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! In the soda firing process, soda ash (sodium carbonate) in water solution, instead of salt, is sprayed into kiln at maturing temperature, and sodium vapor combines with silica in clay to form sodium-silicate glaze. 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. The work in wood kilns reveals the story of the firing, with pieces showing ash deposits and the path of the flame through the kiln. In these archives, Salt, Soda, and/or Wood Firing artists share their glaze recipes and their atmospheric slip recipes