Manufacturing Wiza Boleslawiec Pottery

This is a series of pictures taken by our Polish Pottery expert, Katarzyna (Kate) Swiatek, on one of her frequent visits to Boleslawiec and the factory Wiza.

The process used in making this pottery is long. Note that the pieces are air dried and fired before they are decorated. The quaility control process then becomes rather easy. When a fired piece is picked to be decorated, the decorator checks for any flaws. Decorators simply do not work on anything that is not category one.

The decorating process is either one of using a sponge stamp to add the pattern or making a hand painting. The process is time consuming.

It is at this time that occasional misteps are made. The pieces are, however, fired and put into a second quality category. Practically speaking, most people cannot tell the difference between a category one and a category two piece. Category two pieces are generally sold in the shops in Poland. Buyers do not notice the errors and are very happy with the prices that they get.

Exports are generally category one. The factories are very interested in maintaining their reputations so they do not sell something sight unseen that is not category one.

Wiza makes a very high quality product. To get price information, please go to this link. Polish Product Information Center

Special Boleslawiec region clay is first shaped.	Then it air dries.
It then spends about 8 hours on a conveyer belt slowly moving through the oven. In the last picture of this sequence you can see the conveyer belt and flame in the throat of the oven.	Kasia inspects pottery after the first firing.
After the first firing each piece is hand painted.	It is fired a second time. It is slowly heated, passes through an area at about 1200C and then slowly cooled. Here is cooled, but still very hot, pottery coming out of the oven.

You can get catalogs for this factory and others at Pottery Catalogs.