Ceramics Factory Tour

I joined an Explorers Group here. The members take turns scheduling tours of interesting places. There are all sorts of vetted tours from which to choose. These tours can be a hike, a museum tour, a painting class, a cooking class and more. They are always day trips but depending how far out of town you travel it could be a very full day. I think the maximum travel time allowed is 2 or 2.5 hours. But with bad traffic, that could mean a long day.

The first of these I've done is to travel to a ceramics factory about an hour away. Traffic was favorable and we were actually able to give the car's engine some speed to deal with. As you can see from this photo, at times we were actually driving fast.

I was supposed to meet the rest of the ladies at 9:30 at the factory. At 8:00 my driver, Pak Oky, called one of the other drivers to get directions or possibly to follow. The other lady was already there! She had met a couple of other ladies, also there very early. The group of them happened to see a golf/country club and so they went there for coffee before venturing on to the factory. I met those ladies there. Eventually we met the rest of the ladies at the factory but here are a couple of photos near the factory.

I don't know if everyone knows this, but my mother and I had a small ceramics studio in her home for a long time. Because of this I had a special interest in a ceramics factory. They create ceramics by 3 methods: manual, semi-automatic and automatic. Manual is the one I have used. You pour liquid clay slip into a mold, wait, pour out the excess, then let the thing dry, remove it, etc.

The semi-automatic method is used with objects with no handles, knobs, etc. This would include plates, bowls, etc.With this method, disks of workable clay are pressed and shaped around a form. This method still requires a worker.

The automatic process works by having large logs of clay loaded into an automated system that slices the clay, places it, presses it and trims it all without human intervention.

Perhaps my favorite process was the cleaning of any sharp edges with automatic sanders and sponges.

Naturally everything is fired in huge racks that are moved through kilns on large tracks.

They do produce some products that are not glazed, but most are glazed. Again, an automated glaze spray booth. If underglazes are used to decorate, they are applied on decals rather than by hand painting. The department of underglaze decal appliers is 100% women based on what we saw. Here are some bowls with their decals waiting for firing.

This place was extremely clean and was a very interesting tour. After our tour we traveled back to town to their shop. They sell some of the pieces they make for customers around the world and gave us a small discount on top of some major stock reducing sales. I bought myself a Lenox tea cup and saucer in a pattern called meadow butterflies or something like that. I don't remember the brand name but I also bought 4 small plain white ceramic rice bowls and 2 ceramic serving plates with a red stem design that goes nicely with our Corelle dishes we brought with us.

In December, my group is field testing a possible new tour.