Member resource
Engobes, and how to get a clay color we will never carry
We stock eight clay bodies and every last one of them is light or medium. No black. No dark brown. No red. An engobe is how you get those looks anyway. You brush it on, two coats, and the surface stops being the color of the clay underneath it.
We do not sell engobes and we have no plans to. You are welcome to buy your own and bring it in. This page is everything worth knowing before you do.
The short version
All of it, in seven lines
Everything you actually need before you open the jar.
- 1It is a colored coating, not a different clayTwo coats and the surface stops being the color of the clay underneath. Break the pot and it is light all the way through, and a chipped rim shows a bright line.
- 2We do not sell them and we never willSeven Mayco Stoneware Engobes are approved and nothing else is. Buy your own from a ceramic supply shop and keep it on your shelf with your name on it.
- 3Buy one for a clay color we do not stock, or to carveBlack, dark brown, brick red, terracotta. Carving back through it so the light clay shows is sgraffito, and it is why most people buy their first jar. If you only want to paint a design onto a pot, use our underglazes and save the money.
- 4Put it on bisque unless you are carvingBisque is the safe stage. Nothing left to crack, nothing left to warp. If carving is the plan, brush it on at leather-hard instead.
- 5Two thin coats, a soft wide brush, cross your directionsStir the jar hard and pour some into a cup rather than dipping into it. Every failure here gets worse when the engobe goes on heavy.
- 6It fires matte and it is not food safe on its ownA glaze over the top brings the shine back and seals it. Brush-on goes straight over raw engobe. Dipping does not: the piece has to be bisque fired again first.
- 7Anything on the bottom goes on a kiln cookieWrite every color on your kiln ticket. It fires at the normal glaze rate, five cents per cubic inch with a four dollar and eighty cent minimum. And no, none of this lets you bring your own dark clay in.
The one sentence to remember
An engobe changes the color of the surface. It does not change the clay, it does not make the piece food safe, and it does not shine. Everything else here is a footnote to that.
Section one
What an engobe actually is
An engobe is a hybrid. Mayco calls it part slip, part glaze and part underglaze, and that is a fair description. There is enough clay in it to shrink along with your pot. There is enough flux in it to grip bisque, which plain slip will not do. And there is enough color packed into it that two coats hide whatever is underneath.
It is not a decoration sitting on the clay. It is a replacement for the surface of it.
- 1Glaze, if you want itEngobes come out of the kiln matte. A clear glaze over the top brings the shine back and makes the piece safe to drink from. The left of this drawing has it. The right does not.
- 2The engobeTwo or three coats, about as thick as a sheet of paper once it dries. This thin band is doing all of the work.
- 3Your clay, unchangedStill 52 Buff. Still B-Mix. Still whatever you threw with. Chip the rim and you will see it right there.
- 4A line carved throughBecause the engobe is its own layer, you can scratch through it and the clay shows as a clean bright line. That is sgraffito, and it is why a lot of people buy their first jar.
- 5Bare engobeNo glaze at all is a real finish. Flat, matte, soft to the touch. Just not food safe on its own.
The one sentence to remember
An engobe changes the color of the surface. It does not change the clay, it does not make the piece food safe, and it does not shine. Everything else on this page is a footnote to that.
Section two
Engobe, underglaze, slip or glaze
Four buckets of goo that all look about the same in a jar. Here is the short version of how they differ, and which of them you already have access to here.
| Engobe | Underglaze | Slip | Glaze | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What is in it | EngobeClay, flux and a lot of color | UnderglazeColor with a little clay in it | SlipClay and water, nothing else | GlazeGlass-forming minerals, melters, stabilizers and color |
| Does it hide the clay | EngobeYes, in two coats | UnderglazeUsually, in three | SlipOnly while the clay is still wet | GlazeDepends entirely on the glaze |
| When it goes on | EngobeWet clay, dry greenware or bisque | UnderglazeWet clay, dry greenware or bisque | SlipWet clay only | GlazeBisque |
| How it comes out | EngobeMatte, every time | UnderglazeMatte | SlipThe same texture as bare clay | GlazeWhatever that glaze does |
| Food safe on its own | EngobeNo | UnderglazeNo | SlipNo | GlazeOnly the ones that say so |
| What it is best at | EngobeTurning a whole piece a different color | UnderglazeDrawing and painting a design | SlipJoining wet clay and decorating it | GlazeThe finished surface people touch |
| Do we supply it | EngobeNo. You buy your own | UnderglazeYes, well over a hundred | SlipNo | GlazeYes, hundreds of them |
The one that trips everybody up
Underglaze is for drawing on a pot. An engobe is for changing the whole pot. If you want to paint a fox on a mug, walk over to the underglaze rack and save your money. If you want the mug to stop being buff colored in the first place, that is an engobe, and nobody here has one to lend you.
