Ceramics, Woman-Owned
Chickadee Clays
Handmade ceramics for everyday moments
Batavia, Illinois
Engineer by trade; potter every other moment
Dee creates her ceramics from her home studio in Batavia, IL. Her love of pottery started over 20 years. She primarily works with crystalline glazes, creating and altering her own glaze recipes to achieve specific color combinations. Each style of piece is prototyped and perfected through use in her own home.
Crystalline glazes are not like typical glazes. Typical glazes fire to their top temperature, and then cool either naturally or slowly. Crystalline glazes fire to their top temperature but then cool rapidly to hold a temperature between 1800F and 1900F for hours. The amount of time and the temperature of the hold determine the crystal size and color. Hundreds of test firings of small batches of glaze allow very specific glaze-crystal color formulations and patterns.
Crystalline is a very messy process- the glazes flow down and off the pot during the firing process. Each piece is fired on a separate tray to catch the glaze run-off. After a piece is removed from the tray, it must be sanded to finish the bottom and clean up the drips.
Each crystalline piece is unique: not two pieces can ever be the same since crystal growth is random. Opening a crystalline glaze kiln is a surprise: pieces can have thousands of crystals or none.
Dee creates her ceramics from her home studio in Batavia, IL. Her love of pottery started over 20 years. She primarily works with crystalline glazes, creating and altering her own glaze recipes to achieve specific color combinations. Each style of piece is prototyped and perfected through use in her own home.
Crystalline glazes are not like typical glazes. Typical glazes fire to their top temperature, and then cool either naturally or slowly. Crystalline glazes fire to their top temperature but then cool rapidly to hold a temperature between 1800F and 1900F for hours. The amount of time and the temperature of the hold determine the crystal size and color. Hundreds of test firings of small batches of glaze allow very specific glaze-crystal color formulations and patterns.
Crystalline is a very messy process- the glazes flow down and off the pot during the firing process. Each piece is fired on a separate tray to catch the glaze run-off. After a piece is removed from the tray, it must be sanded to finish the bottom and clean up the drips.
Each crystalline piece is unique: not two pieces can ever be the same since crystal growth is random. Opening a crystalline glaze kiln is a surprise: pieces can have thousands of crystals or none.
