How dinner plates are made
A freshly formed plate is about an inch wider than the one on your table, because the kiln shrinks it.
- stations
- 8
- things upstream
- 2
- raw sources
- 2
- step from the ground
- 1
The short version
Dry clay is blunged with water for about two hours, pressed into filter cakes and extruded into pugs. A slice of pug spins against a plaster mold on a jigger machine, which forms the plate from above. It dries, is trimmed on a wheel, sprayed with glaze and wiped clean at the foot before it enters the kiln.
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Blunge the clay
Dry clay, which arrives at one California factory in 600-pound bags, is stirred with water in a blunger about two hours. The result is a slurry whose consistency matters as much as a cake batter's.
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Press out the water
A hydraulic press squeezes water from the slurry and leaves waffle-like filter cakes of clay.
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Extrude the pugs
A pug mill forces the cakes into dense tubes called pugs. At the forming station a cutter slices them into small round cakes.
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Jigger the plate
A clay cake lands on a spinning plaster mold, and a jigger machine forms it from the top down. Bowls go the other way, on a jolly. Some factories instead press a damp powder in a die.
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Dry and trim
Warm air turns the wet clay into stiff greenware. Spinning on a wheel, each plate has its edge scraped smooth. Broken pieces go back to the blunger, so nothing is wasted.
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Spray and wipe
A worker centers each plate and sprays a set amount of glaze in a set pattern. The foot is then wiped on a belt, because glaze touching a kiln shelf would fuse the plate to it.
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Fire in the kiln
Plates are placed where the kiln's hot and cool spots suit each glaze, and a fire tender adjusts the gas through an eight-hour run. Other makers fire twice, once for the body and once for the glaze.
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Decorate and grade
Inspectors grade each plate first or second quality and polish the bottom. Lines that use decals apply them after the glaze and give the plate another firing.
Worth repeating
- The diameter of the typical dinner plate is estimated to have grown by 65% since 1000 AD.
- Pad printing, which transfers images with flexible silicone pads, was developed in the late 1940s.
Back to the ground
Follow every input upstream and dinner plate starts as these 2 raw sources.
Keep walking
Sources
Cite this page: "How dinner plates are made." Assembly Line, 2026-11-03. https://assemblyline.org/make/dinner-plate