Art Deco Green

PC-48

⬛ Black Level

Art Deco Green is a satin brush-on glaze from Amaco's Potter's Choice line, fired cone 5 to cone 6. Patinated, architectural, weathered green.

SatinOpaqueCone 5/6
Available at The Clay HoleYes
Test tile
Fired pot
Potter's Choice family
Find it on the glazes shelves Shelf 3, Row 1Tile #13 on the Potter's Choice pot
Show me where

Friendly studio tip for this glaze

Make a test tile on the clay you actually use before you commit a piece. The metallic spots change with the clay body, so someone else's photo is only half the story.

The quick version of Art Deco Green

CoatsThree, evenly
VariableMetallic spotting shifts with clay body
TypeBrush-on glaze
FinishSatin
OpacityOpaque
Shows textureNot especially
Glaze fire toCone 5/6
Bisque toCone 04
DifficultyBeginner-friendly, but test on your clay

What this glaze does

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.

How many spots appear and how big they get is not fixed. Amaco says both the clay body and the application thickness change the result, which makes this one worth a test tile on whatever clay you are actually using.

How much it varies

Variable in the specific way Amaco names: clay body and application both change the metallic spotting. The color field itself is steady.

Clays that suit Art Deco Green

Amaco names the clay body as one of two things that change the metallic spotting, alongside application thickness. A test tile on the clay you actually throw with is worth the fifteen minutes here.

Thirty three of these forty six glazes are opaque, so on most of them the clay underneath is a surface to sit on rather than part of the finished color. The other thirteen see through to some degree, and those are the ones where your clay choice really shows.

Rated forStoneware and porcelain at cone 5 and cone 6, which covers every body on our shelf.
Light bodies#16 Porcelain, B-Mix and Half & Half show these glazes closest to the test tile. Start here if you want the color on the label.
Buff bodies52 Buff and Speckled Buff run warmer and let iron specks come up where the glaze thins. On the see-through glazes that speckle is often what makes the pot.
Berlin GrayOur dark body, and the one that changes these glazes most. Anything see-through goes deeper and quieter on it.
Chasing pinholesAmaco reports this line clearing up on a smooth, low-grog body more often than not. Worth trying before you blame the glaze.

Applying this glaze to your work

Three coats. Since thickness affects how the metallic spots develop, keep the coats even if you want an even scatter, and expect heavier areas to behave differently from thin ones.

How much it moves

Nothing published about heavy fluidity, but treat any glossy floating glaze with the usual caution at the foot.

Across the Potter's Choice line

Amaco's instruction for the line is three brush coats, not thinned, each one dry before the next. Their own guidance says most disappointing results come from glaze applied on the light side. Amaco publishes an application guide showing what too thin and too thick actually look like.

Layering

It has enough going on by itself that it works as a finished surface rather than a base. Test any pairing on a tile first, since the metallic float can be smothered by a top coat.

Before you commit a pot

Amaco's own combination tiles usually show two coats of each glaze, which lands four coats total anywhere the two overlap. Their standing advice is to test a tile before committing a piece, and to re-test when a new batch number arrives, since raw materials shift between production runs. Dipping versions of these glazes behave differently from the brushing jars and are much harder to layer.

Firing Art Deco Green

Amaco rates the line for cone 5 and cone 6, published as 2167F and 2232F on a medium speed firing, over bisque fired to cone 04.

If you are a member here

None of this is yours to manage. We handle everything on the kiln side, and every glaze on our shelves can be fired safely in our studio.

Common problems with Art Deco Green

Why do I have almost no metallic spots?

Amaco names two causes: the clay body and the application. A different clay or a thicker coat changes how many spots come up.

Why are my spots huge on one pot and tiny on another?

Same two variables. This is a glaze that reads the surface it is on.

What to put it on

Forms and surfaces

Smooth to lightly textured forms where the spotting can be seen clearly. Vases, lidded jars, anything meant to look aged rather than new.

Colors beside it

Weathered copper green wants warm neighbors: browns, rust, and tan. Against a cream it reads almost mineral.

Food and function

Amaco rates this glaze food safe and dinnerware safe, lead free and AP Non-Toxic.

Across the Potter's Choice line

Every glaze in the line is lead free and, by Amaco's rating, dinnerware safe except PC-4 Palladium and PC-64 Aventurine. Amaco's own label carries the standard caution that anyone producing tableware should test finished ware, because firing temperature and contamination vary between kilns.

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

Our test tile pots

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.

  1. 1Find the pot The brand and family name are written on the rim. This glaze lives on the Amaco Potter's Choice pot.
  2. 2Find the tile This one is tile #13. The numbers match the ones in the Glaze Bible.
  3. 3Read it properly Look at what the glaze does across all four textures, not just what color it is.

What to look at on the tile

Broad vertical textureA broad open surface. Shows the color at full strength, and whether the glaze travels down it.
Shallow textureA shallow swirl stamp. Shows whether light carving still reads once the glaze is on, or fills in and vanishes.
Deep textureCut lines. A deeply rough texture stripe. Shows where the glaze pools, how it breaks, and how dark it goes in the recesses.
Wipe-away textureGlaze wiped back to bare clay. Shows what the edge does where the coat runs thin. Find this wiped away on the tile's number.
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.

Other glazes close to Art Deco Green

Vert Lustre carries a metallic sheen in green with more flow. Lustrous Jade gives the even green without the spots. Satin Oribe covers the blue-green ground in a matte.

Vert Lustre glaze test tileA pot fired in Vert Lustre
Vert Lustre

AmacoPotter's Choice

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #40

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.

Lustrous Jade glaze test tileA pot fired in Lustrous Jade
Lustrous Jade

AmacoPotter's Choice

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #22

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.

Satin Oribe glaze test tileA pot fired in Satin Oribe
Satin Oribe

AmacoPotter's Choice

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #37

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.

June Bug glaze test tileA pot fired in June Bug
June Bug

AmacoPotter's Choice

🟧 Dan Only

Tile #25

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.

Looks great paired with

Put these on the shelf beside it, or on the next pot in the same set.

Deep Sienna Speckle glaze test tileA pot fired in Deep Sienna Speckle
Deep Sienna Speckle

AmacoPotter's Choice

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #3

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.

Oatmeal glaze test tileA pot fired in Oatmeal
Oatmeal

AmacoPotter's Choice

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #41

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.

Ironstone glaze test tileA pot fired in Ironstone
Ironstone

AmacoPotter's Choice

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #1

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.

Temmoku glaze test tileA pot fired in Temmoku
Temmoku

AmacoPotter's Choice

🟪 Purple Level

Tile #42

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.

About the Amaco Potter's Choice Family

Potter's Choice is the line Amaco built so an electric kiln could do what a gas kiln does. Released in 2004, it reaches for the depth of cone 10 reduction glazes at cone 5 and cone 6 in ordinary oxidation. That is the whole premise, and it is why the surfaces break, pool, float and shift instead of sitting flat.

It is one of the most layered brushing lines in American pottery, and Amaco keeps a public library of combination tiles for it. Most of the effects potters chase come from two of these glazes meeting on one pot.

Made by Amaco, a company that has been building glazes and kilns in Indianapolis since 1919. The Potter's Choice line arrived in 2004 and has been a reference point for mid-fire reduction looks since.

Potter's Choice family

Membership levels that may use this glaze: Black

Not sure whether this glaze suits what you are making, or how it works with our system here? Ask an instructor. That is what we are here for, and a two minute conversation at the shelf beats a fired pot you did not want.

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