glass (casting and fusing) but my glass equipment supplier only has SiC that goes to 800, and a lot of us on Glazy feel that is still too coarse, you can see it. I fire at cone 6, the highest I can go in my kilns is cone 8 unfortunately, and there aren’t a lot of cone 6 copper red SiC glazes yet, most of the ones I’ve found don’t even look nice in their pictures. I want the kinds of oxbloods Tom Turner was getting! I’ll definitely have to try out my copper sulphate as I have a ton of it and it is so cheap, and it sounds like it may make even better reds. The difficult thing with trying to get a cone 10 copper red recipe down to cone 6 so I can use SiC with it is SiC is not a fan of boron, it tends to bubble up a ton and will ruin the glaze, but there aren’t a lot of other ways to lower the cones of the glaze without adding more boron than it can take. And for some weird reason a lot of cone 10 copper red recipes already have quite a bit of boron, which is odd for cone 10 recipes in general. I have a lot of experimenting and lines blends to do…there is one or two quite good SiC appropriate copper red recipes at cone 6 that work, I want more though. And what I’d really like would be the ability to make them without SiC- there are often just too many issues with SiC with copper reds. With celadons and Juns SiC tends to work wonderfully, you would never think looking at the glaze that they weren’t done in a gas kiln. But copper red is just a lot more difficult. That’s why I’d love to figure out a way to make them in a saggar without the combustibles sticking to the glaze. 

[PeterH]

Just a thought. If you are using solubles (e.g. copper sulphate)  in a dipping glaze they may be sucked out of the glaze and into the body. One way of reducing this problem (and generating others) would be to use CMC to make a painting glaze, the contents of which would hopefully stay on the body.

[Min]

1 hour ago, ATauer said:

I really wanted to be able to fire copper reds in reduction without using SiC, as I’ve found a lot of the copper red SiC recipes don’t end up with the kind of glaze I’m looking for, and may have black areas around the edges or even within the glaze.

Have you seen the chemically reduced copper reds Tom Turner can get? He wrote a really good article on SiC reds which is available here. Not the simplest process narrowing down the glaze recipes but I the results are beautiful.

[ATauer]

I have seen Tom Turner’s reds, but he was firing at cone 9/10, whereas I have to fire at cone 6, and the boron used to get copper reds at cone 6 interacts a lot with the SiC, so it is much more tricky and there are many fewer recipes, and unfortunately I have been warned against just taking a gas reduction recipe and adding SiC to it because of the boron. Really I have to lower recipes from cone 10 to cone 6 yet do it without using a ton of boron, in order to have enough recipes to try, and finding ways to do it without having too much boron so far has not been very successful for me. Which is why I would really love to find a way to fire them in a reduction atomosphere in a saggar somehow. Things could be worse, I can get some very gorgeous oxbloods with raku by putting the raku into reduction for 30 minutes once the glazes start to melt, and a lot of the copper glazes will turn gorgeous oxblood colors that I usually just spray with water after taking them out of the kiln and allow them to cool, and don’t do post-fire reduction. It is the only way right now I can get fairly consistent copper red colors I love, though I continue to experiment with SiC. It works wonderfully with celadons and Juns, I’m not sure why it has so much more difficulty with copper reds. When I have more time I plan to do some biaxials and triaxials and attempt to develop my own cone 6 SiC copper red that is actually oxblood, instead of the handful that are on Glazy that are frankly pretty awful colors. Glazy surprisingly doesn’t even have very many good looking cone 10 copper reds that I can try to bring down to cone 6. I might try instead trying to bring Tom Turner’s recipe in his paper down to cone 6, he has frit 3110 in it which is rather odd to me for a cone 10 glaze, that frit has so much boron that I would guess the glaze would fire a LOT lower than he was doing, I am very curious why he chose that frit. So I’ll do a test tile first with just the glaze the way it is and see if it already fires to cone 6, and if not swap frits, add some more zinc oxide, and switch to neph sye. I just worry as always that I will have too much boron. Which is why I would do some biaxials and triaxials increasing other fluxes such as the zinc and the whiting, instead of the boron, and see if I can get it low enough. But if I change the feldspar, the amount of zinc, and the amount of whiting, not even considering the boron, it might very well produce a very different glaze with totally different colors and textures…the perils of glaze chemistry! It is really too bad we don’t have any chemical reduction agents that don’t react pretty violently with boron, because otherwise then there would be a lot less problems. 

