slip. This slip has a gray or drab colour, and is so perfectly smooth (for the better kinds of ware), that not the slightest grittiness can be detected in it. The slip is poured into a slip-kiln, a large flat kind of open oven, in which a fire beneath raises the slip to such a temperature, that the water gradually evaporates, and leaves the mixture in the proper state as to consistency. Every fragment of stone or clay in the mixture (for the finest porcelain) has had to pass through sieves, whose meshes do not exceed one threehundredth of an inch in diameter; and being thoroughly kneaded by machinery after the evaporation, the substance becomes as fine, pliable, and homogeneous as can well be imagined. For coarser work the preparation, as well as the choice of materials, is less important; but the mixture is brought to pretty nearly the same condition as to stiffness. All these processes are conducted in buildings which are among the dirtiest in a bank; but now we come to the cleaner work-shops, where the material is to undergo its very remarkable transformations. And, first, for the throwing-wheel, or potter's-wheel,-that simple piece of apparatus which we know, from Bible history, has been in use from the very earliest times. Nothing can well be more simple than a potter'swheel it is a stand about three feet high, with a flat board, or tablet, on the top; and the stand and tablet are made to rotate rapidly by a band connected either with a windlass or with some other moving machinery. Provided the tablet on the top of the stand be made to revolve rapidly horizontally, the immediate object is answered. A piece of the clay, large enough to make any one vessel, is placed upon the tablet; the tablet and clay are made to revolve; the workman, called the thrower, sits in horseback-fashion in front of his machine, and then the operations commence. To describe how an urn, or a jug, or a cup, is made from a mass of rude clay, is no easy matter: the thrower seems to have almost a magical power over his clay, bidding it to assume any form he may desire. The general process has been thus described: "With his hands, wetted in an adjacent vessel of water, he presses the clay while rotating, and brings it into a cylindrical form; this cylinder he forces again down into a lump; and he continues these operations squeezing the clay into various shapes-until he has pressed out every air-bubble from the body of clay. Then, pressing his two thumbs on the top of the mass, he indents or hollows it, as a first germ of the internal hollow of the vessel. Once having the least semblance of a cavity within, he proceeds, with a rapidity almost marvellous, to give both the outward and the inward contour to the vessel. With the thumbs inside and the fingers outside, he so draws and presses and moulds the plastic material, as to give to the outside a convexity, to the inside a concavity, and to the whole substance an uniform consistency, without breaking the clay or disturbing the circular form of the vessel.” Whatever be the vessel-a cup, jug, basin, or any other with round surfaces-it is made in this way; and there are few mechanical operations on which a spectator would look with more surprise, arising from the dexterity of the workman. If the vessel made is to have a handle, such as a tea-cup, the handle is made separately, in a mould or by some other means, and is then fixed on by a little slip, which acts as cement. If there are to be raised ornaments in the vessel, these ornaments are cast separately in moulds, and cemented on in a similar way. If there is to be a spout, such as that of a tea-pot, the operations again are of a very similar kind. In short, the process of throwing can only give a perfectly circular form; and anything in the vessel which deviates from this circular form must be produced in some other way. All which the thrower cannot effect, in giving roundness and smoothness to his work, is accomplished by the turner, who turns the ware, while in a partially dried state, at a common lathe. Another wholly distinct kind of work is pressed ware, comprising such flat articles as saucers, plates, and dishes, which are too broad and flat to be conveniently produced by throwing. In this kind of work, instead of placing the wet clay on a mere flat tablet, it is placed on a plaster of Paris mould, which at once gives the principal surface to the article to be made; while the other surface is fashioned by the hands and tools of the workman. A third description of ware is that which, from its complicated forms, can neither be thrown nor pressed: it must be cast in moulds. All the more costly kinds of porcelain require this process to a greater or less extent. In all such cases mould-making must precede the casting, and modelling must equally precede the mould-making. It therefore devolves upon the modeller, in the first instance, to exercise such taste as may lead to the production of articles worthy of the district; and hence the importance of Schools of