John Tilton Workshop

Feb. 14 -17, 2008

Zinc Silicate Crystalline Glaze Pottery

A chronicle of my recent progress and a way for me to keep it straight in my head!

We all had a great time (well I did anyway) at the John Tilton Crystalline Glaze Workshop at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center in Dunedin Florida. We had some huge success, massive failure and a chance to mingle with some great friends as well as make some wonderful new contacts.
This is a reverse chronological order look at some of what happened. I do regret that I wasn't able to photograph everyone and all the happenings.

Sunday February 17, 2008 The Fourth and Final Day (Really Day 2)


Participants included (from left to right) me, Terry Fallon, Glenn Woods, John Tilton, Anne Gary, Jan Anthony, Alex Deeds, Laura Muller, ? (I didn't get her name in writing), Wilson Page and Barry Weiss.	Patti seemed happy to be able to raise the flag to get service on the beach at the Sand Pearl Resort while soaking up some rays.	Katerina got to spend time on the beach with her summer camp buddy Destiny who lives in the area.

Terry unloaded his electric reduction kiln before I got there in the morning to take a picture. For the second time in a row the results were spectacular.
Our attempts at Post Fire Reduction were a total disaster. The only thing we were able to reduce was the entire load into a pile of glassy rubble.
We overheated the kiln to the point of melting the kiln furniture.		It seems like Terry saw it coming and shaved his beard so no one would recognize him!



This load (our second oxidation firing) had pots with a wide range of results.		Jan Anthony got some cool looking glaze over stain pieces that have kind of a matt glaze look to them.

Saturday February 16, 2008 Day Three.......(Really Day 1)


I caught Anne Gary in the act of loading the kiln.

John is a fabulous instructor. He's so easy going. It's a pleasure and honor to be able to learn from his years of experience.	I glazed some pots with my 8% titania base with 2 1/2% copper carbonate, commandeered the kiln and programmed it with my 1-25-08 firing schedule which I knew gave good results.	Anne was a working fool, glazing piece after piece after piece!

I brought a series of test tiles I prepared in New York which contained various inclusion stain containing slips. I wanted to know what adjustments, if any, to make to the composition to get nice crystals.

The two tiles on the left are colored with 1% green nickel oxide. The over nucleated one in the front is my clear base. The one in the rear, showing more background had to 2 1/2% more frit and 2 1/2% less silica.

In the group on the right I started with my clear base and added 1% neodymium oxide to try and get a little color. These are in the front row. The back row is the same thing only with 5% less zinc oxide (I was expecting over nucleation). It appears that the neodymium is enough of a flux that over nucleation is not an issue as I got some fairly decent results with the unmodified base. Also the blue stains actually appear to have cobalt in them which bled out into the background and crystals. The five on the left had thick dipped coatings where as the two on the right were brushed on, and probably were too thin.

February 15, 2008 Day Two.......


The Fallonator in cooling mode.	Pots glazed with Gold Stuff and Golden Snow (Kris Friedrich) came out great. The piece I glazed with 4% titania and 1% copper carbonate did squat!


We loaded a gas fired unit with pots with some copper to try and reduce them to red. We had zero success! We heated it up to 1500 to 1600°F and tried to put the unit in reduction as evidenced by a small lick of darkish flame but saw no change in the pieces. Terry's oxygen probe showed an oxidizing atmosphere the whole time.

A collection of work by Terry Fallon and Glenn Woods.	You can't be too safe when handling inorganic particulate materials. I think Anne's mask matches the colors in her shirt perfectly.	After reloading the Fallonator Terry made some minor adjustments to the firing schedule including bringing it down in a neutral atmosphere as opposed to in oxidation.

We did an oxidation firing containing test tiles of glaze over inclusion stain plus some pots. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo of the setup or results and the results weren't totally known to us until after we glazed and loaded Saturday's firing. I could see that the schedule, which really only had about 2 hours of growth hold time didn't yield much in the way of big crystals.

February 14, 2008......The First Day......Valentines Day......

Glenn, John, Terry Anne and I showed up 2 days early to try and work out a few bugs before the workshop started.


I got to spend Valentines Day morning with my girls at the Sand Pearl Resort in Clearwater Beach.	We unloaded the Fallonator (Terry's new whiz bang electric reduction rocket!).......	Anne, Terry John and Glenn worked out the firing schedule......	And we loaded the puppy with pots and waited overnight for some magic.

Before the event:


Agenda for upcoming workshop with John Tilton at the Dunedin Fine Arts Center.	The weather here in NY was a nightmare. 4" of snow, 1" of sleet then 2" of freezing rain. Our flight from Stewart Newburgh was cancelled and we had to fly out of LaGuardia. I Love NY (not).

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Phil Hamling

376 County Route 1

Warwick, NY, USA 10990

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