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Parent Category: Technical Articles from Journal Back Copies

Category: Technical Articles 2004

Janet Notman

Enamels are like chocolates and I can't resist them when I don't really need them. This summer, when at long last I had finally made samples of all the enamels that I had bought from Mike Warren's studio, I discovered a cache of lead-free whites and fluxes that I had bought from Ellen Goldman at the last conference. I already had (I now discover) 20 different whites and 20 different fluxes! As part of my samples I had also been high firing some of the whites almost to destruction to see what colour they became - an interesting range from pinks to green, turquoise and blues. I now started playing with the lead-free enamels and fluxes and comparing them with the leaded enamels. I made the mistake of mentioning this to Dorothy, hence this article, and the play turned into hard work.

I had purchased seven Thomson lead-free whites, 1010, 1020, 1030, 1040, 1045, 1050 and 1060. Two of these, 1040 and 1050, become translucent then transparent but do not change colour when high fired - so are not included in my results. I had also purchased five Thompson lead-free fluxes, 2010, 2015, 2020, 2030, and 2040. Having worked with Pat Johnson, I decided to include two leaded whites, LJE DW1 and SOJE 159 plus LJE T232 flux in the test samples for comparison.

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