Red Spiral Diamond Tile Composition

This tile composition starts out on the wheel, as a thick flat pancake. The artist cuts the squares (roughly 10.5" on a side). She then starts carving out the design, keeping the lines very thick because the next step is to add wide clay coils to the raised parts to give the spiral depth--about 3 inches at the center of the spiral. The lines then have to be defined and sharpened and also unified across the four tiles. After a lot of fussing to make sure everything is just so, the artist then lets the tiles dry which can take up to two weeks.

The first firing takes several hours to avoid stress on the clay, and reaches temperatures of about 1800 degrees. After more than a day of cooling, the artist starts the glazing process. She sprays first a copper red glaze from one direction, really saturating the glaze so the colors have depth and a wide range of color. The second glaze, also sprayed from the same direction, is a shino glaze and it adds oranges and golds and texture to the colors. Because the glazes are sprayed from the same direction, the other side of the raised ridges that make up the spiral is unglazed and creates a contrast that highlights the rich and varied colors of the red and shino glazes.

The glaze firing reaches temperatures of almost 2300 degrees, and takes 2 days to cool. There is a wide range of color from dark red to orange to gold, to earthy brown and the composition looks different from different angles, which makes this wall sculpture even more interesting.

The tiles must be hung as a diamond, as shown, using a French cleat system, and all the hardware and instructions arrive with the piece. Can be hung outdoors in temperatures between 35 and 105 degrees F.