Floating

24 glazes / Spectrum

Spectrum's 1430 series, and we carry the whole thing. All twenty four colors, 1431 through 1454.

Floating is not a technical term. Spectrum named the series for what it looks like: one color appearing to sit above another without you layering two glazes to get there.

Cone 4/6Bisque to Cone 046 studio favorites

Floating by the numbers

24glazes on our shelves
24at Purple Level
21good on texture
6studio favorites

Every Floating 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

24 to choose from

Order
Autumn Purple glaze test tileA pot fired in Autumn Purple
Autumn Purple

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #4

Good on texture Studio favorite

A dusty mauve sitting over a warmer ground, with coral breaking through on every raised edge. One of the clearest examples of what this series is named for.

Bougainvillea glaze test tileA pot fired in Bougainvillea
Bougainvillea

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #23

Good on texture

A deep magenta pink, mottled rather than flat, lifting lighter and pinker over the relief.

Cactus glaze test tileA pot fired in Cactus
Cactus

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #8

Good on texture

An olive yellow-green that breaks to a paler green on the high points. Quieter than the name suggests.

Curry glaze test tileA pot fired in Curry
Curry

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #2

Good on texture

A bright mustard yellow, even across the field with a light mottle through it.

Floating Blue glaze test tileA pot fired in Floating Blue
Floating Blue

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #10

Good on texture Studio favorite

The one the series is built around. Gray-green floats over blue with olive and smoky bronze pooling in the recesses, and it reads like two glazes layered when it is only one.

Floating Celadon glaze test tileA pot fired in Floating Celadon
Floating Celadon

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #7

Good on texture

A pale yellow-green that breaks cream over the relief. Soft, and the most restrained of the three Floating colors we carry.

Fuzzy Peach glaze test tileA pot fired in Fuzzy Peach
Fuzzy Peach

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #14

Good on texture

A pale peach with lavender clouding drifting across the surface. The two colors separate rather than blend, which is the effect.

Ginger glaze test tileA pot fired in Ginger
Ginger

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #13

Good on texture Studio favorite

A warm red-brown with purple mottling through it, lifting lighter and more copper on the edges.

Glacier glaze test tileA pot fired in Glacier
Glacier

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #12

Good on texture

A very pale blue-white, close to a satin in how little it reflects. The lightest color in the series on our tile.

Kimchi glaze test tileA pot fired in Kimchi
Kimchi

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #6

Good on texture

A bright red-orange mottled with pink. Busy, and it moves visibly across a flat tile.

Louisiana Bayou glaze test tileA pot fired in Louisiana Bayou
Louisiana Bayou

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #17

A near-black blue-green with lighter blue pooling where the glaze gathers. Dark until the light finds it.

Morning Glory glaze test tileA pot fired in Morning Glory
Morning Glory

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #19

Good on texture Studio favorite

A soft cornflower blue with white clouding floating over it.

Nori Green glaze test tileA pot fired in Nori Green
Nori Green

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

No Tile

A dark olive with gold breaking hard on every raised letter. High contrast for a green.

Papaya glaze test tileA pot fired in Papaya
Papaya

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #18

Good on texture

A burnt orange with lighter apricot breaking through on the relief.

Pearl White glaze test tileA pot fired in Pearl White
Pearl White

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #1

Good on texture Studio favorite

A pale pink-cream with a pearl cast. The softest thing on this shelf and an easy background color.

Sangria glaze test tileA pot fired in Sangria
Sangria

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #5

Good on texture

A bright red with darker crimson mottling through it. Strong, and one of the few in the series that reads as a solid color at a glance.

Shallot glaze test tileA pot fired in Shallot
Shallot

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #20

Good on texture

A lavender purple with a pink cast, mottled across the surface.

Spanish Moss glaze test tileA pot fired in Spanish Moss
Spanish Moss

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #21

Good on texture

A pale gray-green, almost matte in how little it reflects, and one of the quietest colors we carry.

Sunrise glaze test tileA pot fired in Sunrise
Sunrise

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #22

Good on texture

A pale peach-pink with lavender clouding drifting through it. A close relative of Fuzzy Peach on the shelf.

Tapenade glaze test tileA pot fired in Tapenade
Tapenade

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #16

Good on texture Studio favorite

A near-black olive with green and gold breaking on the raised edges.

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

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #15

Good on texture

An amber gold with brown breaking on every edge. Spectrum write it as Tiger Eye without the apostrophe.

Twilight glaze test tileA pot fired in Twilight
Twilight

SpectrumFloating

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #3

Good on texture

A slate blue-gray, even across the field, breaking a shade lighter over the relief.

Pots decorated with Spectrum Floating glazes at The Clay Hole pottery studio

How the Floating line works

Every one of these is doing two things at once. A ground color and a second color drifting over it, out of a single jar.

Spectrum fire their own samples at cone 5 and say the cone moves the result. Our glaze kilns run cone 5½, so what you see on these tiles is the color at our cone rather than theirs.

Coats

Two to three coats for full coverage on cone 04 bisque. Spectrum are specific about that number, and a thin coat on a floating glaze loses the float entirely.

Layering

These already layer themselves, which is the point of the series. Spectrum still recommend overlapping their glazes for new results, and thickness and clay body both move what you get.

Food and safety

Spectrum say most of their cone 4 to 6 stoneware glazes are lead free and dinnerware safe. Some of the reactive ones carry an ACMI cautionary label because of copper or vanadium in the wet glaze, which makes them unsuitable for young children or anyone pregnant to handle. Wet only. Fired and cooled, that is not the concern.

Clays that suit Floating

Spectrum name the clay body as one of the three things that decide the fired look, alongside thickness and cone. A darker body pulls the pale ones down.

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

The Floating 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 Spectrum Floating 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