Making Your Gift
Your ornament was made using a unique combination of screen-printing and ceramics that I have spent the last year developing.
Design & Burning Plates
I started by putting together a holiday scenic design and printing out transparency sheets for creating 2 screen-printing plates.
This process is pretty new to me and has been a whole new set of skills to learn. This process lets me reproduce logos and computer generated graphics in lots of interesting mediums like ceramics.
Printing Transfers
Using the screen printing plates, I printed a thick colored liquid clay onto transfer sheets and let them dry. Each print contains a level of detail I could never get by hand, even with imperfect plates. The transfers are left to hang dry and are then cut for application.
Making Ornaments
While the transfers dry i rolled and cut clay pucks, letting them slowly dry under wrap to avoid warping.
All this clay is on its second life. It was an old pot, or dried trimmings, or cast offs from the throwing process. I reclaim 99% of clay that doesn’t make it to the kiln and try to give it a second life as something new.
Once the pucks were just the right level of dryness it was time to apply the transfer. This is where much of the individuality appears in the piece. After more drying I scribed my mark and the year, as well as the series number on the bottom rim.
Making it a thing
The clay pucks need to be heated to 2000°F to make them a durable and waterproof ceramic.
As I was growing up, my dad spent his hobby time making musical instruments like harps and guitars. During the pandemic I helped him restore his shop and add a kiln.
Running a kiln is no joke. It takes a full day of attention, and a lot of power. After a year my dad has learned to run the kiln like a pro and makes these fantastic logs of how the firing went.
As a fun side note, the shop (including the kiln) is powered by the house’s solar power and we generally self-generate ~40% of the electrical load used to fire the kiln.
Packing it all up
Now that I have a bunch of fired pieces, they get a little more character with a bead and string for hanging.
Last was to design, print and cut the printed inserts and package everything up to be delivered to you hopefully intact and ready to display!
Pepper and I hope you have a wonderful & warm holiday season and great start to the new year!
