What is the best ceramic glaze book of this year? If you ask me, that’s “Special Effect Glazes” by Linda Bloomfield. This is the first book that explains how to analyze (special) glazes using the UMF and plotting it on the Stull Chart. The author also explains how you can do this easily: by using Glazy.org.
This is the modern way to discover the “mechanism” behind the glaze. In other words “what makes this glaze tick“. She is not the first to analyze glazes in this way. Matt Katz of Ceramic Materials Workshop in particular is the driving force behind this contemporary view. But he hasn’t (yet) written a book about it.
In short, as far as I am concerned , this is the book to show 21st century ceramists the way to that new manner of discovering ceramic glazes.
Introductionary book on ceramic glazes?
I often get the question what the best ceramic glaze book is for the novice potter. I always find that difficult to answer, because it depends on what you’re looking for. This new book by Linda Bloomfield is a great introduction if you want to learn how to investigate glaze mechanisms.
Despite the title “Special Effect Glazes“, this is not just a book about special glazes. In the first part of the book (almost half) Linda deals with exactly how to develop “ordinary” glazes. But yes, the title “Introduction to analyzing very ordinary glazes” was probably not sexy enough for the publisher 🙂
However, if you are looking for a general introduction on how to weigh, mix and apply glaze recipes, this book is probably not the most suitable. Then it’s better to read “The Glaze Guide” by Gabriel Kline.
The glaze route of the 21st century
I think the disadvantage of Kline’s book is the lack of vision on glaze analysis. Why does this glaze look like it looks (and behaves). And that’s a gap that linda’s book fills perfectly. It builds on the progressive glaze insights of the 21st century.
I don’t want to dismiss the 20th (and 19th century): these insights already existed. R.T. Stull described his graph in 1912. But in the 21st century, it’s much easier to use these insights. And linda’s book is a good hook-up to that.
This is partly thanks to glazy.org. This open source glaze website from Derek Au is much more than an exchange platform of glaze recipes. In addition to calculating the UMF (Unity Molecular Formula), this website automatically plots the recipe on the Stull Chart. In this way, the relationship SiO2 and Al2O3 is graphically represented. This ratio (usually) provides the most important clues for the discovery of the glaze mechanisms.
The best ceramic glaze book of 2020
Developing a beautiful glaze is a lot of work, even if you have plenty of examples in recipe books or online. But figuring out the glaze mechanisms involves a lot more detective work. Then you have to see not only what works, but also when it stops working.
And it’s impossible to exhaustively examine all these mechanisms. This is also evident from Linda’s book. In some chapters (such as the chapter on metallic glazes) she falls back into “outdated” insights based on a few sample recipes. And then she comes up with “general” principles based on these recipes or ingredients that are not quite (or not at all) correct. Old habits die hard.
Despite that, I declare (… drum roll…) “Special Effect Glazes” the best ceramic glaze book of the year. This book gives insight into the new way of glaze research in the 21st century.
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