I have been doing research for a safety manual for our college ceramics department for several days. Finding your site has been a God-send-Thank you!
Food safety of our product has suddenly come to our attention. The biggest health problem I think we have is crazing (maybe some leaching). We need a way to solve this yesterday.
I want you to know how much it means to me to have you help with my questions. I have been doing pottery for over 20 years and never new this stuff. I feel so responsible for my glazes leaching and stupid to not have known, and the stress or waiting for the lab test results has been eating me up.
Because of media warnings to make people wary about using brightly coloured pottery, I would like to put together some advertising that I can distribute with the work to give people confidence in using brightly coloured hand made pottery. I am wondering if there should be anything further that I could do to have this work tested to guarantee no toxicity in leaching? .. You have no idea how grateful I would be if you can help me or advise me re the above. I am reluctant to do any production until I am satisfied that my work is safe for people to use.
Could we print your article on leaching in our newsletter. Many members are really concerned about the safety of the pottery they are making.
We are using your 1916 glaze recipe on low fire ware and my students are asking a lot of questions about the safety of the pottery they are making, does it leach. I do not know how to answer them. Please help.
I love your site and am so grateful for all you have done to help with glaze formulation/safety.
Your comments about the ethics involved in selling functional wares make sense to me, but not to my studio friends. I'm studying ceramics under studio potters (making functional wares) who NEVER test new glazes for durabilty, leaching,etc. (despite? college degrees in ceramic art).
I have been very impressed with the software thus far as I begin to explore its features as well as your considerable expertise. My eventual goal is to simplify the glaze situation in the studio by employing Frit based glazes overall and/or simple base glazes that can cover a reasonable range of colors and provide consistent reliability (and safety) to the beginning student ... and avoid any toxic elements that would compromise safety in the studio or in the fired, functional, piece.
My partner in crime (wife) is concerned about crazing and we are both concerned about leaching of toxins into someone's dinner...... so we have a keen interest in stability.
I've just received an email from a customer about one of the mugs she bought from me. She said there was a metallic taste and stopped using the mug. Okay, so is this possible, that there would be some kind of leaching from the glaze that would cause a metallic taste?
Love the post (about leaching in glazes). I am the bad guy on Facebook ceramic because I always bring up this subject. So sad.
Your site is great! It is so good to have your site as I venture into making my food-safe glazes. I live in São Paulo, Brazil, so the raw materials here naturally can be very different from the ones in most of the books and websites, as we don't have much of that available here. So your site is the only that I have found so far that is really helpful if you want to start from scratch, so thank you! Its like my dream as a potter to make beautiful, lasting and safe ware so your website and insight-live are invaluable sources of information for me. I am so glad to be able to work with this! I really admire your work and tell my students about your website. Here in Brazil, studio ceramics is not a very developed area. Many people don not even know/care about being precise and knowledgable about safety with glazes. So your website is like an oasis in the tropical desert.