US232791A - Process of painting pottery - Google Patents

Description

UNTTEn STATES PATENT GEErcE.

THOMAS J. WHEATLEY, OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

PROCESS OF PAINTING POTTERY.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 232,791, dated September 28, 1880. Application filed June 24, 1880. (Specimens) To all whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, THOMAS J. WHEATLEY, of Cincinnati, Hamilton county, Ohio, have invented a new and useful Improvement in the Art of Painting Pottery and other Ceramics, of which the following is a specification.

The object of my invention is to employ underglaze colors to pottery and other ceramics in such a manner as to cause the colors to become integral with the ware as soon as the latter is baked, thereby adding to the beauty and durability of the ornamentation and increasing the value of the ware, as hereinafter more fully described.

The first step in my improved art of ornamentation consists in forming the vessel or other piece of ware of any suitable plastic clay, and while yet moist or damp there is applied to it the background tint, which tint is composed of any appropriate oxide or underglaze color mixed with white slip. The background tint thus prepared is applied to the damp piece with a brush, care being taken to give the article a thick uniform coating of said tint. The white slip employed in this process is the kind used in all potteries in manufacturing Parian ware or white delft, the slip bein g simply mixed with water until the desired consistency is obtained. \Vhile this background coat of tinted slip is yet damp the piece is decorated with landscapes, flowers, figures, animals, or other desired ornamentation, which decorations are applied with a brush or other convenient tool or implement. The appropriate oxide colors or other pigments used for these decorations are mixed with slip in any suitable proportions, and if the ornaments consist of a bunch of flowers or fruit or other simple group it is preferred to impaste the colors, so as to cause such a group to stand out in high relief after the piece is burned, which burning is effected by placing the article in an ordinary kiln heated to the proper temperature-say about two thousand degrees. After being baked a sufficientlength of time, according to the size of the piece and the kind of clay of which it is composed, the article is then removed from the kiln or oven in the condition commonly known as bis cuit, an examination of which will show that the colored ornaments have been so thoroughly baked onto the ware as to become integral therewith. This biscuit is now dipped in any suitable glaze and then reheated, so as to give it the final or vitreous coating, which operation completes the process.

From the above description it will be apparent that the colored ornaments are so completely fused or burnt onto the substance of the ware as to become part of the material body of the same, and consequently they cannot scale off or be removed by any means short of the destruction of the vessel.

Finally, to define my invention more explicitly, it consists in baking tinted clay or- 11am ents onto pottery or other ceramics.

I claim as my invention- The \vithindescribed improvement in the art of painting ceramics, which improvement consists in mixing underglaze colors with slip or other suitable clay vehicle, then applying such tinted clays to the piece and baking or burning them onto the same so as to become integral with the substance of the ware, for the purpose specified.

In testimony of which invention I hereunto set my hand.

T. J. VVIIEATLEY.

Witnesses:

JAMES H. LAYMAN, GEO. H. KOLKER.