Section three
Why we will not carry dark clay
Here is the entire clay list, and it has not got a dark one in it.
Light and medium, all the way down. No black. No red. No dark brown. And no, you cannot bring your own bag in either, no matter how careful you promise to be. Studio clay only.
It is not that we have anything against dark clay. It is that dark clay does not stay where you put it.
Iron and manganese travel. They travel in the reclaim, in the sinks, in the wash pit, in the sponges, in the wedging canvas, on the bats, on the wheels, on the towel somebody grabbed right after you were done with it. One bag of black stoneware in a shared studio turns into gray streaks running through fifty different pieces of lighter clay that never asked for any of it. We would be chasing that out of the building for a year.
So we made a call and we are sticking to it. Everybody’s clay stays light, and everybody’s white pot stays white.
An engobe is the loophole
It lives in a sealed jar. It goes on with a brush. It never touches the reclaim, the pug mill or anybody else’s work. Two coats of Black Engobe over B-Mix and, out of the kiln, you have a black pot.
You get the look. Nobody else gets the mess. That is the whole trade.
Now the part nobody likes hearing
It is a surface, not a clay body. Break the pot and it is light all the way through. Chip the rim and a bright little line shows up where the dark used to be. If the look you are chasing needs the dark to go all the way to the core, an engobe will not get you there, and we would rather say that now than after you have spent the money on a jar.
Section four
When to reach for one
Most pieces do not need an engobe. Six situations where one earns its place.
You want a clay color we do not carry
Black, dark brown, brick red, terracotta. Two coats and the outside of your piece is that color, sitting on top of the clay you actually threw with.
You want to carve into it
Sgraffito only works when there is a layer sitting on top of a clay that is a different color. That is the entire job description of an engobe.
Your glaze keeps going muddy
Buff and speckled bodies drag glaze colors down. A coat of White Engobe underneath gives the glaze a clean white ground to sit on, the way it would on porcelain, and the color reads true again.
You want lines that stay exactly where you put them
Engobes do not run into each other in the firing. Thin lines stay thin. Two colors touching stay two colors. This is why they work for majolica and silkscreen work.
You want matte outside, glossy inside
Bare engobe on the outside, a clear glaze on the inside. A soft flat body with a surface you can still drink out of.
You want to rescue a piece
Engobes go on bisque, so a piece that came out of the bisque firing looking like nothing you had in mind can still be turned into something else entirely.
So what are you actually trying to do?
Tap the one that sounds like you.
Black Engobe or Sparkle Black Engobe, two coats
This is the thing engobes are best at. Black Engobe gives you a flat, dense black. Sparkle Black has a shimmer in it, and Mayco recommends burnishing it with your fingers before the last coat has fully dried to bring that out.
Leave it bare for a soft matte black, or put a clear over the top for a deep glossy one. They look like two completely different pots.
Any color, applied at leather-hard
Brush two coats on while the piece is still leather-hard, let it set up, then carve your lines with a loop tool or a needle tool. Every line you cut shows the light clay underneath.
Carve too early and the engobe smears. Carve too late, once everything is bone dry, and it chips out in flakes instead of curling off cleanly. The window is real and you will find it fast on your first piece.
White Engobe as a base coat
Two coats of White Engobe on bisque, then your usual glaze over the top. The glaze is now sitting on white instead of on buff, and colors that were coming out dull and brownish come back to life.
If you plan to dip rather than brush, the engobed piece has to go through a bisque firing first. See step nine and rule eleven.
Worth knowing before you commit: an engobe underneath also changes how the glaze on top of it moves. Test it on a tile before you do it to something you care about.
Use our underglazes instead. Do not buy a jar.
We keep well over a hundred underglazes on the rack and they are already included in what you pay us. They are built for detail work, they come in far more colors than the seven engobes, and for painting a design onto a pot they are simply the better tool.
The one exception: if you want that design sitting on a black or terracotta background, engobe the background first, then paint on top of it.
Engobe the outside, glaze the inside
An engobe on its own is not food safe. It stays porous and it stays matte. Anything that holds a drink needs a glaze over the top of it, and that glaze needs to be one that seals.
