Vitreous red body color with a clear glaze at cone 6. Impossible.

The two back pieces are traditional Mexican terra cotta ware. Lead glazed, porous, not durable at all. The front two pieces are stoneware, produced by two Mexican manufacturers to emulate the look of traditional ware. Both tried. Both failed. It is pretty well impossible to clear-glaze a mid temperature red burning stoneware and get a red color. The glaze fluxes the clay surface and turns the color to the more vitrified version of the body, which is always brown. The terra cotta is fired so far below the temperature at which the clay vitrifies to brown that it maintains the red body color. To get the color in the stoneware plate on the left they brushed on a red-stained engobe (you can see the brush strokes). This worked. And the glaze has fired crystal-clear (likely because they bisque fired it very high). But there is a problem. Although not crazed when purchased, it crazed badly after several months. The bowl on the right also has a beautiful transparent glaze and it has maintained crisp edges on the decoration (and with no micro-bubble clouding). But this is as dark as they could make the clay without having it turn brown under that clear glaze.

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A transparent that looks good on cone 6 red burning bodies

The GA6-A Alberta Slip:Frit 3134 (80%:20%) glaze is excellent as a liner for dark burning bodies, it looks much better than a regular transparent recipe (which often form clouds of bubbles on red bodies). The iron in this glaze makes it fire an amber color on buff burning bodies (not very attractive), but on red bodies it brings out the natural color of the clay.

Is Mexican Terra-cotta pottery lead-glazed? Yes. Does it leach? Yes.

A lead-glazed handled cup sold in markets in Mexico

This piece was bought in Sinaloa in 2020 (made in Puebla). By breaking it and refining shards I estimate the firing temperature around 1800F. This lead test procedure involves leaving white vinegar in the piece overnight, pouring some of that into a test tube, dipping a cotton swab into a reagent solution and then stirring the vinegar with it. The darkening of the color indicates the concentration of lead in the leachate. It has turned black! Yet a typical fritted lead bisilicate PbO:2SiO₂ glaze (having 10-15% clay to suspend it) does not leach lead (when melted well). The very thin glaze application suggests potters were trying to save money. Frits are expensive so it seems likely they are using raw white or red lead powders. But they are not mixing enough silica to produce a stable lead silicate chemistry.

Yet this pottery is a tradition in Mexican culture (and elsewhere) and is used for food and liquid surfaces everywhere. There are manufacturers trying to make stoneware that retains the traditional terra cotta appearance, but people prefer this.

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Glossary	Transparent Glazes Every glossy ceramic glaze is actually a base transparent with added opacifiers and colorants. So understand how to make a good transparent, then build other glazes on it.

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