Fillin´ it

Ok! On Thursday pressing clay into molds started. The schedule is so far holding up pretty nicely.
As a first thing we moved to a bigger room to another workshop, as the molds were drying up with a fan-heater in the ceramic workshop.
This type of press mold technique is a new one to me so there was a little bit of learning.
Ugis Pucens did the wooden frames for the molds to get the right thickness on the tiles. He had used this technique before so he knew what he was talking about.

Because there are a lot of tiles to be made it is not possible to let the tiles dry in the molds, instead the clay needs to be removed shortly after the pressing is done. Two sides of the wooden frames are glued together, so the frames can be opened just pulling two corners apart. Quite easy.
Baby powder is also used on the surface of the mold to help to remove the clay.
It doesn´t  really matter how precise the molds are anyways, they tiles get hits because of all the handling, especially the edges. So thats why there are these 0,5 cm marginals on each corner, to be cut away after the clay has dried enough to have the edges as sharp as possible.

The clay needs to be hammered down so it fills all the details. This also requires a technique of it´s own so no gaps or wrinkles are left on the ready one. Because most of the molds were carved straight on the plaster as negatives, this was the first time to see most of the forms positive!
And it´s looking promising. Looking forward for the results of the glaze tests.