Glazing can be the most exciting part of ceramics for new students. After so much time has been spent forming a ceramic piece, and then firing the first time around, glazing is what the ceramic piece will look like when it’s finally finished. You’ll see a variety of colors come to the surface, textures change, and overall surfaces can be transformed entirely. Glazing, in essence, is just a special kind of coating that’s put on the surface of a ceramic piece before its final firings. When it gets hot, in a kiln, this coating starts to melt and bind to the clay, and you can either have the final glaze be glossy, matte, smooth, and/or textured. It helps the ceramics become less porous and absorb less liquid.
Glazes also rely heavily on temperature, making some interesting. A glaze can show up one way in one kind of firing, and another way in another kind of firing. Temperature can change how a glaze looks. For this reason, and others, glazing can be seen as part science and part art.
There’s a lot that goes into ceramic glazing, and it can take artists quite a few years to learn what happens with different glaze ingredients. Different minerals and oxides in these different ingredients will make different colors in the kiln, and some transparent glazes can reveal the texture of the ceramic clay, while others can make a layered, multi-colored glaze surface, and some even with a crystal. Changing the composition of the glaze by even a little bit can change how the final result looks, which is a lot of time spent exploring the science of glazes and the art of glazing. Some artists prefer the process of applying the glaze in different ways as well, using different types like brushing, dipping, pouring, and spraying to finish. Some artists will even layer many glazes or multiple application techniques to make a unique surface.
Glazing can be a fun process because you can never know for sure how a piece will finish until the kiln is opened up again. Many ceramic artists will wait anxiously to open up the kiln and see what their new glaze fired out as. This is all because glazes can be so unpredictable, and this can make for interesting surfaces to work with, like unexpected color changes, different texture, or different surface characteristics. Learning how to ceramic is also a lot of learning about science and art in a technical sense, and glazing is definitely a key part of this learning process. For some ceramic artists, glazing is how you really learn the difference between the science and art of ceramics, and how different materials change in different ways at different times.
Many artists eventually develop glaze styles that they like to stick with, which can become a recognizable style for them. They might stick to certain colors and glaze styles as they keep making more and more ceramics. This isn’t necessarily something that every artist does, and some artists will stick to a single glaze throughout a project, or even try a variety of different glazes to create unique surfaces. Glaze can be one of the most rewarding aspects of being a ceramic artist because it can really bring an idea into the physical world. It’s not just a decorative thing you put on top of something after the work is already done, but rather, it’s another stage where artists explore, experiment, and make a piece of work. Glazing is one way that the clay can go from being a sculpture or a piece of functional ware into something more finished, more interesting, something that can really capture the attention of a viewer.