Wedgewood Handpainted tiles from CL ad

[Lily left the valley]

I have to admit, this Craig's List ad sounds really dicey as to how the poster got their hands on them. Still, they are stunning tiles so I wanted to share what I found.

[Manalto]

Beautiful. I like the way the seller pinpointed the date of origin, "circa 19th century."

[Gothichome]

Lilly, these tiles are a partial (or the whole) set of surround tiles in the preraphaelite style of the mid to late 1800’s. They tell a heraldic story or fable. You would need to know the English heraldic stories to pick out what they represent.
Did a bit of google research, here is a set.
minton heraldic tiles
Ops, that didn’t work try this.
http://oldhouseliving.com/2010/04/21/th ... olimont/3/

[Manalto]

They depict novels by Sir Walter Scott. Look in the upper left-hand corners.

[1918ColonialRevival]

These are British and are somewhat uncommon in the US. As Manalto and Gothichome said, they are scenes from stories written by Sir Walter Scott (I believe they are from the Waverly Novels, but it's been a long time since I took English Literature). They date to the late 1870s/early 1880s.

I believe there should be more to the set.

[phil]

makes me wonder if one could lift the images and transfer them to something like the printers they use to make coffee cups. they use a heat transfer process and quite durable. although not original you could have as many as you wanted. I like the one with the designs.

[Manalto]

I like the one(s) with the designs, too. I prefer to see figural illustrations in public spaces like schools, libraries, courthouses, etc.

There's a process of pottery decoration called transferware that's been around for over 250 years. (I'm not saying that was the process for the SWS tiles.)It can be quite beautiful but its popularity has waned in recent years.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_printing

[phil]

My uncle had a pad printing business. with that they print on irregular objects using raised printing pads. the detail is limited and he did things like printing the golf course names on golf balls or the bottom of ashtrays.

in my printing career I worked with machines that are used for proofing in this system the image is cast upon a sheet containing pigment and where the laser hits the sheet it transfers to a transfer sheet which is a piece of mylar behind it.
the cyan would load and the laser would transfer all the cyan image , then it would eject the cyan master and load magenta then the laser would image the magenta to the transfer sheet , and so on through yellow and black. those are the process colors for color printing. they could also do spot colors for example is it had a brown background it would be kept separate.

once all the colors were transfered to the transfer sheet it would then be put through hot rollers and with a sheet similar to the paper used on the actual print job. the colors then transferred to this sheet.

the results were usually poster sized images with clarity like youd see in a national geographic. it was a dot for dot system meaning that the actual spots on the master were the same as they would be on the printed sheet. with offset and most kinds of printing the image is either ink or no ink , there are no areas with weak ink. the halftomes are broken into dots for this reason. the company I worked for improved this technology and it changed the whole industry so now when you look at your evening paper and see color pictures or if you pick up a magazine they image quality is of much higher quality than it once was.

at one point the dots were made photographically by transferring the image through a special screen ( called a magenta contact screen) and that would create the different sized dots. with laser technology it is a digital image and instead of this grid of spots we now have teeny tiny spots made with the laser. the laser is on or off when it's on it creates image when its off it creates blank space. the technology replaced the use of photographic film with digital technology so it sort of went from analogue to digital.

the screening methodology also changed. early printed pieces had a screening , 133 lines per inch was common. with the newer technology they created a system where rather than varying the dot size, the spots were all microscopic sized dots and the frequency was changed instead of the dot size. this is called FM screening ( frequency modulation) You have ot look with a magnifying glass to see the effect. It resulted in a more automated and dependable system. no more film and chemicals. previously big negatives were used ot make printing plates which are sensitized aluminum sheets. now the laser can image directly on the printing plate and it has a photopolymer coating , when it is imaged it retains and attracts ink , where it is not imaged the photopolymer washes away and this is the non image area.

the image area is ink receptive and the plate is kept damp. the water is repelled from the image area and retains ink. the non image area is kept wet and ink won't stick to that area.
the plate holds the ink and transfers it to a blanket cylinder. the blanket is a sheet of rubber. the paper passes between the blanket cylinder and the impression cylinder and the ink is squeezed on to the paper.

only one color is done at a time, the press has units and each unit is for one color so a typical press may go yellow cyan magenta then black and then there may be a spot color, lets say a brown background. often a clear ink is put on top and UV cured resulting in a shiny appearance with a bit of a protective coating.

Its quite a mechanical feat to have the press running all these colors and the paper is transferred from one unit to the next through the machine and it cant' vary even a thousandth of an inch in registration or it will show the issue. you have like 30 cylinders which hand off and accept the sheet without it moving position.. so we had to adjust all the cams and pressures of the grippers so it could do this properly.



with the proofing,, the print buyers would view this sheet, it might cost a thousand to do the proof. once they signed off on it it would be considered a contract proof and the color and image quality of the final product would be expected to be the same.

in this way they can view the actual job dot for dot..

quite a convoluted process but the heat transfer and methodology could be used in other interesting ways.

you do see color images that are transfered to coffee cups using a system that might be somewhat similar. with this system the ink is very well adhered , they can go through a dishwasher and handle use without the image coming off.

the older systems were used but as soon as you require things like etched copper plates that might work for industry but not for individuals. the coffee cup system must be quite cheap. its basically a heat transfer, much like an iron on transfer. I bet the transfers could be done on little more than a laser printer and be of at least acceptable quality.

It doesn't seem like it would be a huge feat to change from transferring to coffee cups to transferring to tiles. same kind of surface..

with inkjet and laser printers it's different technology and the ink is basically sprayed on the paper. these inks have limits though, printing ink is more like paint, it's tough. laser ink is more like a pigment than a paint so it can't usually be used so well in situations where it is permanent.

printing on plastics presents other issues, screen printing works and so does pad printing because you can then use epoxy inks. these inks can stand abuse but they are normally limited in resolution.

the coffee cups must be some sort of inkjet system because these are not super expensive and they can be done in very small quantities in a profitable way and with quite high image quality and durability.