About the Original Hand Made Tile Company

About Original Hand Made Tiles

Caroline Pearce has been involved in art and design since she first went to Epsom School for Art and Design in the 1980's and more recently to Glasgow School of Art.

Since then, Caroline has travelled extensively throughout Asia.

It was during her travels that she became fascinated with ceramic functional ware and finishes from the Japanese culture and in particular Raku glazes which produce beautiful crazing effects.

Caroline has incorporated the Raku crazing effects into her designs for her tiles and plates. The tiles and plates are made by hand. Each tile and plate is pressed from a specialist raku clay into a mould, it is then removed and a tool is applied to the surface to give an uneven finish, it is then dried and bisque fired.

Designs are hand drawn using ceramic pencil and then painted before they are fired again. Once removed from the kiln liquid latex is applied to the design to create the black smoked areas on the finish product. Now they are glazed and the dried latex is removed leaving bare clay underneath. Finally the tile is fired in a raku kiln.

Once in the Raku kiln the tile is put under intense thermal shock by placing it under extreme temperatures very quickly. It is then removed at high heat by hand using raku tongs and placed in a sawdust pit where it bursts into flames but is very quickly starved of oxygen producing smoke, this process is called reduction which gives the unglazed areas a striking black smoked finish and allows the smoke to penetrate the crackle in the glazed areas creating beautiful grey smoked crazing. No two tiles are alike and when placed together, they create a beautiful piece of functional art.