| Description |
Ceramic transfer (or decal) printing, provides an exciting creative potential for any ceramic artist. With the up-to-date techniques detailed here, you can transfer pictures, patterns or text onto both two- and three-dimensional forms. Most importantly, printing on ceramics achieves distinct aesthetic effects not possible using any other decorating techniques. Transfers, or decals, have great potential as a means of creative expression. Printmaking allows reproduction of both photographic and ‘hand drawn’ imagery, pattern and text onto the surface of two and three-dimensional ceramic objects.
The advantages of print
Printing is one of the prime methods of decorating ceramics. The advantage over hand-painting is that a print can be accurately and rapidly reproduced, making it especially attractive for industrial production. The individual artist or designer is less likely to be concerned with high-volume production, but might well be attracted to the diversity of aesthetic that print can offer. Hand-painting tends to look handpainted, whereas a print can take many forms, from the painterly to the photographic.
The versatility
There are many ways to print onto ceramics, and transfer printing forms a significant strand of the range of printing potential. Screenprinting is perhaps the most versatile print method available so a large proportion of this book is devoted to it. The advantage of using a transfer is that finer and more accurately registered imagery can be printed onto paper and then applied to the ware.
The creativity
Transfers also have the advantage that they can be cut up and freely collaged onto ceramics, creating a range of meanings, whereas a direct print is perhaps more limited. But don’t think of transfers as a singular decoration. Transfers are ideally used with one or more other decorating techniques using stencils, spraying, overglazes, underglazes, etc. |