Flameware Stovetop Ceramic Cookware

We first started work on Flameware in 2007. Paula Wolfert was working on a new book (Mediterranean Clay Pot Cooking) due out in October 2009.  She was looking for a tagine that would take the stovetop heat, but be able to have our regular glazes on the top.

My first exploration was into the indigenous clays that allowed cooking over open fires that Paula was so familiar with.  Turns out they are high in mica, but it must be mica formed in the clay, not an added ingredient.  No one I could find mined high-mica clays for quantity use.  They tend to be very localized in distribution.  I dug through all the ceramic books I have (Betsy says way too many), and there were very few references to Flameware.  There were a couple of references on the ‘net  but not too helpful.

Then in early 2008, Paula introduced us to Bill Sax, a potter who has done Flameware for a number of years and who was willing to share his clay recipe with us with the usual caveats and a couple of tips.  Pottery materials vary from area to area and batch to batch.  Ingredients come and go, so much testing was in order. 

The primary key to making a flameware clay body is introducing lithium, usually in the form of a lithium ore called spodumene.  As lithium batteries have become more popular, spodumene has gotten harder to obtain.  One of the old forms has disappeared entirely.

Then Paula called asking for a cazuela, skillet, casserole and saucepan for recipes in the book.  The tagine took a back seat while we developed these and sent them to Paula for comments.

We started testing the claybody Bill shared and rapidly found out it was prone to cracking resulting from the clay blending process, unless you took preventative measures in clay preparation and forming.  (Bill had worked all this out for his processes and his ware performs perfectly).  This tendency to crack is due to the high percentage of non-clay materials used.  Then we found all handles had to be propped during firing, (Bill had warned us on this one) since the clay becomes very soft at peak temperature.

The scariest part was when we realized that the clay was subject to complete failure but not until after several months of use, unless it was fired hot enough and, again, care was taken during forming and finishing. 

Our testing included using various pieces day after day, for months.  I fry a piece of ham and some eggs every morning using the same skillet and Betsy generally has oatmeal done in a saucepan.  The same pieces are used for other cooking almost daily.  When I’m done cooking I stick the hot pan directly from the flame into cold water.

We also put pieces in the freezer overnight and then took them out and put them directly on a high gas flame, heating them to well over the oil smoking point and then plunged them into cold water.  We handed out test pieces to employees and friends to be sure the pieces worked on all sorts of heat sources, stoves and under various cooking methods.  Next we started down the glaze trail since there were essentially no published glaze recipes that would work on the spodumene loaded clay body.  The only really helpful reference was a 29 year old patent paper by William Crandall.  In it he gave general ranges for both clay and glaze recipes.  After much trial and error we came down to a couple of working glazes for the flameware.  Generally you’ll only find white/orange and dark brown glazes on non-commercial flameware.  This is because the spodumene in the clay body changes normal glaze ingredients.

The second issue with glazes is that the shrinkage of clays and glazes containing lithium don’t conform to the “rules” of normal clay bodies and glazes.  Lithium undergoes a non-reversible expansion at a certain temperature so normal glaze calculation formulas don’t work. 

All this is to say that it has taken over 2 years to come up with a workable flameware claybody and a couple of glazes.  Over time, we hope to add a couple more glaze options and several new pieces.  As with all our work, we guarantee the new flameware to work for its intended uses.

To view the current lineup, go to the Flameware section of the Clay Coyote Store.