Casey O’Connor, my professor spring quarter gave me a recipe for a glaze using nickel that comes out a dark shade of pink when fired at about cone 6 or 7. The chief fluxes in terms of mass are Barium Carbonate and Zinc Oxide. The pigment is Nickel at 1.5%.
I wanted to obtain a pigment that would oxidize red, and at the time I had a hypothesis that if I were to add a certain amount of a Vanadium stain to any glaze that fired pink, I would obtain the red that I sought.
I arranged nine tests that fired like this:
I wanted this glaze to flux properly at cone 5, and it was firing a little dry, so I wanted to try adding Nepheline Syenite (nicknamed neph sy) to the glaze in order to melt it a little more. The columns labeled A, B, C all contained increasing amounts of nepheline syenite. Rows 1, 2, 3 contain gradually increasing amounts of Vanadium yellow stain. Unfortunately, I was very tired and also ramped vadadium yellow in columns A,B,C, and I tried to fix this by adding even more vanadium to 2 and 3 so I could get a good gradient going. To further the chaos, the kiln I fired it in over fired by a couple of cones- it could’ve been up around cone 8 or 9 for all I know.
At least some good came out of this. I was happy with the results of A2, B1, and B3. I also know that I can’t add more than 10% neph sy to the glaze or the pink-creating environment is destroyed and you get what you see- brown. I also know vanadium is a good stain that minds its own business and doesn’t mess around with the nickel stain.
Starting in the fall, I will continue to research this tile, and attempt to recreate the glazes that pleased me.
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