The Pottery at Old Toolijooa School.

Copper Red Glazes.

                          


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Little Animals just for fun

An Invitation

Ideas for Other Potters

Toolijooa? Where's that?

Pottery Slide-show
Group
                  of copper red pots Soup cup & saucer
Square plate with red ducky Sugar pot & spoon Hawk bowl copper red
Copper
                  red mugs
"Copper Red" is a glaze that goes back centuries, always regarded as beautiful but difficult (some people are like that, too). You'd think at first that the colour was due to some kind of dye or pigment, but not so. When the glaze is first mixed, it's white, not red.  It contains just a trace of copper, less than 1%, usually as copper carbonate, and it has to be applied  much more thickly than for most other glazes.

To get the red colour, it has to be fired in a reducing atmosphere (too much gas, not enough air). There's still some disagreement about whether the final colour is due to microscopic particles of a form of copper oxide, or particles of the metal itself (which seems more convincing). Whichever is true, the quest to get this glaze just righ
t, every time, has occupied a lot of potters for a long time.


Each little picture is the link to a larger one, of course.

Platter with red bird motif
Vase water etched celadon and red Square plate eucalypt motif
Platter with duck motif NZ copper
                  red bird Spoon rest copper red NZ copper
                  red bird Platter with Welsh Dragon motif