Various Families

67 glazes / Mayco

Sixty seven Mayco stoneware glazes that sit together on one shelf rather than in one Mayco line. Classics, crystals, mattes, the two clears and the texture glazes are all in here.

Various is our grouping, not Mayco's. Every page here names the Mayco line that glaze actually belongs to, and carries its real Mayco code so you can find it in their book.

Cone 5/10Bisque to Cone 049 studio favorites

Various Families by the numbers

67glazes on our shelves
67at Purple Level
10good on texture
9studio favorites

Every Various Families glaze we have in house

Hover any tile to see a pot fired in it, or tap once on a phone.

Jump straight to one

67 to choose from

Order
Amaryllis glaze test tileA pot fired in Amaryllis
Amaryllis

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

No Tile

A coral pink that breaks into orange and yellow with dark speckle floating through it. One of the most active surfaces on this shelf.

Antique Brass glaze test tileA pot fired in Antique Brass
Antique Brass

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #1

Studio favorite

A dark olive brown with a metallic sheen. Reads like tarnished hardware rather than like a glaze.

Aurora Green glaze test tileA pot fired in Aurora Green
Aurora Green

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #20

A soft sage green over a warm ground, with the green pulling back to amber where the glaze thins over the relief.

Birch glaze test tileA pot fired in Birch
Birch

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

No Tile

A creamy off-white that breaks brown on every edge. Mayco note the thinner it goes the more amber it reads, and the thicker it goes the more white floats.

Black Timber glaze test tileA pot fired in Black Timber
Black Timber

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

No Tile

A near-black brown with olive and amber breaking through in streaks. Looks like charred wood, which is the point.

Blue Splatterware glaze test tileA pot fired in Blue Splatterware
Blue Splatterware

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #22

A white semi-matte base carrying blue crystal blooms. Mayco build it on White Matte and say the crystals melt into small blue blooms, which is exactly what our tile shows.

Celadon Bloom glaze test tileA pot fired in Celadon Bloom
Celadon Bloom

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

No Tile

Good on texture

A pale turquoise green that pools deeper in the recesses and pulls almost white on the high points.

Cenote glaze test tileA pot fired in Cenote
Cenote

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

No Tile

Studio favorite

A pale blue with rust and brown speckle breaking through it, like mineral staining on limestone.

Copper Float glaze test tileA pot fired in Copper Float
Copper Float

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

No Tile

A dark brown ground with a copper green float sitting on top of it. Two colors in one glaze, and where they separate is up to the thickness.

Dark Magma glaze test tileA pot fired in Dark Magma
Dark Magma

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #4

A textured black that fires to a raised, cratered surface. This is a texture glaze, not a color one, and the thicker it goes the rougher it gets.

Galaxy glaze test tileA pot fired in Galaxy
Galaxy

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #26

A black ground with blue and brown crystal blooms spreading across it. One of the most dramatic surfaces we carry.

Glossy Crackle White glaze test tileA pot fired in Glossy Crackle White
Glossy Crackle White

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #11

A bright white gloss with a fine crackle pattern all through it. Mayco recommend rubbing ink into the cracks after firing to bring the pattern out.

Gray Opal glaze test tileA pot fired in Gray Opal
Gray Opal

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

No Tile

A soft blue-gray with an opal shimmer where it pools. Subtle, and it changes with the angle you look at it.

Ivy glaze test tileA pot fired in Ivy
Ivy

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

No Tile

A soft green with darker green pooling in the recesses and gold breaking on the high points.

Light Magma glaze test tileA pot fired in Light Magma
Light Magma

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #3

A gray textured glaze that fires to a raised, cratered surface. Same family as Dark Magma, lighter ground, and again thickness controls the texture.

Matte Clear glaze test tileA pot fired in Matte Clear
Matte Clear

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #35

A satin matte clear. Mayco say it fires to a satin matte at cone 5 and 6 and goes more satin at cone 10. This one is off the shelf and needs asking for.

Matte Crackle Clear glaze test tileA pot fired in Matte Crackle Clear
Matte Crackle Clear

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #34

A matte clear with a fine crackle pattern. Mayco's own name for it is Crackle Matte Clear. Rub ink into the cracks after firing to show the pattern.

