Potter's Choice

A modern stand-in for Albany slip, the natural clay that gave American potters their default brown for most of a century. The real material ran out decades ago. This is the color it left behind.

An iron red with a metallic shimmer over it. The color is deliberately unstable across a single surface, and that is the point: it goes dark brown wherever it thins over a raised edge, and it pools a deep yellow-green wherever it gathers in a recess. Flat open areas hold the copper. The overall read is a metal object that has been buried for a while and dug back up.

Three colors in one jar, and which one you get is decided entirely by thickness. Thin, it fires a soft black. A little heavier, olive green. Heavier still, rust red. On one pot with any relief at all, you get all three at once.

A light opaque blue with a smooth, even surface, which makes it one of the calmer glazes in a line full of loud ones. The interest is in the break: over a raised edge it pulls back to tan, so texture draws itself in a warm line against the cool field.

A glossy light blue-green carrying metallic spots that float up during the firing. The effect Amaco is chasing is a copper roof that has been weathering for a century, and it lands: a soft green field with metal breaking through it.

A cool blue that breaks milky green and then pools pale in the low spots, which is exactly the trick the name is describing: shallow water over sand, deeper water further out.

Reads as a glossy black until the light hits it, and then blue comes up wherever the glaze is thick. It is a black glaze with a blue secret rather than a blue glaze that went dark.

Amaco calls it one of the best sellers in the line, and the reason is that it never does the same thing twice. Thick, it is a flowing light blue. Thin, it breaks brown. Between those two states it stays busy: streaking, pulling, and following whatever the form gives it.

A glossy royal blue that grows small triangular crystals in dark gray metal as it cools. The reference Amaco reaches for is lapis lazuli, and the comparison holds: deep blue stone with metallic flecks scattered through it.

A soft blue-green matte that Amaco compares to a stone worn smooth at the bottom of a river, and the softness is the point. There is no gloss to bounce light around, so the color sits quietly on the form.

A translucent pink-red that breaks light tan over texture. It is chasing the copper reds of historic Asian pottery, and Amaco's own framing is worth keeping: it gets there with a reliable color response in an oxidation kiln, which the originals could never promise.

An oxblood red, a color that is hard to get out of an electric kiln at all. Traditionally it takes a gas kiln and a reduction atmosphere. This gets the same result in ordinary oxidation.

A gold glaze with sparkle in it, and under direct light the sparkle carries flecks of red and brown rather than being a single flat glitter. It is one of the newer glazes in the line and it reads more like a mineral than a metal.

A dark glaze carrying shimmering flecks that pull into streams and patches as they move. Amaco compares it to a hare's fur glaze, one of the old Chinese temmoku effects where iron separates during cooling and draws fine streaks down the pot.

A sparkling dark brown that breaks light yellow-brown over texture. The sparkle is the unusual part: it shifts between silver and copper depending on the angle, which gives the whole surface an iridescent quality rather than a fixed color.

A translucent emerald built to show off carving. Because you can see through it, the relief underneath is not covered so much as filled: deep cuts hold more glaze and go darker, shallow ones stay light.

An opaque brick red with black specks running through it, and a strong presence on a pot. Where it thins it turns translucent, so edges and raised lines lighten and let some clay show.

A rich translucent green with darker green speckles suspended in it. The gloss and the translucency together mean the clay body underneath still contributes, so the same jar looks different on white stoneware than on a darker clay.

A warm russet, translucent, with dark specks scattered through it. Amaco's own comparison is to reduction stoneware, and that is a fair description of the result: it looks like a wood or gas fired surface that came out of an electric kiln.

A glossy green that breaks lighter and then pools into a gray-green with mauve in it. Two colors, and the second one is unexpected: the mauve is what stops this from being an ordinary green glaze.

Deep red where it is thick, icy blue where it is thin, and the transition between them across one pot is the entire reason this glaze exists. It is a copper red built for an electric kiln, with a blue break on texture that no traditional copper red would give you.

