“The most important thing is what is invisible to the eye,” said the Little Prince.
To the naked eye, these golden crystals look like small golden dust on the surface of the glaze or like a starry August night. That’s where the name for the glaze came from – “Stardust”.
A completely different picture opens up very closely through a magnifying glass. Small microcracks run through the glaze, somewhere between the crystals there are stuck microscopic gas bubbles, small crystals grow inside the glaze like columns in which some have extended to the surface, and some have not reached it. And some crystals have turned into flower petals on the surface of the glaze.
There are many factors in the formation of crystals – how thickly or thinly the glaze has been applied to the vessel, at what temperature it was fired and how long the crystal has been allowed to grow at a certain temperature. How these crystals come out is always a bit of a gamble. In the same firing, there can be a vessel with an oversaturated gold surface and one with only few crystals on it. This lidded jar has just the right amount of gold shimmer.
I took a close-up picture with a macro lens, cut out a small part of it and enlarged it. In real life, this flower-shaped crystal is about half a millimeter and sometimes a few are larger, up to a millimeter in size.
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