Transfer printing

Transfer printing is a method of decorating pottery or other materials using an engraved copper or steel plate from which a monochrome print on paper is taken which is then transferred by pressing onto the ceramic piece. Pottery decorated using the technique is known as transferware or transfer ware.Teapot with scene of a fortune-teller. Printed black outline with manual enamel colours. 1762–82Tile with Orpheus or Apollo, c. 1780, the green paintedPlate using two transfers, puce and green, c. 1830, Enoch Wood & Co.Polychrome teapot, 1896Advertising metal matchbox, British, late 19th centurySadler and Green tile, 1760Wooden matchbox, British, c. 1900Practical printing on a stoneware Australian jar (printed in New Zealand?)Paper print of transfers, Dutch, 1859Transfer printing department of earthenware factory, Societe Ceramique, Maastricht Transfer printing is a method of decorating pottery or other materials using an engraved copper or steel plate from which a monochrome print on paper is taken which is then transferred by pressing onto the ceramic piece. Pottery decorated using the technique is known as transferware or transfer ware. It was developed in England from the 1750s on, and in the 19th century became enormously popular in England, though relatively little used in other major pottery-producing countries. The bulk of production was from the dominant Staffordshire pottery industry. America was a major market for English transfer-printed wares, whose imagery was adapted to the American market; several makers made this almost exclusively. The technique was essential for adding complex decoration such as the Willow pattern to relatively cheap pottery, but the ease with which very detailed images could be used rather went to the head of early-19th-century potters, who tended to produce dense overcrowded designs that, though very evocative of their period, are in questionable taste. Earlier and later wares show more restrained designs. In particular, transfer printing brought the price of a matching dinner service low enough for large numbers of people to afford. Apart from pottery, the technique was used on metal, and enamelled metal, and sometimes on wood and textiles. It remains used today, although mostly superseded by lithography. In the 19th century methods of transfer printing in colour were developed. The process starts with an engraved metal printing plate similar to those used for making engravings or etchings on paper. The plate is used to print the pattern on tissue paper, using mixes of special pigments that stand up to firing as the 'ink'. The transfer is then put pigment-side down onto the piece of pottery, so that then sticky ink transfers to the ceramic surface. Usually, several different transfer sections were needed for each piece if the design covered the whole object (see illustration). The paper is either floated off by soaking the piece in water, or left to burn off during the firing. This can be done over or under the ceramic glaze, but the underglaze ('underprinting') method gives much more durable decoration. The ceramic is then glazed (if this had not been done already) and fired in a kiln to fix the pattern. With overglaze printing only a low-temperature firing was needed. The process produces fine lines similar to engraved prints. Before transfer printing ceramics were hand painted, a laborious and costly process. Transfer printing enabled the high quality of representation that had been developed in painting on porcelain to be done far more cheaply, in the process making large numbers of painters redundant. Initially, it was also mostly used on porcelain, but after a few years it was also used on the new high-quality earthenwares that English potters had been developing, such as creamware and pearlware. By the end of the 18th century, a variant technique giving 'bat-printed' wares was introduced. This used 'pliable glue bats or slabs' of a rubbery texture instead of the paper. The plate printed glue onto the bat, which was then transferred to the piece, and powdered pigments were then added, which stuck to the glue. The technique was associated with the introduction of stippling rather than line engraving as the technique used on the copper plates. The process was much more complicated, and little used after about 1820. Both these techniques printed a single colour, which was most often the cobalt blue that had been heavily used for painting pottery for centuries. Its success was because the colour was attractive, and cobalt kept its colour in firing even at very high porcelain temperatures. Initially cobalt blue, black and brown were probably the only colour options for underglaze transfer printing. Transfer printing could be supplemented with colour added by hand, or gilding, and this technique was used from early on. The use of multiple transfers, each with a different colour, was introduced quite early when different areas were printed in each colour, for example, a plate with the centre in one colour, and the border in another. It was more difficult to build up a full polychrome image, but this was perfected by Messrs F&R Pratt of Fenton in the 1840s.