2019 has just started and “I am feeling Blue“. No I don’t have the blues, I really feel blue……… that is to say glaze blue.
The first firing of this year I tried some new glazes. Glazes I developed and tried on test tiles. But you will only get to know a glaze for real when you use it. And fortunately, also “in the real“, this glaze suits me very well.
Each glaze has its own origin. This blue glaze started as a muddy kind of brown…
Training for glaze nerds
As a ceramist (and also as “non-ceramist”) there is always something to learn. Besides marketing, branding and other business courses, I always want to dive deeper into ceramic techniques. Last year I came across “Ceramic materials Workshop” by Rose and Matt Katz. Both have deep roots in (industrial) ceramic research.
I took among other things the “advancing glazes” online course from Matt Katz. I really recommend this online class to all the “glaze nerds” out there. Matt is a great ceramic materials teacher at Alfred University, one of the best ceramics courses for artists in the world.
As a research project I proposed the development of an aventurin glaze. Such a glaze is special because of the iron crystals that grow in the glass. This gives a “sparkling/shimmering brown/red”.
Contemporary theory stable glaze
This research was a great way to learn about (micro) crystallization, the melting temperature, the different melting agents and coloring oxides. For the exploration of this type of glazes I didn’t base it on (historical) examples. To find new glazes, I took, with help of Matt, as a starting point the guidelines for a stable glaze.
Current theory testing in practice is always the best way to get ahead, in science and also for me. But what does that have to do with a blue glaze, I hear you ask..
To test the theory, I have literally made hundreds of glaze tests, of which less than a hand full got me near an aventurin (type) glaze. Where all the other tests being made for nothing? No, certainly not. Of all tests you learn something, a better understanding, and not only in the development of aventurin glazes.
Ceramics glaze blue
Thanks to these tests, Matt and tests from the other students I learned a lot about crystallization, the replacement of melting agents and the effects thereof. One of these is the melting agent cobalt, better known from (Dutch) Delftware…
Thus, I took a promising test with crystals, but with a somewhat dull brown color, and turned it into a blue. A cobalt blue glaze. Now blue glazes are nothing new, the Chinese have been using blue glaze for thousands of years.
New for me, however, are the micro crystals in this glaze, which give the blue a matte appearance. If it is fired slightly higher these micro crystals change into somewhat larger crystals and the glaze becomes shiny. Magic… or actually science.
Scientific blue magic
But whether it is science or magic, it is fascinating. I call it blue magic.
Thanks to Matt and my fellow students/researchers 😉
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