Wheel-thrown overfired vase made of wild fireclay from Terra Alta (Tarragona, Spain), glazed with pink granite from Costa Brava (Girona) and fir wood ash.  Fired in a reducing atmosphere to 1300 ºC for eleven hours in a manual gas kiln.  
 
This is the only clay I have collected so far capable of sustaining 1300°C. This is due to the amount of kaolin it contains, and its colours to the various impurities that stain the soil where I collected it (iron, etc.), hence the reddish color and metallic tones of the piece. I achieve this rusty appearance thanks to the reducing atmosphere of the firing, which in this case was very intense. 
 
Being placed right next to the inlet of the burner, the clay began to collapse as it exceeded its melting point, so the vase was deformed at the base until it stuck to a small commercial clay tile underneath. Luckily the piece did not melt and now that tile allows the vase to rest stably on its new belly. I wanted to finish decorating the vase with glaze made of pink granite from the Costa Brava, calcined and crushed manually with the mortar and pestle. The granite, mixed with fir wood ash is that greenish glaze that falls on the piece.
 
Height: 16 cm
Diameter: 20 cm.
 
The paleogene fireclay from Terra Alta  is one of the very few wild clays from Catalonia that can withstand  1300 ºC thanks to the kaolin that forms it. This clay is also rich in various minerals such as iron oxide, which enables that metallic look on the clay's surface. This material was collected from an abandoned extraction site, thus ensuring minimum landscape and ecological impact. Once collected, the clay was sieved to remove stones and roots.