About

In early 2017 Helen Love was asked by Aberdeen Art Gallery to make a library of ceramic glaze test tiles for the wall of their applied arts section.

In response, Helen challenged herself to make the brightest spectrum possible using 8 common metal oxides and no commercial stains.

There followed a frenzy of glaze testing, 1500 glaze tests to get to the final of nearly 500.

Rejected test tiles

Two versions of this glaze library of test tiles can be viewed in person. One is on the wall of the ceramics workshop at Gray's School of Art where all the glaze tests were mixed in their glaze lab and fired in their kilns.

The other is on display to the public in Gallery 5 “Crafting Colour” of Aberdeen Art Gallery.

Helen with some of the Design and Code team

Helen with her spectrum

As a ceramic technician working daily with students, Helen saw the potential to use the testing data she recorded for their benefit.

Collaborating with creative agency Design and Code, the data Helen collected over the years was transformed into this digital resource.

Colin Leonard, Founder of Design and Code says “We were thrilled when Helen asked us to collaborate with her on this exciting project. It’s an amazing piece of work, a two-year labour of love! It has been a real joy to form this partnership with Helen and help share her findings with the wider community.”

Hopefully this teaching tool will draw people in to the world of glazing and they will begin to understand the chemistry and experiment themselves.