Ceramic table numbers

I was taking a pottery class at Ruby’s Clay Studio when I realized I could use a language model to help design molds for clay. My wedding was coming up, and table numbers were the first thing I thought of making.

I’d never made a mold before. Working with Claude, I researched how to press slabs of clay into 3D-printed molds, with recessed designs that would come out raised on the tiles. I used the lettering from our wedding’s design guide and found a fern pattern for the project. Ferns were already a motif throughout the wedding.

From a drawing to a mold

The molds combined the fern artwork with the outlines of the numbers. Each tile used a different crop of the pattern. I enlarged the ferns so their details would have enough room to come through in clay.

The design also had to work in reverse. The recesses in the mold would become raised details, and the lettering had to be mirrored. One printed mold got that wrong: it produced a backwards number.

Working in clay

Getting a consistent thickness took more than setting the slab roller. Pressing displaced the clay, so we added four corner stops to the mold. A flat board could press down until it met those stops, setting the thickness of the tile.

I printed all seven molds and pressed two of each number in Soldate 60 clay. The molds released well with cornstarch. After trimming and cleaning up the tiles, I dried them flat and took them through bisque firing successfully.

The glaze

The final firing changed the result. I hadn’t consulted thoroughly enough about a yellow-salt glaze I used. The numbers came out brownish, losing the crisp contrast I wanted against the fern pattern.

We didn’t use them at the wedding. I’m considering reglazing them, but I need to learn that process first.