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| - The Majolica Method needs two firings: the first one is to fire the clay, the clay turns into a ceramic when fired at 600 Cº or more, the higher the temperature, the stronger it becomes and changes into a material that is solid, breakable but still porous and is known as bisque. For the second firing the bisque fired pieces are covered with a layer of a white opaque glaze-base, which can be applied by throwing, dipping or spraying. When dry the glaze-base is cleaned, footings of plates, jars and lids and the edgings and backs of tiles and the trademark is painted on. The prepared designs, which have been drawn and pounced, are marked onto the glaze-base with vegetable ash, after which the pieces are decorated with colors and when finished the glaze-base and decoration are fired together to
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| abstract
| - The Majolica Method needs two firings: the first one is to fire the clay, the clay turns into a ceramic when fired at 600 Cº or more, the higher the temperature, the stronger it becomes and changes into a material that is solid, breakable but still porous and is known as bisque. For the second firing the bisque fired pieces are covered with a layer of a white opaque glaze-base, which can be applied by throwing, dipping or spraying. When dry the glaze-base is cleaned, footings of plates, jars and lids and the edgings and backs of tiles and the trademark is painted on. The prepared designs, which have been drawn and pounced, are marked onto the glaze-base with vegetable ash, after which the pieces are decorated with colors and when finished the glaze-base and decoration are fired together to vitrify at 980 Cº. The vitrifying makes the glaze-base an opaque layer of glass and this stops the bisque being porous, this integrates the glaze-base and the glaze colors, so two colors that overlap forms another color and the work is left with a smooth unbroken surface. Very few art schools teach this method and the old way of learning is finished. You cannot start at 13 years old, working and learning this specialty in a factory. When I say factory I mean a human factory where everything was done by hand. You learnt to paint and draw with a brush the outlines and colors onto an opaque crude white glaze-base by decorating hundreds of tiles, plates and jars with different designs and my friend, business partner and teacher learnt in this way and was brought up in a family and town that specialized in this method. His knowledge was not only technical but he was a superb painter, controlling the colors and the movement of the paintbrush, the stroke, to give form to a subject, the overlapping of two colors to make a third and to shade. The following three photos show the development of a design of nine tiles. The first photo shows the circles painted and the outlines of the design marked on with wood-ash, the second has been freely painted and the third is when it has been fired. Remember it is very difficult to correct anything you paint as the base you are painting on to is crude so if you clean a section of a color you damage the base and this will show up when fired
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