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.Fleming, John & Hugh Honour. (1977) The Penguin Dictionary of Decorative Arts. London: Allen Lane, p. 800. Pottery decorated using this 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. 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 Vitreous enamel, 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 It remains used today, although mostly superseded by lithography.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.
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 China painting 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.Battie, 117
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.Godden, 44 The process was much more complicated, and little used after about 1820.Honey, 7; "Bat-Printed Porcelain", Regency World
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.Godden, 44
Transfer-printed English wares are recorded in New York by 1776, and North America became an important market. By this time transfer-printing on the refined earthenwares such as creamware had become common. Large numbers of designs celebrated the new republic and in particular George Washington, with elaborate decorations around the central image as the century came to an end.
One particularly distinctive type of transferware, with an all-over floral pattern, is called chintz pottery, or chintzware.
In 1751 John Brooks, an Irish engraver then based in Birmingham, petitioned for a patent for “printing, impressing, and reversing upon enamel and china from engraved, etched and mezzotinted plates and from cuttings on wood and metal...” He was primarily concerned with printed decoration on enamels; boxes, plaques, medallions, etc. His patent application failed and he moved from Birmingham to London where he continued to unsuccessfully apply for patents. He was involved in early printing on enamels at Battersea in London, and probably Bilston near Birmingham.Honey, 7; Savage, 30
Printing on enamel probably began around 1753 (a letter of Horace Walpole dated 7 September 1755 mentions a printed Battersea box), and by around 1756 his process was being used on some Bow porcelain, although the results were not excellent, perhaps as the glaze was "too soft and fusible", giving a tendency to blur the image. The colours of the 1750s were a "purplish or brownish black" or a "beautiful warm brick-red". By around 1760 there was some underglaze printing in blue.Honey, 7, 116–121, 120 quoted; Savage, 30
Five years after Brooks's first patent attempt, in 1756,Hildyard, Robin. (1999) European Ceramics. London: V&A Publications, p. 90. John Sadler (in partnership with Guy Green) claimed in a patent affidavit that they had spent the past seven years perfecting a process for printing on tiles and that they could "print upwards of Twelve hundred Earthen Ware Tiles of different patterns " within a period of 6 hours. Sadler and Green printed in Liverpool, where their trade included overglaze printing on tin-glazed earthenware, porcelain, and creamware.Honey, 295–296
Transfer printing on porcelain at the Worcester porcelain factory in the 1750s is usually associated with Robert Hancock, an etcher and engraver, who signed some pieces and had also worked for Bow. Richard and Josiah Holdship, the managers of Worcester, were very supportive and involved with Hancock's work. By the mid-1750s the Worcester factory was producing both underglaze prints in blue and overglaze prints, predominately in black.Dawson, 172–192; Honey, 7, 118, 220–224 Some printed pieces were in complicated shapes and included gilding, showing that the technique was at this point regarded as suitable for luxury products.Dawson, 186
From 1842 the United Kingdom Patent Office introduced a system of registered marks, usually impressed or printed on the underside of pieces. Transfer-printed designs were easily registered by submitting the transfers printed on paper. /mark/reg.htm The Potteries, "Ceramic Marks" The technology of transfer printing spread to Asia as well. Kawana ware in Japan developed in the late Edo period and was a type of blue-and-white porcelain.
Burleigh Pottery, made in Stoke-on-Trent, is the last pottery in the world to still use transfer printing on its ceramics.
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