Silica

Silica, quartz, fired sand, ball clay, kaolin, minspar 200, silica, darvan, collected sea glass, fir.

Silica can be found in nature as the mineral Quartz. It’s used in manufacturing glass and is a major component of sand, or silicon dioxide. In most glaze recipes I come across, silica is included. Whenever I think of silica, I think about those little gel pouches that you find in the bottom of new handbags or shoe boxes but I’ve never considered it as sand until now.

During one of my walks I collected handfuls of dirt from different areas in the desert around my RV. At the time I was curious about trying a rammed earth technique that I saw on youtube. I figured this material would hold up because I had noticed the strength it had during monsoon season, withstanding the currents when the arroyos filled with water. One of the steps in the process was to screen out any large rocks or sand. Curious of what would happen I loaded the pebbles into the kiln. The kiln transformed the pile to a small disk of fused rocks. It’s quite fragile, but there is enough silica in most areas holding it together.

Sand weathering sea glass can take anywhere from 20-40 years for sea glass to be formed. An artifact of passed time, tumbling to the present becoming a souvenir of whatever place it was discovered.