Different Styles of Test Tiles You Can Make for Glaze Testing
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What Are Test Tiles?
The word “test tile” can refer to any shape of clay that’s used to test glazes, slips, underglazes, engobes etc.
Test tiles can be any shape you wish and can be made in a variety of ways. In this post, I’ll share lots of different examples of ways you can make your own test tiles. Here are examples of the test tiles I use regularly.
Extruded test tiles
Extruded test tiles
Wheel thrown test tiles
It doesn’t matter how you make them. The key is that they’re fast to make, they don’t use much clay and you have so many of them that you’re not afraid to grab them and test.
This way, you can do lots of experimenting and you don’t care what happens to them in the kiln. They’re not precious like your pots that you’ve put a lot of time and thought into. It’s always better to sacrifice a few test tiles than risk ruining your pots.
Use them often, whenever curiosity strikes. Try a new glaze recipe or a new combination of existing glazes. The more you test and experiment, the more glaze options you’ll have access to.
Styles of test tiles
Test tiles can be made in many different ways. To illustrate the variety of possibilities, I reached out to my Facebook group Understanding Glazes with Sue to see how other people make their test tiles and I have a lot of great photos to share with you. I hope these examples give you new ideas of ways you can make test tiles to test glazes.
Shapes cut out of a slab that sit flat in the kiln
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1. Textured wall tiles from the studio where I work – Cedar Hill Rec Centre in Victoria, BC
2. Raku test ornaments by Bonnie Martin McCormick
3. Flat, stamped tiles that will be hung on pegboard hooks by Debbie Peeples Diz
4. Flat, stamped, slip decorated tiles by Jacquie Blondin
Shapes cut out of a slab and propped upright in the kiln
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5. Nicholas Feisst stands his flat tiles in holders made from old clay scraps.
6. Don Clark stands his flat tiles in cut fire brick, inspired by Ron Roy.
7. An extruded test tile firing rack, similar to a Scrabble tile rack. Flat tiles lean can upright against the back of the rack.
Extruded ‘L’ shapes
These are the extruded test tiles that we make at my work. That’s the extruder die in the centre.
Extruded tubes
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8. Clay is extruded through a tube shape and then cut into smaller sections – Jacquie Blondin
9. Extruded tube with a different test on each side – Jacquie Blondin
10. Dipped extruded tubes by Rachel Gayfield
A ring thrown on the wheel and cut into sections
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11. Clay rings thrown on the wheel and then cut into sections – Eleanor Hendriks
12. Texture lines are easily added during the throwing process – Eleanor Hendriks
13. My wheel thrown test tiles were made inside out. I stamped and put holes in them after cutting them out.
Throwing test tiles on the wheel is a great way to make upright tiles when you don’t have an extruder.
Pinch pots
I make tiny pinch pots for when i need a bit more info than a tile can offer.
Other small test pots
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14. Small test bowls are made by pressing a slab into a disposable small sauce bowl – Brenda Keirsebilck
15. Callie Beller makes these testers that fit nicely in between large bowls in the kiln. The cone shape slows down glaze runs. They can be strung together to keep them organized.
16. Griet Vandenbussche first tests with small tiles and then the ones she wants to test further are tested in these small bowls she throws off the hump.
Different tiles for different purposes
Each style of test tile will provide different types of information. I recommend making test tiles that resemble your pots in some aspect.
If your work is 3 dimensional, it’s important that your test tiles have enough of a vertical surface so you can see how the glaze moves. A glaze that’s fired flat can look very different than the same glaze fired on a vertical surface, with the forces of gravity at play. And you can’t see if a glaze is going to run if you fire it flat.
If your pots are highly textured, make textured test tiles. Smooth pots, smooth test tiles.
Ashley Keller hand carves her test tiles. This shows her whether the glaze will accentuate her designs.
If you work in several clay bodies, it’s good to make test tiles out of all of them. Glazes can look and behave vastly different on different clay bodies. Just make sure to indicate the clay body on the test tile somehow.
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17. Different types of test tiles, different clay bodies – Brenda Kiersebilck
18. Different types of test tiles, different clay bodies – glaze testing workshop in Whitehorse, YK
The clay bodies I use are numbered and I stamp the number into the test tiles. It’s good to mark them in some way so you can tell what clay body they are years down the road, if necessary.
If you use coloured slips or underglazes on your pots, paint some of your test tiles too. If you’re trying to find a transparent glaze to put over images and decals, put images on your test tiles.
Brenda Keirsebilck paints slips and engobes onto her test tiles so she can see the transparency of different thicknesses of glaze. This will often produce an unexpected colour where the glaze and engobe overlap.
You get the idea! Make sure the test tile will give you the information you want from the glaze.
If you think you’ll eventually want to hang them or string them together, make sure you put a hole in them so you have the option.
Adelaide Barbey hangs her test tiles on the garage door. She has examples of each glaze on 4 different clay bodies.
If you really want to learn more about glazes, developing the habit of testing is going to get you there the fastest.
I recommend putting at least one test into every glaze firing, whenever you can. Especially if you’re firing a glaze kiln once/month or less.
When those glaze firings don’t come around very often, take advantage of them. Make use of the empty spaces in your kiln to learn about your glazes and find new ones.
Do you have a different way of making your test tiles? Please share in the comments or come over to my Facebook group and add to our test tile photo thread. I love seeing all the different ideas people have to test their glazes.
If this post helped or inspired you, please share it with others.
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Want to keep this blog post in your files? You can download it as a full colour pdf to print or keep on your computer for easy reference.
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Hi Sue,
Loved this article – and very timely! It’s great to see so many ideas from different people… I have a request for a future article please:
Now that I am making glazes, slips, terra sigs, and mixed underglazes, I’m in desperate need of a way to keep track of everything! How do you (or other people) mark your tiles, then record, track and store your inventory? I need an understandable coding system, and also a proper recording system. Help!!
Hi Irene,
Glad to hear the article caught you at the right time. Thanks for the blog post suggestion. You may find next Tuesday’s article interesting. It’s going to be about what to keep track of in your glaze journal, which is about record keeping but it doesn’t include how I mark test tiles or inventory. That would be a great future post topic!
Sue
Hello, Irene — Did you ever find a good way to index/code your test tiles?
Wow! I have been looking for glazing help a while. My glazes at times seem so unpredictable. These are concise, well thought out processes.
Thank you. Dan
Sue, I’ve been on your site about 10 minutes and already realize that my test tiles require the addition of specific gravity of each glaze used. I’ve promised myself to be more methodical, adding a code to each test tile and logging ingredients and SG for each layer in a Google Sheet. If I keep good notes, these documents will be nicely searchable.
I make test tiles as 4″ squares, add my new favourite texture, then dry/decorate. I have pieces of soft firebrick into which I’ve cut slots to receive the tiles. I can get up to 6 tiles stacked fairly compactly into an array.
Hi, thanks for all the tips. Now once all is done, instead of accumulating tons of test tiles in buckets, what would you suggest we do with used test tiles that are of no use anymore? Do you recycle them? Or just throw them out?
I personally categorize and box them so I can look at them again. I have a shelf dedicated to boxes of test tiles. If I have multiples of the same glaze, I just throw them out but I keep anything unique. I often go back and look at old test tiles.