How To Make Handmade Decorative Tile

Handmade decorative tile has become a trend since it is full of creation and it spark inspirations. Designer and art lovers are  very crazy about it. Homeowners may also have a try. It is not so difficult as they think. Then you can make your kitchen backsplash,bathroom wall,fireplace,TV background,balcony,any place in your house or your garden into a unique art of work with your own handmade decorative tiles. Then here is our topic today:how to make handmade decorative tile? Let's learn and have a try.

Laying out the design for a carving on a porcelain 'blank. Starting to carve a 12x12 Celtic knot tile.

Carving done! Lay out and complete a carving using a variety of conventional and custom made manual carving tools.

Prepare a wooden frame around the carving to make a mold of it.

All set to make a mold!

Pouring the prepared plaster into the mold box, over the carving.This part is always a little tense,  if anything goes wrong, it's a lot of hours of work down the drain.

A reclaimed dryer motor with an unbalanced wooden fly wheel mounted on the pouring table.This vibrates the table while pouring the plaster and ensures there's no air bubbles trapped in the mold.

Done!
The carving rarely survives this process and is thrown into the clay scrap pile. We now have a master mold, one tile or several in the case of smaller accent and border tiles, will be made from this and another mold made from it.
This will become the production mold and the master will only be used when it's necessary to make a new production mold due to wear or breakage.

The tile making bench. A large heavy duty oak rolling pin is used to roll out slabs of wet clay to a specific even thickness on the canvas covered surface of the bench. Templates are used to cut the proper shape and size out of the slab to fit the mold.

The cut slabs of clay are placed into the mold, covered with a board and pounded with Johns very special duct taped wooden mallet.

The backs are trimmed, stamped and set aside until they're dry enough to remove from the mold.

The tiles are dried slowly in drying racks to prevent warping.This part just can't be rushed, especially with the larger tiles.

The tiles are dry and for some it's now time to start applying the color. The tiles are decorated in a variety of ways, these ones are hand painted with under gaze and will later have a clear gloss glaze over top.

    

All the tiles are fired twice at around 2000 degrees in one of our three kilns, which generally takes two or more days. Most of that time being cooling down, another thing that can't be rushed. The first firing is called a bisque firing,the clay is now hard and any painted on under glaze is fused to the tile. A glaze, either clear, colored, gloss or matte is then applied to the tile and the second and generally final firing is done. Bright gold, copper or mother of pearl are applied over a gloss glaze and require another firing at a lower temperature.

 

The tiles are finished and they are really beautiful! Do you like it?

  

(Selected from Internet)