BLENDED FOR SMOOTHNESS

I emailed a friend a while back asking if he may have a particular formula that I am looking for. He emailed back with a suggestion that I do a line blend with several materials, though I had already gone through that exercise, it got me to thinking about another type of line blend. Back at CSU, I had come up with a nice alternative to an Albany slip glaze by blending two existing glazes in a 60/40 ratio. The results were as good as it was going to get in a post-Albany environment. Using the same principle, I took 5 existing glazes that I am using and "blended" them together in 80/20, 50/50 and 20/80 percentage ratios. The results, though just a jumping off point, came out surprisingly well. In all, I came up with at least 3 new glazes worth further trials. I am sure to try different blends as part of my normal testing from now on and see what else shows up.

Illustrated is a  60/40 blend of the alkaline clear with my tetsu-yu glaze, which has become a super rich, iron yellow glaze. I am tentatively calling it Chinese mustard, after the glaze, not the condiment. The glaze needs some more work and is a bit prone to run, but it makes for a rather nice surface on the right pot. Where pooled inside the yunomi, the glaze breaks on the  ridges of the finger swirl, standing up in contrast to the smooth iron yellow.