help, please....

[SusanKFord at aol.com]

There are many Chinese glazes that are period and not poisonous. Celedon
comes to mind. It is a clear green glaze that shows up any incised work and
texture put into the pot. It is usually put over whiteware and porcelain.

I put modern glazes on my pots and explained why in my documentation. Also,
before the Roman era, most pots were unglazed, only decorated in colored
slips (liquid clay) and then burnished to a sheen with a smooth stone.  In
this case, you could decorate the outside of the pot the way you want to, and
then just glaze the inside with a clear glaze. There were many different
colors of clays, depending on the deposits of clay you were using. There was
terra cotta, a yellowish-tan, and a lot of black. I believe the black was
either a black slip, or it was raku fired. 

Raku firing is when you take the red hot pot out of the kiln and smother it
with sawdust or leaves (today trash cans and shredded newspaper is used). The
pot ignites the sawdust, which burns out the oxygen which then turns the clay
black.

Sigrid