“Retail Rick” Has it Figured Out

He’s got a much better way to glaze

Rick doesn’t dig clay, crush rocks, or make glazes. Ew, messy. He buys commercial glazes in cute little jars, each the price of a steak dinner. Sure, back in the dark ages, potters used actual dirt and rocks. And, around here you can even get a ton of gravel or clay, for $20. But today, potters shell out twice that for one box and say, “Totally worth it!” OK, fine. But glaze is where it gets magical. A ton of local gravel is packed with feldspar, silica, calcium carbonate, dolomite — a whole cone-10 party (that can be moved to a cone 6 neighborhood with a little frit). Grind it, add clay, dip, done. How is it possible that an overloaded pickup truck full costs half the price of a single 500ml jar Rick uses? Something’s upside down here! Rick says: “Why mess with base recipes or spend all that effort learning and testing DIY dipping glazes when I can spend minutes multi-layering these commercial paints”! Of course, he has to brush up the price to pay for them! And sure, some customers might question how glazes that have such intense metallic colors and run like mascara in the rain are not silica-starved metal-oxide sludge. Rick answers: “They have safety labels, with fancy symbols, so I don’t have to think about that”. The icing on the cake it how well they photograph and how good they look on Rick’s social. He really has this thing figured out. Tradition is overrated anyway, right?

Related Pictures

Are drippy glazes what pottery has come to?

Brightly colored commercial brushing glazes

AI-generated using prompt for drippy and layer glazed pottery typically displayed on social.

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There is an undeniable appeal to the bright colors of many commercial glazes. While nobody is recommending abandoning them and going all-in on DIY, there is an appeal to having more control. If you are a potter, hobbyist or small manufacturer, consider: Do we want customers eating and drinking from these kinds of glazes? This type of ware is often crazed (runny glazes do that, especially on bodies they were not designed to fit). These are also prime candidates for leaching the high percentages of the heavy metals they contain. All those drippy layers running and pooling on the insides can make pieces into glaze compression time bombs. For food surfaces, the glaze manufacturers want us using their recommended balanced, lightly colored products. Good news! These base recipes are also the easiest to make yourself. When did we get intimidated about mixing our own glazes anyway? No one has to go full mad scientist on DIY here. Research the common ingredients your supplier offers. Use recipes that pass a sanity test. Be a savvy consumer - these colored products are expensive and using them only on the outsides will cut your costs in half. Learn to add pigments to your base recipes and save even more. Then learn to make and use dipping glazes (not dripping glazes) and save time also.

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Glossary

Commercial hobby brushing glazes
These are an incredible benefit to pottery beginners and pure hobbyists. But they can also be an obstacle to progress and affordability as your skills improve.

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