n Frog Valley, W.Va.
, Mark Schwenk, a
metal artist and photographer, has been
building and operating a pottery kiln for
the past 3 years. Visitors enjoy going to
his studio because they are in for a show!
Schwenk opens the kiln, grabs a red-glow-
ing pot with metal tongs, and plunges it into
a metal trash can stuffed with
shredded paper. Flames shoot
skyward! Then, Schwenk slams
the lid down, and the flames
are replaced by a small emis-
sion of black smoke. After a
few minutes, Schwenk removes
the pot, still very hot, and dips
it in a tub of water, where the
billowing steam captures the
attention of a crowd of visi-
tors. When the pottery piece is
cleaned, it has a beautiful shiny
and colorful glaze.
Schwenk makes Raku pot-
tery, an increasingly popular art
form that is also a fun way to
fire pottery. He is one of seven
artisans working together as
part of an artist collective called
Frog Valley Studios. The other
artisans create craft from metal, ceram-
ics, and glass, which attract many visitors
throughout the year.
I work at Frog Valley Studios as a volunteer
apprentice. I help Schwenk and a stained-glass
artist named Veronica Wilson with pottery and
stained glass. I find Raku pottery and stained
glass fascinating. Let me show you around!
Red-hot pottery
Its hard to imagine a craft as basic as
pottery, which consists of making pots
out of claya naturally occurring material
composed mainly of fine-grained minerals.
Essentially, pottery consists of sculpting pots
by hand, decorating them with a glaze, and
heating them to high temperatures in a kiln
so they can harden before letting them cool
down outside.
But unlike traditional pottery, Raku pottery
is more exciting. Sculpting a Raku pottery
piece and glazing it is similar to traditional
pottery, but unlike the gradual heating and
gradual cooling of the everyday pottery kiln
a process that takes at least 8 hoursa Raku
kiln is best described as fast and furious.
The pots sit in a chamber, exposed to a fuel-
rich flame that rapidly heats them to 1,800 F.
What Schwenk shows his visitors a few
times per year is the most spectacular part of
the process, but alsoaccording to many
the most fun and enjoyable. This unusual
form dates back to the mid-16th century
when Sen no Rikyu, a Japanese tea master
and former Zen monk started firing pieces in
such a way that each bowl presented its own
unique shape, texture, and surface features.
Today, Raku potters produce pieces which,
like those of Rikyu, have singular forms and
features. In short, every piece is a surprise!
A finished piece from a Raku firing: metallic
features provide color and sheen.
What happens in the trash can is an exam-
ple of oxidation-reduction, or redox, reac-
tionsamong the most common and most
important chemical reactions in everyday
life. A redox reaction involves both oxidation
(loss of electrons) and reduction (gain of
electrons). In this case, the elements are the
By Helen Herlocker
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www.acs.org/chemmatters 6 ChemMatters, APRIL 2012
ArtistIC
Chemistry
A Beautiful Collaboration
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metals in the glaze, which either lose or gain
electrons. The elements that lose electrons
are oxidized and those that gain electrons
are reduced.
The glazes contain metals of either the
oxide ion (O
2
)such as copper(I) oxide
(Cu2O) and silver oxide (Ag2O)or the
carbonate ion (CO
3
2
), such as cobalt(II)
carbonate (CoCO3) and copper(II) carbonate
(CuCO3).
The burning in the trash can occurs
because of the presence of three elements:
heat, fuel, and oxygen. With the lid cutting off
a supply of atmospheric oxygen, the nearest
available source of oxygen is the glaze com-
pounds, which all contain oxygen.
The metals in the glaze components are
reduced, while the carbon or carbon monox-
ide coming from the combustion is oxidized.
For example, in the case of copper oxide
(Cu2O), which is actually a crystal composed
of the ions Cu
+
and O
2
, the following redox
reactions occur in the can:
Reduction: The copper ions are
reduced into elemental copper:
Cu
+
+ e
Cu
Oxidation: The carbon is oxidized into
carbon dioxide in the presence of carbon or
carbon monoxide:
CO + O
2
CO2 + 2 e
or
C + 2 O
2
CO2 + 4 e
The combination of both reduction and
oxidation reactions leads to either of the fol-
lowing reactions:
2 Cu2O + C 4 Cu + CO2
or
Cu2O + CO 2 Cu + CO2
The end result is a shiny copper coating on
the surface of the pot that replaces the copper
oxide that was present in the glaze before the
combustion occurred.
What makes Raku pots unique is the pres-
ence of different metallic streaks that would
not form if the pots were left outside to cool
down after being taken out of the kiln.
Art on glass
Another art form that is gain-
ing popularity is stained glass. To
picture what stained glass looks like, imagine
a beautiful painting that you like. Now imagine
the painting with sunlight streaming through.
Thats essentially what a stained-glass window
looks like. It consists of small pieces of glass
that are carefully shaped and assembled to
form a design or a picture. Stained glass is
also used to make lamps, boxes, and decora-
tions, and anyone can learn this craft.
