Katherine Choy: Glaze Explorations

Katherine Choy pushed the envelope in many ways over the course of her career. As her clay forms sprouted extra necks and spouts, leaning away from function, she also experimented with glaze chemistry, and some of her resulting formulas are still used at Clay Art Center today.

Clay Art Center is home to the largest collection of ceramics by Katherine Choy, a significant artist of the 20th century and co-founder of Clay Art Center. Her work challenged common notions of what pottery could and should be, and she was an early defender of ceramic as a fine art. For Katherine, an essential component of the art of pottery was its highly technical nature, particularly the formulation and application of glazes.

“There is one point on which pottery must be considered as a fine art rather than a craft or industry. You have to think deeply - as in sculpture or any creative work - to achieve a synthesis of the technical and the esthetic. I’ve found that through trying to achieve an esthetic ideal, you are most likely to develop useful techniques or glazes or bodies.”

- Katherine Choy, quoted in “Three Potters from China” by Dido Smith

The copper reds and brilliant celadons of Katherine Choy’s work are of her own devising. During her year as a teaching fellow at Mills College, after earning her Master’s degree from the same institution, Katherine experimented with glaze formulation using rare pigments sent to her from her family in China. Her notebook is full of notes from kiln firings, recording her chosen formulas, application process, and temperature checks from throughout the firing. One of her glazes, the Choy Blue Celadon, was included in Making Pottery Without a Wheel (1965) by F. Carlton Ball and Janice Lovoos. Katherine had studied with Ball at Mills College, and it’s likely that her recipe was developed during her time as a teaching fellow.

Katherine’s glazes continue to see prevalent use, though sometimes recipes are modified as certain ingredients become more scarce. The Choy Blue Celadon recipe forms the basis for the blue celadon glaze used today in the classrooms of Clay Art Center, continuing Katherine’s legacy at the organization that her passion for clay helped to build. As Smith noted in her 1957 article about Katherine’s work, “For her, the power of knowledge in service of her art opens the world on every side, a world her eager spirit and probing mind will never cease to explore.” Katherine’s spirit lives on today at Clay Art Center, as our students continue to explore and experiment, finding new ways to leave their creative mark on the world around them.

Two glaze recipes for Copper Red Underglaze and Ash Glaze from the Clay Art Center. The left recipe is Katherine Choy’s handwritten recipe, while the right is a later typewritten version with handwritten modifications.

You can view a selection from the Katherine Choy collection in the Clay Art Center Gallery, and learn more about founders Katherine Choy and Henry Okomoto during our weekly tours.