Crystal Glaze

A creamy and shiny crystal pottery glaze.

Can be grey to yellowish gold with crystals and even subtle peach coronas. We call it Zinc Crystal. Based on a reduction chun (a classical Chinese glaze) this came from Ken Bushe, as he was giving up pottery to paint full-time, with the recommendation to “try chucking in a bit of titanium with it” — which did the job nicely. Rarely have we seen a glaze similar to this: as we fire in an electric kiln — ‘oxidising’ our pottery rather than ‘reducing’ it in the flame of a gas or wood-fired kiln — our finish is quite different fom the Chinese original. As the glaze cools down from around 1300 Celsius but is still molten, the zinc crystals grow in the glaze, golden and glinting, as they push other glazes out of the way, particularly the Green glaze, to wonderful effect. This crystal growth happens naturally within our firing cycle, but normally an imposed slow cooling cycle is required for such effects, so we feel very lucky!

Glazes | Published 15 May 2025