The Blues
SP-231
The Blues is a glossy brush-on glaze from Mayco's Stroke & Coat Speckled line, fired cone 06 to cone 6.
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The quick version of The Blues
What this glaze does
A denim slate blue with dark specks, softened with gray.
Clays that suit The Blues
Works on any of our bodies. On a speckled clay body you get two speck patterns at once, which can read as a mess or as depth depending on the color.
Applying this glaze to your work
One coat is translucent, two to three gives solid color. Fires glossy with no clear over the top. Let each coat dry before the next.
Apply to cone 04 bisque, greenware or wet clay. One coat is translucent, two to three is opaque. It fires glossy on its own, so no clear is needed.
Layering
Speckled colors behave like the rest of Stroke & Coat: they do not move or blend into a neighboring color, and they are intermixable across the line.
These do not move or blend into a neighboring color, so hard edges hold. Intermixable with the rest of Stroke & Coat if you want to mix your own shade.
From The Clay Hole University
More info about The Blues below, but first... Everything we teach about glazing, written down and taught properly. These are the glaze lessons, and they are a small corner of a library that runs from centering your first pot to selling your work.
GuideGlaze Brushing Techniques, Coat by Coat
GuideGlazing Big and Intricate Pottery Faster
GuideGetting the Most Out of the Mega Glaze Tool
GuideMaking, Logging and Dialing in Test Tiles
GuideGlaze Problems, Causes and Fixes
GuideGlazing on the Wheel for Even Coats and Clean Bands
GuideBubble Glaze with Dish Soap
GuideMixing Your Own Glazes: What It Actually Involves
GuideMaking a Glaze Catcher
GuideOxide and Carbonate Washes
GuideWhen to Use Celadon Glazes
GuideHow to Use Dipping Glazes
UnderglazeHow to Use Underglaze: Techniques, Rules and Firing
UnderglazeMishima: How to Inlay Slip and Underglaze into Carved Lines
UnderglazeWipe-Away Texture: Underglaze and Oxide Washes on Bisque
Firing The Blues
Mayco rate Stroke & Coat from cone 06 to cone 6, with most colors holding to cone 10. Our glaze kilns run cone 5½, so the tile here shows the color at our cone.
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 The Blues
Where did my specks go?
Coats. The specks sit in the glaze, so a single thin coat scatters far fewer of them than three.
Do I need clear over it?
No. It fires glossy on its own.
Food and function
Mayco list Stroke & Coat as food safe and dinnerware safe when used as directed. If you are selling functional ware, test your own finished work.
Mayco list Stroke & Coat as food safe and dinnerware safe when used as directed. Test your own finished work if you sell functional ware.
Our test tile pots
This family does not have a test tile pot. The colors and results come out close enough to what the book shows that a pot would not tell you much more, so work from the printed Glaze Bible and the tile above.
About the Mayco Stroke & Coat Speckled Family
Twenty Stroke & Coat colors with contrasting specks suspended in them. Same glaze, same rules, one extra thing going on.
Mayco build these on their existing Stroke & Coat colors, so a speckled color behaves exactly like its plain counterpart on our other shelf.
The specks are in the glaze, not on the clay. That means coat count controls how many of them land: one thin coat scatters a few, three coats gives the density you see on these tiles. Contrast does the rest. On the pale bases the specks read hard, and on Tuxedo and Moody Blue you have to catch the light to see them at all.
More ways to pick a glaze
Membership levels that may use this glaze: Purple & 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.