Glaze Making Course
£225 per person
The basics of glaze chemistry - a practical course. 8 spaces.
Sunday February 22nd 1pm-5pm
Sunday March 1st 1pm-5pm
Sunday March 8th 1pm-2pm
This course is aimed at those who have wanted to learn how to develop and make your own glazes but haven't really known where to start.
Session 1 - we will describe what glaze is, and the building blocks of a base glaze. We will describe and categorise common materials that are used in making glazes, such as quartz, flint, frits, EPK, china clay, gerstley borate, whiting, talc, feldspars, wollastonite and nepheline syenite. We will discuss the use of pyrometric cones in firing, and differences between firing in oxidation and reduction.
After a tea / coffee break, in pairs, you and your partner will select four materials, one from each category to form a base glaze (a source of silica, a source of alumina, a primary flux, and a secondary flux / modifier) based on what you have learned in the first part of the session. You and your partner will perform a quadraxial line blend of these materials, mixing them in 25 different volumetric combinations. These tests will be fired ready for the second session.
Session 2 - You and your partner will evaluate your line blends, and select the blend that functions best as a glaze. You will then mix this blend at a larger scale, and use this base glaze to develop colours, using tester tiles and adding various percentages of colouring oxides such as red iron oxide, rutile, cobalt carbonate, copper carbonate, manganese dioxide, chrome oxide, illmenite, titanium dioxide and tin oxide / zircopax, as well as artificial stains.
Session 3 - A short session to swap the face masks for tea and biscuits as the whole group looks at and evaluates all of the finished test tiles!
By the end of this course, you should have an understanding of the roles of the individual materials and feel confident to start having a go at making your own glazes - developing and following recipes, and making adjustments to them, as well as working safely.
All materials, tools, PPE and test tiles will be provided. You may wish to bring a notebook, and your own test tiles for Session 2 if you wish to use your preferred clay body.
Please email to book! Spaces are limited to 8 people.