Design, and all such institutions in a pottery district. The models are made in clay, but the moulds are made of plaster of Paris. If the article to be moulded be a plate, saucer, dish, lid, spout, or handle, the clay is used in its plastic or stiff state; and the process is pressing rather than casting; but if the form of the vessel or ornament be intricate, the clay is brought to a liquid state, and is poured into the moulds, where it gradually consolidates. All these various modes of shaping pottery, earthenware, or porcelain, are adopted while the clay is yet cold and unbaked; but all the ware alike must be baked before it will be fitted for its object. The ware is left to get quite dry by exposure to the air, and is then placed in the biscuit-kiln. This kiln is a large, lofty kind of oven, surrounded on all sides by fires, so that the interior may be kept at any required heat. Before the oven is heated, the ware is placed in the saggers before noticed, which are oval vessels made of very refractory fire-clay; the ware is then shielded from the smoke and dirt of the kiln, and the saggers are heaped one upon another until the kiln is completely filled. The door is then closed, the fires lighted, and the ware exposed to a fierce heat for forty | small camel-hair pencils. The colours are mineral or fifty hours, until all the moisture is driven off, and materials mixed with oils and turpentine; and gold is the clay converted into a kind of semi-vitreous sub- used exactly in the same way, so that, when laid on, stance. When the fires have been sufficiently cooled it looks anything but the brilliant material which it to allow the kiln to be emptied, it is found that the will afterwards appear. Every degree of artistic skill ware presents a very different appearance from before; is called for in these painting-rooms, from that which it is less dense, more clear in its colour, and less is merely shown in drawing a narrow stripe round a earthy in texture: it is now called biscuit. Some cup, to that which exhibits itself in a highly-finished of the most exquisite modern specimens of porcelain, landscape on a salver or urn. There is a sort of subintended wholly for ornament, are left in the biscuit division in the labours of the painting-room, according state, without any glaze on them: if well made, they to the variations in talent: one person takes flowers, equal in fineness and delicacy the purest alabaster. another foliage, another animals, a fourth landscape, a fifth figures, a sixth heraldic bearings, and so on. The enamel-kilns, in which the ware is baked again after the painting and gilding, require much more delicate management than any of those before alluded to a slight want of tact here may ruin a whole suite of costly porcelain. The burnishing of the gilt portions is effected after the firing, by women and girls, who employ burnishers of blood-stone or agate.—All this work of painting, gilding, and burnishing, is done before the glazing: the union with the ware would not otherwise be durable. All the ware for usual purposes, from brown earthenware to the most exquisite porcelain, requires to be glazed before being applied to use: it would be too absorbent, and not sufficiently durable, without glazing. The glaze is a liquid which usually contains some preparation of lead, and generally some kind of salt. The exact nature and proportions of the ingredients are among the secrets of the manufacturers; but lead is understood to be a very general component: and the health of those employed in this work is said to suffer in consequence. Anything which will form glass, will by that property form glaze, for they are in fact two names for the same substance; since glaze is nothing but glass applied in a liquid form to the surface of another material; and as there are differences in the composition of flint, crown, plate, and bottle glass, so there may be at least as many differences in the composition of glaze. The ingredients are mixed into a liquid form, in large wooden troughs. The workman or dipper takes the articles of ware one by one, and dips each into the liquid so dexterously, that while every part shall be covered, there shall be but little surplus glaze to drain off. The way in which he manages that the parts touched by his fingers shall not be deprived of their due share of glaze, is one of those examples of manipulative skill which so many of our manufactories exhibit. The dipped ware is placed in the glaze-ovens, which bear a good deal of resemblance to the biscuit-kilns; but the care to prevent any smoke or dirt from touching the ware is much greater, the heat is much less intense, and the firing is continued for a much shorter space of time. The fire converts the liquid into a true glass, which binds with the surface of the biscuit-ware so firmly as never afterwards to separate. A heap of crockery fragments, an utter wreck in all other respects, still possesses its brilliant glossy surfaces. Perhaps there is no other example in