The Basics Of Ceramics And Exploring Glazes.

'Ceramic' comes from the Greek word meaning ‘pottery’. The clay-based domestic wares, art objects and building products are familiar to us all, but pottery is just one part of the ceramic world. Nowadays the term ‘ceramic’ has a more expansive meaning and includes materials like glass, advanced ceramics and some cement systems as well, But here I will be exploring the more creative aspect of ceramic, so I won't bore you will with all the applications of this amazing material.

Ceramic Glazes The Complete Handbook

Ceramic Glazes : The Complete Handbook is a good starting point for anyone interested in researching the basics of glazes in ceramics. I used this book myself to gather knowledge on the topic along with a few others such as

Developing glazes by Greg Daly, Colour in Glazes by Linda Bloomfield and Natural Glazes by Miranda Forrest.

I used these books because they were readily available at my university library, but I'm 100% sure there are plenty more out there that just as informative.

Contents Page For Ceramic Glazes; The Complete Handbook

Back to the handbook, Honestly this book has everything you need from the history of glazes to the testing, application and creation of glazes. All the Pieces displayed in this book are bright and gorgeous pieces with many of the glaze recipes being displayed on the pages, Which is super super handy if you wanted to try your hand at recreating any of them.

Though I feel as I should warn you, some glazes won't turn out just like the picture, this is because glazes are an organic creation that occurs naturally in the world and therefore are a balanced mixture of different ingredients and depending on the temperatures they are fired at , they can have very varied outcomes.

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The Fundamental difference between a clay body and the glaze is in fact the temperature. Both things include 3 basic ingredients;

Silica- the glass

Flux- an additive to lower the melting temperature

Alumina- a stiffening agent that stops glaze from simply running off the vessel it was applied to.

Glazes Have a lower melting temperature then clay bodies so they melt during the firing process and harden on the body of the fired object. Depending on the recipe and additives in the glazes, the results are often a magical transformation of colour and texture, the outcomes are practically limitless and thus it is impervious that I research and experiment with creating my very own glazes and document the outcomes.