Blue Snow Bowl

Technically you could use this bowl for tea, but it is a bit on the tall side. Thrown from our house porcelain clay body with a high-titanium matte glaze on top, the blue comes not from a traditional colorant like cobalt, but from titanium crystals that reflect blue light, much like Rayleigh scattering produces the blue of the sky. The white specks, which look like falling snow, are a different species of crystal. This effect is hard for me to reproduce on demand. It’s a very subtle interaction of clay body, glaze, firing, and cooling in the kiln. So when I get one of these results where the blue is so striking and uniform, I do treasure my good fortune in the firing.