Ceramics Bensu. Studio and Shop
COME TO MY STUDIO-SHOP
SHOP FRONT AND WINDOW
1) The entrance to the studio-shop shows the name plate of our business. The front door and window can both be opened inwards which allows a hydraulic pallet truck to enter and leave 4000 tiles inside, due to this everything in front of the entrance it dismountable.
2) Our shop window displays antique Catalan tile designs.
FRONT ROOM DISPLAY ROOM AND SHOP
3) The left wall of the front room, which is the shop, has five vertical lines of shelves 20 cm deep to hold jars and tiles. The tiles are piled up in subjects, with a standing tile at the front, so the design can be seen.
4) The wall between where we work and the shop has a big space cut out of it, so we can work and watch the shop. In front of it, there is a large table for drawing and packing and on the left of it you can see our computer.
5) This is the right hand side of the room and on top of the shelf there is wood with a slight slant to display designs of up to three tiles high. Above this the wall is covered with white wood, which allows you to hit a nail into it at 45º and hang up plates wherever you like. The shelves were made wide, to be able to display jars at the top, the ones underneath are made to hold boxes with tiles of different sizes.
HALL
6) On the left there is a piece of wood that goes from one end to the other, slanted slightly with a holding bar at the bottom, which allow you to display large pictures of tiles resting on a shelf. The plates at the top are done in the same way as the ones of the right wall of the front room.
7) At the bottoms there are two sections of vertical shelves, the ones behind are fixed and the ones in front consist of four stands on wheels that can be moved out.
8) On the right is a large display of tiles that can be lifted out individually. How to do this is explained in the dictionary and on the same side is the door that goes onto the main room.
THE MAIN ROOM
9) On the third shelf up you can find plates prepared to decorate and on the ones above there is every design we have in our catalog, painted and fired so that people, who are learning to paint, can copy them. The last stand has two of the same design, the one on the left is painted but not fired and the right one is fired.
10) The right wall has 4 tile stands, the picture shows the first two, the farthest and the biggest is 120 cm high by 220 cm long, the next is 100× 90 cm. Each painter has his own trolley, with colors and brushes and they are all marked with a different colored tape.
11) The last two are table stands to sit while working with them. They hold six tiles vertically or horizontally. At the very end you see the window space and part of the shop.
THE SECOND HALL AND SILK SCREEN PRINTING ROOM
12) We have had to install these shelves so the tiles, once they have been prepared with glaze-base, can be left for at least 24 hours to dry, they can then be piled up, one on top of the other.
13) A small room where we do the screen printing and keep the screens.
14) A printing table prepared to use.
THE GLAZE-BASE AN COLORS AND THE KILN ROOM
15) The table that covers three basins holding different glaze-bases.
16) One of three basins which we use to prepare tiles, jars and plates with a glaze-base. Each basin has a lid, and the three lids form a table top.
17) The table an shelves where we keep and prepare all our colors.
18) The kiln and the shelves near by, where we keep the furniture and cranks for packing the kiln.
NOTE: I have not explained here how to work, if you want to learn how to do so, go into the dictionary and in the “MAJOLICA – THE METHOD OF WORKING” you can find a list that gives the different sections and the chain of working. My Ceramic Dictionary at the moment is only in English. Any help to translate it into Catalan or Spanish will be very welcome.