Looking to mix your own clay bodies and casting slips rather than purchasing pre-made clay? Whether you’re interested in achieving a specific color or need a clay body that responds to the specific combination of forming techniques and surface decoration
techniques you’re using the recipes collected here will help you to narrow down your choices. Once you have selected a few promising candidates, start testing until you find a clay or casting slip that works for you.
Many people work in the low fire temperature range, some for the varied surface qualities and vibrant glaze and slip/underglaze colors that can be achieved, others to take advantage of the beauty that red earthenware clays offer, and still others for
practicality of reduced wear and tear on their kilns or to save electricity. The variety of glazes available at lower temperature ranges has increased dramatically over the years. The range itself has widened too, encompassing more than cone 08-04
glazes, with some firing to cone 02 or 01, and even higher.
If you fire to mid range and you’re looking for glaze recipes, you’ve hit the jackpot. In this section, you’ll find a plethora of mid range (cone 4–7) glaze recipes including loads of ever-popular cone 6 recipes. Check out our
mid range recipes and try something new the next time you fire your kiln, whether it’s an electric, gas oxidation, gas reduction, or atmospheric wood, salt, or soda firing.
High firing often produces the most vitreous and durable ceramic work and many potters and ceramic artists choose to high fire for this reason. Most artists that fire to this range mix their own glazes. We’ve collected over 450 high-fire glaze recipes,
and are adding more all the time. Many of these recipes come from master artists in the field, or are revisions and adaptations of classic glazes.
Raku firing is expressive, exciting, and fun. Whether you’re firing
in your own studio, or taking part in a group firing at a school, workshop or community center, raku offers many rewards. But the process requires more than just enthusiasm; you’ll need some reliable recipes in addition to the proper equipment and
tools to make the event successful. Here, you’ll find recipes and a few suggestions on how to tweak them to come up with great results.
In this section, you’ll find flashing slip and glaze recipes to use in an atmospheric, Salt, Soda, and/or Wood firing. Salt firing is a vapor-glazing process where salt (sodium chloride) is introduced into the kiln firebox at high temperature. The
salt vaporizes, and sodium vapor combines with silica in clay surface, forming extremely hard sodium-silicate glaze. Soda firing has been touted as modern-day nontoxic replacement for salt firing, but has proven to be much more than that. Potters
have discovered that soda firing has endless exciting aesthetic possibilities rather than just being a more environmentally friendly! Since humans first began to understand how fire hardened clay, we have been making ceramics, both in pits and in
wood kilns. Now, with so many fuel options available to the potter, wood-fired kilns are more of a choice than a necessity. While wood kiln firing isn’t easy, the results are incomparable.
Explore many options for adding surface designs and patterns to your clay vessels and sculptures at the leather-hard, greenware, and bisque-ware stage using decorating slips, engobes, and terra sigillatas. We all know from experience that getting ceramic
surfaces right can be one of the most frustrating, time consuming (and rewarding!) aspects of the ceramic process. Here we’ve gathered a number of recipes used by artists who have mastered working with ceramic slips, engobes, terra sigillatas,
and underglazes as part of their surface design and finishing process.
In this section, you’ll find all sorts of reference articles to help you get a better understanding of ceramic glaze, clay, and slip recipes. We have articles on specific ceramic materials that are used in some of the recipes, such as copper carbonate,
iron, ball clay, feldspar, and many more topics. Having problems with your glaze or need help figuring out what’s causing a glaze flaw? We have information here that you’ll find helpful. Also included here is a number of articles that
provide reference information about kilns, firings, material properties, substituting ceramic materials, and glaze stability. And if you’re looking for practical information on testing standards for testing clay or glaze recipes, for example
how to test your fired results for leaching or where you can get it sent for analysis, look no further because you’re in the right place.
Recipe Topics
Browse the topics below and click on the title of the area of interest to view all recipes in that topic.
Clay Bodies and Casting Slips
Looking to mix your own clay bodies and casting slips rather than purchasing pre-made clay? Whether you’re interested in achieving a specific color or need a clay body that responds to the specific combination of forming techniques and surface decoration techniques you’re using the recipes collected here will help you to narrow down your choices. Once you have selected a few promising candidates, start testing until you find a clay or casting slip that works for you.
