Making a wood-ash glaze from our own stove
Every winter the studio stove burns oak and apple wood, and every spring we sieve the ash into buckets. Wood ash is mostly calcium with a little potash and phosphorus, which makes it a lovely, unpredictable flux.
We wash the ash several times to remove soluble salts, dry it, and blend it roughly half and half with a local clay. Fired to cone 10, it runs and pools into greens and ambers that no commercial glaze quite matches.
Because every batch of ash is a little different, each kiln load comes out with its own character. That is exactly why we love it.
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