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Tile making has not changed much throughout its history of thousands of years, but the processes have become more streamlined.
Today, tile is made by pressing finely ground clay or stone (or a combination of various other materials) with a slurry water mixture into a flattened shape, typcially square or rectangular. When that mixture is dried, a glaze of some other material (such as flint or ore, which can be colored or artistically decorated) is applied on the mixture, and then the tile gets finished. Designs, engravings and silk screen patterns may be applied during these finishing stages. The finished, pressed material is then baked in a kiln for a process called “firing”.
For hundreds of years, the firing process was a multiple-staged exercise, as different firing temperatures yielded different finishing results for both the glaze and the clay, also called a bicottura process. Today’s modern techniques primarily use a single firing kiln (monocottura) and many technological advances ensure consistency and quality, including computerized inspection of every tile to measure size, shape, flatness and finish. The monocottura method was an Italian innovation, and one of the reasons that country leads the world in tile exports. These techniques also permit tile manufacturers to create porcelain tile that emulates many products such as marble, limestone and slate, as seen in the Tesoro line. |
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