Ash Glaze

I am drawn to the depth of color and texture achievable in glazes, especially those which utilize natural materials such as ash. The melting, pooling, dripping and crystallization of glaze are all characteristic of its inherent nature as a glass. Glaze, in stark contrast to clay, is not something which takes form through physical interaction but rather through a chemical one. And however fundamentally simple glaze chemistry may be, when realized in the physical world an infinite number of complexities arise. The impurity, inconsistency and volatility in natural materials, as opposed to synthetic ones, I find to be an embrace of the insurmountable complexity of reality. The reason to use natural ash in a glaze, I find, is not because it is more consistent or cost/time efficient to do so, but rather because it is simply more complex in its beauty.