Ash Glaze is a high temperature glaze for stoneware pottery that includes the ashes of trees, shrubs, plants or grasses within the glaze recipe. Madonna with Child and Angels, ceramica glaze by Renaissance artist Andrea della Robbia. ... A Staffordshire stoneware plate from the 1850s with transferred copper print - (From the home of JL Runeberg) Stoneware is a category of clay and a type of pottery distinguished primarily by its firing and maturation temperature (from about 1200°C to 1315 °C). ... Unfired green ware pottery on a traditional drying rack at Conner Prairie living history museum. ...

Plant ashes are a mineral cocktail that reflects the nutritional requirements and therefore composition of the living plant. High in calcium and also incorporating other alkaline material, ash behaves as a flux encouraging the glass forming oxide silica to melt at a temperature within the scope of a pottery kiln. Ash glazes often have a characteristic mottled or streaky texture depending on the amount of ash incorporated.

Ash glaze is the earliest form of high temperature glaze. Ash settling upon the pots in a woodfired kiln combined with the silica within the clay to form crude glazes on Chinese pottery 2,000 B.C. The effect can be seen clearly on early Han pieces. The Chinese potters then began to combine ash with clay to create a "recipe" and this mixture was applied to the pot before placing in the kiln to create the first true glaze that wasn't accidental. Han Chinese (Simplified Chinese: 汉族; Traditional Chinese: 漢族; Pinyin: hànzú) is a term which refers to the majority ethnic group within China and the largest single human ethnic group in the world. ...