The usual move is engobe on the outside left bare, and a clear or a colored glaze on the whole inside. Matte outside, safe inside, and it looks deliberate.
Brick Red or Terracotta Engobe
Red clay bodies are one of the things we will never stock, and these two are the closest you will get to that look here. Terracotta reads warmer and more orange. Brick Red reads deeper and browner.
Fire either one bare and it is uncannily convincing. Put a clear glaze over it and you get that classic wet terracotta look you see on old flowerpots after it rains.
Section five
Wet, dry or bisque
Engobes will go on at any of the three stages, and all three are allowed here. They behave completely differently at each one, though, so pick by what you are trying to do rather than by whichever pot happens to be sitting in front of you.
Wet or leather-hard: the carving stage
The clay is still shrinking and the engobe shrinks right along with it, which is the most forgiving bond of the three. Leather-hard is the sweet spot. Not slick and wet, not dry and pale. Leather-hard.
Sgraffito, marbling, feathering, anything you plan to carve into or push around while it is still soft.
Soaking a thin wall. Two wet coats onto a freshly thrown pot can soften it enough to slump or warp. Let it firm up first.
The best stage if carving is the plan, and the one that asks the most of your timing.
Bone dry greenware: convenient, and the riskiest
It works. Plenty of people decorate a whole week of pots at once, right before everything goes into the bisque. It is also the stage where things go wrong, because bone dry clay drinks water instantly and it does not drink it evenly.
Small, sturdy, evenly built forms. And for the rest of us, who forget the whole idea until the pot is already dry.
Cracking. One wet side against one dry side opens seams and warps flat pieces. Thin coats, keep the brush moving, and do the whole piece rather than half of it.
Fine when the piece is small and solid. Not where you want to learn this on a wide platter.
Bisque: the safe one
Nothing left to crack and nothing left to warp. We bisque at cone 05, which leaves the clay soft and very thirsty, so it grabs that first coat almost as fast as you can lay it down.
Your first jar. Rescuing a piece you had given up on. Anything thin, fussy or already survived enough.
Panicking at coat one. It sinks in and looks streaky and starved. That is normal on our bisque. Keep feeding the brush and give it the second and third coat.
If you are not sure, do it here. Almost nothing can go wrong that another coat will not fix.
One thing that is true at every stage
Thin coats beat thick ones. Every single failure mode on this page gets worse when the engobe goes on heavy: cracking, crawling, flaking, sticking to the shelf. Two thin coats will cover better than one thick one, and they will stay put.
Section six
Do this
How to put it on
Ten steps, and none of them are complicated. Most of the trouble people run into comes from skipping the first one or rushing the sixth.
Six steps, and none of them are complicated. Most of the trouble people run into comes from skipping the first one or rushing the fourth.
You will want a soft fan brush, a cup, and somewhere to set the piece down that you do not mind getting engobe on.
- 1Stir it hard, then pour some into a cup.
The color settles like concrete at the bottom of the jar. Stir until it looks smooth, keep going another thirty seconds, and scrape the crust off the inside walls back in. Never put a brush that has been in your water bucket into the jar.
- 2Use a soft, wide brush.
A fan brush or a hake lays it down flat. Stiff bristles leave tracks, and those tracks are still there after the firing.
- 3Two coats minimum, three if you want it dead solid.
Two fully cover on our light clay bodies. Over Speckled Buff, give it three.
- 4Cross your directions, and let each coat lose its shine first.
One coat one way, the next across it. Go again too soon and you lift the coat underneath instead of adding to it. This is the step people rush.
- 5Then decide about glaze.
Bare is matte. A glaze over the top goes deeper, shines, and makes the piece something you can eat off. Brush-on goes straight over raw engobe; dipping needs another bisque firing first.
- 6Wipe the rim and the threads before you close it.
Dried engobe in the threads is a lid that never comes off again.
- 1Stir it. Do not shake it.
Engobes are heavy and the color settles hard at the bottom of the jar. Stir until it looks smooth, then keep going another thirty seconds. Scrape the dried crust off the inside walls and stir that back in as well.
- 2Pour some into a cup. Never dip into the jar.
A brush coming out of your water bucket carries water back in with it, and a jar that gets watered down a little every session slowly stops covering. Pour out what you need. Leftovers from a single color can go back in.
- 3Use a soft, wide brush.
A fan brush or a hake lays engobe down flat with the fewest streaks. Stiff bristles leave tracks, and those tracks are still going to be there after the firing.