manufactures of a varnished or polished surface so durable and unchanging as glaze. If the ware be common white ware, the processes are ended; but if there are to be coloured and gilt decorations, another train of operations is called for. The painting-room of a porcelain manufactory is an interesting place. The work-people, women as well as men (and women more frequently than men), hold each an article of porcelain in the left hand, usually supported by some kind of stand, and paint with In that very useful production, the blue-printed ware, the pattern is engraved upon a copper-plate; the ink or blue paint is a viscid mixture of cobalt, flint, oil, tar, and other substances; and a print is taken from the plate with this ink on a piece of very thin but tough paper. The paper is handed to a girl called the cutter, who cuts away from it as much of the unprinted part as is not wanted; and a woman, called the transferrer, places the paper, with the inked side downwards, on the biscuit-ware which is to receive the pattern. She rubs the paper with a roll of flannel in such a way as to transfer the ink from the paper to the biscuit-ware; and by washing the ware immediately afterwards in water, all the paper is washed off in fragments, leaving the inked pattern on the ware. This is on many accounts a very singular process; for it involves the destruction of what is really a copper-plate engraving for each plate or saucer, however cheap that may afterwards be sold; and the spectator is not a little puzzled to understand how the substance of the paper can be washed away without getting rid of the ink also. The ink or paint has a dirty brown appearance when laid on, but the heat of an oven and the subsequent glazing bring out its lively blue tint. To carry our descriptive details to a greater degree of minuteness would be beyond the province of this work: indeed we fear that some readers may already think that they have been drawn into too many workshops and banks. It may be very prosaic; and we feel tempted to show the reader, as a relief, how far poetry and pottery have been brought together in some minds. The most comical of all poetry, perhaps, (in part because it is not meant to be comical,) is a description of a manufacture, "done into rhyme." There is a poem called the 'Potter's Art,' some twenty years old, whose author was too modest to show his name upon the title-page. The first Canto introduces us to the Israelites, the Athenians, the Spartans, the Etruscans, and the Romans, with a view to poetizing on their pottery. We then come nearer home, and the historical gives way for a time to the manipulative "How bodies new their varied forms acquire, The digging of the clays and flints, and the transference to Staffordshire being duly noted, the labours com mence: "First we blunge (Amalgamate and blend) the liquid flint And moisten'd clay, each of proportion'd stint, Into a cistern thrown, and there well maul'd With wielded paddle-staff (a blunger call'd), Until the blended matter, all afloat, Thin slip becomes, and slops the labourer's coat." It is a delectable idea to give definitions of the technical terms as the poet proceeds! The 'slip' is evaporated, the clay prepared, and the thrower begins his work: "The moist pliant lump, now formless, rude, Rising an urn, an ew'r, a bowl, a can ; Again have brought them to a ruddy hue, And burnt away the menstruum of the blue, Leaving the cobalt to its tincture true. We deem this short remark may here suffice, Nor would too tediously partic'larize." -A very considerate step. Following upon this is a completion of the manufacturing processes, and an acknowledgment how unequal the 'Muse' is to describe all the beauties of lustre-ware' and other varieties of the art. Then comes a history of the manufacture, from Confucius to Wedgwood; and the whole is wound up by a contemplative glance at the potter's ware when it is fulfilling its destined purposes :— "The large tureen, the all-accomplish'd dish, But the Muse' finds greater pleasure in the crockery To find the grateful breakfast ready set, (Of olden date, in favour always new,) The steaming pot, with bohea steep'd to stint, After sending the newly-formed ware to be dried, But here the poet leaves the ware, and sings of the turned, handled, and fired, we are invited to a new spectacle: "The pond'ring Muse here certain stanzas spares To meditate how flat and hollow wares Are press'd and fashion'd, all on plaster blocks, breakfast itself, where we will leave him. A WALK THROUGH THE SHOW-ROOMS. If we would see what Staffordshire can really produce, an hour should be spent in the show-rooms of The plates, and pots, and so forth, being ready, the those manufacturers who make porcelain as well as saggers and the kiln come into requisition : "Let none forbid the sagger's fame to sing, One on another placed, the sagger bung, While the ware is baking, the Poet relates a tale concerning a bewitched maiden in one of the Staffordshire villages; and he then resumes his