Decalcomania, from the French décalcomanie, is a decorative technique by which engravings and prints may be transferred to pottery or other materials. It 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

Simon François Ravenet

Simon François Ravenet was a French engraver.He was born in Paris, where he studied engraving under Jacques-Philippe Le Bas before moving to London in 1750, where he founded a school of line engraving and is credited with the revival of engraving in England. He died in London...

, an engraver from France who later moved to England and perfected the process he called "decalquer" (which means to copy by tracing). The first known use of the French term décalcomanie, in Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Eleanor's Victory (1863), was soon followed by the English decalcomania in an 1865 trade show catalog (The Tenth Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association

Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association

The Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association of Boston, Massachusetts, was "formed for the sole purposes of promoting the mechanic arts and extending the practice of benevolence." Founding members included Paul Revere, Benjamin Russell, and others...

); it was popularized during the ceramic transfer craze of the mid-1870s. Today the shortened version is "Decal

Decal

A decal or transfer is a plastic, cloth, paper or ceramic substrate that has printed on it a pattern or image that can be moved to another surface upon contact, usually with the aid of heat or water. The word is short for decalcomania...

".

The surrealist Oscar Domínguez

Óscar Domínguez

Oscar M. Domínguez was a Spanish surrealist painter.Born in San Cristóbal de La Laguna on the island of Tenerife, Domínguez spent his youth with his grandmother in Tacoronte and devoted himself to painting at a young age after suffering a serious illness which affected his growth and caused a...

 (referring to his work as "decalcomania with no preconceived object") took up the technique in 1936, using gouache

Gouache

Gouache[p], also spelled guache, the name of which derives from the Italian guazzo, water paint, splash or bodycolor is a type of paint consisting of pigment suspended in water. A binding agent, usually gum arabic, is also present, just as in watercolor...

 spread thinly on a sheet of paper

Paper

Paper is a thin material mainly used for writing upon, printing upon, drawing or for packaging. It is produced by pressing together moist fibers, typically cellulose pulp derived from wood, rags or grasses, and drying them into flexible sheets....

 or other surface (glass

Glass

Glass is an amorphous solid material. Glasses are typically brittle and optically transparent.The most familiar type of glass, used for centuries in windows and drinking vessels, is soda-lime glass, composed of about 75% silica plus Na2O, CaO, and several minor additives...

 has been used), which is then pressed onto another surface such as a canvas

Canvas

Canvas is an extremely heavy-duty plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other items for which sturdiness is required. It is also popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame...

. Black gouache was originally used in Dominguez's practice, though colours later made their appearance.

Max Ernst

Max Ernst

Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...

 also practiced decalcomania, as did Hans Bellmer

Hans Bellmer

Hans Bellmer was a German artist, best known for the life-sized pubescent female dolls he produced in the mid-1930s. Historians of art and photography also consider him a Surrealist photographer.-Biography:...

 and Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo Uranga was a Spanish-Mexican, para-surrealist painter and anarchist. She was born María de los Remedios Varo Uranga in Anglès, Girona, Spain in 1908. During the Spanish Civil War she fled to Paris where she was greatly influenced by the surrealist movement...

. http://www.findarticles.com/cf_dls/m1248/4_89/73236324/p1/article.jhtml

In the 1950s and early 1960s, King Features Syndicate

King Features Syndicate

King Features Syndicate, a print syndication company owned by The Hearst Corporation, distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles and games to nearly 5000 newspapers worldwide...

 marketed a set of decalcomanias bearing full-color pictures of characters from King Features comic strips, including Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon

Flash Gordon is the hero of a science fiction adventure comic strip originally drawn by Alex Raymond. First published January 7, 1934, the strip was inspired by and created to compete with the already established Buck Rogers adventure strip. Also inspired by these series were comics such as Dash...

, the Katzenjammer Kids

Katzenjammer Kids

The Katzenjammer Kids is an American comic strip created by the German immigrant Rudolph Dirks and drawn by Harold H. Knerr for 37 years...

 and Dagwood Bumstead

Dagwood Bumstead

Dagwood Bumstead is a main character in comic artist Chic Young's long-running comic strip Blondie. He first appeared sometime prior to 17 February 1933....

. Intended for young children who might have difficulty pronouncing or reading the word "decalcomanias", these transfers were marketed as "Cockamamies", a deliberate mispronunciation of that word. The term "cockamamy" or "cockamamie" has entered the language with various slang meanings, usually denoting something that is wacky, strange or unusual.

The production of decalcomanias has not been confined to art. At Yale University

Yale University

Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...

 fingerpaint

Fingerpaint

Fingerpaint is a kind of paint intended to be applied with the fingers; it typically comes in pots and is used by small children, though it has occasionally been used by adults either to teach art to children, or for their own use....

 decalcomanias have been analysed for their tendency, when the process is repeated several times on the same paper, to generate fractal

Fractal

A fractal has been defined as "a rough or fragmented geometric shape that can be split into parts, each of which is a reduced-size copy of the whole," a property called self-similarity...

s.http://classes.yale.edu/Fractals/Panorama/Art/Decalcomania/Decalcomania.html

External links

• Works using decalcomania by Max Ernst
  Max Ernst
  Max Ernst was a German painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism.-Early life:...
  
  
• Industrial Transfers and the Art of Decalcomania
• History of Decals