Don't know if any of you are into ceramics, but I ran across a conundrum at the local RenFaire. Irie Lights is a candle and ceramis vendor (best incense EVER) and I usually end up chatting with the Owner (Turns out he's an OSU alumnus, so that's cool). We get ion the topic of firing and he points out three pieces. One was a simple cup with a nice earthy brown, the next a dark blue with some brown mottling in semi large patches, and the last a rich and fiery red. Nothing odd about them except they were all fired with the same glaze at the same cone (Cone 5 I think).

A mixture of Iron Oxide and Rutile, he said. I went searching and have since found out why the brown and blue show up with varying thicknesses of the application, but have yet to understand why the third produced such a satisfying red, especially considering the inherent difficulty of producing reliable reds. He told me that he glazed it as greenware so the how is pretty easy (and seems consistent too), But I want to know why. Best theory I can come up with at this point is that, the extra oxygen in the greenware brought out the red oxide before it reacted to the rutile or something like that. Anyone have any insight on this?

PS: Which building has the ceramics library and glaze lab in the basement?