labours. The baked ware is 'overlooked,' and is then taken to the blueprinter, whose work is duly commemorated in pent ameters. We are next told that "The printed biscuit-wares do not admit Of further progress till the oven's heat commoner ware. Yet it is the common ware that employs the bulk of the work-people, and that has made most of the fortunes among those who are high up on the ladder of good luck. It is the common ware that mainly supports the seventy or eighty thousand inhabitants which the Pottery district now contains. It is the common (or rather the middle-class) ware which has given our pottery a reputation all over the world. We may usefully read what Mr. Kohl says of our Potteries, potters, and pottery-ware; for he institutes a comparison with the state of things on the continent, with which he was previously more or less familiar. "English earthenware," he says, "is one of the finest and most complete articles in the world; and if all other things were equally perfect, this would be a world of perfection indeed. We know little of English earthenware in Germany, beyond tea-pots and milkjugs partly because we are content to put up with things of an inferior quality, and partly because many of the articles in common use in England have not yet a practical way. Many of the statuettes and small busts which are now to be seen so plentifully in the London shops are exquisite specimens of biscuit-ware; and though the lace-coverings of some of the Cupids and Venuses may be prettinesses rather than artistic merits, yet their manufacture is a curious specimen of ingenuity. This lace is to real lace what coral is to coral-fishes,-the outer crust of something which has once been withinside. A piece of lace is dipped into liquid slip, of which it imbibes a certain quantity; the lace is dried; and the subsequent baking burns away the lace from within its delicate porcelain envelope. become matters necessary to us. It would be difficult to enumerate all the articles here manufactured of clay. There are tea and coffee services of all imaginable sizes and kinds, ornamented in the most varied manner, and yet always with good taste. Then there are endless varieties of vessels, large and small, pitchers, jugs, dishes, bowls, basins, and every kind of apparatus for washing, and for bathing the feet and the different parts of the body: articles with which an English sleeping-room is usually so richly furnished, and of which the uninitiated stranger is often at a loss to divine the use. All these things in England are not only handsomely ornamented, but are also made large. The English complain, and not without reason, of the diminutive size of most of the apparatus of our bedrooms." Mr. Kohl might have added that the supply of fresh water in such rooms is equally diminutive. In pursuance of his comparison, he says: "If we compare the common earthenware of England with that of the French and Germans, or of any other nation, it appears not only excellent in quality, but also highly ornamental and unsurpassingly beautiful. The common French and German earthenware is comparatively ugly, coarse, and misshapen. On the other hand, English porcelain, particularly those articles in which beauty and elegance are the main points aimed at, are far behind those of the continent. I believe there is something characteristic of the English in this. In articles of ordinary use, the English seem, better than we, to know how to combine excellence of quality with outward grace and beauty; whereas, in those articles wherein grace and beauty alone are to be kept in view, the English are never equally successful. Their tools, their furniture, their machines, their knives and scissors, their bread, and their joints of meat, are not only excellent, vigorous, and nutritious, but also beautifully formed, and not to be at all surpassed; whereas, their pictures, their sculptures, their pasties, and their cakes, and, in short, everything in which fancy takes precedence of usefulness, are far behind ours in excellence. Look, not merely at the earthen-in foreign countries, naturalists, artists, potters,―all ware of the French, but at their tools, at their implements of gardening and agriculture. They are all strikingly rude and little suited to the purposes they are intended for. Even the common bread in France is much inferior to that used in England." Staffordshire is trying to wash away the stain of being behind-hand with the continent in elegant porcelain. Perhaps she may one day succeed. