How I Make the Tiles

For most of my life I have been a potter, making and decorating pots, mostly for functional use. One method of decorating a pot is to apply a bit of wax to the still wet clay surface and then wash the clay with a wet sponge. The wax masks and protects the clay from the erosive effect of the sponge washing and leaves the protected clay a little bit higher than the washed area. 

While decorating a pot in this method I wondered if there was a different way to apply a protective mask to clay and maybe even wash the clay without using a wet sponge. 

An idea came to me to try modify the surface of a pot with pressurized water sprayed water through a mask that I made out of mosquito net and silicone sealer, applied to the net make a design. Unfortunately the net I used did not conform to the shape of the pot.

So I tried putting the mosquito net mask over a slab of clay and tried making tiles. I would roll out slabs of clay and then take them to the nearby car wash where I would put the masks over the clay and use the high-pressure car wash sprayer to apply my designs. I continue to experiment with variations in my process and materials and I have moved from spraying at the car wash, which was so cold in the winter, to spraying at home in a home-made spray chamber that is in my clay workshop over our garage. Although process is slow and cumbersome, requiring that I handle and modify each tile at least 80 times from beginning to end, I do enjoy seeing what is possible and wondering what will come next.

I applied for, and received, a patent for my process in 2023, which gives me a monopoly on its use. I continue to improve my process and design skills.

Although I still make some single-tile designs, my preference has changed to multi-tile designs, called murals.

Tile making has become my passion and purpose. I like to imagine that my tiles will someday grace the homes of people that like how they look and feel and have a connection to the images.