Ravenscrag Silky Matte for Cone 6
Recipe
Notes
This works well on Plainsman M340, but especially on a whiteware like M370. Produces an ivory white with some fleck. The surface is very silky, reminiscent of a cone 10 dolomite matte. Its matteness is adjustable by varying the amount of calcined kaolin (or simply blending in a glossy recipe to shine it up a little). The mechanism of the matteness is high MgO in a boron base of low Si:Al ratio. Do not use regular kaolin, the glaze will shrink too much during drying. Use enough water in the slurry so it flows well, it will apply very evenly without drips. If there is not enough water and the slurry is too creamy, it will crack during drying and crawl during firing. Calcine part of the Ravenscrag to reduce the shrinkage if needed. The tin oxide is included to whiten and opacify the glaze, if you remove it the color will be quite a bit darker, especially on darker clay bodies (Ravenscrag contains some iron). The 1.5 wollastonite is a remnant of how this glaze was created; it started as Moores Matte, a well-known Gerstley Borate-based matte recipe. We first reformulated it to substitute the GB for a frit (while maintaining the same chemistry) and then incorporated Ravenscrag Slip to supply as much of the rest of the chemistry as possible. A further adjustment was made to make the surface more silky. The silky matte G2934 followed this, it being a cleaner, whiter variant having no Ravenscrag but the same fired surface. Since this has some iron, colouring it with stains could produce more muddied colours than you might want. Consider using the G2934 base instead if needed.
Description
Plainsman Cone 6 Ravenscrag Slip based glaze. It can be found among others at http://ravenscrag.com.