Porcelain painting

In our showroom you can have a peek at how our expert painters bring to life the distinguished Kalocsa style with the gentle stroke of a brush. First, the painters draw the motives with pencil then the process is repeated with a black clack ink. The contours are filled with colour after the firing. The most popular method of porcelain painting is the so-called on-glaze method, but under-glaze and in-glaze porcelain painting is also well known.

The painter obtains the different colours in form of powder. This is mixed with turpentine and the viscous residue oil that comes from boiling down turpentine, which we call 'thick oil'. Currently we use ca. 50 colours and their different shades. Porcelain paints are actually a grist of low-melting coloured ceramic glass, which after being applied, still need to be fired. As a consequence of the firing, the paint melts into the surface layers of the glaze. Firing occurs usually at 820 °C in one of our three electric kilns.

Noble metal paints represent a special group of porcelain paints. The most common are gold paints and less frequently silver and platinum. Porcelain decoration can be done with two types of gold: matte or shiny. Both are a viscous black or brown liquid. The metal gold solution contains 8-12% gold, while the matt gold suspension contains finely ground gold dust and chemically dissolved gold with 18-30% gold content. During firing, the metal gold has a glistening luster and does not require subsequent working. Matt gold becomes matt after firing and therefore has to be buffed and polished with a fiberglass based plastic or marine sand. The thickness of matt gold layer is about 6 times that of shiny gold, and thus more decorative and resistant.