Portfolio

About me

I'm passionate about wheel-thrown ceramics and glaze research, and I also develop web applications. This website brings both together.

Wheel Glazes Web development

Why this site exists

I love understanding why a glaze behaves the way it does: how it changes with each oxide, with temperature and with firing. To research it rigorously, and to have formula calculations done automatically, I decided to program my own tool. That is how this site was born: it is my workshop and my laboratory all at once.

Wheel

What I enjoy most is working at the wheel. Every piece is born there, by hand and with patience, and then goes through glazing and firing.

Wheel

Hand-thrown pieces: mugs, bowls and everyday tableware.

From clay to finished piece

I design and make each piece, and handle the whole process myself.

How a piece is made

ThrowingI center the clay and pull up the form on the wheel.
TrimmingWith the piece leather-hard, I refine the shape and the foot.
Bisque firingThe first firing, once the piece is completely dry.
GlazingI apply glazes from my own formulas.
Glaze firingThe fire melts the glaze and completes the piece.

Glazes

I research and adjust my own glaze formulas, and share them as recipes in the laboratory.

Own glazes

I research and adjust my own formulas, and share them as recipes in the laboratory.

How I research glaze chemistry

A glaze is a glass. To understand it I stop looking at the raw materials and look at the oxides they provide, expressed in the Seger unity formula.

RO · R₂O

Fluxes

They lower the melting temperature. In the unity formula they always add up to 1, so different glazes can be compared.

Al₂O₃

Stabilizer

It adds viscosity and hardness. It stops the glaze from running too much and helps prevent crystallization.

SiO₂

Glass former

It is the backbone of the glass network. Its amount relative to the fluxes and the alumina defines gloss and maturity.

Raw materialsI start from the materials in my studio and their chemical analysis.
Oxide analysisThe laboratory converts the recipe into the percentage of each oxide, including loss on ignition.
Unity formulaI normalize to fluxes = 1 so recipes can be compared with each other.
MapsI place the recipe on the Stull diagram and on ternary maps to see where it is heading.
Testing and adjustingI change one oxide at a time, test on a piece, take notes and recalculate.

What I look at in each formula

The ratio of silica to alumina, which determines whether the glaze will be glossy, satin or matte.
The balance between fluxes, to control melting without overdoing any single oxide.
The estimated expansion of the formula, to anticipate crazing or shivering.
How the formula differs from the reference ranges for the firing temperature.

Todo esto se puede probar en el laboratorio, y cada óxido tiene su ficha en la guía de óxidos .