1
Palladium
Amaco Potter's Choice
The most convincing mirror we own, and the clearest demonstration of what a metallic is for. It also punishes an uneven coat harder than anything else here, so start on a tile.
Metallic Glazes
The glazes that come out looking like metal rather than glass, and the narrowest margins on our shelves.
- Glazes
- 9
- Makers
- 4
- Studio favorites
- 3
- Good on texture
- 3
A metallic glaze is trying to do something ordinary glazes never attempt: come out of the kiln looking like metal rather than glass. It gets there by loading the recipe with enough iron, manganese or copper that the surface saturates and the excess crystallises out on top as a hard, reflective skin.
That is also why they are the most demanding glazes we stock. A glaze carrying that much colorant has very little margin. Go thin and it fires as a dull brown wash with no shine at all. Go thick and it runs, blisters, or turns matte and dry. The window between those two is narrower than anything else on our shelves.
The other thing to know before you commit a pot: most metallics are not food surfaces. A glaze saturated with metal oxides is not the same as a stable liner glaze, and a crystallised metallic skin is not one to eat off. Read each glaze page, and when in doubt use a metallic outside and a proven liner inside.
Nine of them here, and every one is worth a test tile before it is worth a pot.
Where to start
9 is a lot to look at. If you want three, these are the three.
2
Gold
Spectrum Various Families
Warm rather than cold, which makes it the easiest metallic to combine with a normal glaze without the pot looking like two ideas.
3
Blackened Copper
Speedball Mid-Fire
The one to reach for when you want the surface to look aged rather than polished. Forgiving by metallic standards, which is a low bar, but real.
Every one we stock
Grouped by maker. Every tile is one we fired ourselves.
Every one we stock
9Amaco, Mayco, Spectrum and Speedball together. Shown in one row rather than split by maker, because with a handful from each the brand is the least interesting thing about them.
Swipe or use the arrows, 9 in this row
Thickness is the whole game
With most glazes thickness shifts the result. With a metallic it decides whether you get metal at all. Too thin and the metal never saturates, so you get a flat brown or grey with no reflectivity, and people usually blame the glaze. Too thick and the same saturation that makes the shine makes it run.
Three even brushed coats is the honest starting point for most of these, and even coats matter more here than anywhere else, because a metallic reports every place your brush hesitated as a stripe. Dip if you can. Where you cannot, load the brush properly and work in alternating directions.
Put something under the pot
A saturated glaze is a fluid glaze. Metallics are among the most likely things in the studio to end up welded to a kiln shelf, and the ones that run tend to run a long way once they start.
Keep them well up off the foot, at least a quarter inch of bare clay, and put a cookie or a piece of scrap shelf under anything you are unsure about. Treat the first firing of any metallic on any new form as a test, because the form decides where the glaze stops as much as the recipe does.
Where a metallic actually shines
The reflective surface needs something to reflect. On a flat, smooth wall a metallic can read as a dull dark field, while the same glaze over throwing rings, a faceted edge or a carved band catches light on every ridge and turns the pot into something that changes as you walk past it.
The other trick is restraint. A whole pot in metallic often reads as heavy, but a metallic band against a matte or satin colour reads as deliberate. Some of the best pieces to come out of these kilns use a metallic on a third of the surface and nothing else clever at all.
Common questions
Why did my metallic come out dull brown?
Almost always too thin. The metal never saturated, so it fired as a colored glaze instead of a metallic one.
How many coats?
Three even ones for most of these. Check the glaze page, because a few want more and a few run if you give them more.
Are metallic glazes food safe?
Treat them as decorative unless the glaze page says otherwise. Use a metallic outside and a proven liner inside.
Will they run?
They are among the most likely glazes here to run. Keep them off the foot and put something under the pot.
Why do mine look streaky?
A metallic shows brush marks more than any other surface. Dip where you can, and brush in alternating directions where you cannot.
Where are the raku metallics?
On the raku page. Those fire in a completely different process and never go in the glaze kilns.
Can I layer a metallic over another glaze?
Yes, and it is often the best way to use one. Test it on a tile first, because a metallic over a fluid glaze can move a long way.
Metallics are the one shelf where a test tile is not caution, it is the only way anyone gets a good result. Fire one, look at it, then commit the pot.
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.