My Peach Bloom glaze endeaver
In the early 1990 I found a high fire glaze recipie in a ceramics magazine that I wanted to try. The glaze was originally developed in the 17th century in China using porcelain clay. The glaze was reformulated by an American potter (Richard Fairbanks) and its formulation was published in the ceramic magazine. I remember that I boldly tried the glaze with some of my white stone ware (not porcelain) pots. I used a spray gun to apply the glaze and needless to say I was not sure how think I should apply the glaze. I also was a complete novice in loading and firing a gas kiln, but I distinctly remember the stunning purple color of the Peach Bloom glaze when I opened the kiln door. The color of the Peach Bloom glaze was a deep purple red with greenish areas because of the copper in the glaze. The purple red color broke at the rim of bolws which became beautifully white. Unfortunately, when I tried the glaz again, I was not successful. Pieces showed a moorn type color and I wondered whether I made a mistake in my original formulation. I tried many times, re-made the glaze, made sure I did everything right, to now avail. I could not get the deep purple color back. I am an experimental biologist, and the worst that can happen is that one obtains interesting experimental results that one cannot reproduce. I was very frustrated with my glaze situation and essentially shelved Peach Bloom.
I stoped making pots for about 15 years because I wanted to spend my time with Max, my growing son. We played baseball together, he was playing music and we gardened and cooked together. We spent out summers in the High Sierra mountains and needless to say there was no time for ceramics. Max is now a Chef de Cuisine at Amass in Copenhagen, Denmark a world class restaurant. I like to think that our time spent together was instrumental in his career decision. After Max went to college, I restarted my ceramic “career”. It took a long time to get my basic skills back. I realized that my esthetic interest in the kind of pots I wanted to make had changed. I mainly used red stoneware clay with decorations made of homemade ash glazes. Over a few years of practicing, I began to experiment with kiln firing conditions. I slightly changed firing schedules and I learned where to place certaining glazed pots in the kiln in order to achive the desired color. Then one recent day I thought that maybe my experiments with the Peach Bloom glaze were not failures, but rather a consequence of my inexperience to control my kiln firings. I learned from reading about glaze compositions and firing schedules that I may have inadvertently obtained my purple Peach Bloom color not because of a mistake in making the glaze but rather as a consequence of the atmospheric conditions in the kiln. In particular I was concerned that I used a too heavy reduction in subsequent firings when I tried to reproduce the Peach Bloom color. I decided to remake the glaze using my glaze notebook and fired some test tiles using my current firing conditions. Stunningly, I was able to re-create the original color and it did not matter where in the kiln I placed the test tiles. Interestingly, the glaze was purple, deeper in clolor wher the glaze as thick, the glaze also showed white spots, possibly because I just dipped the tiles. After all thoses years, I realized that the formulation I had previously used was correct, yet the heavy reducing firing conditions must turn the glaze into maroon color. I have used the “newly discovered” Peach Bloom glaze a few times and I am able to create the purple red color dependening on the thickness of the glaze application. You can find a few examples in my Gallery page