So renovating my house has clearly driven me insane because I cannot for the LIFE of me find tiles I like for my fireplace facade. Would I be descending further into madness if I tried to make my own? I’ve only ever coil-built some stuff and thrown ~5 things on the wheel in my lifetime, but I have time to experiment and would be happy to sign up for a class that could teach applicable skills.
Is this even possible with materials/equipment in the lab, given they will go over a brick fireplace which means a lot of heat? Do you know of plain tiles I could buy and glaze and get fired here instead? Any direction is helpful.
From what i know, you dont need to worry about the heat from the fireplace. We fire to cone 5, which is generally ovensafe after firing. We also have a slab roller in the ceramics room which can help you with rolling out even and flat sheets of clay. I dont know about premade base tiles though. Overall, it shouldnt be too hard! Depending on how big the area is, it could be a time consuming and repetitive task though. Good Luck!
A method that was used for a lot of tile designs historically was to stamp or carve an indentation of the design into the wet clay for tiles and then pour a thick slip made from a different color of clay into the channels, then after the slip dries scrape the top layer to clean up the edges. This has an advantage of making the pattern very durable because a lot of material needs to be chipped or worn away to remove the colored component, but makes things difficult if you want more than a two toned design, but you may want to consider that method.
We have a tile cutter somewhere in the MakeICT ceramics room, it lets you get exact sizes. Also have sandbags to weight down the tiles so less chance of warping. Good luck!!
