Wild Materials Analyses
One of my main passions in ceramics is understanding the sources, origins, and geologic history of the materials I use. I am lucky to have access to a wide array of analytical tools to evaluate materials that I find, and that friends and colleagues bring to me. I am always excited to geek out about clay and glaze materials.
On this page I will share my musings about various materials I have collected, worked with, and the analyses I have done on them. At the moment I have access to facilities with powder X-ray diffraction (to determine mineralogy), X-ray fluorescence (to determine elemental chemistry), as well as laser particle size analyses.
Powder XRD
I have been working on analyzing a suite of Miocene age clays along the Northern Gulf of Mexico region using powder X-ray diffraction. These samples are of clays that I have found as well as those that local potters have used for many years. We are learning a ton about the variability in depositional settings across the region as well as picking up on trends through time.
Handheld XRF
I also have a handheld X-ray fluorescence instrument in the lab which allows rapid, onsite, semi-quantitative characterization of certain elemental concentrations in clays and other materials. This can give a first-pass look at variations between different clay bodies. We have used this extensively on the Miocene clays in the northern Gulf region and target additional analyses based on these runs.
Electron Microscopy
I have been granted access kindly by a colleague at the USDA to run some analyses using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) with energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy (EDS or EDX) detector. This allows extremely high resolution imagery of clay particle surfaces, as well as spot, line, and map analyses of the geochemical composition.