Earrings

The process of making earrings is strangely a little bit like baking biscuits! I start by preparing a big, beautifully flat and smooth piece of porcelain clay, and with cutters (much like cookie-cutters), cut out a big batch of porcelain tiles. When the pieces are dry enough to be held without damaging them, I use a toothpick to drill tiny hole into the top of the piece, where the earring wire will thread through. With a sponge and scalpel, I make sure to smooth over the space around each wire hole to make sure the piece is perfectly flat.

Then, I leave the earrings to dry between two planks of wood. This is to keep all the tiles as flat as possible as they dry: porcelain has a long memory, and can occasionally curl or warp in the drying process, as it “remembers” the process of being rolled by a curved rolling pin. It can sometimes take a few days for the earrings to dry, but once they do, I get my mask on (safety first: porcelain dust can be dangerous) and sand each one down to be ultra-thin and flat. After that, they’re ready for their first firing at the kilns.

After the first firing, the pieces are sanded again to tidy up the edges and issues that might have come up in the kiln.

Then, I detail the pieces with glaze - a process like painting. This can take anywhere between 10 minutes to a couple of hours, depending on the detail. It can be really time consuming, but is probably my favourite part - it’s like designing miniature artworks in pairs.

Another layer of clear glaze is applied, and we’re back off to the kilns for second firing. Sometimes, I’ll then repeat the glazing step to add some additional gold or copper glaze, and fire the earrings a third time.

All earrings are checked for quality and any issues that might have come up in the kiln. By this time, they’re looking pretty different: tiles can shrink up to 10 or 15% from its original size, and patterns can be affected by high temperatures in the kiln.

When the tiles are finished, fired at least twice, paired up & checked for any issues, I thread on .925 sterling silver or stainless steel kidney wires to each, and attach them to display cards.

All in all, depending on the detail of the pattern involved, the process of making any single pair of earrings can often take several hours. It’s a labour of love - a lot goes into making pieces worthy of our ears!

Wondering how to take care of your earrings? Read more on the care page here.

Small dishes

Small dishes and plates start off in the same form as earrings do — by rolling one big slab of porcelain or speckled clay perfectly flat. The shapes are created with the help of giant cutters and sponges to clean up the shapes and make them as smooth as possible. While the clay is soft, they are stamped individually with a pattern & patch stamp on their reverse side.

Like earrings, all plates and dishes are fired once to bisque, then glazed with patterns and stoneware glaze, before being fired again. They are then fired for a third time if they will be finished with any gold or copper flecks.

Risograph prints

All pattern & patch prints are made on a risograph. Risograph prints are a little unusual, and have more idiosyncrasies than a normal digital print. Risograph printing is a bit like screen-printing crossed with a photocopier, which means the distribution of ink is different with every print. 

The files are prepared digitally, and run through to the printer like you might do when photocopying something. The risograph creates a ‘master’, not dissimilar to a mesh screen for a screenprint, and then printed in batches — with just one colour printing at a time. All the interesting details turn up in how the risograph interprets the digital file. Look up close and you’ll see some details that you mightn’t if the print was made on regular printer — perhaps some speckled edges where the printer converted a pattern, or some patches where colour is brighter, or darker where the ink was thicker.

All prints are designed digitally, and printed on envirocare paper, in limited runs.