Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Since I am a sucker for simplicity, especially with numbers, a cone 10 (10) magnesium matte glaze I found on the web really appealed to me. The one I found is: Kona Spar 20 Soda Spar 20 Whiting 20 Dolomite 20 Kaolin 20 Very simple numerically, and low in complexity of ingredients, but it seemed to be a little low in magnesium for my tastes3 . So, I tried testing this as a base glaze, but I just couldnt help myself with the question regarding; What if.... In the rst magnesium matte base glaze I attempted, I replaced all the soda spar with Kona spar (a potassium spar), cut the Whiting in half and substituted Strontium Carbonate instead. Since the glaze seemed a little low in magnesium and especially since I was using a more active (lower temperature melting) feldspar, I thought that the addition of 10 parts magnesium carbonate would stien the glaze and add matte-ness to the glaze. Who knows? So, the base glaze I rst tried is: Mag Matte Base 1 Kona Spar 40 Whiting 10 Strontium Carbonate 10 Dolomite 20 Kaolin 20 Magnesium Carb 10
3
In the picture to the left is a sample of the base glaze. It turned slightly purple-pink where thick; note the mottling as well. Possibly from incomplete mixing, but also maybe from the introduction of strontium carbonate. Replace with whiting? Also, since the strontium was an impromptu replacement of some whiting, possibly reducing the strontium in half is more accurate according to the molar mass comparison with whiting. So my thinking here (quite erroneously, as I found), was that cobalt and chrome oxide had minimal color interaction with the melt they were in, that is, they remained blue and green respectively with only slight color modications due to the solvent they were in. So I tested the base glaze, cobalt carbonate, and chrome oxide. 1. Cobalt colorant.
100 40
With the addition of 1.5% Cobalt Carbonate, the magnesium-cobalt interaction produces a sparkly matte dark purple.
2. Chrome colorant.
100 40
In this test, .8% Chrome oxide was introduced, producing the mottled puke-green / brown shown.
A question Im interested in is; could the replacement of 10 whiting for the 10 strontium reduce the mottling eect?
These tests addressed the question above about the substitution of Strontium Carbonate in place of Whiting. Notice that the new base glaze recipe below is the same except for the lack of use of Strontium. All these glazes were striking in that they behaved as a fake ash glaze. In order to produce a magnesium matte, the viscosity needs to be increased as well as a slight reduction in the surface tension. Mag Matte Base 2 Kona Spar 40 Whiting 20 Dolomite 20 Kaolin 20 Magnesium Carb 10 I apologize that there is no test tile of the base glaze for the Magnesium Matte Base 2.
100 2
Surprisingly, the 2 parts iron oxide produced a pleasant yellow with dark green crystals in areas of thicker buildup.
100 10
Here, the 10 parts iron oxide produced as expected a dark brown, almost temmoku appearance fake-ash style glaze.
100 3
100 2
Not too surprisingly, the 1.5 parts of copper carb produced a dark green glaze, though it is a fake-ash.
100 2
Here, the 2 parts iron chromate produced an interesting mottling of brown/grey which seemed slightly less runny than the other tests.
100 2
The 2 parts Cobalt Carbonate was used to look for contrast with the previous1 Mag matte cobalt test. Here, this one produced a subtle purple/lavender fake-ash glaze, which is strikingly dierent from the previous.
Open Questions:
1. What would Nickel do as a colorant in either of these two base glazes? 2. Would more mag carb ( 20 total) make this (Mag Matte Base 2) a matte glaze rather than an ash glaze? 3. Are the crystals which were produced in the rst mag matte a consequence of the ring or the use of strontium or some other unknown? Need more tests... 4. What would the replacement of Whiting with Strontium Carb do in these base glazes? 5. What would the introduction of titanium do to either of these two base glazes? 6. Increase the Kaolin to stien the glaze?