1
Glacier
Amaco Celadon
The one that teaches you what celadon does. Pale enough to disappear on a flat wall and three shades darker in every carved line, so you can see the whole effect on one pot.
All the Celadons
Every celadon on our shelves, from two full lines and the strays that carry the name without belonging to either.
- Glazes
- 55
- Makers
- 2
- Studio favorites
- 11
- Good on texture
- 41
Celadon is the oldest glaze family still in regular use. It came out of China well over a thousand years ago, and the pale green that gave it the name comes from a very small amount of iron melting in an atmosphere with not much oxygen in it.
That last part matters, because we fire in electric kilns and electric kilns are full of oxygen. What Amaco and Coyote sell as celadon today is a modern recipe built to give the same look in oxidation: a clear or near-clear glaze with a trace of colorant, thin enough to let the clay and any carving show straight through it.
Which is why celadon is the shelf to go to when the pot is the point. It pools darker in every line you carved and thins to almost nothing on every edge, so it draws your work rather than covering it.
Where to start
55 is a lot to look at. If you want three, these are the three.
2
Obsidian
Amaco Celadon
Proof that a celadon does not have to be pale. It reads near black on the flat and breaks translucent brown wherever the surface moves.
3
Aqua Celadon
Coyote Celadon
Coyote's version of the classic, and the most forgiving of the three. It holds its color over a dark clay body where the Amaco ones go quiet.
Every one we stock
Grouped by maker. Every tile is one we fired ourselves.
Amaco
33Amaco's celadons are the deepest bench here, and they are built to break. Thin them on a rim and they nearly vanish; pool them in a carved line and they go three shades darker.
Swipe or use the arrows, 33 in this row
Coyote
18Coyote's celadons run a little more saturated than Amaco's and hold their color better over a dark clay body.
Swipe or use the arrows, 18 in this row
From other lines
4These belong here by behavior rather than by shelf label. Each one lives in a family of its own, and its page will tell you which.
A thousand years of the same idea
Celadon came out of China well before the year 1000 and was, for centuries, the most prized ceramic surface in the world. The recipe is almost embarrassingly simple: a clear glaze, a very small amount of iron, and a kiln with little oxygen in it. The iron cannot fully oxidise, so instead of going brown it goes green.
Korea took it further with inlaid celadon in the twelfth century, cutting designs into the clay and filling them with white and black slip before glazing. Japan built a tea aesthetic around it. Every one of those traditions was chasing the same thing we are: a glaze thin enough to show the pot underneath.
What changes in an electric kiln
Our kilns are full of oxygen, which is exactly what a traditional celadon needs to be starved of. So the celadons on this page are modern recipes, formulated by Amaco and Coyote to produce the same visual result in oxidation at cone 5 and 6.
What you get is the transparency, the pooling and the break. What you do not get is the particular grey-green of a reduction celadon, or the way a true reduction glaze sits on the clay. That is not a compromise worth mourning; it is simply a different route to the same idea, and it works in the kiln we actually own.
Getting the most out of one
Three things decide a celadon. Carve or throw something worth showing, because a celadon over a plain wall is just a tint. Keep the coat even, since it will faithfully report every place your brush hesitated. And do not over-apply, because a thick celadon stops being translucent and becomes an ordinary colored glaze.
Two or three thin coats, brushed in alternating directions, is the whole technique. The pot does the rest.
Common questions
What makes a glaze a celadon?
A small amount of iron in a transparent or near-transparent base. The color is a side effect of the iron; the transparency is the point.
Do I need to carve for a celadon to look good?
No, but it is where they earn their keep. A celadon over a flat surface reads as a soft tint. Over carving it reads as depth.
Will it look like a real cone 10 reduction celadon?
Close, and deliberately so. These are modern recipes built to get the look in an electric kiln, which is what we have.
How many coats?
Follow the family page for the line you are using. Thin coats show the clay, thick coats deepen the color and can go cloudy.
Why are some celadons on this page not in a celadon family?
Because the name travels. A few glazes in other lines are celadons by recipe and behavior, so they are here too.
If you want the carving to do the talking, this is the page. If you want the glaze to do the talking, try the shinos or the reactive lines instead.
Also worth a look
About these images and what your pot will actually look like
We have done our best to represent every glaze here accurately, and you should still expect your pot to look different from what is on this screen.
Our glaze tile images are digitally created. They are built to show the character of a glaze, not to be a color match.
A screen is not a printout, a printout is not a test tile, and a test tile is not a finished pot. Each step in that chain shifts what a glaze looks like, sometimes a lot.
On top of that, the pottery itself changes the result: the clay body, how thick the glaze went on, whether it was brushed, dipped or sprayed, what was layered under or over it, where the piece sat in the kiln, how hot that spot ran, how fast it cooled, what was fired next to it, and how much texture the surface had. Two pots glazed from the same jar on the same day can come out different.
Treat every image here as a starting point, and treat a test tile fired on your own clay as the real answer.