Tidal Pool

C623

🟪 Purple Level♥ Studio favorite

Tidal Pool is a satin brush-on glaze from The Ceramic Shop's Pro Series line, fired cone 6.

SatinOpaqueCone 6
Available at The Clay HoleYes
Test tile
Fired pot
Pro Series family
Find it on the glazes shelves Shelf 2, Row 10
Show me where

The quick version of Tidal Pool

TypeBrush-on glaze
FinishSatin
OpacityOpaque
Shows textureNot especially
Glaze fire toCone 6
Bisque toCone 04

What this glaze does

Dark blue and green with flecks of light blue through it, in The Ceramic Shop's own description. It breaks on texture and comes back warm brown where it does.

So the pot decides a lot of this. A smooth form gives you the blues, and every carved line gives you brown.

Clays that suit Tidal Pool

This is one to put on something textured. The break is the point, so carving, throwing rings and any raised line will pull the warm brown out of it. Any body on our shelf will do that.

These behave differently from each other on clay, so the short version is on each glaze's own page.

Light bodies#16 Porcelain, B-Mix and Half & Half. Electric Ash is photographed on a light ground and Seaglass Aqua is transparent, so both read closest to the jar here.
Buff and dark bodies52 Buff, Speckled Buff and Berlin Gray will warm and quieten everything on this shelf. The Ceramic Shop specifically warn that Electric Ash can run and darken on some stonewares.
On textureTidal Pool is the one to put on a carved pot. It breaks to a warm brown wherever the surface moves.

Applying this glaze to your work

Worth knowing before you pick one up: this line is formulated for dipping, not brushing. The Ceramic Shop thins it with water for spraying and recommends adding a brushing medium such as Veegum T if you are going to brush it. Ours are on the shelf as brush-on, so treat an even coat as the thing to aim for.

Across the Pro Series line

Cone 6, which is where our glaze kilns run.

Because the line was built to be dipped, the surface rewards evenness. Where thickness does matter, and on Jewelry it matters a lot, it is called out on that glaze's own page.

Firing Tidal Pool

The Ceramic Shop rates this line for cone 6, which is where our glaze kilns run. They say it has been used in studios and schools for over a decade.

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 Tidal Pool

Why is mine flat blue?

Nothing for it to break over. Tidal Pool needs texture to show what it does.

Why is there brown on my ridges?

That is the glaze working as described.

Food and function

Lead and cadmium free, non-toxic, conforming to ASTM D-4236. The Ceramic Shop tells anyone producing dinnerware to test their own finished work, because clay body and firing both change the result. Their dry powder carries a California warning for silica and lithium carbonate, which is a mixing-room concern rather than a fired-pot one.

Across the Pro Series line

Lead and cadmium free, non-toxic, conforming to ASTM D-4236.

The Ceramic Shop tell anyone producing dinnerware to test their own finished work, since clay body and firing both move the result. Their dry powder carries a California warning for silica and lithium carbonate, which matters in a mixing room rather than on a fired pot.

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

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 The Ceramic Shop Pro Series Family

The Ceramic Shop mixes its own cone 6 glazes in Pennsylvania and sells them mostly as dry powder to studios that dip. Four of them are on our shelf.

Three are from their Pro Series. The fourth, Seaglass Aqua, is from their Sea Glass line and lives here because it sits with the others on the shelf.

A small shelf, and a different animal from the big brush-on lines beside it. The Ceramic Shop formulate these for dipping. They thin with water for spraying, and if you brush them they recommend adding a brushing medium first. Ours are set up as brush-on, so the thing to aim for is an even coat rather than the thick-and-thin trick some reactive lines reward.

Pro Series family

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.

Download the Glaze Bible PDF