Methods of William De Morgan Methods of William De Morgan
"The majority of De Morgan's tiles were made in the Persian faience technique. The tile designs were line drawings carefully filled in with tones of various colours. The designs were too complex to be laid out freehand, and the link-up between the tiles required consistency and precision. The tiles were also needed in considerable quantity. All this might suggest some kind of printing or transfer application, but De Morgan rejected both these methods because he knew they could give neither the depth of colour nor the beautiful finish that his designs demanded. Instead, he devised an ingenious method which was entirely original. It was described as follows by his partner, Halsey Ricardo:'the pattern (its leading lines only) was drawn in strong black lines on tracing paper and this was pasted onto a sheet of glass. On the other side of the glass was fixed (temporarily) a square of thin paper and the glass, easel-fashion, was set up in front of a window. The lines of the pattern were easily visible on the thin paper and the painter proceeded to follow them with his pigments, filling up the rest of the pattern according to his discretion as to the intensity and so forth of his colouring, a coloured tile or drawing at his side dictating to him the effects required'.
The painted paper was placed face-down over the slip-coated tile, then the back of the paper was brushed with glaze and sodium silicate. In the firing the paper, being extremely fine, was reduced to a film of ash which was easily incorporated into the glaze. Thus the tile itself, the white slip and the glaze fused together. The whole process was an extremely adroit way of achieving a high degree of precision whilst retaining the unmistakable touch of hand-painting.
De Morgan's painted paper technique entirely bypassed the pricked drawing technique which had for centuries been the traditional manner of laying out repeat designs on hand-painted tiles. However, he used pricked drawings for special panels of tiles, such as the dragon panels, the original drawing for which is now in the Clayton-Stamm collection.
The painted paper method was not without difficulties and it was, of course, only suitable for flat surfaces. As Mr. Bale remarked, 'He never painted straight on to the tiles, like the vases, he did them on tissue paper.'"
Caiger-Smith later goes on to state:
"An additional advantage of the painted paper method was that the pigments were not disturbed when the glaze was applied, because they were protected by the leaf of fine paper."
I am not aware of any recent efforts to duplicate De Morgan's methods.