Brief History of Ceramic Imaging

At the turn of the 20 th century the process of “silk” screening was developed bringing a new technique for imaging ceramics and making it possible, for the first time, to “mass produce” ceramics with a desired image.The advent of photo-sensitive screens has replaced silk, and screen printing remains the dominant long run production technique.Screen printing is economical if the number of “prints” is high enough, typically 500+ for a four color image.The high cost of screen printing is a result of expensive equipment and numerous steps required in the process.

In the 1990’s Cromalin® Art, a photopolymer film carrying ceramic toners, made one of a kind photo-imaging of ceramics possible for the first time.Cromalin Art® has been widely adopted throughout Europe for creating permanent duplicates of photographs on ceramic. Because it requires many process steps, including color separations and hand registration of the color films, it is also an expensive process although far less expensive than screen printing one image.Thermal transfer and sublimation techniques were also introduced and can reproduce photographs on ceramic but are not as durable.These techniques use much lower temperatures and plastic surface treatments to image the surface of the ceramic.