Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Chasing Tomato Red-


For the past 25 years we have worked with an iron red glaze. A Tomato Red given to us by Geoff Picket- an English man who is a potter living and working in Georgia.
We are quite affectionate of Tomato Red. We like the warmness of the glaze and the brightness of the glaze. The two pots here are from the last firing. One sat on the right side of the kiln- the other on the left. One came out with no iron trapping the other plenty of iron trapping.
The last two years this glaze decided to crawl. A very stable glaze which- other then the changes caused in reduction- decided to crawl and sometimes about the size of a quarter.
What's with that?
After taking the glaze completely apart ingredient by ingredient - we found one which did not jive. We had bought chemicals from a different company. The difference we found in the weight from company 2- not our regular company was about 3 times heavier then from our old company. Needless to say we went back to company 1.

1 comment:

MH said...

It's the magnesium carbonate, which if you have used it you know is almost lighter than air. The problem was a magnesium carb from a Japanese company. I do not remember the name but it was nearly three times denser than normal. that is the volume per kilo was much less.
mh