Colorful ceramic products made in the majolica technique have been created by professional craftsmen from the ancient city on the Volga - Yaroslavl for over 20 years. The technology for making majolica includes many stages, ranging from the idea of the chief artist and the embodiment of the idea in clay sculpture to painting a ceramic masterpiece.
Majolica acquired its amazing name on the consonant Spanish island of Mallorca. It was through him that unique objects of art created on the basis of ceramics were delivered to Italy. In Russia, the technique of painting on wet glaze was revived by Yaroslavl masters.
The world-famous Yaroslavl majolica has been pleasing connoisseurs of ancient art with real masterpieces of miniature painting for more than 20 years. To get a bright glossy ceramic sculpture, you need to spend a lot of time and effort, since the technology of making majolica takes several stages.
Each new miniature is born in the studio of the chief artist in the form of a plasticine sculpture. In this form, the future majolica masterpiece is very easy to modify, as well as to work out various details. Then the work goes to the production workshop, where the craftsmen take a composition of boiling water and gypsum and carefully fill it with plasticine miniature. After cooling, the mass will solidify in the form of a sculpture and you can create an infinite number of copies without problems.
In the format shop, the molds are filled with slip (liquid clay). After a few minutes, the gypsum blanks are freed from this composition and left to dry. The technology for creating ceramic sculptures for the Yaroslavl majolica is based on the ability of liquid clay to adhere to the walls of the mold. The thickness of the clay products will depend entirely on the residence time of the slip inside the gypsum.
The slip itself is prepared according to a special recipe. For its manufacture, red clay is taken, which is aged in the quarry for more than one year. Due to this, it becomes plastic and easily combines with water. The slip is kneaded for 5 hours, after which it is left to rest for 24 hours. When the composition is ready, it resembles hot chocolate in consistency.
After removing the plaster mold, the craftsman obtains a clay product that remains soft enough. Thanks to this, workers in the assembly shop can combine various clay parts into a more complex composition and clean up the seams left after molding. Then the sculpture is dried for 2 days and sent to an oven heated to a temperature of over 1000 degrees. It is at this stage that the clay product is transformed into ceramics.
The cooled miniature is immersed in white enamel and left to dry, and only then sent to the artists for painting. The technology for making majolica can be called a very painstaking work. The sculptures are painted with special glassy paints and enamels, which instantly dry up after applying the miniature to the surface. At first, the colors seem dull and pastel, but after firing in the oven, the product acquires a unique glossy shine and pleases everyone with its splendor and beauty.
