the story behind the new clé Guild Fundamentals: Work Study glazes
by clé tile | published: Oct 15, 2024
clé Guild’s Work Study is a collection of quietly luxurious, elevated and refined thin glazed brick tiles in nine neutral tones, ranging from the lightest beiges to a dark pink-brown.
Consider this the next chapter in the clé Guild Fundamentals story. Like Guild Fundamentals: Classic, Work Study features matte to semi-gloss glazes with slight tonal variation and natural iron spotting for an elegantly timeless character.
In the wrong hands, neutrals can skip past versatile and become ubiquitous: boring, blah, tame. at clé, we wouldn’t let that happen.
forever inspired by fashion, design, and the creative and alchemical processes, we think neutrals should be complex, rich, powerful storytellers on their own. The main event, not a mere backdrop. And that’s how we feel about the sophisticated, nuanced nobility of Work Study.
In a world of fast fashion, faster design, dupes, copycats, and insta-everything, bringing a main event worthy collection like this to life has been the epitome of slow, the antithesis of linear: the result of continuous conversations between artist and alchemist, between texture and color and light; between fire, mineral, and clay.
mad glaze scientist Eric VanderMolen at work
artistry and alchemy: an interview with Eric VanderMolen
Eric VanderMolen is the head of the clé Guild, and its lead ceramist since its inception. With a degree in biology, a long-held fascination with material science, and a considerable ceramics practice, it’s only apt that Eric calls his metier “the perfect combination of science and art.”
clé: [clé founder] Deborah Osburn is always so energized with all that emerges from The Guild, not just the finished product, but the glaze experiments, the happy accidents, the sheer creative thrill of your conversations. Was this the beginning of your journey to Work Study?
eric: In some sense. It’s really the result of a conversation we’ve been having for several years. Ever since we came out with Guild Fundamentals in 2020, we’d been talking about the wide world between the original black and white. To kick things off, I developed some initial glaze directions exploring the many nuances of khaki. It reminded Deborah [with her encyclopedic, fashion editor grade knowledge of fashion] of an early collection by Martin Margiela based on work and utility wear.
I was curious to learn more about the traditions associated with that range of colors. And not really being deeply immersed in fashion, I was also interested in the way designers develop collections as compositions of colors and also in the way in which those great designers look at texture as an inextricable part of color. There’s a parallel between that approach and the approach we take to ceramics.
From there it was a long series of iterative loops, of conversations and tests and then waiting to see what the kilns delivered us.
Ranges of greys, beiges, blues
clé: We think of this as the next chapter in the clé Guild Fundamentals story. To what extent did that shape your processes?
eric: To almost every extent. We wanted to have a similar feel in terms of surface sheen and opacity and thickness. That called for the development of glazes that are chemically similar with similar firing characteristics, minerality, etc. The feel is very similar but the colors are different.
clé: Design constraints can be very freeing.
eric: Exactly. We had two design constraints: a neutral palette, and chemical composition. We took some of those first glazes and then using them as a hub, began to push certain parameters, whether it’s adjusting pigment concentrations or firing times. Do you want me to get technical here?
clé: Well...let’s not give away all the secrets of The Guild!
eric: Fair enough. But let’s just say that when you’re talking about formulating glazes, it’s about finding the perfect balance to create the color, but also dialing in the chemistry for the ideal surface quality. As you know, the glaze you apply to a clay body is nothing like the glaze that emerges from the kiln, and that firing process can be lengthy — and unpredictable. Unlike painting, we don’t know what we’ve done until well after the fact.
To complicate things further, all materials change slightly, suppliers stop supplying, the glaze minerals and underlying clays change slightly as the cuts drift through the mine: every slice is going to give you a slightly different mix. And since what’s happening in the kiln is this wonderful fusion, resulting in a completely new material, any small change can affect anything else.
clé: That’s quite the adventure.
eric: That’s quite the understatement.
clé: One of the things we’ve talked about is the difficulty you faced in creating a grey glaze. For the uninitiated, could you tell me more about that?
eric: Greys are chemically very difficult: throttling back from black is hard and technical and requires a lot of experimentation to maintain its neutrality but retain liveliness and depth. The Work Study greys (Expedition Wool and Black Wool) have many different colors in them so there’s that richness that doesn’t scream and yell at all but which still has a great deal of depth.
many steps to find the perfect blushing neutrals
clé: As we read in your Guild Diary, pink tones are something new for the Guild. were they easier than grey to invent, or was it also a technical challenge?
eric: Indeed. We tried hundreds of different pinks — finding the right surface to complement what we had in mind in terms of hues. It also required different firing temperatures, so it required all new processes.
clé: So let’s turn from the micro to the macro. It’s one thing to develop a glaze for a specific object: a mug, a bowl, or in our case, a tile. But it’s more complicated for us: our tiles are meant to be seen as part of an installation. The tile itself needs to tell a story — but the full story is in installation, most likely a wall or fireplace or similar.
eric: I think of it as akin to playing 3d chess or the difference between producing an album versus just a single. You need to go from a glaze test, a 2” x 2” sample, to a few square feet to a full kiln load. In the case of Work Study, we were thinking about the hues, of course, and how we develop a coherent story in terms of a collection.
But we were also trying to think about how it will fit with the essence of Guild Fundamentals and what it means to be clé.