Studio Glazes

Our glazes are in a constant state of flux at the studio. We regularly introduce new glazes to give our students fresh colors and textures to explore. You can find information on basic glazing practices on our student info page. We're also excited to release our current glaze recipe book for the ceramics community to try out.

Indigo Fire 2024 Glaze Recipe Book

Wanamaker

Wanamaker is a matte, turquoise glaze with many faces. On any clay it will show three different colors depending on thickness. When thin it is a pale green, but as it thickens it moves to a charcoal green and then eventually pools bright turquoise when thick enough. It is a challenging glaze that doesn't play particularly well with other glazes. If you operate within the glaze's strengths though, you can achieve great results. It is an excellent choice for showing off texture and adding a bit of spontaneity to a pot. Be careful when glazing, drips will definitely show with this glaze.

Umoja

Umoja brings the funk. Just like Wanamaker, this glaze has many faces. While it appears matte on its own, beware because it will make most glazes it mixes with go glossy and run wild! This glaze has an unorthodox R20:RO ratio because of soda ash and lithium. It's not designed for stability, it's designed for effects! By itself on white clays it produces brilliant colors and effects. When mixed with a more neutral, gloss glaze, the copper, titanium and lithium really come through. You can get streaks of white, blue and bright green. Use this glaze carefully, our kiln shelves are quite familiar with it at this point.

Nova White

Nova White is a semi-gloss, bright white glaze. It has 16% Ultrox and 10 spodumene which makes it a strong whitener and opacifier. It's stable and reliable across all the clay bodies.

Mar Sara

Mar Sara a kaki-red glaze adapted from a John Britt straw ash recipe. It has a semi-matte finish and does spectacular things when mixed with other glazes. Despite being full of colorants, the glaze is food safe and well balanced. You can achieve bright, tomato reds on brown clay and crystalline deposits on porcelain. Pay attention to glaze thickness when using Mar Sara as it can run quite a bit when combined with other drippy glazes.

Gloss Black

Another anchor glaze at the studio. Gloss black is a rich, saturated glaze that plays well with the rest of the lineup. It is stable and predictable. You can see some nice, silver crystals that show through on our speckled stoneware clay. When mixed with another color-rich glaze you can get mottled, hare's fur patterns. Although this glaze gets a full melt in the kiln, it is not runny and is an excellent choice for beginners.

Egg

Our adaptation for a cone 6, electric shino. Egg is a wonderfully balanced and stable glaze. It brings the best out of our other glazes and is very versatile. It pools a creamy white, and breaks an iron, orange. Use this glaze to show off texture and add interest to a glaze that might otherwise be flat. Egg has an organic, comforting look and gives pots a lasting presence. This glaze is great for beginners, advanced potters and everyone in between. Food safety rating: 1

If you see "egg" in a glaze name, it's usually because of the glaze's eggshell finish. Our glaze however, looks like a fried egg. Fried eggs are beautiful.

Clear

We have the best cone 6 clear glaze in the biz. I've tested and modified dozens of clear glaze recipes and this is the best. It fits all of our cone 6 clays, melts well, and does not pinhole. It is forgiving when thin and can get reasonably thick before going cloudy. Use clear to dilute other color saturated glazes or to show off underglazes and raw clay.

Celedon.jpg

Psionic Celedon is meant to capture the cool, gray, blue-green hue that an iron celedon achieves in reduction. It is a subtle glaze that will grow on you over time. Psionic Celedon is stable and forgiving. The surface is glossy and smooth while not moving much in the kiln. Would you guess that four different oxides are involved in producing this simple green?

Zerg

For those interested in drippy, bright colors, Zerg is for you. This glaze is not especially predictable, but it does produce brilliant colors when used correctly. Zerg goes from pink/brown, to dark purple, to bright/white purple as it gets thicker. Use Zerg to highlight sections of your pot. If covering your whole pot in Zerg, make sure you have a beefy foot with plenty of clearance in anticipation of drips. Zerg will surprise you with all colors of the rainbow when paired with the right glaze.

Glacius

Glacius is a rutile float glaze that mixes incredibly well with the rest of the studio glazes. The blue will come through in most pairings, but in slightly different shades. It has some oil-spotting and hares-fur tendencies when mixed with the right counter part.

