Decalcomania

Decalcomania (from the French décalcomanie) is a decorative technique by which engravings and prints may be transferred to pottery or other materials. Today, the shortened version is “decal.”

Origins
Decalcomania was invented in England about 1750 and imported into the United States at least as early as 1865. Its invention has been attributed to Simon François Ravenet, an engraver from France who later moved to England and perfected the process, which he called “décalquer” (derived from French papier de calque, “tracing paper”). The first known use of the French term décalcomanie, in Mary Elizabeth Braddon’s Eleanor’s Victory (1863), was followed by the English decalcomania in an 1865 trade show catalog (The Tenth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association); it was popularized during the ceramic transfer craze of the mid-1870s. By c 1875 decalcomania designs printed in colored glazes were being applied to porcelain, an extension of transfer-printing, which had been developed in England since the late 18th century. The decalcomania was applied over an already-glazed surface and re-fired. The process began to be mechanized from the turn of the 20th century.

Artists
The surrealist Oscar Domínguez referred to his work as “decalcomania with no preconceived object.” He took up the technique in 1936, using gouache spread thinly on a sheet of paper or other surface (glass has been used), which is then pressed onto another surface such as a canvas. Dominguez used black gouache, though colours later made their appearance.

German artist Max Ernst also practised decalcomania, as did Hans Bellmer and Remedios Varo.

French surrealist Yves Tanguy used the technique in his 1936 works, Paysage I and Paysage II, which were included in the Guggenheim Museum’s exhibition, “Surrealism: Two Private Eyes” (4 June – 12 September 1999, New York).

Versions
In the 1950s and early 1960s, King Features Syndicate marketed a set of decalcomanias bearing full-color pictures of characters from its comic strips, including Flash Gordon, the Katzenjammer Kids, and Dagwood Bumstead. Intended for young children who might have difficulty pronouncing or reading the word “decalcomanias,” these transfers were marketed as “Cockamamies,” a deliberate mispronunciation. The term “cockamamy” or “cockamamie” has entered the English language with various slang meanings, usually denoting something that is wacky, strange or unusual. However, the expression “cockamamie” is attested by 1946, and reportedly as early as the 1920s.

Technique
Very often a white background is printed to emphasize the colors even if the decal is applied on a dark background. Then proceed with the other colors, lastly the black.

Above the colors, a coat of transparent paint with high tensile strength is finally printed, so that the decal has a certain resistance, especially when applied.

At this point the decal is finished, to transfer it you must put the sheet on which it is printed, in water for a few minutes, when you feel that the decalco glides (the water melts the glue of the paper on which it is printed) you transfer it on the desired object; once positioned, the excess water is discharged passing a soft rubber spatula on the decal surface (trying not to tear off the decal). The problem with this technique is that it is better not to use it on surfaces that absorb water (for example, if it is applied on a piece of paper, it undulates). The resistance, once dried, is good and durable over time. The decal has become obsolete in the mid -sixties, as mentioned above, for the advent of adhesives that are undoubtedly of more convenient use, not requiring water and even greater resistance.

Forms
Known almost exclusively by the public play, although it is less common, the principle of the decal dates back to the xix th century and to very different technical applications.

Leisure decal
Dry decal to scratch
It is a form of dry decals for children that was a great success from the mid -1970s to the mid -1980s. It is characterized by a board of color decorations on which the child places patterns and characters by scratching a transparent sheet of transfers using a pen or a coin. Letraset(United Kingdom), which invented dry transfers in 1959 is the pioneering company for the manufacture of this type of game. Faced with the infatuation of children around the world, many brands of dry decals have seen the day at the time: among the most popular, Action transfer and Panorama of Letraset, Kalkitos of Gillette, Trans’Rama of Jesco, Decorama of Touret, Transfer of Hemma, Decotransfer of the editions Dargaud, Decalco sports editions of the Lion. The only brand that has survived [ref. necessary] and still exists is Kalkitos which today belongs to a Singaporean company Ideas Empire.

