mystery albany slip

I made some more mugs in this plum glaze I like.  Some are for a customer, the rest will go either to the market or etsy.  There's something very attractive to me about this glaze.  At first glance, you think it's black, but then you notice the warm plum tone it has.  I mentioned this glaze in a former post, plum.  Now I'm trying to decide whether or not to mix it in larger quantities and how I'd like to use it.

 I find it difficult to capture the true color of this glaze with my camera, so here's two of my attempts. 

I found this glaze on a Clayart thread:  

Plum Gloss (cone 6)

Albany Slip     70

Yellow Ochre  10

Frit 3134          20

Isn't it great to only have three ingredients to weigh?  One problem- I no longer have the recipe for the Albany Slip substitute I used in this glaze.  I used to rely heavily on Albany Slip based glazes.  The real Albany Slip, that is.  When it got mined out I turned to making substitutes, trying to find one that would work with my glazes. I also tried a couple of commercially made Albany subs. The only one of my glazes that worked with the substitutes was a gunmetal color.  Eventually I gave up and started testing new glazes to replace the old.  About a year ago I cleaned out some stuff in my work space. One of the things I tossed was some Albany Slip sub recipes.  I figured I'd use up the sub I had left, then rely on commercially prepared ones if I ran across a recipe that calls for it.  Problem is, when I tested a Laguna Albany Slip in this Plum recipe it looks quite a bit different from my mystery mix.  

 These test tiles are (1)Licorice Black,  (2)Plum with my mystery Albany sub, and (3)Plum with Laguna's Albany sub.  It's very difficult to distinguish the first and second test tiles in this picture. Laguna's is slightly transparent and more glossy. These tiles all have a brush stroke of white slip going across the middle.  You can see that white slip through the Laguna tile.  I brushed Rutile Green from Bill Van Gilder over the Plum on the mugs and across one corner of the Licorice.  The Licorice (Ron Roy's) is a nice glossy black.  There's a swipe of white glaze under it- barely visible. I tested it because I wanted a good black glaze.  Another reason for testing it is I may be talking myself out of widely using the plum. When someone picks up a piece glazed with this plum I feel I have to tell them it's not black.  I know if they happen to have black granite counter tops, they might be in for a surprise when they set their new pottery piece down. 

I had this test tile in a previous firing. This is Graces yellow under Plum (top) then swiped across the middle over Plum.  I thought the interaction of the two glazes on the top was interesting.

Since that test looked promising I thought I'd try it with a couple of other Grace's based glazes.  Not the results I hoped for.  Something about Grace's yellow being high in rutile?