Advanced Glaze Development — A 3-Day Workshop
£400
A workshop for ceramicists who already make glazes — and want to understand, properly, what's happening inside them.
Most glaze teaching gives you recipes and a method. This three-day workshop goes underneath that, into the chemistry that determines why a glaze behaves the way it does. Over three days in the GLOST studio in Peckham, you'll work directly with Elena Gileva — artist, teacher, and founder of GLOST — on the Unity Molecular Formula, the role of fluxes, and the relationships between materials that govern melt, surface, and colour.
By the end of three days, you'll be able to read a glaze recipe the way a chemist reads a formula: knowing what each material contributes, which fluxes are doing the work, where the silica–alumina ratio sits, and what that means for how the glaze will fire. From that understanding, recipe development follows naturally.
What you'll work on
Day One — The Unity Molecular Formula What the UMF actually is, and why every serious glaze recipe can be expressed through it. Translating recipes from weight-based to molecular form. Reading existing glazes through their unity formula. Understanding the alumina–silica balance and what it tells you about durability, melt, and surface. Setting up your three-day testing plan.
Day Two — Fluxes and how they shape a glaze A proper look at the flux family — sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, lithium, zinc, barium — and what each one actually does in the melt. How different flux combinations produce different surface qualities, melt temperatures, and colour responses. The behaviour of eutectic mixtures: why two fluxes together can melt lower than either alone. Practical work: structured line blends to see flux behaviour in real test tiles.
Day Three — Putting the chemistry to work Bringing days one and two together. How colour responds to different flux environments — the same metal oxide in three bases gives three different glazes, and why. Reviewing fired results from the workshop alongside their molecular formulas. Beginning to develop and adjust your own recipes from a place of understanding rather than guesswork.
Each day runs 11:00–16:30 with a half-hour break.
Who this is for You've completed Foundations of Glaze Making, the Mastering Ceramic Glazes online course, any other glaze makig course, or you're already mixing glazes in your own studio practice. You can follow a recipe and you understand the basics of how a glaze is mixed and applied. You want to move from following to understanding.
If you haven't worked with raw glaze materials before, Foundations of Glaze Making is the right starting point.
What's included All raw materials and pre-made test tiles. All firings during the workshop. Annotated recipe sheets and a full set of your own test tiles, returned after final firing (tile shipping charged separately at cost).
Practical £400 per person. The GLOST studio, Peckham SE15. Tea, coffee and decent biscuits throughout. Lunch is on you — there are good places nearby.
We run this workshop once a year. The next dates after August won't be confirmed until 2027.