 Phil Hamling 376 County Route 1 Warwick, NY, USA 10990 e-mail: pdah-at-optonline.net (change the -at- to @) |
Zinc Silicate Crystalline Glaze Pottery A chronicle of my recent progress and a way for me to keep it straight in my head! Click on thumbnails to enlarge photos |
Info I've been asked to keep in confidence.
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 Electric Reduction Symposium |
 Friends' Work VENDORS Workshops |
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1-31-12 After posting the question "Does anyone know Jon Dunlavy?" on The Crystalline Glaze Forum Greg Beckman (mohawkpiper) replied "phil, i know jon dunlavy. he works at the local clay store (clay planet) on saturdays and the rest of the week works as some sort of chemist working with glazes. ......... that piece you posted looks just like his work. G"
| 1-31-12 | 1-30-12 | ||
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| Does anyone know Jon Dunlavy? I found this photo on Flickr after searching for "Molybdenum Crystals" |
Here's another of his pieces I found on someone else's Flickr account. Then I found his website but didn't see any molybdenum crystalline glazes. http://jondunlavy.daportfolio.com/ |
Today, after everything had cooled down, the olive drab from the original yellow uranium oxide colorant is back. The most curious thing is that the original engobe sample, which was sitting wet for ~2 months, turned a bright yellow color after bisque - which is what I expected to see in the first place. |
@450C the sample using the original engobe, which appears yellow in the
photo at the left, seemed to be an orange red color. What a tweaky, fickle trail this seems to be! |
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| 1-29-12 | 1-28-12 pm | ||
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| Then I thought maybe my notes were flawed and I actually mixed them at a 20% level. While adding more powder I realized the yellow material I used in the second and third trial was from a different container than from the first. I went back to the original stuff for this trial and made one trial using the original engobe. | Although the 2 preparations looked different before bisque, afterwards the difference were unremarkable and still no olive drab. | I remembered that the first time I mixed the engobes by hand and passed them through an 80 mesh sieve . The next time I blended just the uranium oxide in water first and passed it through an 100 mesh sieve (Y1 thru B1). Maybe particle size was the difference - so I went back to the original method (Y2 thru B2). | |
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| Patti and I went to see Andy Boswell at an exhibition in a gallery in Princeton, NJ. He had some very nice work there including some celadon green and blue glazed pieces. | |||
1-28-12 am My plan was "Today I'm going to go back to exactly the same clay combinations and see if I can reproduce my original results". Then I realized I had already tried those combinations and got olive drab so it must be something else ....... but what?
1-27-12 Jamie wrote "I’d say the (base clay) is definitely the difference, even if the engobe is the same. I notice differences in results when the body is different, even if it has the same engobe...."
1-24-12 I've been working with uranium oxide engobes and are perplexed by the results compared to my last attempt. I was expecting, after bisque, that the yellow engobe would turn to olive drab (as it did before) and the black to stay black. Neither happened. Although after bisque there were subtle differences there was no olive drab and no black. They just tended towards looking more like each other, in 2 separate kilns. I'm not sure what happened but would like to get a handle on it. This is one of the rare times I feel like I am unable to reproduce previous results.
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| Before | After | Before | After |
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| Previous experience from 11-25-11, left to right, 10% yellow uranium oxide engobe covered pieces turned to olive drab after bisque firing. | Left to Right: 10% yellow, 10% orange and 10% black uranium oxide engobes on some of The Wizard's pieces. | Left to Right: 10% black, 10% orange and 10% yellow uranium oxide engobes on vertical test tiles. | |
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| Some innies and an outtie. | Engobe placed in surface incisions. | ||
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New bottles by Glenn Woods (I have to give him a real camera for Christmas.) |
And one by Marsha Silverman who I can't wait to see at Ginny's in March. | ||
1-21-12
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| I'm looking forward to this piece from Matt Horne. | Joerg Baumoeller and Peter Ilsley in Joerg's studio. Photo courtesy of José Mariscal. | An unique blue glaze by Paul Brown. | Another interesting number. |
1-16-12
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| This stinker took 5 firings. | A post fire reduced piece of Gordon's. I wonder if the deeper gold crystals and pink background are from silver flashing from other pieces or if he added some magic ingredients in his glaze. | ||
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| Now just to get this to stay on the pot! |
1-13-12
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| With the lid shut the Geiger Counter barely ticks. | Feri pointed me to this book on luster glazes | Yellow, orange and black urania powders before (bottom) and after (top) a ^11 oxidizing crystalline glaze firing. | |
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1-8-12
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| Bailey has a nice new SS barreled extruder which I set up on a quick disconnect mount. | Fabricating a lead lined ammo can, with copper foil liner, for storing uranium oxide powders. | ||
1-2-12
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Back to Crystalline Glaze Information Page
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Recently I had the good fortune of importing many very interesting crystalline glazed pieces from Beijing, China. |
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The source of all my good fortune---my day (and night, 24 - 7) job. ZIRCAR Ceramics, Inc. |
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One of my other passions - landscaping, gardening, greens keeping, etc.. |
