What Is Sgraffito In Ceramics
Sgraffito in italian to scratch is a decorating pottery technique produced by applying layers of color or colors underglazes or colored slips to leather hard pottery and then scratching off parts of the layer s to create contrasting images patterns and texture and reveal the clay color underneath.
What is sgraffito in ceramics. The design is scratched on the surface of the pieces before the first firing and the final painting. From the byzantine emperors to the russian czars sgraffito has been the earthenware for the blue bloods of europe s finest houses. In these pieces everything white has been carved out with a small knife and loop tool. It s a painstaking and time consuming process with many different steps.
Sgraffito is the technique of scratching an image through a coloured slip to reveal the body beneath. The sgraffito ceramics are completely handmade today as they were centuries ago. Sgraffito pottery was once considered to be the vessels of kings. Scratched in the visual arts a technique used in painting pottery and glass which consists of putting down a preliminary surface covering it with another and then scratching the superficial layer in such a way that the pattern or shape that emerges is of the lower colour during the middle ages especially in panel painting and in the illumination of.
The piece is then fired to glazed with a clear.