I’m wondering if what I need to do because of the foaming/blistering of the SiC with boron is have a much longer drop and hold and slow cool than I normally do, I normally do for almost all my glazes Digitalfire’s drop and hold and slow cool, if I extend those holds maybe the glaze will have more chance to smooth out, more time to offgas which affects the color etc. That, or do what Tom Turner discovered, striking them- so fire them normally, then throw them in my next 04 bisque, as he says in his article that when he did that he got much brighter colors and I think too a smoother glaze. Of course, he was striking from firing them at cone 9/10, so I don’t know if there would be any difference if it had originally been fired at cone 6. Lots of things to consider and take into account when testing. 

[ATauer]

32 minutes ago, PeterH said:

Just a thought. If you are using solubles (e.g. copper sulphate)  in a dipping glaze they may be sucked out of the glaze and into the body. One way of reducing this problem (and generating others) would be to use CMC to make a painting glaze, the contents of which would hopefully stay on the body.

So far for saggar firing/pit firing I haven’t had much problem with them soaking into my bisque too much. I bisque at 04 so it isn’t terribly porous. I bisque at 08 or 06 for raku but not for my other alternative firing most of the time, specifically because I don’t want the salts to absorb too much. I do love CMC, I use it as a glue with my glass work so I was amused when I got into ceramics to find out how it is being used so differently here, but also recently finding out that it is actually the main/only ingredient in most wallpaper pastes! Very versatile stuff. I have no objection to using it in general to paint on, mostly right now I am spraying or sponging on in order to still allow for flashing from the combustibles and to make it look like the color fumed on to it naturally…instead cheating and making sure I get color! My guess at least with copper sulphate is that if it is put into the right glaze it would mostly stay in the glaze and only a small portion would become soluble. Mostly because Tom Turner used it and mentioned nothing about having problems with it soaking into the clay or out of the glaze, and in fact his test tiles with the copper sulphate in my opinion are brighter and more beautiful than the copper reds he got with copper carb. 

Rather off topic…I am a huge evangelist for paperclay. I try not to use any clay that isn’t paperclay when I can help it. But I’m super allergic to mold and I also like to mix up big batches of my own recipe of porcelain with cellulose and store it as slip or soft slabs, instead of making small amounts as I go that I would use up before it would go bad. Because duh duh duh, I found out that 0.02-0.2% of copper carb by the clay’s dry weight mixed in is the best preservative ever, way more effective than bleach without the dangers of bleach. It is such a small amount in the clay that there are no toxicity issues with handling the clay bare handed, it doesn’t color or flux the clay, and it can make the clay last 2 years or longer. Copper carb is definitely not as expensive as cobalt, but it is still about $9-12 whether I get it from US Pigments or my local supplier, and it adds up when adding it to large amounts of clay frequently, whereas my 3 lb of copper carb would otherwise last me several years if just used in glazes. Copper sulphate on the other hand I found 2 lb free in my basement left by the previous owners just as I was starting to do alternative firing, so the timing was incredible, even using it a lot that 2 lb is going to last a long time. And I’ve looked it up at my local DIY stores to see how expensive it would be to buy once I run out there versus at my supplier, and it is sooooooo cheap….10-20 lb of it for dollars. I believe any copper substance would act as an effective preservative, but I’m wondering if using copper sulphate in my clay would be too dangerous, even at the small amounts. I’m not sure what its solubility would do to my clay, if anything, and whether it would be caustic or absorb through my skin, which is of course what we worry about when it is more concentrated….would definitely welcome thoughts especially from anyone with more experience with it. I’m a recovering scientist, but my 4 years of chemistry classes did not cover anything that would help me with this!

[PeterH]

Stumbled across this:
The Effect of Silicon Carbide Mesh Sizes on Copper Red
https://glazy.org/posts/164731
... note enlarge button at bottom RHS of image

Don't like the colours, but some interesting comments in the text.

[ATauer]

I thought I had kept up with all the Glazy blogs showing tests, but I missed this one. Glad to find that the 1200 mesh that I have is the best performing! Very interesting data. Absolutely awful glaze though, color wise! I had found out from various sources that I should only use 0.15-0.3 SiC and that recipes that have 1% I should be wary of. A little absolutely goes a long way! Thanks! I’m very intrigued about the comments about boron carbide replacing frit, I will have to look more into that since boron in frits is such a pain with copper reds. At cone 10 even but especially at cone 6. 

