Rob Ryan

Ceramics at Ryantown HQ

A few months ago I gave details of the stages involved in the making of Rob’s screenprints at the studio, you can click here if you would like to read all about it. Following this, I thought I would also give an insight into another proccess we use regularly here at Ryantown HQ;  which is that of turning Rob’s drawings into a ceramic product.

Rob invested in his kiln about 6 years ago when he decided to start making his own ceramics. We now produce many of our studio products at Ryantown HQ using the kiln, which includes plates, mugs, egg cups, tiles and many more!

To create the ceramic products Rob’s drawing is screenprinted using ceramic ink. Once dry, a special cover coat is then printed on top of this drawing, this creates the decal transfer which is applied to the ceramic.

A decal or transfer is a ceramic substrate that has a pattern or image printed on it a that can be moved to another surface upon contact, usually with the aid of water or heat.

Once the screenprinted transfer comes into contact with water it separates from the backing paper and we are able to apply this to the ceramic. It is carefully applied by hand, taking care to smooth out any creases or bubbles which may appear.

This process is used when we make most of our ceramic product. However, Rob’s tiles are screenprinted by hand then fired, this is because the surface of the tiles are flat so we are able to screenprint using our print bed, as you can see from the images below.

Some of our ceramics are made as limited edition so Rob will initial the base of the piece in gold lustre before it is fired in our kiln.

I hope this has given a good insight into how we work with ceramics at Ryantown HQ.

Louise Renforth
Studio Assistant