Crockery, decorated

Silicate ceramics are generally alumino-silicate based materials obtained from natural raw materials. They exhibit a set of fundamental properties, such as chemical inertia, thermal stability and mechanical strength, which explain why they are widely used in construction products (sanitary articles, floor and wall tiles, bricks, tiles) and domestic articles (crockery, decorative objects, pottery). They are often complex materials, whose usage properties depend at least as much on microstructure and aesthetics as on composition. Silicate products with an exclusively technical application (refractory materials, insulators or certain dental implants) will not be explicitly discussed in this chapter. 

Melamine-formaldehyde (MF) is qualitatively better than UF. It is, therefore, used in more demanding applications such as crockery, various electrotechnical articles and decorative panels. 

Ceramic materials are commonplace in everyday life, e.g. floor and wall tiles, crockery, wash-basins, baths and decorative pottery and tiles, and also include the cuprate... 

These products, used in constmction (enameled bricks and tiles), for domestic uses and as crockery (jugs, pots, etc.), are generally covered with an engobe whose pores are finer than those of the shard. This engobe constitutes a smooth and regular siufacing intended to mask the coloring of the shard and to be used as decoration base. 

---