The Complete Guide to Mid-Range Glazes: Glazing and Firing at Cones 4-7

I recently started doing pottery again and I have been working with Cone 6 oxidation and Cone 7 reduction glazes. I pre-ordered this book a couple months ago and it finally arrived and I love it! The wealth of information in this book is truly impressive! It is a great book for anyone working with mid-range clay and glazes. I've included a short video of leafing through the book so you can get a general sense of the books format (text and images). The basic chapters include: Glaze: An Introduction Why Fire to Cone 6? Materials, Oxides, Colorants, and Melt Tests Mixing Glazes Application Kilns and Firing Safety Overview of Mid-Range Glazes: Clear and White Glazes, Iron Glazes, Shino Glazes, Red Glazes, Green Glazes, Blue Glazes, Purple Glazes, Matte Glazes, Black Glazes, Yellow Glazes, Crystalline Glazes, Ash Glazes, Salt, Soda, and Wood-Fired Glazes. Making the Most of Mid-Range Glazes Cone Charts Feldspar UMF Charts Frit UMG Chart Kiln Wash Chart The book includes a wide variety of glazes. It is organized well with dozens of charts that group similar glazes together so you can easily see not only the appearance of the glazes but also the chemicals included in the glaze. I believe this book is best summed up by John Britt's own words from page 7 of the book. "This book is designed to help the beginner through advanced student overcome the confusion (and perhaps fear) and to help make sense of mid-range glazes. Although it also contains hundreds of recipes, it will go beyond them to explain the principles behind the glazes. By comparing and contrasting recipes within a type and learning the way glazes work, you'll see how potters create variations within a type. This gives you a sense of freedom and allows you to create an infinite number of your own recipes." A great book!

Received the book today. Purchased it pre-publication so I was quite eager to get it. For those familiar with John's previous book on high-fire glazes, you will find the format familiar. It is laid out with general information on glazes, preparation, application and firing (oxidation and reduction), and testing. Then an overview of many types of glazes is given, with hundreds of photographs and recipes. The photos alone are inspirational and really demonstrate the wide range of outcomes available at these mid-range temperatures. I had spent a bunch of years working in the cone 10 range and after reading John's High-Fire book, I switched from many of my old standards to one's I found in his book. I am similarly anxious to find some improvements on cone 6 glazes I have been working with lately. This book is really great in that it can be read at many different levels. It is pretty enough to be left on a coffee table, or perhaps, better, used as a reference for recipes, or a technical read on understanding what is chemically happening to assist in developing and altering glazes to one's own needs. I wanted to share these impressions and I am certain more in-depth reviews will follow. I'll get back to reading and enjoying my new book.

Not only does this book explain how glazes work and go into detail but Britt writes in a very easy and approachable way. I checked this out at my library multiple times and because I keep coming back to it I knew I needed to get my own copy. So much info and details about everything glaze. This book also has tons of tried and true glaze recipes! Some don't have pictures to show you what they look like or in some cases the pictures are on another page than the recipe. But you can find pictures online if you just google it. But that is the only critique I have. It is a must have 100%! He also has a high fire glaze book that is equally as valuable.

My copy came a few days ago, and I love it. I can't wait to start testing some of these recipes -- there are several that promise to fill "holes" in my glaze palette. Like several other reviewers, I own John Britt's cone 10 book and have really enjoyed it, even though I never fire to cone 10 in my own studio. The mid-range glaze book follows much the same format as the cone 10 one, with groups of recipes given in chart form so that they are easy to compare. This also makes it easier to go through and see what glaze chemicals you already have and what you need to buy. The pictures are good illustrations of the glazes given in the book, and John has very helpfully included page numbers with the pictures so that it is real easy to find the recipe. Like some of the other reviewers, I appreciate the clear information on various firing schedules, too. The book is easy to use for potters who don't have experience with glaze mixing, but it also contains a wealth of information for those of us who have been making our own glazes for years.

Great informative book

This guide makes making glazes easy to understand and unduanting.

Printing Error - I have two copies of pages 116 & 117, but not pages 132 &133. Other than this this book has been extremely useful to me for understanding glaze chemistry and how to formulate my own glazes.

I have only had the book for two days, and I already know that I will never be without it. It contains so much valuable information in regard to mixing glazes. He covers the finer details, which is great for a relative newcomer like me. The book contains many images of fired glaze tiles along with the recipes/ingredients needed. It is worth a close read, as there is valuable information on every page.

I'm learning everything I wanted to know and couldn't find in other books on glazing. Easy read and very very well written.

A very useful text overall.

Un testo immancabile pieno di informazioni dettagliate ed esaustive, molte ricette da provare, e un buon numero di foto che aiutano a capire. Adatto sia ai neofiti che ai pro. Basta sapere l'inglese.

A todos lo ceramistas se los recomiendo. Aparte no estuvo tan caro. Comprar por internet es un albur, pero en este caso me fue bien.

The works of glazing and it has the whole theory on glazes