In last week’s post we introduced a new surface sample of a high-iron stoneware piece by Dan Murphy that was wood fired to cone 8 and reduction cooled. Today’s featured post shows a close-up image of this sample taken with a high power optical microscope under bright, direct illumination. At the end of this post you can find a high resolution graphic that shows the location of this microscope image in relation to the camera photo from last week.
An extended study of images like this one (with bright direct illumination) gives the impression that the ceramic surface consists of a black-gunmetal glossy substrate with red-orange crystals growing on top. We are of course led to wonder about the chemical composition and morphological details of these crystals and the substrate – next week we’ll begin looking at some SEM and EDS images that provide some clues.
Acknowledgments: Part of this work was performed at the Stanford Nano Shared Facilities (SNSF) of Stanford University.