Decalcomania with water or Waterslide
This one, the best known, is a process that allows to apply an image, usually small (a few centimeters) on any smooth support. The image is printed upside down, the foreground colors first, on a suitable paper. Soaked in water, the paper softens, the image is applied to the chosen support by rubbing gently, and the paper is removed: the image appears on the support. The decal of this type required a lot of attention because the image could fragment or stick imperfectly on the support. The advantage of the decal compared to a modern sticker is that there is no “background”: only the “printed” part sticks to the support, which easily allows non-rectangular shapes and parts transparent in the drawing.

Later, the image was in place, printed on a very thin transparent film and after soaking of the support paper, we held the image with a finger while removing the paper support (this decal was sometimes called decalcifying ), the difficulty being that the film does not crease.

Dry Transfers
Finally, a new form corresponds to the process of transfer characters: the image appears under the transparent plastic support and sticks to the chosen support by rubbing. This process, allowing the personalization of all types of everyday objects, experienced a great wave of popularity in the 1980s.

Self-adhesive decalcomania
One can add a fourth kind of decal, it is the decal sticker dry. In this case, the decal is directly self-adhesive. To apply it, remove the silicone protective paper and apply the pattern directly to the support, improve the attachment by pressing firmly with a plastic edge (credit card style for example) or dry with a hair dryer.

Around 1936, the painter Oscar Dominguez practiced a process close to the monotype, which he called “decal”, although there is no connection between these two techniques. His technique consisted in spreading gouache on a glossy surface and pressing on the wet paint another sheet of paper by making it move. He thus obtained accidental and abstract forms 1. Other surrealist painters also use this “decal of desire” or “decal without preconceived object,” as Dominguez called it.

Historical decal
This decal known to the public drift applications of lithography and the chromolithographie developed throughout the xix th century and reached a high degree of technicality.

Paper report
The invention of the paper report is due to the French engraver Simon François Ravenet [ref. needed], based in England, who worked for a porcelain factory in Chelsea. He imagines printing in intaglio (on copper plate) a particular paper, which allowed to postpone his drawing on the pieces of porcelain.

Alois Senefelder develops in the early nineteenth century century the lithography he invented, and which is the first printing method not based on relief. We draw or write on a limestone, upside down. In seeking to facilitate this operation, Senefelder develops the paper report: a paper specially prepared so that one can write and draw normally, at the place: applied then on the lithographic stone, the ink is postponed, the paper removed, and operations can be continued in the same way as if the drawing had been done directly on the stone. This principle will be repeated and amplified by chromolithography, which is a technological development of lithography in several colors. The final impression is made on a paper report: it is then transferred to objects in relief such as packaging,

By printing a color image on a transparent support, we can make imitations of stained glass, applied to windows, and later decorations of windows and advertisements: vitrauphanie.

Decal porcelain
The principle of the postponement finds a major interest in the porcelain impressions. Until then, porcelain decoration was done by hand. It was a specialist job that required great skill and a lot of time, even if it was to repeat pre-established, often traditional, motives. Once the decor is done, the pieces are put in the oven and the used paints are definitely integrated into the support. It was therefore possible, by the method of the report, to apply this same type of paints. The first reports, called decals, were made by the French engraver Simon François Ravenet in England, perpetuated by others, but remained limited to a single color until the appearance of lithography. The pattern is carefully created and then printed in as many copies as necessary. The decal is placed on the piece to decorate, soaked in a water bath that peels off the backing paper, and can be cooked. First printed in lithography, the decals can be printed by all the current techniques. The decal makes it possible to decorate any room.

In popular culture
In 1982, the decal is mentioned in the hit track by Richard Gotainer entitled The Mambo Decalco.

Fractals
The production of decalcomanias has not been confined to art. At Yale University fingerpaint decalcomanias have been analysed for their tendency, when the process is repeated several times on the same paper, to generate fractals.

Source from Wikipedia