Looking for glaze recipe

[medfordjared]

I am new to mixing glazes for my wife. She fires at cone 6. One of her go-to glazes is Amaco's Ancient Copper, which as many know has been discontinued due to lithium shortages. Does anyone have a recommendation for a replacement or know of a similar recipe?

Thx.

[Min]

Hi and welcome to the forum!

Looking at images of Amaco's Ancient Copper it appears to be a high iron red glaze. There are many many published glazes with different names for iron reds (in oxidation firing). One very popular one is Bailey Red, here is a version of it from Glazy. 

Lithium is still available but it has gotten ridiculously expensive. Other recipes that contain lithia might have it sourced from other sources than lithium carbonate. ( frits, spodumene, petalite, or lepidolite) Bone ash (or tricalcium phosphate) is often found in Iron Red's also.

I would suggest doing a search on Glazy and Google for Iron Reds and start testing. Type of red iron oxide used and the cooling schedule can play a part in how they differ also.

If your wife uses it as a brushing glaze then you would need to add a brushing medium (gum) to your glaze. You can make your own brushing medium or purchase ready made medium.

[Pres]

As others have said, much of the glaze surface could be had by a speckled clay body. However, if I were experimenting, I would try using iron rust mixed into a White or off white glaze, you might even try adding some Rutile, powdered to a glaze white glaze as it has a tendency to make a more buttery looking color. . . then add the iron rust to that. When I say iron rust, I mean to scrape some rusted metal to get irregular sizes of iron, then grind it some to remove the larger particles screen it through a 200 to 300 mesh screen. Depending on the size of particles  you with to include in the glaze. Then comes the fun part, deciding how much iron speckling you want in the glaze. Lots of testing, but could be a great learning experience for some more advanced motivated students.

(For some reason or other, I got this on to another strand about a glaze search. . . Mod-Min brought my error to my attention)

 

best,

Pres

[medfordjared]

Here is an example. She uses bmix.

[medfordjared]

[JohnnyK]

Just when I was getting really interested in working more with Ancient Copper...I have about a 1/2 pint left, so I will be using it judiciously. This is my latest foray with Ancient Copper and Ancient Jasper:

[Min]

I would expect there are going to be other commercial glazes, such as the fake Shino’s, that will be getting very expensive or discontinued due to the cost of lithium.

[neilestrick]

The price of lithium has dropped by 50% since the start of 2023.

[Hulk]

Cobalt is cheaper today than it was ~five years ago.
Hope petalite price drops, still $10/lb (or more)...

[Min]

4 hours ago, Hulk said:

Cobalt is cheaper today than it was ~five years ago.
Hope petalite price drops, still $10/lb (or more)...

My go to for lithia is using spodumene, my local ceramic supply price is currently $453 for a 5 kg / 11 lb bag.  Lithium carb is $863 for a 2.5 kg / 5.6 lb bag. I guess suppliers need to sell the old stock before bringing in new and hopefully less costly new supply. 

[JohnnyK]

Great news here regarding the Amaco Ancient Copper! Check out this new article by Tony Hansen at Digitalfire!

You can make your own Ancient Copper brushing glaze (digitalfire.com)