[PeterH]

Long ago I knew a potter who used silicon powder (which doesn't out-gas) to produce copper reds.

Finding a cheap(ish) source of silicon power may not be that easy.  Rather restrictive googles such as silicon powder -carbide -dioxide turn up suppliers offering small quantities of ultra-pure powder at high prices. Searches such as pyrotechnic silicon powder seem to be more successful.

Silicon Metal Powder -200 mesh $9.00 Per Pound .
https://www.fireworkscookbook.com/product/silicon-metal-powder-200-mesh/

. .. as it's not out-gassing mesh size may be less important than for silicon carbide.

[PeterH]

On 6/21/2022 at 7:26 PM, ATauer said:

Stannous Chloride, Strontium nitrate, and Barium Chloride. He also has Biz’s Opal fuming recipe which is Stannous chloride and Bismuth nitrate. I am having a very hard time finding most of these materials.

Remembering the occasional usefulness of pyrotechnic suppliers https://www.skylighter.com/collections/chemicals have both Strontium Nitrate and Barium Chloride at less than $8/lb (plus shipping).

Stannous Chloride is AFAIK generally available but pricey (and probably purer than you need). Searching the US market from the UK isn't that easy, you might like to repeat some of these searches.

tin (ii) chloride dihydrate (stannous) on ebay.com $77/500g
Etsy.com probably has something, but my searches from the UK aren't really working

googling stannous chloride pottery supplies gives https://shop.clay-planet.com/tin-stannous-chloride.aspx listing Stannous Chloride at $30/lb. Not sure if I believe it, but as Scarva list it as £35/500g maybe it is possible.

googling tin mordant Stannous Chloride throws up a few offers for smaller quantities.

[ATauer]

4 hours ago, PeterH said:

Remembering the occasional usefulness of pyrotechnic suppliers https://www.skylighter.com/collections/chemicals have both Strontium Nitrate and Barium Chloride at less than $8/lb (plus shipping).

Stannous Chloride is AFAIK generally available but pricey (and probably purer than you need). Searching the US market from the UK isn't that easy, you might like to repeat some of these searches.

tin (ii) chloride dihydrate (stannous) on ebay.com $77/500g
Etsy.com probably has something, but my searches from the UK aren't really working

googling stannous chloride pottery supplies gives https://shop.clay-planet.com/tin-stannous-chloride.aspx listing Stannous Chloride at $30/lb. Not sure if I believe it, but as Scarva list it as £35/500g maybe it is possible.

googling tin mordant Stannous Chloride throws up a few offers for smaller quantities.

Wow, thank you for finding some of these things. The prices for Strontium and Barium are fantastic! Much much lower than what I was expecting, having only found like 1 oz bottles of them being sold for ridiculous prices. Dakota Pottery Suppliers usually sells Stannous Chloride for $30/lb, they just can’t get any right now, so ClayPlanet is probably right, the issue with them is in general even for a very small light order their shipping is outrageous. I’ll have to pretend like I’m buying it and get to the part where it shows me how much shipping will cost, and compare how much the total cost is to US Pigments, which sells Stannous Chloride at around $45/lb, which really surprised me because for most things they are so much cheaper than regular pottery suppliers. I think they have Bismuth nitrate maybe, but I need Bismuth subnitrate, and I have no idea what the difference is, if any, but don’t want to buy it unless I know it would work the same. Bismuth is reasonable enough, about the price of Tin, just a little lower, although from what I know about the availability of Bismuth is should be a lot cheaper, it is not as rare as Tin! It just isn’t used very much! I’m slowly working on a long term research project with a ceramicist with decades of experience who was previously a molecular biologist (I was a veterinary epidemiologist) so we get on well in terms of having strong research backgrounds and a strong interest in doing art research. I have a dream of developing a glaze that can be applied by torch without any firing in a kiln, without cracking the surrounding sculptures or doing any of the myriad problems we have to overcome. I make large scale sculptures that I have to cut into sections to fire in my kiln and do an exhausting process of epoxying them back together, hiding the seams, color matching an glaze or terra sig or whatever, and then put a cold glaze over it to try and match the rest of the piece. Unfortunately all the cold glazes on the market turn yellow, sometimes within a year, from UV light exposure, and I hate hate hate the idea of that happening.

