The goal of this manufacturing process was to cast a form thin enough to give light a soft translucence.  Porcelain is an incredibly difficult material to scale up because of its shrinkage as it dries.  To solve this issue of the porcelains scalability I ran a material exploration of paper clay.

 

Paper clay is a mixture of paper fibers and of porcelain slip.  Different ratios of paper to porcelain yield different plasticity and strength properties.  The first mixture of paper clay was made with 1:1 ratio of paper clay pulp to porcelain.  This resulted in a strong but less moldable, plastic material.  The strength of this material unfired allowed me to create a form that would live in its green unfired state for use as a press mold.

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To shape this first iteration of paper clay, I took various plaster blocks and molds from past projects and I assembled them into a topology that would give a weightless movement to the form of my paper clay slabs.  I took my paper clay slurry, dried the slurry into a workable piece of clay and rolled it into a quarter inch slab perfect to shape but thick enough to use as a press mold.  After rolling the slab, its shape was cut once dry but still workable.  Touchups were made to the form and the creases and the surface was smoothed.  

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The photo and video above show the creation of each porcelain sconce via press mold.