Small Pressed Tiles

The idea for this project started in the Fall of 2023 in my mold-making class. I was tasked with creating a small tile design in order to create a small tile press mold. When designing the tile, I drew inspiration from geometric patterns. It was something that always caught my eye, especially in a mosaic-style format. In the mold-making class, I experimented with different glazing ideas, including making the lines black and filling in with color (not pictured). I ended up enjoying a particular blue-green fluid glaze. It reminded me of stained glass and the way light shatters, with the way the glaze reflected and broke on the edges.

After the mold-making class, I continued with the small tiles, and I decided to explore what it’s like to use press molds to mass-produce a design by hand. I ended up making 24 terracotta tiles and 24 stoneware tiles as part of my final collection.

For this project, I also reformulated the original glaze I liked to create it in a new color. It was a little tricky as the colorants of the original glaze acted a certain way because they were both earth metals and reacted with other base ingredients. For the new pink/purple color, I had to glaze test what colorants I had to keep to retain the effect I wanted, while also seeing what colorants got the color I wanted. It was a fun process.

When glazing the tiles, I used both glazes on both clay types, split 12 and 12 with each clay type. At the end of the project, I had 4 different versions of the tiles and a total of 48 tiles. This project was another labor of love, and I am obsessed with how it came out.

These tiles were made in press molds with cone 6 stoneware and terracotta, both fired to cone 6 with cone 6 glazes. 📸 by myself with an iPhone 14Pro in AppleRaw Photo mode.