For a little more than a decade, I lived in a 200-year-old house in Portsmouth, N.H., a town that reflected a more than a 300-year Sherburne family history. I had a vision of a hand-painted mural on the staircase wall that would follow that history from the family’s arrival in 1632 through to the modern day, with images of relevant people, places, and buildings that reflected the family’s influence on the city over the years. But I didn’t want to stop there. I thought individual images could be captured and printed on ceramic tiles and other materials to be used as decoration throughout the house.

Unfortunately, I was a little ahead of the times; it was possible, but not easy, to do that work back then. The hand-painted mural, sure; but custom ceramic tiles were a challenge. That’s so not true today!

Just over a decade ago, conventional screen printing was the most common printing methodology for ceramic tile. But since then, beset by demand for more customization, smaller lot sizes, and faster cycle times, ceramic tile manufacturers have turned to digital inkjet printing to address these market dynamics. These systems typically use UV-curable or eco-solvent inks, and more eco-friendly water-based inks are now making their way into the market. As a mature technology and an analog printing process, it also limited to some degree the flexibility of designs that could be produced.