Lowfire Glaze Testing Cone 04

I’m switching to a lowfire smooth red earthenware clay and that means finding studio glazes that will play nicely.

I’ve always worked in high or mid-fire clays, but hardly ever the earthenware clays. I did find a lovely clay from New Mexico clay that I fell in love with. I quickly created a slab mug and fired this clay successfully to cone 1. It holds coffee nicely! Plus, the clay at cone 1 turned a yummy light brown. I used a commercial cone 06 glaze on the inside and left the outside bare.

I’ve been using this simple mug for about a month. I’ve put it in the dishwasher and microwave a number of times. I’m pleased with how it has held up so I feel comfortable expanding this clay into functional dinnerware, but I’m looking to make my own glazes so that I can keep my operating costs low.

I found a cone 04 glaze on glazy.org called ‘vc transparent satin’ and used it on a couple of small items, fired them to cone 1 and as a clear base glaze, it performed great at this temperature.

Now that I have a happy base glaze, it’s time to think about colorants. I am looking for a simple pallet of only a few colors. Therefore I am trying for Turquoise, Cobalt, and Pale Yellow. I may add Avacodo Green at some point, but these are the three I’m starting with.

The copper carbonate and cobalt carbonate are both well within limits of not leaching, but I will be using the lemon slice test to be certain. That’s when a lemon slice is placed onto the glaze, wrapped and covered and left for a few days. If the glaze is going to leach off over time, the area where the lemon is placed will be considerably lighter in color.

Triple Dip Technique
Woot! Love these!

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