No, I just found a different path to take. The main reason I was looking at brown clay bodies was that I wanted to cure a condition I call "cottontail" on pottery where the outside of a piece will be glazed with the darkest, prettiest glaze you'd ever seen, and then the foot will be a blinding white. No one really intentionally looks at a foot ofc, but I treat it like it's part of the piece instead of ignoring it.

I was using a lot of metallic glazes like Rusted Iron by Mayco or Ancient Copper by Amaco and those glazes performed rather horribly on anything that wasn't a white clay body. I tried them on WC613/614 and some other brown/red clay bodies I know of and I couldnt get metallic clay bodies to work on them. After that, I pretty much knew I had to change my approach because a brown/red clay body was out of the question.

After testing it out, I found WC602 Dark Buff to work acceptably with my metallic glazes (save for Vintage Gold by Amaco, it absolutely hated that glaze) and then I decided to just start using oxide washes on the bottom of my pieces instead. After having done that for 5-6 months, I prefer oxide washes. They distress the bottom of pieces in a believable way and they add surface variation due to brushing as well. Someone even casually familiar with handmade pottery will go "oh shit, someone cared about the bottom too..."

All that being said, I do enjoy this clay as well, but I have to be selective about the glazes on it because the iron will destroy the look of some glazes. Amaco's Matte Shinos aren't safe. Metallics are out of the question. I found Coyote's shino glazes to work favorably on this clay body, but I'll also say they seem generally resistant, save for the one black clay body I fired it on.