Drejarboa -Terre de Promesses AB

Drejarboa -Terre de Promesses AB Drejarboa // Eleonore // Terre de Promesses AB
Kurser & Bruksföremål
Butik : mån-tors 9-14
Älgered 475, 82953 Bergsjö Contact me at: [email protected]

01/09/2026

I hope my last reel didn't scare you off glazing!
Here are 4 things you can actually do to make your glazes safer.

1. Use witness cones or a similar system.They give you a physical, visual confirmation that the right heat-work was actually reached, and subsequently that your glaze is matured. Your thermocouple can lie, and temperature varies across different spots in the kiln. A cone doesn't.

2. Use a liner glaze for food-contact surfaces. Ask your supplier for more detail than the label gives you. And be creative everywhere else, the outside of your piece is where you can go wild with color, texture, and effects.

3. Check the safety datasheet. Avoid copper and zinc in your liner glaze. In small quantities, these aren't necessarily a stability issue and copper isn't a major health concern either. But those two elements destabilize the glaze. Current regulations don't test for copper or zinc leaching. So without knowing the actual chemistry, it's safer to avoid them in a liner glaze. If your supplier can't share real detail about the glaze's chemistry, or a lab analysis, choose a different glaze.

4. Try a home acid test, for example lemon juice or rhubarb juice, let sit 24 hours, then check the exposed glaze with a magnifying glass. This is an elimination test, not a certification. If you see any change in color, surface, or gloss (...), that's a clear sign the glaze isn't stable enough for food contact, discard it as a liner. But no visible change isn't proof it's safe either: leaching can still happen invisibly, especially in light-colored glazes. A change means discard. No change just means "inconclusive."

I hope these tips give you a bit more confidence in your own glazing. What's one thing you're going to check on your own ware after watching this?

Nya kaffekoppar i större modell, med handmålade fiskar i fina färger. Fiskekoppar för den som behöver lite fiskelycka! T...
29/08/2026

Nya kaffekoppar i större modell, med handmålade fiskar i fina färger. Fiskekoppar för den som behöver lite fiskelycka! Två unika koppar finns till salu, 400 kr/st.
Fler kan tillverkas på beställning!

Idag öppnade jag glasyrugnen full med kursalster, glasyrprover och flera nyheter. Bland annat dessa fina ljusstakar i en...
28/08/2026

Idag öppnade jag glasyrugnen full med kursalster, glasyrprover och flera nyheter. Bland annat dessa fina ljusstakar i en fantastisk blågrå, spräcklig glasyr. En helt ny glasyr som jag tagit fram under sommaren!
Ljusstakarna passar fint på bordet till en höstdukning. 300 kr/st.

27/08/2026

This one's for EU-based ceramicists.

"Food safe" ready-made glaze: what you're actually buying is a guarantee that a lead/cadmium test passed, at one specific firing temperature.

The firing temperature is very important for the glaze stability. If you happen to underfire the glaze, the glass matrix that's supposed to lock all the glazes elements in place doesn't fully form. The glaze is unstable and it will leak its contents into the food you are eating.

The food safe label is a guarantee for that specific glaze. If you layer it with another glaze, you've made something new; a different chemistry and you can't tell how it will react in contact with acid. Now, most likely your "food safe" glaze doesn't contain lead or cadmium, but the reasoning here is that you create a new chemical formula that hasn't been tested and the outcome is unknown. Two "food safe" glazes combined don't automatically make a third one.

A last aspect to take into account is the fact that glazes recipes are proprietary. No one outside the manufacturer knows exactly how the recipe was developed and tested. Keeping in mind that "food safe" legally only means passing for lead and cadmium, it is not a guarantee that the glaze won't leak out other metal oxides or elements making up the glaze.

With all that said, legally, the responsibility is yours, whether you use ready made glazes or mix your own! The ceramicist firing the ware has the ultimate responsibility. And here is the thing, there is a more general clause for food safety in ceramics in the EU regulation.

Under Article 3 of EU Regulation 1935/2004, food contact materials must not transfer substances to food that could harm health, unacceptably change its composition, or affect taste and smell.

That rule has no specified test method (unlike lead and cadmium, which have a defined migration test and clear limits). So in practice, it's easy to prove the part that's easy to prove (no lead, no cadmium), and much harder to prove the part that actually matters most: general stability.

Have you ever asked your supplier for lab results, or just gone by the info sheet? Tell me in the comments.

26/08/2026

This one's for EU-based ceramicists, regulations differ elsewhere.

"Food safe" only checks two elements. I call the fuller picture "food-stable", here's why.

"Food safe" is a legal term dating back to a 1984 EU directive and it only covers two elements: lead and cadmium. Meanwhile glazes contain cobalt, chrome, zinc, barium, aluminum, and more. And in high-fire work, lead is barely used anymore anyway.

A few countries have gone further on their own: France adds limits for aluminum, cobalt, and arsenic; Austria adds antimony, barium, and zinc. The Netherlands is tightening its rules too, but only on the lead/cadmium thresholds themselves, not adding new elements. Here in Sweden, where I work, we only follow the base EU regulation, lead and cadmium, nothing more.

Following the law is meeting a minimum, not a guarantee. That's why I'll be using "food-stable" instead of "food safe": a glaze that stays stable under acidic exposure, doesn't degrade with repeated food contact over time, and doesn't release harmful (or even non-harmful) elements into what you eat. No glaze is truly inert; some tiny degradation over time is unavoidable. But durability is the standard.

26/08/2026

This one's for EU-based ceramicists, regulations differ elsewhere.

"Food safe" only checks two elements. I call the fuller picture "food-stable" here's why.

"Food safe" is a legal term dating back to a 1984 EU directive. It covers only two elements: lead and cadmium. Meanwhile glazes contain cobalt, chrome, zinc, barium, aluminum and more. And in high-fire work, lead is barely used anymore anyway.

A few countries have gone further on their own: France adds limits for aluminum, cobalt, and arsenic; Austria adds antimony, barium, and zinc. The Netherlands is tightening its rules too, but only on the lead/cadmium thresholds themselves, not adding new elements. Here in Sweden, where I work, we only follow the base EU regulation: lead and cadmium, nothing more.

Following the law is meeting a minimum, not a guarantee!

That's why I'll be using "food-stable" instead of "food safe": a glaze that stays stable under acidic exposure, doesn't degrade with repeated food contact over time, and doesn't release harmful — or even non-harmful — elements into what you eat. No glaze is truly inert; some tiny degradation over time is unavoidable. But durability is the actual standard.

If you got to define "food safe," what would you include? Comment below.

22/08/2026

Confession: my ceramics origin story involves a fireplace, a bright red glaze, and a shopkeeper who just said "good luck." No gloves, no idea what I was actually breathing in or handling, just enthusiasm and zero clue.
Enthusiasm outran knowledge back then. Two kids eating off my plates every day changed that :)

Ever started something without realizing what you were getting into?

20/08/2026

Warning: nerdy post ahead!

If you make tableware, I think we need to talk about this more. "Food safe" in Sweden and the EU legally only means lead and cadmium stay under the limit. Cobalt, chrome, zinc, barium, aluminum and many more are not tested. An unstable or underfired glaze can leach into acidic food without you knowing, and you are slowly poisoning yourself, eating small amounts of glaze overtime.

This spring I trained with Éric and Joëlle Swanet on food-safe formulation, and I'll soon lab-test my glazes for 28 elements, not just the two the law requires.

Did you know that ceramic glazes can be made with harmful metaloxides?
Drop a comment, I'm curious what you think.

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