- 4Two coats minimum. Three if you want it dead solid.
Mayco says two coats fully cover, and on our light clay bodies that holds up. Over Speckled Buff, or any time you want zero variation showing through, give it three.
- 5Cross your directions.
Brush the first coat one way and the next one across it. It evens out the coverage and it hides the brush marks better than any amount of careful work in a single direction.
- 6Let each coat lose its shine before the next one.
Not bone dry. Just no longer wet looking. Go again too soon and you lift the coat underneath and start dragging color around instead of adding to it. This is the step people rush.
- 7Do not overwork Speckled Buff.
The specks smear if you keep brushing back over them. Lay it down and leave it alone. Worth knowing too: those specks can show under a sheer glaze and vanish completely under an opaque one.
- 8Burnish Sparkle Black with your fingers.
Rub the surface before the last coat has fully dried. That is Mayco’s own tip and it makes a real difference to how much of the sparkle actually shows up.
- 9Then decide about glaze.
Leave it bare and you get matte. Two or three coats of a glaze over the top and the color goes deeper, the surface gets a shine, and the piece becomes something you can eat off. Mayco specifically recommends a zinc-free clear over Sparkle Black.
Dipping has one extra step. An engobed piece has to go through a bisque firing after the engobe goes on before it can go into a dipping bucket. Brushing on top of raw engobe does not need that.
- 10Wipe the rim and the threads before you close it.
Dried engobe in the threads is a lid that never comes off again. Nobody here has a spare to sell you, so treat the jar like it is the last one.
Make a test tile the very first time
Take a scrap of whatever clay you actually use. Brush two coats on one half and three on the other, then put your clear glaze over one end of it and leave the other end bare. Fire it and keep it. One tile answers more than this whole page can, because the same engobe reads differently on porcelain than it does on 52 Buff, and a glaze can behave differently over an engobe than it does on bare bisque.
Section seven
Look at this
Two pots, one glazed and one not
These are two nearly identical pots. Both carry all seven engobes in the same order, in the same stripes. One went into the kiln with no glaze on it at all. The other was glazed and fired the whole way. Put them side by side and the entire glaze decision from step nine is sitting right there.
These are two nearly identical pots. Both carry all seven engobes in the same order, in the same stripes. One went into the kiln with no glaze on it at all. The other was glazed and fired the whole way. Put them side by side and the entire glaze decision is sitting right there.
What you are looking at, top to bottom
- 1The top is still bareAbove both glaze bands the engobe is untouched, which is the whole of the pot on the left. Flat, matte and soft to the touch. This is the finish we keep warning you about, and plenty of people decide they wanted it all along.
- 2The lower band is one single glazeAmaco Blue Rutile, run straight across every engobe in one continuous band. Look at what it does over the white, then look at the same glaze over the black. One glaze, doing seven different things depending only on what is underneath it. That is why you fire a test tile.
- 1The top is still bareAbove both glaze bands the engobe is untouched, which is the whole of the pot on the left. Flat, matte and soft to the touch. This is the finish we keep warning you about, and plenty of people decide they wanted it all along.
- 2The middle band is clear glossOne zinc-free clear over the same engobe underneath it. The color underneath did not change at all. It just went deep and wet instead of flat and chalky, which is the entire reason anybody puts a clear over anything.
- 3The lower band is one single glazeAmaco Blue Rutile, run straight across every engobe in one continuous band. Look at what it does over the white, then look at the same glaze over the black. One glaze, doing seven different things depending only on what is underneath it.
- 4The bottom is bare clayNo engobe and no glaze under the carved logo, just the clay body itself. That pale stone color is what the entire pot would have been.
This is the whole argument for a test tile
One glaze, poured straight across seven engobes, comes out a different color on every stripe it crosses. That is what we mean over in the honest problems when we say an engobe changes the glaze you put on top of it. You would never have picked that blue out of a jar lid, and neither would we.
Section eight
What you can do with them
Covering a whole pot in one color is the obvious use and it is not always the most interesting one. Eight things engobes are genuinely good at.
Sgraffito
Italian for scratching. Two coats of engobe at leather-hard, then carve your design back through it so the light clay shows. The single most common reason anybody buys their first jar.
Two by two by two
Two coats of engobe, two coats of one glaze, two of another. Mayco builds most of their combination results this way. The engobe underneath changes how everything above it flows, which is the whole point.
