Commercial Glazes

Commercial glazes come in a variety of different cone/temps, tons of different colors, and in different consistencies.

When shopping for a glaze you need to know a few things before you order: What cone will you be firing to(or what cone does your clay mature at)?; Is the work it will be applied to functional or nonfunctional(or do you need food-safe glaze)?; Do you want glossy, satin, or matt finishes on your glazes?; Will you be applying the glaze by brush, pouring and dipping, or spray? and lastly of course, what color do you want and will that color look good on your clay body?

All these things need to be determined before you get your heart set on a color. Different clays have different maturing temps, before you start picking glaze you need to know the difference between a cone 06 and a cone 6. Also not all glazes are food-safe or even really safe for you the glazer to work with, some glazes have lead, some other high metal ingredients that might leach out of the glaze with acidic food etc, some glazes have textures that would cause cleaning near impossible and set up nice homes for bacterial growth. Many glazes also have different surface finishes, so knowing if you see your work in a glossy or a matt, etc will help you narrow down the right glazes you want. Glazes also come in different thicknesses, a thicker consistency for brushing and a thinner consistency for dipping and spraying. Generally, brush on glazes come in pint bottles and smaller and dipping/spraying glazes come in gallon+ size containers. Commercial glaze also comes in dry form so you can mix up how you want it, not all glazes are available dry tho. Now after you have figured what kind of glaze you need to be shopping for you can get to the fun stuff of picking color...pretty, pretty colors...yum.

Remember: The glaze chip you see in the catalog is how it looks on their clay body it might look quite different on yours, a glaze on a white clay will be bright a colorful, the same glaze on a terra cotta clay might look a whole lot different.