Michele Cobb

Rita gave us a brief demonstration after which we started our 'masterpieces'.

We each took along a slightly domed blank, with two layers of hard white on the front and two layers of counter-enamel on the back. Firstly, we cleaned our blanks with white spirit, or Polyclens, on a dust free cloth. Next, we traced our designs onto tracing paper and stuck this, using masking tape, onto a sheet of carbon paper (Rita uses dressmakers' carbon). This was then positioned over the blank and held in place with tape on the back. We then traced over our designs using a hard pencil, and removed the carbon and tracing papers. Things were looking good.

Our colours were mixed and ground on glass tiles (or pieces of glass with ground edges). Rita used underglaze colours which, being pure oxides, need an equal amount of printing flux and a few drops of medium. I was using overglaze colours, which are already fluxed. The colour was mixed with the medium, to a perfectly smooth consistency, using a glass muller or glass

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