Cobalt and rutile tend to degas at the wrong time in the kiln which makes floating blues prone to pin-holing. To combat this, Glacius is made from a base glaze of all the best melters. Very frit heavy.

Artanis

Artanis is the crown jewel of our scrap glaze recipes. Though Artanis doesn't have a specific recipe, we have a known group of material additives that reliably create Artanis from the studio scrap glaze bucket. This does mean that there is variation in how Artanis looks month to month and studio to studio. The overall look and feel though is consistent. It's an earthy, matte blue with great texture and breaking qualities.

Archon Blue

Archon Blue is a semi-translucent, tropical blue color that comes from copper. Copper glazes produce blue colors under very specific circumstances and it usually requires high alkali presence and an excess of silica. This makes Archon prone to crazing, particularly on white clays.

Alarak Red

Alarak Red is a stable, stain based glaze with a semi-matte finish.

Dehaka Purple

Recently reformulated (2023), Dehaka Purple is a periwinkle, matte glaze. This color is produced by adding a bit of cobalt to a magnesium base glaze. Although the glaze is matte and stable by itself, it has the potential to become very runny when combines with other glazes so watch out!

Assad Black

Christa Assad's copper black glaze is a wonderful glaze to blend other colors with. It has a wonderful surface texture and produces some bright greens when paired with glossy glazes.

Amber Crackle

Amber Crackle is just what it sounds like! Alkaline frits and feldspars have high thermal expansion which produces crazing. It's why Amber Crackle has 73% Nepheline Syenite. For color, we use yellow ochre rather than traditional iron oxide. The crackling effects will show best on white clays.

Endion Blue

Endion Blue is a very dynamic, cobalt blue glaze with a matte finish. By itself, and on the right clay, it can produce a variety of blue, green and purple crystallization effects. This glaze can definitely run.

Lalone's Crawl

Lalone's Crawl is a messy, challenging-to-apply, unreliable, but beautiful fault glaze! If you're attached to your pot, skip this glaze. It applies thick and dries fast as well. It's one dip, in and out. When done right though, you get an amazing effect!

Karax Blonde

Karax Blonde is a rutile-heavy, gloss glaze that really shines when combined with other glazes. Copper and cobalt based glazes love to play with rutile. Karax is easy to use, reliable, and guaranteed to brighten up your pot.

Neo Steel

Neo Steel is a matte, charcoal black glaze. It's got a wonderful, sugary texture. Although it might seem to be a flat color, it does a great job highlighting heavily textured pots.

Satin White

We added satin white to our glaze lineup because it's just so hard to choose between a gloss and matte white! Satin White has an incredibly smooth, matte finish that's perfect for decorating. It also produces incredible, pale blue colors when used alone on dark clays.

Thermal Yellow

Another recently reformulated glaze (2023), Thermal Yellow is a stain-based glaze with a nice matte finish. It does well showing off texture.

Glaze Food Safety

Pre-Approved Commercial Glaze Lines

Indigo Fire now allows some outside commercial glazes to be used in the studio. Our pre-approved glaze lines are below, but if you have another glaze you'd like to use that isn't on this list, you can submit it for review here using...

this Google Form

Our staff will look at the glaze and determine whether it's OK to use in the studio.

AMACO Celadon Glazes ( Cone 5 - Cone 6)

https://www.amaco.com/t/glazes-and-underglazes/high-fire/celadons

AMACO Potter's Choice Glazes (Cone 5 - Cone 6)

https://www.amaco.com/t/glazes-and-underglazes/high-fire/potters-choice

AMACO Satin Matte Glazes (Cone 5 - Cone 6)

https://www.amaco.com/t/glazes-and-underglazes/high-fire/satin-matt

MAYCO Stroke & Coat Wonderglaze (Cone 06 - Cone 10)

https://www.maycocolors.com/color/fired/stroke-coat/

As of right now, these are the only glaze lines you are allowed to purchase from. You don't need to get approval for specific colors, so long as they are from these glaze lines. Commercial glazes are functionally different than our bucket-dipping glazes. They need to be applied with a brush, usually in several coats. These glazes are NOT to be layered over or under our studio glazes. Their consistency and stability will be compromised otherwise. We cannot attest to the food safety, runny-ness, vibrancy, or finish of any of these glazes on our clay bodies. If we find that any of these glazes aren't performing well or are actively damaging our kiln shelves, we will remove them from the approved list.