I am a potter of over ten years and am now in this year paying attention to my glazes and what goes in to them. It's been an awesome journey with plenty of "ah ha" moments and exponentially more "what the..." moments. Regardless of what I'm feeling, digital fire is so far the best resource I've encountered. I’ve been going about glazes all wrong, following recipes and stabbing in the dark hoping to find one that Works for me... well, it’s not working! I’m devoting my time to explore glaze chemistry even more than I have and to do this I am convinced I can not go forward efficiently without a test kiln. THANK YOU for these wonderful resources!
Looking at your website, I have no doubts that there is no other person that would be so dedicated to the subject as you. It is a fact that you have a truly unique knowledge of how things are done, the materials and chemistry being used in such processes. Frankly, I do not complement people and their work easily but you are one of a kind person with some divine dedication to the technology. There are very few people like you and that is a fact. I just spoke with several so-called ceramics, frits and glazes experts and I have to say that they had somewhat limited knowledge while you cover incredibly wide spectrum of all affairs involved in to working with all those great materials.
I just wanted to say, thank you! I’m relatively new to pottery, taking a mostly self-taught approach and I’m at the stage where glazing is in my mind. I don’t want to be (and can’t see myself ever) buying glazes from commercial suppliers. I want to learn my craft with glaze as much as I do with my clay preparation and pottery making. I’ve seen “the dragon” and been uninspired by so much of what I find online and to be honest, in many glaze books. It seems more popular to try and present a mass of glaze possibilities than to offer a learning experience beyond being told a glaze needs a melter, a refractory and a glass-maker. Enough to offer a very basic understanding, but nothing upon which to build the understanding that will allow some degree of mastery (or at least influence) of your glaze making.
I am so pleased to have found digitalfire.com. You’ve shown me exactly how to approach and understand glazing, giving me the foundation for approach I sought. I was thinking of base glazes and what you’ve shown me about working on from those is fantastic and exactly what I was looking for. To have a reliable base glaze to modify and develop to meet different needs; to understand how to shift a melting point or adjust the surface gloss; to come to know how the mechanisms in a glaze and understanding them gives me the route to creating glazes that realize my intentions - wow!
I can’t thank you enough. Rather than having to form a dumb reliance on a book of recipe cards and a bunch of website bookmarks (which I wasn’t wanting to go for) you’ve given me the foundation for a lifelong development and understanding of the glazes I will make, that will become “my” glazes. You have really opened my mind to the whole subject and it doesn’t seem to be a problem that I’m no scientist or chemist. You’ve shared your knowledge in a way that is completely approachable and remarkably easy to understand for someone without any kind of science/chemistry background.