A copper red carrying purple and blue through it, which is what the name is pointing at: the shifting colors of a flame rather than a single red. Like Copper Red, it produces in oxidation what traditionally took a reduction kiln.

An opaque gray-blue that looks crackled over a deeper blue, except the surface is not actually crackled. It is smooth and satiny to the touch, and the crackle is a visual effect inside the glaze rather than a real network of lines.

A warm translucent yellow with a semi-gloss surface, and the comparison Amaco reaches for is whipped honey, which describes both the color and the slight softness of the finish.

An intense cobalt blue with a lighter blue floating on the surface of it, which gives the glaze visible depth: one blue sitting on top of another rather than a single flat color.

Brown where it is thin, with blue-gray floats coming up where it is thick. Amaco describes it as a more restrained relative of a straightforward blue glaze, and restrained is the right word: the blue is present but it never takes over.

A glossy soft yellow with flecks of iron scattered through it. Mostly opaque, and it breaks clear over texture, so raised edges show the clay through it.

A glossy dark glaze that reads deep chocolate brown where it is thin and grows a beige-bronze float where it is thicker. The float is what separates it from an ordinary brown: on a full application there is metal in it.

A glossy dark green that grows small triangular crystals as it cools, iridescent enough that Amaco reaches for the wings of a beetle to describe it. That comparison is not marketing; the crystals really do sit on the surface like shell.

An opalescent gray that changes noticeably across a textured surface. Opalescent is the right word rather than opaque: there is a milky depth to it that shifts with the light.

A glossy opaque green with a soft, even finish, named after the stone and behaving like it: consistent, calm, and slightly luminous rather than busy.

A toasty light beige, relatively translucent, breaking clear over texture. On its own it is a quiet, useful neutral that lets the clay body show through.

A metallic glaze that fires to a mirror. Not a shimmer or a sheen, an actual reflective surface, which is rare in mid-fire and is the reason this glaze exists.

A glaze with two distinct personalities at either end of its range. At cone 5 it is a matte violet. At cone 6 it turns glossy deep indigo and grows purple crystal floats on the surface.

Sandy dark brown feathering into near black, then breaking to a rich amber over texture. Three states in one glaze, and they sort themselves out along the relief of the pot.

A glossy denim blue with a wispy white rutile float drifting across it, breaking green-gray over texture. The float is the feature: it does not sit still, it flows with the form.

A modern reading of oribe, the Japanese green glaze tradition that goes back to the sixteenth century. This version is blue-green with a burnished satin surface rather than a glassy one.

A dark gold that fires closer to bronze than to yellow, with a satin matte surface rather than a shine. It reads as metal that has been aged rather than polished.

A deep green that breaks brownish over texture and becomes more fluid as it gets thicker. That last part matters: this glaze does not just look different when applied heavily, it behaves differently.

A warm dark purple with a soft lilac float drifting over the surface. Purple is a difficult color in mid-fire, and this one gets there without going pastel or turning brown.

A satin matte dark brown and tan with speckling through it, named for a glaze tradition that goes back centuries. The texture in it is the point, and so is what it does not do: it stays consistent.

A subtle turquoise gloss that reads green-beige where it is thin and a real aqua where it is thick. The two states are far enough apart that a single pot with relief shows both clearly.

An opaque warm gray carrying subtle frothy tones of pink and green. Described plainly it sounds unremarkable, and on the pot it is not: the pink and green surface within the gray keep it from reading as flat.

An intense opaque blue-green with a smooth, strong surface. Where most of this line is built to break, pool and float, this one holds a single saturated color and holds it well.

A delicate light green built to reproduce the classical Asian celadons, and it gets close. Celadon is a long-established glaze effect, a pale green transparency that was originally chasing the look of jade.

A flowing green carrying a metallic sheen, and Amaco's reference for it is Persian lusterware, the medieval technique that put a metallic shine onto a glazed surface.