Lace Porcelain Art
Lace Porcelain Art
The ease and elegance, as well as the similarity to the woven lace gave the name to lace porcelain. Most often, the figurines appear to us as girls and young women, often ballerinas or dancers in a lush, airy dress, which consists of fine lace with small holes. A specially selected soft colors, such as pink or blue, make these figures even more light, soft and weightless. For its uniqueness and singularity, they are highly valued throughout the world.
These fine porcelain figurines made by a process known as drape lace. It turns the delicate lace and other cotton fabric in porcelain. Fabric draped by hand, then dipped in porcelain slip and after heat treatment transformed into delicate porcelain patterns. The process is believed to have been developed in ancient China, where raw silk was used.
Lace Porcelain Art
However, the most famous example is the Dresden Porcelain – after the city where it was invented, and where at one time there were a lot of factories that use this technique. Dresden lace was produced in the late 18th-early 19th century. But due to the imperfections of manufacture (not sufficiently high firing temperature) delicate lace were quite fragile and could be broken at the slightest touch. That is why lace porcelain of the time is very rare and it costs so much. Almost every statuette is “chipped” – victims of time and mechanical effects.
Today, when you create “lacy” statuettes using real lace, which is impregnated with porcelain mass (each manufacturer has his own secret of special mass for the impregnation and further strength), and then still wet, attached to the sculptures. In furnaces at temperatures over 1300 degrees textile base burns out and porcelain lace remains forever.