Cream City Glaze, Latest Firing

I just fired my latest batch of slip-cast wares to test out some of my new glazes. I was very happy with the results. The first glaze (bottle on right) is 100% cream city brick dust, which resulted in a bright, rustic orange color with a lot of texture. I then experimented with mixtures of brick and other glaze ingredients to come up with a creamy white glaze with a smooth, matte finish. I was able to achieve colors ranging from orange to white. I am looking forward to working more with the contrast of the dark orange with the rough texture combined with the creamy white.





Cream City Brick Glazed Coffee Mugs

I recently got 3 pieces back from the kiln with one of the cream city brick glazes I developed. I was very pleased with the results. I used a red clay, and the overall color was much darker. I really like the way it looks, but it did come out darker than the test samples on the gray clay. The lighter clay glazes matched the color of the brick very closely, so in terms of capturing the essence of the brick I think I prefer them. The iron in the red clay interacts with the glaze, and is pulled into it during the firing process, resulting in the darker glaze.It did have a nice texture and a rustic look that matched the bricks well.

In the second mug, I found that the glaze goes on nicely when applied very thick, and actually looks a lot better than the thin coating. I really liked the way the cream city glaze interacted with the white glaze.

Ceramic Glaze

I recently finished building an outdoor kitchen out of historic cream bricks from Fort Atkinson. This project involved a lot of brick cutting with a wet saw. It was incredibly dirty and unpleasant work; however one thing that struck me after a day of cutting was the water mixed with the dust from the cut bricks, and made a wet clay. I thought it was really cool that I was basically reconstituting clay that was originally dug up from Wisconsin a century and half ago.

As a potter, it got me to wondering more about the clay and its uses in ceramics. I have since learned that due to the high calcium and magnesium levels, it is unsuitable to use as a ceramic clay body, since both act as fluxes and lower the melting point enough that the clay starts to melt above 2000 deg F. Since then, I have been very interested in developing a glaze out of recycled cream bricks.

Thanks to research that has been done on this clay and the brick making process over 100 years ago, I have a very good idea of the exact chemical composition of these bricks. With my research into glaze chemistry, I was able to formulate some excellent glaze recipes with the addition of a few ingredients. To make this glaze, I ground a brick into dust using a belt sander. My goal was to maintain cream city brick as the main ingredient, and only add enough to make it a viable glaze. I recently got my first test pieces back from a cone 6 firing and was extremely happy with most of the results. I have run the successful samples through the boiling water to frozen water test multiple times, and they exhibited no crazing. These glazes contain 60% cream city brick dust by mass.
 

I am very excited to continue testing on these glazes, I would love to make pottery with a glaze made from brick scraps from my parent's historic barn, and it would be a great way to carry on the legacy of the many cream brick buildings that are being taken down each year. I am in the process of constructing a ball mill to ramp up my production of these glazes, and hope to post many more examples soon.