Aqua Crystalline Herb Stripper Bowl – Seconds #2

My aqua crystalline herb stripper bowl is wheel thrown and hand built from the finest English porcelain. This piece is reduced as a second as it has 2, small stress cracks on the base of the piece. The stress cracks are superficial and don’t affect the function or strength of the piece. It has delicate, 2 dimensional silicate crystals floating across its surface and an iridescent sheen that can be seen when it’s in the shade. The last image shows an example of the iridescence on a different piece. There are many steps to making crystalline glazed ceramics so it is an incredibly time consuming and costly process, but I hope you’ll agree that the results are worth the effort! I make every crystalline glaze in the studio right before each 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 silicate crystals germinate and develop optimally in a very fluid glaze, 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 18 hours. I recommend to hand wash them to preserve the clarity of the crystals. The innovative and beautiful piece can be viewed in action on my Instagram. This is the perfect gift for foodies!  The crystalline glaze is safe for coming in contact with herbs, but it is not generally food safe. Please don’t use it for the preparation or serving of sauces or other foods.