In-house glaze: Celestial Girder
A special glaze recipe concocted in the studio
A lot of the glazes we have in the studio are commercial glazes, bought ready mixed, just add water. A bit like boxed cake mix. But some of the glazes are special. That’s because they’re our own concoctions, that we’ve tweaked until they’re just right.
I didn’t document the development process for these glazes, but we’re still working on expanding our range so I’ll write more about that in another post. For now, I just want to share the recipes of two of our in-house glazes that we’re very happy with!
Celestial Girder
A soft, matte, pale blue/grey glaze with little variation in colour. It breaks slightly over texture, but is consistent on smooth surfaces. It can be a bit wishy-washy when it’s too thin.
This glaze is a favourite of mine, I often use it for my little creatures, as well as on my patterned cups. One of the best things about this glaze is that the colour comes out on darker clay bodies, as well as light ones. See below for specific glaze notes.
Above, from left to right, Celestial Girder on white, brown (iron) and black (manganese) stoneware bodies.
The tiles are all double dipped. The white and brown test tiles show a 3-second dip on the lower half, and a 6-second dip on the upper. The black test tile shows a 5-second dip on the lower half, and a 10-second dip on the upper.
The glaze is mixed to a density of 1.4 for dipping.
Tiles fired to 1240°C in an electric kiln.