Kiln Notebook

Glaze tests, firing logs and slow mistakes from a small home studio.

Fixing a glaze that crawls

Crawling is when the glaze pulls back into beads and leaves bare clay. Three things fixed it for me: wiping bisque with a damp sponge to remove dust, swapping half the raw kaolin for calcined kaolin, and applying in two thinner dips instead of one heavy one.

If a glaze cracks as it dries on the pot, it will almost certainly crawl in the firing. That crack is the early warning.