Crystalline Ceramics

Brandon Franks
Pottery

Handmade Crystalline Pottery

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Large handmade gourd-shaped ceramic vase covered in tan and blue zinc silicate crystalline glaze by Brandon Franks
The Artist

About Brandon

My name is Brandon Franks. I am a 21-year-old ceramic artist specializing in crystalline glazes — some of the rarest and most technically demanding surfaces in all of ceramics.

I began throwing pottery at age nine, drawn early to the quiet discipline of working with clay and the way raw earth could become something beautiful in a single afternoon. I started selling my work in 2017, and by 2019 had focused entirely on crystalline glazing — a discipline that has shaped everything I've made since.

Crystalline work demands constant experimentation: new glaze formulas, new firing schedules, new ways to coax unpredictable chemistry into something intentional. It has taught me that patience and precision are inseparable, and that the most beautiful outcomes are often the ones you didn't fully plan.

Every piece leaves my studio as something that has never existed before and will never exist again.

The Process

Crystalline Glazes

What you see on each piece are real crystals — grown inside the glaze during firing, not painted on, not printed, not applied. They form the way snowflakes form: from chemistry, in conditions carefully prepared but never fully controlled. Crystalline glazing is one of the most technically demanding processes in ceramics, and every single piece that emerges from the kiln is genuinely unrepeatable.

01

The Glaze Formula

A crystalline glaze is built around zinc oxide and silica — the two ingredients that, under the right conditions, will bond together and grow into zinc silicate crystals. Metal oxides are added to produce color: cobalt for blues, iron for ambers and greens, copper for turquoise. Every new color needs a new formula. The chemistry has to be exactly right, or the crystals simply won't form.

02

The Firing

The kiln climbs past 2,300°F, melting the glaze into a liquid. Then begins the most critical phase: a slow, precisely guided descent. The temperature is held at specific points — sometimes for four hours at a stretch — giving the zinc silicate molecules time to find each other and crystallize. A deviation of just a few degrees in either direction can mean no crystals at all, or a result no one intended. Each firing runs 12 to 18 hours.

03

The Finish

Crystalline glaze is so fluid at peak temperature that it runs off the piece entirely if not contained. Every pot is fired inside a handmade catch basin to collect the overflow. After the kiln cools, that base is cut away with a diamond wheel and ground smooth by hand. What remains is a surface that grew in the dark of the kiln — crystals that can span several inches, with radial structures visible under magnification. No two are ever alike.

Handmade teardrop-shaped ceramic vase with dense cobalt blue zinc silicate crystalline glaze by Brandon Franks
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I set the conditions. The crystals decide the rest.

After years of developing glazes and refining kiln schedules, I've learned to work with uncertainty rather than against it. I know what conditions tend to grow large crystals, what oxides shift color at certain temperatures, what cooling rates produce finer or coarser structure. But I can't dictate the outcome. Every firing is a collaboration — part chemistry, part craft, part chance.

That tension between precision and surprise is what keeps this work interesting. It's why no two pieces in my studio have ever looked the same, and why I'm still learning after years at the wheel and the kiln.

Available Works

Own a Piece

Each piece is one of a kind. Browse available work and inquire about commissions in my Etsy shop.

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