Thursday, May 10, 2012

Underglaze and Soda

Red underglaze, no less. And orange.

Fellow potter Nate Philbrick - lately seduced away from clay by the promise of actual cash money to be made lobstering - used to use a couple of AMACO underglazes to cone 10, with brilliant results. That surprised me, and I made a mental note of it, for possible use at a later date. Nate used them for tiny accents, with no glaze, and on the exterior only.

Hot shades notoriously burn out, and despite the success in the stoneware kiln, I figured soda vapor would vanish all traces of color. Expecting exactly nothing, I brushed a little bit on a test piece. And, hey, WOW, red!! and orange!! Brilliant, almost-true color.


As you can see, I had a hell of a time getting a non-blurry photo of this tiny little piece; but it's enough that you can see the color, and a bit of the sheen, from the soda glass. The orange was shinier than the red but neither was entirely dry.

It bears repeating: exterior only, and I'm gonna guess it would be a less-than-pleasant texture over a broad surface. But for details? Delightful.

The specific underglazes  are AMACO 389, Flame Orange, and AMACO 388, Radiant Red, and they were applied after bisquing. (I think that matter but not sure. )

3 comments:

Sue Pariseau Pottery said...

Awesome. I wonder if they work well in the wood fire as well. I'll have to try it out.

Linda Starr said...

I wonder what it would look like on a larger surface, both the orange and the pinkish red and as Sue says in wood fire too.

The Wynhill Potter said...

Bowie Croisant uses the Radiant Red on large surfaces and has had a couple of articles and a cover for Pottery Making Illustrated with his red soda fored pots. Amaco also features them in their advertisiements. Seeing how great those were, I asked Bowie via email what he used for the red and he advised me the Amaco product name and number. He also suggested that I put it on greenware and bisque it on, then put a little clear glaze over it for the soda firing to give it more gloss. I did all of these things and used the red for accents to beautiful effect. I did not have a clear in my palette, so I used Frazier's Blue Celadon, and in a more protected area, with possibly heavier application, it turned the red a wonderful burgundy. I have a wood firing coming up in September and will report back on red from wood fire.

John Lowes
http://wynhillpottery.weebly.com