Fine lines and majolica
Engobes will not move or bleed into their neighbors in the firing. Thin lines stay thin and two colors touching stay two colors, which is exactly what majolica style painting needs.
Marbling
Lay two or three colors on while everything is still wet and drag a needle tool through them. They blend where you push them together and stop dead everywhere you did not.
Wax resist
Wax over your engobe, then a second color or a glaze over the top of that. Everywhere the wax is, the first layer stays. Sharp edges without any taping.
Woodgrain
Drag a stiff brush or a comb through wet engobe and you get grain. Mayco publishes a full walkthrough for this one on their site if you want the proper version.
Banding
Hold a loaded brush steady against a slowly spinning pot and let the wheel draw the line for you. Clean stripes that no amount of freehand work will match.
Blending your own
Engobes are intermixable, so seven jars is really an open palette if you are willing to mix. Brushstroke two into each other for shading and they hold whatever gradient you made.
Section nine
Before you start
The honest problems
Every one of these has cost somebody a piece. Better you read them here than find them in the kiln.
Matte is not a setting you can turn off
Engobes fire matte. Every color, every time. If you had a glossy pot in your head, that is a second product and a second decision, and it has to go on before the piece is fired.
Not food safe on its own
The surface stays porous. Anything anybody is going to eat or drink out of needs a glaze over the top that actually seals, and Mayco is clear about that on their own label.
It changes the glaze you put over it
Engobes influence how the glaze above them flows, and they change its color. A glaze that has behaved perfectly for you on bare bisque for a year can start moving once there is an engobe underneath it. Runs land on kiln shelves, and kiln shelves cost hundreds of dollars. Go look at the blue band on the test pot again.
Thick coats can flux and stick
Mayco says two coats will not stick to a shelf and that heavier applications may. They also say results vary with the kiln wash on the shelves, and their testing was not done on ours. This is exactly why anything with engobe on the bottom goes on a kiln cookie here.
It cracks bone dry greenware
Dry clay pulls water out of the engobe fast and unevenly. Seams open, flat pieces warp, and it usually happens on the piece you spent the most time on. Thin coats and full coverage, or wait for bisque.
It crawls over dust and oil
Engobe laid over bisque dust, or over the natural oil off your hands, pulls back into islands in the firing and leaves bare clay showing between them. Wipe the piece down before you start and try not to handle the areas you are about to coat.
Chips give it away
It is a skin. Knock the rim of a black engobed mug against the sink and a bright buff line appears, and there is no fixing that after a glaze firing.
You own all of it
We do not stock engobes, we cannot lend you one, and if you run out halfway through a piece on a Tuesday night there is nothing anybody here can do for you. Seven colors also is not many next to a wall of hundreds of glazes. Buy the color first, then plan the piece around it.
Section ten
Non-negotiable
The rules here
Short list, and none of it is negotiable. The seven Mayco Stoneware Engobes below are the only engobes approved for use in the studio.
Those squares are our best guess at the fired color on a screen, which is a terrible way to choose a glaze color and an even worse way to choose an engobe. Look at the fired pot up in section seven, then at Mayco’s own fired chips, then fire your own test tile.
Those squares are our best guess at the fired color on a screen, which is a terrible way to choose a glaze color and an even worse way to choose an engobe. Look at the two fired pots above, then at Mayco’s own fired chips, then fire your own test tile.
Never have, no plans to. The jar is yours to buy, carry in and carry back out. Nobody here can lend you one at nine on a Tuesday night.
All seven colors are approved and nothing else is. No other brand, no homemade one, no jar somebody handed you at a workshop. You do not need to check in with anybody to use them.
With your name on it. Not on a studio shelf and not in the glaze room.
Coat the bottom if you want to, then put the piece on a cookie. Glaze over the top and it is a glazed piece now, so cookies, catchers and bare bottoms all apply as normal.
Brush-on goes straight over raw engobe. Dipping does not: the piece has to be bisque fired again first, because those buckets belong to everybody. Test any combination on a tile.
Every engobe color and every glaze. It fires like any other glazed piece, five cents per cubic inch with a four dollar and eighty cent minimum, and bisque firings are still free.
Never have, and there are no plans to. The jar is yours to buy, carry in and carry back out.
All seven colors are approved. Nothing else is. Not another brand, not a homemade one, not the jar somebody handed you at a workshop.
Mayco sells through distributors rather than direct, so you will be buying from a ceramic supply shop. They come in wide mouth pints.
Bring it and use it. There is no sign-off, no certification and no quiz for this one.