Micro Ash glaze test tileA pot fired in Micro Ash
Micro Ash

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #44

A dark brown ground with fine gold micro-crystals scattered through it, closer to a metallic than to a color.

Micro Jade glaze test tileA pot fired in Micro Jade
Micro Jade

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #49

Good on texture

An olive green ground with fine gold and green micro-crystals, and a warm break on the edges.

Midnight Rain glaze test tileA pot fired in Midnight Rain
Midnight Rain

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #25

A deep navy with lighter blue and gold breaking across the relief. Dark, wet-looking and one of the strongest blues we carry.

Mood Ring glaze test tileA pot fired in Mood Ring
Mood Ring

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

No Tile

A dark olive ground with gold breaking hard on every raised edge. The contrast is where this one earns its name.

Mudcrack glaze test tileA pot fired in Mudcrack
Mudcrack

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #10

A white textured glaze that cracks as it dries and stays cracked through the firing. Mayco are direct that if it does not crack before the firing it will not crack after, and that the texture makes it decorative only.

Root Beer glaze test tileA pot fired in Root Beer
Root Beer

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #31

Good on texture

A deep glossy brown with amber breaking on the raised edges. Wet-looking and dark.

Shipwreck glaze test tileA pot fired in Shipwreck
Shipwreck

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #6

Good on texture Studio favorite

A dark teal green with heavy rust and brown mottling over it, like something pulled out of the water.

Tidal Wave glaze test tileA pot fired in Tidal Wave
Tidal Wave

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

No Tile

A white ground with blue crystal blooms scattered across the surface, heavier toward the bottom where they ran.

Tiger’s Eye glaze test tileA pot fired in Tiger’s Eye
Tiger’s Eye

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #40

Good on texture

A mottled brown and gold with streaks of deep red running through it. Genuinely looks like the stone.

Winter Wood glaze test tileA pot fired in Winter Wood
Winter Wood

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #2

Studio favorite

A warm white with brown speckle gathering unevenly across the surface, like bark on snow.

Wrought Iron glaze test tileA pot fired in Wrought Iron
Wrought Iron

MaycoVarious Families

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #45

A near-black brown with an intermittent metallic break. Mayco describe it as producing an intermittent effect rather than a flat color.

Pots decorated with Mayco Various Families glazes at The Clay Hole pottery studio

How the Various Families line works

A flat opaque gloss sits on this shelf next to a glaze that cracks on purpose and a glaze that grows crystals. Nothing else in the Bible mixes that much behavior into one row.

Mayco intend the stoneware range for cone 5 to 6 and say it stays stable at cone 10. Our glaze kilns run cone 5½, so every tile here is ours at our cone.

Coats

Two to three even coats on cone 04 bisque unless a glaze's own page says otherwise. Let each coat dry before the next.

The texture glazes are the exception. Magma and Mudcrack build their surface from thickness, so thin coats give you nothing.

Layering

Mayco design this range to layer, and many of these break over texture to reveal a second color underneath.

The crystal and float glazes are their own effect. Covering one defeats the point of buying it.

Food and safety

Mayco list their stoneware glazes as dinnerware safe when used as directed, except where they mark otherwise.

The texture glazes are the ones to watch. Mayco recommend Mudcrack and Magma for decorative surfaces only, because of the surface they create.

Clays that suit Various Families

Clay body moves these more than most lines. A darker body pulls the pale glazes down and a speckled body reads straight through the translucent ones.

Test tile pots lined up on the glaze shelves at The Clay Hole

The Various Families test tile pot

Every glaze family on our shelves has its own test tile pot, and it is the fastest way to decide what to put on a piece. It is a fired pot wearing the whole family, one numbered tile per glaze, on a surface built to show you what that glaze actually does rather than just what color it is.

Look for Mayco Various Families written on the rim. Each glaze on this page carries its tile number, and the numbers run around the pot.

One trick worth knowing

Some glazes tell you loudly that they run. Others hide it. Look at how the brushed lines fired: crisp edges mean a stable glaze, and edges that went soft and fluid mean it moved, and it will move on your pot too.

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.

Download the Glaze Bible PDF