At Frog Valley, stained-glass artist Veronica
Wilson created a stained-glass window featur-
ing Appalachian wildlifefrogs, birds, luna
moths, turtles, and a brightly coiled snake. In
the sunlight, the stained-glass window looks
like a brilliant array of colored glass pieces
some smaller than your little finger nailheld
in place by a metallic support network.
Wilson explains that her work, with its
small scale and tiny mosaic pieces, is actu-
ally a scaled-down version of the stained-
glass windows that grace cathedrals and
churches. To create such windows, artists
connected large window pieces with a rein-
forcing material called a lead came (Fig. 1),
which was soldered at the junctions between
the window pieces.
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Above: Glazes rich in
metallic oxides and
carbonates are applied
to a pot before it is fired
in a kiln.
Left: A pot, hot from
the first Raku firing, is
plunged into a container
filled with paper and
straw, which burn. The
red-hot interior of the pot
is visible in the photo.
A lid is placed on a trash can
containing hot pots.
Figure 1. A stained-glass window commonly
seen in churches consists of many small pieces
of glass that are all soldered to each other with
supporting channels called lead cames. Shown
here are two pieces of glass (labeled 3) that
are soldered with two U-shaped cames (labeled
1) and one H-shaped came (labeled 2).
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ChemMatters, APRIL 2012 7
1 2
3 3
1
Wilson uses bits of colored glass
to form small flower petals, insect
wings, stems, and leaves. But instead
of using lead cames, she fastens them
in place with a different technique.
First, she draws the shapes on paper,
glues them lightly on a piece of
colored glass, and then cuts around
them (Fig. 2).
Using a glass-cutting tool, which
she holds like a vertical pencil, she
scores the surface around each
shape. Then, she lightly taps on the
underside of the glass to weaken the
scored line and applies a downward
pressure with glass pliers on each
side of the scored line to make the
break. When the small pieces are assembled
together, the work looks like a colorful jig-
saw puzzle.
To put the small pieces together, Wilson
uses copper foil, a spool of lead-tin solder,
and a cleaning agent. First, Wilson edge-
wraps each piece of glass with a narrow strip
of copper foiltodays foil is available in
spools with a backing of adhesivewhich she
attaches to the glass (Fig. 3).
Then, she applies the cleaning agent to the
copper. The cleaning agent is hydrochloric
acid (HCl), which is formed by exposing zinc
chloride (ZnCl
2) to moisture and heat, which
leads to hydrous zinc chloride (ZnCl22H2O).
At high temperatures, hydrous chloride
decomposes to hydrochloric acid and zinc
oxychloride [ZnCl(OH)], giving off water vapor
(H2O) in the process:
ZnCl22H2O ZnCl(OH) + HCl + H2O
Hydrochloric acid removes any oxides that
are present on the surface of the copper foil,
so that only copper is exposed to the solder:
CuO + 2 HCl CuCl2 + H2O
The product, copper(II) chloride (CuCl2), is
soluble in water and easily washes away.What
is left is a surface of pure copper, to which the
tin-lead solder can bind.
The solder is a mixture of metals with low
melting points. Wilson uses a tin-lead 50:50
mixture. She heats the copper base and
moves the hot iron to melt a bead of solder
into place (Fig. 4). When the tin-lead metal
cools down, it adheres to the copper and
holds the glass in place.
Wilson then applies a thin shiny coating
called a liquid patina to give the desired color
to the solder line and to protect the cooled
solder from further oxidation. Days, some-
times weeks, in the making, the piece is finally
ready to be metal-framed and mounted in a
sunny window where it blooms to life!
Want to give it a try?
After seeing the art pieces at Frog Valley
Studios, I wanted to become familiar with how
stained glass and Raku pottery are created.
So, I simply showed up and volunteered to
help the artists with the many steps involved
in the production. Hours of free help is hard
to turn down! And they became valuable and
fun lessons.
You may want to try Raku pottery or stained
glass. Classes are offered throughout the
United States, and chances are, classes are
available near you. While you learn about the
properties of the materials and how they inter-
act with each other, you will discover that it
really is all about chemistry!
Figure 2. The artist first draws patterns on paper and then
reproduces them on the glass before cutting the pieces of
glass.
SELECTED REFERENCES
Baxter, R. Glass: An Amorphous Solid.
ChemMatters, Oct 1998, pp 1011.
Stone, C. The Terra Cotta Warriors: Army from the
Earth. ChemMatters, Feb 2000, pp 1415.
Rohrig, B. Myths: Chemistry Tells the Truth.
ChemMatters, Dec 2010, pp 810.
Helen Herlocker, a science writer who makes
pottery and stained glass near Berkeley Springs,
W.Va., is a former managing editor of
ChemMatters. Her latest ChemMatters article,
Retiring Old Tires (coauthored with Donald
Jones), appeared in the April 2007 issue.
Figure 3. Each piece of glass is wrapped with
copper foil because solder adheres to metal but
not to glass.
Figure 4. Molten solder flows onto the seams and creates a came.
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8 ChemMatters, APRIL 2012 www.acs.org/chemmatters
Check out the video podcast on artistic
chemistry at: www.acs.org/chemmatters
