New Works

New Developments Glazewise

Iron saturate glazes.

October 2023

An ode to Fall. A glaze(s) for each season? Hmm, on the list! This is a family of iron saturate glazes at C6 oxidation. With enough heat-work, iron surrenders its oxygen (undergoes thermal reduction) and this is the signal for the party to begin. The metallic crystals bubble up, forming a richly layered glaze surface. They are strong functional glazes.

Restoration

La Bibliothèque de l'Assemblée nationale du Québec

At FabArgile we are thrilled and honored to be fabricating tiles for the limited restoration of the library’s floors. Designing and making floor tiles presents a safety challenge. What is unseen, the internal ceramic structure, has to be carefully constructed and tested to provide a sound technical substructure for the visual elements of the tile. The process of matching colors and surface design comes after this.
In my opinion, the affective design of the ceramic floor of the Library stands in strong counterpoint to the grand structures of its architecture. The patterns of the mosaic floor tiles harken to the tapestry of rugs, both then and now. The allusion to rugs, something with which we are all familiar, provides a note of intimacy in an otherwise grand space.
In helping to restore these old works, I marvel at the impeccable skill in design and execution. Perhaps humility and wonder are their timeless gifts to us.

The floor is made of a mosaic of very small tiles that have mostly endured well for over 100 hundred years.

Shrinkage!

Original tiles

Testing clay-bodies for size, density, color response.

The base glaze and clay body developed at FabArgile for the library floor tiles have met and surpassed industry-certified tests for slip-resistance and abrasion.

Color matching 100 hundred year old floor tiles.

Crawling Blue

The 'crawling' surface patterns are created when excessive surface tension in the glaze is designed to randomly 'tear' the glaze apart during the firing, 4x4 inch/10x10cm.

CUBIC VESSELS
An exploration of rhythms in form and surface
(in tribute to Dave Brubeck)

The work presented in CUBIC VESSELS is an ongoing exploration of rhythmic relationships of form and surface. It's inspired by the music of Dave Brubeck; a master of beguiling rhythms.The clay is a mid range clay adapted from one of SIAL’s clay bodies.The glazes are made in house. They are composed of frits, spars, metal oxides, clay, and silica.This part of the exploration is focused on the cube as vessel, the analog and digital, the yin and yang, the rhythm of stop and rhythm of go.

If you're into Brubeck's music try this. Start Take Five in one page, let it play for about five seconds, and then open a new page and start Take Five again. I could swear that together they form a fugue of sorts, sometimes clashing, other times harmonizing, one motif chasing another! Ah, what might that look like?

Start the audio track of Take Five to accompany you through Cubic Vessels.