Glazes and Glazing: Finishing Techniques (Ceramic Arts Handbook Series)

We all remember our first experience with glazing and how our hopes usually exceeded our skills and knowledge. Glazing plays an important part of ceramic art but can be rather mysterious to both the newcomer and the seasoned professional. While the chemistry may appear to be a bit like alchemy to the uninitiated, an established science and accepted practices provide order and repeatable results.

Glazes & Glazing: Finishing Techniques covers many aspects of glazing. Artists share their methods and recipes while providing inspriational stories about their personal experiences in ceramics and how you can find success in your own studio.

You'll discover information on glaze formulation; applications such as dipping, pouring, and spraying; firing variations; characteristics of materials; testing; and even crystalline and ash glazing along with more than 100 successful recipes.

Whether you're looking for fresh ideas, expanding your palette or exploring new techniques, Glazes & Glazing: Finishing Techniques provides a wealth of information, instruction and inspiration you'll refer to for years to come.

In Using Gravity to Enhance a Glaze Surface Kari Radasch maintains that the surface is more than a seductive veneer, and she embraces spontaneous yet purposeful marks to embrace as much information as possible. These marks have a huge impact on the glaze surface, which moves, melts and flows depending on the mass of different glazes she uses.

Preparing Wood Ash for Glazes gets anyone started on this exciting and readily available ingredient. Kathy Chamberlain describes the five steps to cleaning wood ash so you'll be prepared the next time you come across a recipe calling for it. Which could be one of the great recipes Mark Issneberg provides in his story about Spraying Wood Ash Glazes.

If we could all just get the basics down, we'd be a lot further ahead in achieving the results we wanted. Annie Chrietzberg's Glazing for Success provides many of the tips you need to assure the results you're looking for. From prepping the bisque to treating the drips and runs, her guide is sure to change your glazing from a bust to a triumph.

Todd Burns, a philosophy major turned ceramic artist, explores marine iconography on his series of Aegean-inspired forms using an image trasfer technique.

Frank James Fisher demonstrates three approaches in Glazing Patterns using direct contact, stencils and transfer.

Patrick Horstley, an avid experimenter, shares his Strong, Pure and Matt glazes.

Discover the dark-metal finish technique of Rollie Younger and his Boiler Teapots.

With Susan Beiner Too Much Is Not Enough as she applies brilliant colors fired from cone 6 to 10.

William Sawhill, Sumi von Dassow and William Schran cover the world of crystalline glazes. Sawhill and von Dassow explore high-fire crystals in Crystalline Glazes and Making Crystals Clear respectively, while Schran covers Developing Crystals at Mid Range.

Hunt Prothro pours underglazes on a palette to achieve his color mixing then applies them using a variety of techniques.

Utilizing strong forms, Jeff Kleckner gets a Ripple Effect by manipulating a glaze to create a surface tension that's easy on the eye.

Mary Cay has A Glittering Obsession with the glaze jewels she farms from her kiln.

55 pounds of glaze on a pot? Find out how and why Morten Espersen layers so many glazes in his Knowledge in a Jar.

John Nance tells the story of Tom and Elaine Coleman, who also share their favorite recipes and techniques.

Paul McCoy extensively layers his surfaces with deflocculated slips to get depth and texture.

And much, much more!