Tag Archives: Ceramic glaze

Glaze, Technique

Pure nature: an Earth Crust Glaze

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Have you ever wondered what would happen if you ground up the entire earth’s crust, mixed it thoroughly, and then mixed it with water? Then you get… a ceramic glaze!

But how do you actually prove that? Of course, I could fire the mixture in a kiln at about 1280 °C to see what the result is. But how do you get a completely ground earth’s crust?

Fortunately, there is another way to show that a glaze based on the earth’s crust produces a shiny, deep dark brown ceramic glaze. You just have to do the math…

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Glaze, Technique

Arriving at glaze temperature

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A ceramist wants to arrive as an artist, a ceramic glaze wants to arrive at the right glaze temperature. Greg Daly calls this “arriving at temperature” in his glaze travels. Who dares to say that there is no poetry in ceramic glazes?

Daly provides methods to investigate at which temperature glazes melt, but no (theoretical) tools to  predict this for a given glaze. However, you do need this if you want to design a glaze with a predetermined temperature. If you don’t know which corner to look in, it is also hard to get there.

Glaze temperature is a mechanism, as there are several in glaze technology. To be able to decipher this mechanism you have to look from the right angle (more about this in this blog).

For glaze temperature this is the oxide level. If we dissect a glaze into oxides (the different molecules in a glaze) it is possible to discover trends.

I am still researching how to arrive as an artist, but I have guidelines to arrive at the right melting temperature for any glaze. In this blog I explore the three main ratios:

  • SiO2 -Al2O3
  • RO2 -RO
  • B2O3
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Glaze, Technique

Ceramic glaze levels for analysis

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As a glaze nerd I like to make rows. That’s why I use the “viewpoints” of Tony Hanssen (digitalfire) when analyzing glazes. From him I learned four glaze levels:

  1. Process
  2. Recipe
  3. Material
  4. Oxide

Copper red glazeIn developing a glaze I have always had this theoretical framework in mind. I greatly benefit from this to achieve desired results, a finish that fits my ceramics.

In recent years more and more public data are available, also in the field of glazes. Can these new insights be incorporated into the existing framework or is it time for more perspectives?

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