Customer Reviews

Ash Glazes

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Robert Tichane shows you the wonderful and unpredictable effects of ash glazes made from various plants. He gives extensive detail on the chemical composition of ashes achieved by using different parts of trees (from root to leaves) and from using leaves of different plants (ranging from beech, oak to vegetables like cabbages and lettuce). This book is suited for a more experienced potter with some knowledge of chemistry and much patience. Still, I found it very inspiring despite not understanding some of his more detailed discussions.

I am fairly new to glaze development, though I have read Hopper's "The Ceramic Spectrum", so I ordered this hoping to expand on what I learned from that book. I was quite excited when I recieved it, but quickly began to feel rather disappointed.

Here's a few reasons why: the first thing that bothered me about this book is that it only has a few colour photos - the rest are black and white, and of only medium quality. Secondy, I was also a little irritated when I discovered that the author seems to have very definite opinions about how ash should be used in glazes, and seems to resist usages that don't fit well within his scheme of things. Thirdly, much of the text covers the nominal compositions of various different ashes, and all the while, the author is saying things that basically amount to "You can't ever really tell what's in a specific ash sample without testing it." Finally, most of the photos seem to be of work by a single artist (perhaps the way the author thinks ash glazes *should* look?) ... it would be nice to see a wider variety of work, especially considering the long history of ash as both accidental and intentional glazes and glaze components.

All in all, I would not recommend this book for those who are interested in using ash glazes. To them, I would recommend Robin Hopper's "The Ceramic Spectrum", and say "Try it and see".