1
Light Blue Shino
Coyote Shinos
The friendliest shino we carry and the one to learn the family on. It breaks warm and orange over every edge without going anywhere unexpected.
All the Shinos
Every shino we carry, from Coyote and Amaco. Warm, broken, and almost never the same twice.
- Glazes
- 28
- Makers
- 2
- Studio favorites
- 2
- Good on texture
- 15
Shino started in sixteenth century Japan as the first white glaze the country made, and the modern American version is a different animal entirely. What the two share is a surface that refuses to sit still: carbon trapping, crawling, pinholing and orange peel are not faults in a shino, they are the reason people fire them.
In an electric kiln a shino behaves differently again. Coyote and Amaco build theirs to give the broken, iron-warm look at cone 5 and 6 without the atmosphere a gas kiln provides, so what you get is the color and the movement rather than the true carbon trap.
The practical thing to know is that shinos move. Thickness changes them more than almost anything else on our shelves, and the same glaze on the same clay can come out toasty orange in one spot and near white in another. That is the glaze working, not a misfire.
Where to start
28 is a lot to look at. If you want three, these are the three.
2
Steel Gray Shino
Coyote Shinos
Cool where the rest of the family runs warm, which makes the iron break read as a real surprise rather than a shade of the same thing.
3
Toasted Sage
Amaco Potter's Choice
Amaco's end of the range, and the clearest example of a shino that changes its mind depending on how thick you went.
Every one we stock
Grouped by maker. Every tile is one we fired ourselves.
Amaco
12Amaco's shinos push further toward the toasted, unpredictable end. Worth the tile test before you commit a pot.
Swipe or use the arrows, 12 in this row
Coyote
16Coyote's shinos are the more reliable of the two and the ones to start with. They break hard over texture and stay warm across the whole range.
Swipe or use the arrows, 16 in this row
Four hundred years of happy accidents
Shino appeared in Japan in the late sixteenth century as the first white glaze the country produced, made from local feldspar over iron-bearing clay. It was never a controlled surface. Carbon trapping, crawling, pinholing and orange blush were all part of what made it desirable, and potters have spent four centuries trying to reproduce accidents on purpose.
American shino arrived in the twentieth century as a different recipe entirely, high in soda ash and spodumene, and it is that lineage the glazes on this page descend from.
Why yours looks different in two places
A shino responds to thickness more sharply than almost anything else we stock. Where it goes on thin it toasts orange from the iron in the clay beneath; where it goes on thick it stays pale and dense. Two pots glazed the same afternoon from the same jar can look like different glazes.
That is the family working as designed. If you want an even color across a whole pot, a shino is the wrong choice and there are two hundred better options in the Bible. If you want a surface with weather in it, this is the shelf.
How to use one on purpose
Dip or pour rather than brush where you can, because brushing a shino is the fastest way to a striped pot. Let the thickness vary deliberately: heavier in the recesses, lighter over the rims and edges where you want the toast.
And put it over something. A shino on a smooth cylinder gives you color. A shino over throwing rings, a faceted wall or a carved band gives you the reason the family exists.
Common questions
Why does my shino look different on two sides of the same pot?
Thickness. Shinos are more sensitive to it than almost anything else we carry, and that variation is the effect.
Are shinos food safe?
Follow the family page and the maker's own rating for the glaze you are using. A heavily crawled or pinholed surface is not one to eat off regardless of the rating.
Can I layer a shino?
Yes, and Coyote specifically recommend their Gloss glazes underneath. Test it on a tile first.
Will I get carbon trapping?
Not in an electric kiln. That effect needs an atmosphere we do not fire. What you get instead is the color and the break.
Which one should I try first?
A Coyote shino over something carved. It is the clearest demonstration of what the family does.
Shinos reward a pot with something to catch on. Flat walls give you the color; texture gives you the whole glaze.
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.