In planning the wall decor for Osteria Al Vecchio Stallo, I found I had a couple of empty spots on either side of the window. While browsing the restaurant’s Facebook photos for what felt like the thousandth time, I came up with the idea of a decorative plate. Throughout Friuli, I often saw ceramic plates adorning the walls of homey osterie, typically hand painted with vibrant floral designs. Many bore the name of a particular restaurant (I was generously given one such plate as a gift when I ate at Ristorante Al Cavallino in the town of Paularo), while others were inscribed with a phrase in the Furlan language. Knowing that my drawing and painting skills are lacking, to say the least, I felt my best bet was to find a suitable image online and attempt an image transfer. The plate I chose translates as “Welcome to our home.”
My image transfers for the wooden Gelateria Bocelli signs were ultimately successful, but I wasn’t sure if a similar technique would be possible on polymer clay. I’d watched nearly 50 YouTube videos (!) and found that many transfers involved either wetting the paper and rubbing it off, which risks rubbing off the design, or else printing onto special transfer paper. A few printed the image onto parchment paper. I liked this idea, because the paper can be peeled off with no water needed. However, in researching image transfers onto wood, I knew that feeding parchment through the printer can pose its own problems.
Having stumbled onto the brilliant solution of using label paper for my wood transfers, I decided to give this a shot on clay, only without using the acrylic gel medium. I simply laser-printed my image (in reverse) onto the backing paper from a sheet of printer labels (with the labels peeled off, but leaving the paper border around the edge so that it could feed through the rollers of the printer), cut it out, and gently burnished it onto the raw clay (I used white Premo mixed with a touch of ecru). I found the paper didn’t need too much rubbing before I could easily peel it away, leaving the laser toner stuck to the clay. Every single time my image was flawless. It was so much easier than transferring an image to wood!
The tricky part was cutting out the plate in a perfect circle, since my metal circle cutters have a seam. I do have a set of Kemper cutters, which don’t have seams, but the plunger blocks you from seeing where you are cutting. I solved this problem by making a light imprint with the circle cutter, then placing the Kemper cutter in the groove to make a smooth cut. It wasn’t perfect because there was always a slight notch where the seam made an imprint, but it was better than having a large gouge from using that cutter alone.
Once I got the transfer made, I needed to come up with a method for molding the plate. What I eventually did was make a ring mold out of scrap clay: basically a 3/4″ circle cut out of a thin sheet of clay, with a smaller 5/8″ circle cut out of the center, leaving a flat ring shape. I also made a 5/8″-diameter cylindrical press out of several thick layers of clay stacked on top of each other. After baking the ring mold and press, I was ready to form the plate.
I brushed the ring mold and press with cornstarch so they wouldn’t stick to the plate, placed the raw plate on top of the ring, and used the press to flatten the center area of the plate. This left a nice curved rim around the edge.
After baking, I used some silver-plated wire to create a bail, attaching it to the back with some raw clay before baking again. Finally, I glazed the plate with gloss varnish.
