Biscuit Firing and Kilns

Firing ceramics is a bit like baking a cake, control of cooking time and temperature is critical. This is particularly so when the processes are so complex and take place at such high temperatures.

At Royal Stafford Tableware, the core is fired before the glaze is applied and baked on. This is called biscuit firing. "Cuit" is French for baked, so "Biscuit" literally means twice fired; once before the glaze is applied and then again afterwards.

Precise control of the kilns is essential.

At Royal Stafford Tableware, we use a tunnel kiln to fire our biscuit ware. The pieces of ware are placed onto Kiln Cars which run on tracks through a long tunnel with a firing zone in the middle.

Unfortunately, we cannot simply put the ware into the kiln, heat it up, let it soak for an hour and pull it out, there are several factors which require a slow and careful heating and cooling cycle.

Biscuit firing takes about 32 hours. The trucks continuously move very slowly through the kiln until they reach maximum temperature (1,130ºC), after about 20 hours.

All stages of firing are closely monitored as a mistake at any stage could be critical.