Low Fire Glaze Recipes (Cone 022 – 01)
Many people work in the low fire temperature range, some for the varied surface qualities and vibrant glaze and slip/underglaze colors that can be achieved, others to take advantage of the beauty that red earthenware clays offer, and still others for practicality of reduced wear and tear on their kilns or to save electricity. The variety of glazes available at lower temperature ranges has increased dramatically over the years. The range itself has widened too, encompassing more than cone 08-04 glazes, with some firing to cone 02 or 01, and even higher.
Mid Range Glaze Recipes (Cone 1 – 7)
If you fire to mid range and you’re looking for glaze recipes, you’ve hit the jackpot. In this section, you’ll find a plethora of mid range (cone 4–7) glaze recipes including loads of ever-popular cone 6 recipes. Check out our mid range recipes and try something new the next time you fire your kiln, whether it’s an electric, gas oxidation, gas reduction, or atmospheric wood, salt, or soda firing.
High Fire Glaze Recipes (Cone 8 – 12)
High firing often produces the most vitreous and durable ceramic work and many potters and ceramic artists choose to high fire for this reason. Most artists that fire to this range mix their own glazes. We’ve collected over 450 high-fire glaze recipes, and are adding more all the time. Many of these recipes come from master artists in the field, or are revisions and adaptations of classic glazes.
Raku
Raku firing is expressive, exciting, and fun. Whether you’re firing in your own studio, or taking part in a group firing at a school, workshop or community center, raku offers many rewards. But the process requires more than just enthusiasm; you’ll need some reliable recipes in addition to the proper equipment and tools to make the event successful. Here, you’ll find recipes and a few suggestions on how to tweak them to come up with great results.Salt, Soda, and Wood-Fire Recipes
In this section, you’ll find flashing slip and glaze recipes to use in an atmospheric, Salt, Soda, and/or Wood firing. Salt firing is a vapor-glazing process where salt (sodium chloride) is introduced into the kiln firebox at high temperature. The salt vaporizes, and sodium vapor combines with silica in clay surface, forming extremely hard sodium-silicate glaze. Soda firing has been touted as modern-day nontoxic replacement for salt firing, but has proven to be much more than that. Potters have discovered that soda firing has endless exciting aesthetic possibilities rather than just being a more environmentally friendly! Since humans first began to understand how fire hardened clay, we have been making ceramics, both in pits and in wood kilns. Now, with so many fuel options available to the potter, wood-fired kilns are more of a choice than a necessity. While wood kiln firing isn’t easy, the results are incomparable.
Slip, Engobe, and Terra Sigillata
Explore many options for adding surface designs and patterns to your clay vessels and sculptures at the leather-hard, greenware, and bisque-ware stage using decorating slips, engobes, and terra sigillatas. We all know from experience that getting ceramic surfaces right can be one of the most frustrating, time consuming (and rewarding!) aspects of the ceramic process. Here we’ve gathered a number of recipes used by artists who have mastered working with ceramic slips, engobes, terra sigillatas, and underglazes as part of their surface design and finishing process.
Reference
In this section, you’ll find all sorts of reference articles to help you get a better understanding of ceramic glaze, clay, and slip recipes. We have articles on specific ceramic materials that are used in some of the recipes, such as copper carbonate, iron, ball clay, feldspar, and many more topics. Having problems with your glaze or need help figuring out what’s causing a glaze flaw? We have information here that you’ll find helpful. Also included here is a number of articles that provide reference information about kilns, firings, material properties, substituting ceramic materials, and glaze stability. And if you’re looking for practical information on testing standards for testing clay or glaze recipes, for example how to test your fired results for leaching or where you can get it sent for analysis, look no further because you’re in the right place.
Recipe Topics
Clay Bodies and Casting Slips
Low Fire (Cone 022 – 01)
Mid Range (Cone 1 – 7)
High Fire (Cone 8 – 14)
Raku
Salt, Soda, and Wood
Slip, Engobe, and Terra Sigillata
Reference