Anne on sun 18 mar 01
I'm looking for information on what glazes to use on porcelain bisque tiles
for use in an outdoor mural. Are china painting techniques the only ones
which can be used? What types of fixatives should be used? As a person who
mostly does works on paper, this is a completely new medium to me. Are
there any folks out there who live in proximity to Northern Illinois who
would have experience in these mediums who would consider assisting me for
pay? Thanks!!
Snail Scott on mon 19 mar 01
Anne-
Definitely not just china paint! In fact, I would recommend
against it, personally, for reasons of durability and cost,
both. You cannot really just go buy porcelain glazes in a
jar, though. Fortunately, there are many hundreds of recipes
for mixing your own, in a huge variety of color and surface.
Porcelain is known for producing lovely color response in
glazes, and high-fire glazes are among the most durable
and weatherproof substances known to man.
However...I judge from the language of your post that you are
using the term 'bisque' in the way that china-painters and
doll-makers use it, to mean "already fired to vitrification,
but without glaze", rather than as most ceramists use it, to
mean "fired just hot enough to be permanently hard, but still
soft and porous, not vitrified". This matters, if you are
going to use glaze.
It can be difficult to apply glaze to clay (porcelain or
otherwise) if it is already fired to maturation, because the
clay will no longer absorb the moisture from the glaze, and
will tend not to stick well enough to build up a layer of
appropriate thickness. Can you obtain tile which has been fired
only to lower temperatures? ('Bisque' as potters use the term,
rather than as china-painters and doll-makers use it?)
You can easily learn to mix your own glazes from recipes; there
are several good books. Offhand, James Chappell's "The Potter's
Complete Book of Clay and Glazes" has many recipes appropriate
for porcelain. If you wish to paint detailed designs, and not
just areas of color, commercially-available underglazes will be
useful. Just paint them on the bare clay, then cover with a
clear glaze of appropriate temperature. You will have to test
them, first, on a sample, to see which colors do well at your
temperature, and with your glaze. (You will have to find out what
temperature that is, for your particular porcelain.) You will
not get the wide palette of color that low-fired china paints
offer, though. Fewer minerals can sustain the high firing
temperatures of porcelain, but your end product will be far
more durable that a china-painted surface.
Try to find a porcelain-using artist or potter in your area; I am
sure that there are many. Using porcelain as a ceramist is rather
different from using it as a china-painter, and a bit of hands-
on guidance will probably help a lot, in figuring out the
technical issues. Be sure to mention to them the different uses
of the term 'bisque', however. Most ceramists will not understand
that china-painters use it to mean 'high-fired', since they use
it to mean 'low-fired'. The literal meaning is only 'non-glaze-
fired', but different crafts make different assumptions about what
that implies.
-Snail
At 11:37 PM 3/18/01 -0500, you wrote:
>I'm looking for information on what glazes to use on porcelain bisque tiles
>for use in an outdoor mural. Are china painting techniques the only ones
>which can be used? What types of fixatives should be used? As a person who
>mostly does works on paper, this is a completely new medium to me. Are
>there any folks out there who live in proximity to Northern Illinois who
>would have experience in these mediums who would consider assisting me for
>pay? Thanks!!
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