With your name on it. Not on a studio shelf, not in the glaze room, and not tucked behind somebody else’s work.
Green Level Member through Black Level Member. Same rules for everybody.
None of this opens a door to bringing your own bag of clay in. The engobe is the workaround. A sack of black stoneware is not.
You are welcome to coat the bottom of a piece. When you do, it goes into the kiln sitting on a cookie. No exceptions and no judgment calls at the shelf.
Cookie, catcher, bare bottoms, all of it. The piece is a glazed piece now and it gets treated like one.
No glaze over the top and nothing on the bottom means no cookie required. Engobe the bottom and you are back to rule 8.
Brush-on goes straight over raw engobe. Dipping does not: an engobed piece has to be bisque fired again before it goes anywhere near a dipping bucket, because those buckets belong to everybody. Test any combination on a tile first, since the engobe underneath changes how the glaze moves.
Every engobe color and every glaze, same as always. When something goes sideways in a firing, that ticket is the only way anybody can work out what happened.
Five cents per cubic inch with a four dollar and eighty cent minimum. Bisque firings are still free.
Section eleven
Questions we get asked
Do I need a certification for engobes?
No. There is nothing to sign up for and nothing to pass. Read this page, buy your jar and get to work.
Can I put one of your glazes over my engobe?
Brush-on goes straight over raw engobe, yes. Dipping has one extra step: the engobed piece has to be bisque fired again before it can go into a dipping bucket, because those buckets are shared. Either way, test the combination on a tile first, because an engobe underneath changes how the glaze above it flows, and a glaze that has never run on you before can start running.
Will they survive our firing?
Comfortably. Mayco rates the stoneware engobes from cone 5 to cone 10, and we fire glaze to cone 5½, which is cone 5 with a twelve minute hold on the end of it. We land between cone 5 and cone 6, at the low end of their range, which is the easy end.
Can I eat off it?
Not off bare engobe. It fires matte and stays porous. Anything that holds food or a drink needs a glaze over the top that actually seals the surface.
What brush should I buy?
A soft fan brush or a hake. Wide and soft beats narrow and stiff every time here, because the goal is a flat even coat rather than a precise edge.
Can I mix two colors together?
Yes. Engobes are intermixable, so seven jars is really an open palette. You can also blend one into another with brushstrokes for shading, and whatever gradient you made is what comes out of the kiln, because engobes do not move.
Will it crack my greenware?
It can, on bone dry pieces. Dry clay pulls the water out fast and unevenly, seams open and flat pieces warp. Keep the coats thin, cover the whole piece instead of one side of it, and if the piece is wide or thin, wait for bisque.
Can I bring my own dark clay if I promise to be careful?
No. Not with an engobe, not with a promise, not for one piece. Studio clay only, and every clay we stock is light or medium. The engobe exists so you can get that look without any of us washing iron out of the wash pit for the rest of the year.
Where do I actually buy them?
Any ceramic supply shop that carries Mayco. Mayco sells through distributors rather than direct, so start on their stoneware engobe page and work out who stocks them near you or online. They come in wide mouth pints.
Does it cost extra to fire?
Nothing extra for the engobe itself. The piece fires at the normal glaze firing rate, five cents per cubic inch with a four dollar and eighty cent minimum. Bisque firings are still free.
What if I am still not sure about something?
Ask any instructor on the floor, or text the studio at 385-241-5528. Bring the jar with you if you have already bought it, since the label answers half of these questions on its own.
That is the whole thing
Go get a jar
Buy the color you want. Bring it in. Keep it on your shelf with your name on it. Two thin coats beat one thick one, test it on a tile before you commit a good piece to it, and put it on a cookie if any of it ends up on the bottom.
That is all of it. The rest is just you finding out what a black pot does to a glaze you thought you knew.
That is all of it. There is a longer version of this page if you want it, with the four way comparison against underglaze and slip, the stage by stage breakdown, the eight techniques and every question we get asked. Flip the switch back at the top.
Still stuck? Ask any instructor on the floor, or text the studio at 385-241-5528.
Every piece of pottery pictured on this page is a simulation of what you can expect from engobes rather than a photograph of a finished studio order. Real results move with the clay body, how thick the coats went on, which glaze went over the top and where the piece landed in the kiln. Fire a test tile before you commit to anything you care about.
Which version would you like to print?
The comprehensive version runs to several pages. The nutshell version is the seven lines, the six steps, the two fired pots and the rules.