Wood Fired effects in an electric kiln

A couple of blog posts ago, I wrote about a glaze developed by Richard Busch of Glenfiddich Farm Pottery. It's a fabulous glaze- in fact, it's two glazes- a white and a nutmeg that can be mixed together or layered to create colors in electric kilns that are usually only achieved in wood fired kilns. Busch also developed a black stain (for highlights or brushwork) to be used with these two glazes.

Being the glaze test junkie that I am, I decided to play a bit with these two glazes, by experimenting with not only the proportions of these glazes, but also with different clay bodies. These test results came out of my kiln yesterday.



These glazes over the light color of the porcelain clay body doesn't quite achieve that rich deep golden toasty color that I like. But they do illustrate that higher percentages of nutmeg will give you darker and richer colors.

Next, I tested these same glaze ratios on a medium buff stoneware called Long Beach.




This body is darker than porcelain, but still fires to a light beige color. It's still not quite what I want, but the cup (below) is promising.


Coming up next... these glazes on my clay of choice, Black Mountain.