Crafting with Nature: Silica

Cononish Stone

High in the hills near our studio lies the Cononish Gold Mine, where veins of gold run through ancient quartz deep within the mountain.

To reach the gold, the quartz is crushed and ground to a fine powder. The metal is carefully extracted, leaving behind pale silica-rich stone, the finely milled remains of the mountain itself.

Most of this material has already given up its gold with only trace left.

But the stone still carries quiet value.

We reclaim a small portion of these tailings and return them to use in our pottery. Through simple settling, washing and sieving, the crushed quartz becomes a versatile ceramic material once again.

This reclaimed mountain stone offers several gifts:

• Natural silica, a fundamental ingredient in both clays and glazes
• Rounded quartz grains, formed during milling, which add texture and strength in clay bodies
• Trace magnetite, a natural iron oxide that can warm glaze colours with subtle yellow and green tones

• Trace mica, a potassium rich compound whoch can act as a flux within our glaze

• Trace gold, although the majority has been extracted, there is always trace levels of gold left in tailings

Some of the iron can be gently drawn out using stromg magnets, allowing it to be reused as a glaze colourant in its own right.

In the studio, this material becomes what potters have long known as silica, a mineral used to shape clay bodies, influence glaze melts and become the permanent glass that binds everything together.

Unlike traditional ceramic materials shipped across the world, Cononish Stone comes from just beyond our doorstep.

It is, quite literally, crushed mountain, reclaimed from the gold mining process and returned to craft.

For some pieces we go one step further, reuniting the quartz with its long-lost companion: the gold that weathered from it over millennia, returning the treasure to the mountain.