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Macro-crystalline glazes
Crystals have always set a great fascination over people. They are important in religions, healing processes, mistic powers, decoration, jewels...
In the breast of earth, very hot, it's forming naturally.
It's beauty is unquestionable. Either bringing all the luck of the crystals from Congo or the mistery of the mandalas. We should recognize: There's a mystique.
Macro-crystalline glazes capture our sight in a second. It's so perfect that costs us to believe that only fire and alchemy have made a fake sky where starts and comets dance or there are abysses in which we seem do dive.
The magic of this process produces a crystal of rare beauty appear and grow on the high temperature glass - Imitating flowers at a garden, starts on the sky or corals in the sea - making us forget it's just a glass layer. It's like if we could penetrate in an abyss of colored crystals with delicate shapes and great beauty.
The eternal magic of crystals show countless treasures, like the ones found in nature. Diamonds, sapphires, emeralds
, gold and silver - just to look - these ones he can't take.
I try to give my pieces a mystic, poetic flavor that have not only technical characteristics. Working with crystals gives the ceramist this opportunity - gathering together imagination and technique.
I think this glaze is the best looking one on artistic ceramics and also the one with the most complex process.
A crystal's growth begin with the development of a crystalline "seed" or nucleation spot, a tiny mineral grain where the macro-crystal will be formed - it's born inside a glass with a chemical logic, liquefied by the high temperature.
The crystals are formed in a process of heating and cooling down - temperature and pressure - their positions and sizes never repeat.
The molecules move randomly, tridimensional molecules organizing themselves to imitate nature.
They are very special and unstable glazes, of unexpected effects, which we can't exactly reproduce. The process is very intrigating.
The crystalline formations are mysterious, spetaculars - they blow up and grow like flowers, they can be round and float on a background that looks like water.
It's a glaze that surprises us everytime we open a kiln. Sometimes a great crystal pops from within a group of tiny jewels, often quite shiny, often opaque. There can be also no crystal.
There's no way to totally control the crystals growth and that makes the job much more exciting. Even if a firing is exactly like the other, everything can turn out diferent each time.
Time is the greatest obstacle. Making a piece, drying, biscuit burning, what an agony! Time to formulate the glaze, applying and firing. A firing never takes less than 18 hours - hours of total dedication and attention to every detail.
Some people say crystalline glazes already existed in the 21th century in japanese and korean glazes like Oilspot and Kaki. In the early 1800 those were considered fire acidents and of no interest, because the loses rate was too high.
In Europe early 19th century is mentioned in Sevres - France. At the beginning of the 20th century, those glazes with effects rejected by the ceramic industry start to be developed by ceramic artists in their studios. These ceramists/alchemists surprised the world with works, then contemporary and of rare beauty, having their pieces bought by museums and collectors.
Perseverance and patience are part of everyday of the ceramist who dedicates to this art. Very special moments appear along this dedication, some of great joy, mixed to those of disappointment.
More tests are done and small changes have deep effects in the next firing's result. Time, money and hability limitations get researchs to advance slowly.
In the breast of earth, very hot, it's forming naturally.
It's beauty is unquestionable. Either bringing all the luck of the crystals from Congo or the mistery of the mandalas. We should recognize: There's a mystique.
Macro-crystalline glazes capture our sight in a second. It's so perfect that costs us to believe that only fire and alchemy have made a fake sky where starts and comets dance or there are abysses in which we seem do dive.
The magic of this process produces a crystal of rare beauty appear and grow on the high temperature glass - Imitating flowers at a garden, starts on the sky or corals in the sea - making us forget it's just a glass layer. It's like if we could penetrate in an abyss of colored crystals with delicate shapes and great beauty.
The eternal magic of crystals show countless treasures, like the ones found in nature. Diamonds, sapphires, emeralds
, gold and silver - just to look - these ones he can't take.
I try to give my pieces a mystic, poetic flavor that have not only technical characteristics. Working with crystals gives the ceramist this opportunity - gathering together imagination and technique.
I think this glaze is the best looking one on artistic ceramics and also the one with the most complex process.
A crystal's growth begin with the development of a crystalline "seed" or nucleation spot, a tiny mineral grain where the macro-crystal will be formed - it's born inside a glass with a chemical logic, liquefied by the high temperature.
The crystals are formed in a process of heating and cooling down - temperature and pressure - their positions and sizes never repeat.
The molecules move randomly, tridimensional molecules organizing themselves to imitate nature.
They are very special and unstable glazes, of unexpected effects, which we can't exactly reproduce. The process is very intrigating.
The crystalline formations are mysterious, spetaculars - they blow up and grow like flowers, they can be round and float on a background that looks like water.
It's a glaze that surprises us everytime we open a kiln. Sometimes a great crystal pops from within a group of tiny jewels, often quite shiny, often opaque. There can be also no crystal.
There's no way to totally control the crystals growth and that makes the job much more exciting. Even if a firing is exactly like the other, everything can turn out diferent each time.
Time is the greatest obstacle. Making a piece, drying, biscuit burning, what an agony! Time to formulate the glaze, applying and firing. A firing never takes less than 18 hours - hours of total dedication and attention to every detail.
Some people say crystalline glazes already existed in the 21th century in japanese and korean glazes like Oilspot and Kaki. In the early 1800 those were considered fire acidents and of no interest, because the loses rate was too high.
In Europe early 19th century is mentioned in Sevres - France. At the beginning of the 20th century, those glazes with effects rejected by the ceramic industry start to be developed by ceramic artists in their studios. These ceramists/alchemists surprised the world with works, then contemporary and of rare beauty, having their pieces bought by museums and collectors.
Perseverance and patience are part of everyday of the ceramist who dedicates to this art. Very special moments appear along this dedication, some of great joy, mixed to those of disappointment.
More tests are done and small changes have deep effects in the next firing's result. Time, money and hability limitations get researchs to advance slowly.