Crystalline Turret Vase

My crystalline turret vase was wheel thrown, altered and carved from high-fire stoneware. This irreplicable piece of functional art is sure to be a talking point and can be displayed with or without flowers. Due to the carved, irregular shaped foot, I balanced the piece on a riser and drip dish for glaze firing which created little glaze drop feet. These have been sanded smooth and level. There’s a very minor pinhole on the rim.

There are many steps to making crystalline glazed ceramics so it is incredibly time consuming, but I hope you’ll agree that the results are worth the effort! I make every crystalline glaze in the studio right before every glaze firing, as the glazes don’t ‘keep’ well. The components need to be measured precisely to the fraction of a gram and applied carefully in numerous, thick coats. Every piece has a single-use, hand built ‘riser’ and ‘glaze catcher’ dish made to fit it perfectly for the glaze firing. This is necessary as the high gloss, two-dimensional crystals need a glaze that flows a lot to develop, and all that flowing glaze has to go somewhere. After the glaze firing, the pieces are removed from the risers and catchers by a number of methods and then the razor edged base needs to be sanded, using 5 different grit sanders until it’s baby-bottom smooth. My crystalline pieces are glaze fired to 1300 degrees celcius over 16.5 hours. They are dishwasher safe, but I recommend to hand wash them to preserve their beauty.