Wood Ash Glazes: A Love Letter to Imperfection

The Ash Bucket\n\nBehind the studio, there's a blue plastic bucket. It fills slowly over winter with ash from our wood stove — birch, mostly, with some alder and maple. Come spring, that bucket becomes glaze.\n\nWood ash glazing is one of the oldest ceramic traditions, dating back to Shang Dynasty China (1600-1046 BCE). The principle is simple: wood ash contains fluxes (potassium, sodium, calcium) that, at high temperatures, melt into glass. But "simple" and "easy" are different things.\n\n## The Recipe Is Not a Recipe\n\nEvery batch of ash is different. Ash from birch burns whiter and melts at a lower temperature than ash from oak. Ash from bark contains more silica than ash from heartwood. Ash collected in winter (when the stove runs hot) is finer than ash from autumn (when fires smolder).\n\nYou cannot write a repeatable recipe for wood ash glaze. You can only write a starting point, then test, adjust, test again.\n\nOur current base:\n- 40% washed wood ash (mixed birch/alder)\n- 30% local feldspar\n- 20% ball clay\n- 10% silica\n\nThis gives us a range from olive green to amber to deep brown, depending on application thickness and kiln atmosphere. When the reduction is heavy, we get copper-red flashes. When it's light, we get pale celadon tones.\n\n## Embracing the Uncontrollable\n\nIndustrial ceramics is about eliminating variation. Six sigma, statistical process control, identical products. Wood ash glazing is the opposite: it celebrates variation. Every firing is a small surrender.\n\nI've learned more about letting go from that blue bucket of ash than from any meditation app. You mix your best guess, apply it with intention, load the kiln, fire carefully — and then you open the door to discover what the fire decided.\n\n## The Forest Floor Set\n\nOur Forest Floor tea cup set uses ash from a local sawmill that processes pine and spruce. The high alkali content gives those mossy greens. The rust tones come from iron in the clay body bleeding through thin glaze. Every set is a collaboration between us, the trees, and the fire.\n\nWe wouldn't have it any other way.