June 2006 Archives

In my days of preparing for making my own glazes I ran across many chemicals, various frits, fluxes, opacifiers and colorants. One chemical which stood out as being unique is Bentonite, because the only purpose I could find for it was to keep glazes from seperating.

Out of 5 test glazes, I used Bentonite on 3 of them, those three were very easy to apply and had a much more even covering of the glaze test container than the two glazes without Bentonite. For anyone making their own glazes, even if they are from a recipie, then I would reccomend dropping about 2% of the final weight into the glaze, it will make your life much simpler.

On Tuesday evening my new electronic balance (Ohaus CS2000) arrived, the final piece of the puzzle for making glazes. I began with 5 simple recipies, of which I used 4 and then made my own 6th.

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After much thought and pouring over tons of pro-lead and anti-lead documentation I have made the decision to not use lead-based glazes in my ceramic work. When I began moving forward with my decision to make my own glazes, I was presented with hundreds of glaze recipes that all used very few ingredients, but all requiring lead bisilicate. I initially discovered that lead bisilicate is not that easy to get, it requires special ordering from all suppliers and most don't even list it in their catalogs. I initially assumed that lead bisilicate was safe because many commercial glazes contained lead, and stated that they were "safe" when fired to 1400 degrees F.

Most of the documentation I found relating to why lead is bad in ceramics realted to why it was bad for the potter. I was prepared for the risk to myself because I have been through many lab course in which I was trained how to handle things that could harm me. The deciding factor for me was reading an article about lead leaching. I was by no means prepared to deal with the concept of there being lead released from my works while they are being used.

I am now down to about 5 recipes that are known to be good, so I will be starting off slow as far as things I am certain of. I never have known what color to glaze most of my works, so I will be starting this as a guessing game with myself. I will be making my own glazes, documenting how much of each ingredient I have used and recording the results of each.

Lead has been used in ceramics for far too long, I intend to use other frits and begin my own publicly-accessible catalog of glaze recipies.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.
- Aristotle

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In my general blog I occasionally post things that are "random thoughts", that category may eventually exist here, but for now "quotes" is more appropriate, as I do not yet have many random thoughts when it comes to ceramics. This entry serves as the first in this category. As I find other inspirations or interesting thoughts/quotes I will post them.