Rob Ryan

NEW Staffordshire Cat Edition: Part 1

Last year we produced our first limited edition of Staffordshire Cats, and since then we have slowly been working on a new edition here at Ryantown HQ. I can now show you some exclusive photographs of the cats in progress and give an insight into how we make them.

We buy the cats as a plain ceramic mold ready to be decorated. Rob starts to work on drawing different sections for the cat’s body, face, paws and tail. These drawings are then screen-printed and cover coated to create the transfers. The main experimentation comes as we layer up the different colours and start to fire them in our kiln.  You can never quite control how this will turn out, but based on past experiences with other colours we have fired we can make an educated guess on what might happen in the kiln.

There are many stages involved in making the cats, each one is decorated by hand using transfer decals. This involves many firings in our studio kiln to build up the various layers of colour on the body of the cat. But our feline friends really come to life once you add their facial features, each pair suddenly have their own personality!

When you place the cats side by side they read: ‘All we can do is live from day to day, and I want to grow old with you until my fur goes grey and my claws have wrinkled up and failed. All we can do is live from day to day.’

I will post a second update during the later stages of the process and also show you the cats when they are finally complete.

Louise Renforth
Studio Assistant