Souvenir mugs that demonstrate incredible workmanship, glaze recipes, use of decals

These porcelain mugs are sold at many tourist shops on the Alaskan cruize circuit. Made in China of course. But their quality is astounding. And they teach multiple lessons to potters - great skill in the use of decals (even inside), meeting different glazes at the rims, evenness of application, layering, the use of wax resist, etc. They likely have a glossy and matte base glaze and add stains (to get the black, blue, red, white, green). Notice they have an iron red (lower right) that is stable enough not to run and host an even more fluid melt second layer. They also have a stoney yet functional matte white (bottom left). You can make dipping glaze versions of all of these:
Black glossy: G3914A and G2926BL
Black matte: G2934BL
Iron Red: G3948A
White stoney matte: G2934Y2
Glossy colors: Add stains to G2926B
Matte colors: Add stains to G2934

Related Pictures

G2926B cone 6 transparent liner glaze: Proven, reliable, durable

A hand made pottery mug with clear liner glaze

While colorful and layered glazes on the outsides of pieces get lots of praise and glory transparent or white glazes providing the functional surface on the insides of pieces often get little attention from potters. Really, what good is an attractive piece if the food surface is crazing, blistering, leaching or cutlery marking? Or if it converts the piece into a time bomb? This cone 6 liner glaze, G2926B, is an example of how I found a glaze, recognized its potential and then adjusted the recipe to resist crazing on our clay bodies, fire durable and leach resistant act as a base to host colorants, opacifiers and variegators. I get the best fired results using the C6DHSC firing schedule and very good performance as a dipping glaze when the slurry is thixotropic. One of the reasons this recipe is so widely used is that it is well-documented having a code number that Google indexes. Drinking from a mug having a quality and fitted functional surface and a nice crisp line dividing the outside and inside glazes instills pride in me as the maker. What is the outside glaze? It is the G2934Y matte base recipe plus 8% Mason 6027 stain. The clay is MNP which I make myself.

G2934 cone 6 DIY matte glaze: Reliable, durable, adjustable, stainable

These pieces were made from Plainsman Polar Ice and fired to cone 6 using variations on the PLC6DS and C6DHSC schedules. The dipping glaze is G2934Y, a recipe variant of G2934 having a finer micro-surface texture (it has the same chemistry but the MgO is sourced from a frit and talc instead of dolomite). These mugs display varying degrees of matteness depending on the cooling rate of their firings and the percentage of glossy G2926B base we blend in. As an MgO matte, this glaze is can have a surface very pleasant to the touch. It fires durable, can be quite matte without cutlery marking and it has very good slurry and application properties (as a dipping glaze). It has a very low thermal expansion (won’t craze). It works really well with stains (except purples). It melts even better than the glossy!

An ordinary white mug: More difficult to make than you think!

This is M340S with G2934 matte white outside and G2926B glossy white inside (both have 10% zircopax). Consider what can go wrong. Zircon glazes love to crawl. I either add CMC gum to make it a base coat (or use a combination of tin oxide and zircopax (like G3926C). The clay has granular manganese added to produce the speck, if accidentally over-fired, even half a cone, it will bloat. And the clay body: The outer glaze is ugly on dark-burning clays. And it is drab on porcelains. It does not even look good on this same body if the speckle is not there. Another difficulty: Controlling the degree of matteness. I blend in about 20% of the glossy, otherwise it would fire too matte. And the firing schedule: PLC6DS - its drop-and-hold step is critical, without it the surface would be full of pinholes. Another problem: If the kiln is heavily loaded and cools slower than the programmed ramp-down, the surface will be too matte. Finally, glaze thickness: If it is too thin it will look washed out and ugly. Too thick it will bubble and look pasty.

Control matteness by glaze recipe or firing schedule

The clay is Plainsman M370. Fired at cone 6 using the PLC6DS drop-and-hold firing schedule. The inside glossy glaze is G2926BL. The outside glaze base is G2934BL matte. Both recipes contain 6% Mason 6600 black stain. G2934 is tricky to keep consistent because the matte surface is a product of both the chemistry and the firing schedule. Thus we faced lots of testing when it became necessary to substitute Ferro Frit 3124 for the supposed equivalent, Fusion Frit F-19. Early results showed a little better melting, so the 10-15% glossy we normally add to move the stoney matte toward satin is not needed. However, we still made an 85:15 batch for our more frequent slow-cool C6DHSC firings (otherwise this G2934 mug would have fired too matte). So with the two recipes and two schedules I can produce four surfaces, from gloss satin to stony matte.

Cone 6 iron red with a catcher glaze

This is G3948A (similar to the popular Ancient Copper product). To get this stunning result it needs to be applied thickly. Therefore it runs a lot. But the catcher glaze on the bottom cm of these mugs has stopped the flow. The catcher is a glossy black glaze and is hardly noticeable. I use G3914A as the catcher but Amaco Obsidian would also likely work. The inside glaze, G2926B, is one I have tested and developed to fit our clay bodies really well.

Mason stains in the G2934 matte base glaze at cone 6

Stains can work surprisingly well in matte base glazes like G2934. But they perform differently in a matte host glaze. The glass is less transparent and so varying thicknesses do not produce as much variation in tint. Notice how low many of the stain percentages are here, yet most of the colors are still bright. A good reason to minimize stain concentration is to avoid leaching. We tested 6600, 6350, 6300, 6021 and 6404 overnight in lemon juice, they passed without any visible changes. It is known that MgO mattes, like this one, are less prone to acid attack that CaO mattes. A down-side to the MgO-matte-mechanism is that chrome-tin stains do not work (e.g. 6006), high CaO content is needed in the host glaze to develop the color. The inclusion stains 6021 and 6027 work very well in this base. As do the 6450 yellow and 6364 blue. And the 6600 produces an incredible gunmetal black. The 6385 is an error, it should be purple (that being said, do not use it, it is ugly in this base). The degree-of-matteness can be tuned by blending in some G2926B glossy base.

Mason stains in the G2926B base glaze at cone 6

19 glazed porcelain tiles showcasing Mason stain colors

This glaze, G2926B, is our main glossy base recipe. Stains are a much better choice for coloring it than raw metal oxides. Other than the great colors they produce here, there are a number of things worth noticing. Stains are potent colorants, the percentages needed are normally much less than metal oxides. Staining a transparent glaze produces a transparent color, it is more intense where the glaze layer is thicker, this is often desirable in highlighting contours and designs. If you add an opacifier, like Zircopax, the color will be less intense, producing a pastel shade the more you add. The chrome-tin maroon 6006 does not develop well in this base (alternatives are G2916F or G1214M). The 6020 manganese alumina pink is also not developing here (it is a body stain). Caution is required with inclusion stains (like #6021), the micro-bubbling here is not likely because it is overfired (it is rated to cone 8), adding 1-2% Zircopax normally fixes this issue.

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