Here is a single tile which is navigable in 3D space. If you look at the triangles you can see they have a slight curvature to make the form more organic.
The plaster pouring process air bubbles are to bee avoided
First handmade tile
Molds ready for casting
Here are all 7 molds in action. I don’t know the English word for the process. Porcelain clay is pressed into the molds by hand, instead of using liquid porcelain clay. It makes the molds dry faster.
Even though I had 7 molds, it was very time-consuming, as the molds had to dry after making 2 tiles pr mold.
A critical moment the project almost broke down
I knew I wanted a mudded polluted gold glaze for tiles and very dark deep red for the heart. While the ceramic school I attend has lots and lots of glazes including gold and red glazing, none of the reds were deep enough, and the gold glaze was a too perfect polished gold color. I found a glaze producer in the UK who made a very deep red and a mudded gold complementing each other in the right way. As it happened, no matter how I applied the glaze it just became completely dark when it was fired at 1260 C. I was very close to seising the project for good. My teacher saved the project. She said that maybe a small decreasement in temperature could change the surface. After several test firings, the gold emerged at 1230 C. The rest was a matter of applying the glaze and having the tiles fired in a separate own, programmed to 1230 C.
Remember: Gold can't cure a lonely heart
How it was made: Gold can't cure a lonely heart
This sculptural wall art is made out of tiles. The tile was modelled in Blender 3D.
This is the first impression of how the ceramic wall art tiles would look; I really liked the form and pattern created by the tiles.
Here are the gold tiles simulated. I immediately liked them and wanted to create them in real life.
I used shapeways.com to get the tiles 3D printed because my own 3D printer wasn’t precise enough. Thereby I could get the level of precision I wanted. Shapeway.com can print a 3D model and then cast a 3D ceramic model from it. I ordered two ceramic prints of the tile with and without the organic curvature on the triangels. I did this to be absolutely sure the organic form worked as expected in real life. It did 🙂 I ordered a plastic tile for mold making. Now I realised for the first time that this project was going have considerable development costs, the 3D print costed me 150 Euros alone.
This is the 3D printed plastic tile. The mold size needs to be of a certain thickness in order to suck water out of the clay.
Here is the plaster for the molds (in popular called plaster of Parise). It is a certain plaster type used for ceramic work.
Plaster mixing.
The 12 kg. porcelain clay used for the tiles
Tools used