I started a blog question about it on Glazy and was basically slammed by almost everyone, most saying there are plenty of ceramics in museums that are priceless artifacts that have a yellow tinge, and young artists are too obsessed with the idea that their work will be in a museum- I do not actually think my work will end up in museums. I mean who doesn’t secretly hope that a little, but I’m realistic. I just simply don’t want any sculpture of mine to have the seams become completely obvious after all that work because of the cold glaze, and have anyone who has bought one or is displaying one have that happen. I will probably write into contracts that if that happens I’m allowed to come remove the cold glaze and reapply, hoping that by then there will be some truly non-yellowing products on the market. My co-researcher has done a lot with Bismuth and doesn’t understand why it isn’t being used in art ceramics (it is definitely used in industry) as it is next to lead on the periodic table and has most of the same properties that lead did with glazes, but without zero toxicity! So far trying to make some glazes with Bismuth and borax applied with a torch has just given us black gooey messes, but we are learning. We both know it will be probably years before we are successful and that it is most likely we will fail completely. But we both believe if we could invent it it would make life so much easier for sculptors like me but also have lots of other applications. I know of someone who applied raku glazes by torch to a 6 ft sculpture just after it had been fired sometime ago, I have no idea what his name is though. Raku glazes have a high chance of some of them working, the problem with them is the crazing & generally poor glaze fit/durability. But we are kind of starting with them, using Bismuth instead of boron frits or in addition to them, just as a starting point in our long line of experiments. We know all the things we have to keep in mind, making sure the surrounding clay doesn’t crack or worse, and so on, there is a long list! But we are ignoring those mostly at the moment until we get a glaze that actually works, and then we will target shoot all the ancillary problems. I also am not as worried about the thermal expansion and cracking as some people on Glazy were, because I believe if the rest of the sculpture were gently warmed with a torch and wrapped in ceramic fiber blanket and if the torch is not held too close to the sculpture and is moved constantly, it will be fine. I see people using torches on raku ware all the time to try and bring out colors in glazes if it didn’t come out of the kiln the way they want, or to heat up ware that was glazed fired and they want to glaze it again and fire it again, and a couple other random uses. As long as you constantly keep it moving and don’t focus on one place, and hold it about 8-12 inches away it is rare that they cause something to crack. 

Well, I have managed with the help of some of you to get this thread quite off track from my original post! But in a great way where I have gotten some very helpful resources and ideas and tips. I probably should try and steer it a bit back toward my interest in essentially watercolor painting on porcelain with soluble salts…I’m guessing despite Arne Ase’s book (especially considering it is worth $5000 at most sellers) it didn’t catch on too much. I’ve had a hard time identifying anyone who does or has produced work like he did, and really the only person I know who is using soluble salts a great deal at all is Marcia Selsor in saggars…I’m trying to remember from the article she wrote, I have read it several times, but cant’ remember what kind of kiln she uses. It would certainly be helpful to connect with her and hopefully get some more tips, but essentially for the most part what she is doing is in reduction no matter what kind of kiln she is using, with probably some level of oxidation if her saggar isn’t completely sealed which I don’t think she does, so while I will hopefully get some tips on using soluble salts in saggars and in pitfiring, I don’t know if she can help me with using them in straight oxidation. I feel like someone, somewhere, must have tried that. If the soluble salts were significantly cheaper I wouldn’t care and would be fine doing lots of test tiles and test pieces to figure out what salts can produce what colors and what colors I can get by mixing or layering them…it would just be nice to have some information to go on so I don’t spend a bunch of money on something that produces a color I hate and will never use, or worse, disappears, as some of them did in reduction. We really need more information on soluble salts in the literature and hell just on YouTube. 

[PeterH]

Sorry to keep posting, but you keep raising such interesting points. Some years ago they started ink-jet printing large porcelain tiles with soluble salts. Apparently gave some nice semi-marble effects and maintained the colour if you scratched it (as is wasn't simply on the surface). I think there were a few papers and patents published.

Eye candy
Water Soluble Metal Salt Effects https://www.pinterest.co.uk/ceramicartcommu/water-soluble-metal-salt-effects/
The Soluble Salt Ceramics of Mark Goudy and Liza Riddle https://www.veniceclayartists.com/tag/soluble-metal-salts/
Arne Åse - Painting Timelapse https://www.facebook.com/arneaaseceramics/videos/arne-åse-paiting-timelapse/1855860691328585/
Arne Åse - Paiting With Soluble Metal Salts  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RMAanwmmnI

PS Sent you a pm