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive that this inferiority exists at all, when we glance around any of the show-rooms of the greater manufacturers. The articles of beauty and grace are now most wonderfully diversified. Besides the usual dinner and tea-services, the decorative productions embrace a wide range. The fittings for chimney-pieces, for doors, for the toilet-table, for the writing-desk, are most varied; and the highly-finished miniature paintings on some of the pieces show that if painters can produce the designs, the manufacturers can do what is requisite to work out those designs in While speaking of the show-rooms of our porcelain makers, and of the dazzling display there made, it may not be amiss to say a few words concerning the magnificent museum belonging to the Royal Porcelain Manufactory at Sèvres, in France. It was begun to be formed about the year 1804: it consisted, in the first instance, of a collection of Greek vases, which had been acquired by Louis XVI. To these were added specimens of German porcelain, from the chief establishments of Dresden, Berlin, Brunswick, Wurtemburg, and Vienna, selected and given for this purpose. Next were collected from every part of France specimens of the kinds of earth supposed to be fit for one or other of the various kinds of pottery or porcelain, together with specimens of articles manufactured from such clays. All these collections, made by about 1812, formed the nucleus of the museum. Brongniart, the scientific and talented director of the Sèvres manufactory, then devised a mode of classification and arrangement for the specimens. He adopted. a three-fold system: first, that of fabrication, from coarse brick to fine porcelain; then that of topography, according to the places where the specimens were made; and, lastly, that of chronology, according to the age of the specimen. This system has been found to answer admirably; and for thirty years there have been constant additions made to the museum, chiefly by gifts. Officers of the navy, travellers, ambassadors have sent interesting specimens; and the result is a most beautiful collection, illustrating every imaginable branch of the art. Some of the specimens were presented by the manufacturers of Burslem, Longport, and Stoke. Alexander Brongniart, who has been the director of the Sèvres works for nearly half a century, has not spared time or energy in bringing them to perfection. He made tournées ceramiques,' as he somewhat fancifully calls them, or pottery tours, in 1812, 1820 1824, 1835, and 1836; during which he visited the potteries and porcelain works at Wurtemburg, Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Englandbringing home specimens to adorn the Sèvres Museum, and observing the modes of manufacture at the different places. The catalogue of that Museum, prepared by Brongniart and Riocreux, is an example of the munificent mode in which the French treat all details bearing even indirectly upon the fine arts. The catalogue is an imperial quarto volume, of about 500 pages, printed on fine paper; and in it every specimen is not only mentioned, but described. Then follows a collection of 80 quarto plates, containing drawings of nearly one thousand of the specimens, all delineated and coloured with as much care as if they were specimens in natural history. There is one observation made by M. Brongniart, in the preface to this catalogue, which we feel tempted to quote, because it illustrates a wish which we have often felt while walking through museums in England. "I have long ago expressed an opinion, perhaps too dogmatically, that a museum in which the specimens are not labelled, presents to the public and even to savans nothing more than an object of vague curiosity. In former times, too, nothing was admitted into museums but specimens which were extraordinary or brilliant in themselves: all that was simple and common was rejected. It is true that these brilliant specimens, in the earlier museums, attracted the eyes of the multitude: this was indeed the object; simple specimens, which are neither rare nor striking, have neither interest and utility. It is very easy to arrange specimens in an agreeable manner in the show-cases; but to give any interest to a vessel of common ware, a pipe, a brick, a fragment of clay or of felspar, it is necessary to indicate what it is, whence it comes, and what purpose it subserves. Some research is required for this purpose, often long and difficult; but by its means, specimens which would only deserve to be rejected if not labelled or described, have a value imparted to them by such labelling in some instances the interest and the value become really great." Speaking of the Sèvres collection, he says: "Without this care a great number of specimens in this rich collection would have been rejected; our collection of clays, sands, and marls, would present itself only as a confused mass of earth and stone. For this reason I have acted on the plan, that no specimen shall be admitted without a label attached to it conspicuously. Numerals, placed not only upon the label, but painted on the specimen itself, refer to a register, in which the history of this specimen is given in detail." INTERCOMMUNICATION OF THE POTTERY TOWNS. We have now given a tolerably full account-an account quite as ample, perhaps, as the nature of this work permits of the Pottery towns, their banks, their show-rooms, their people, and the past history and gradual development of their manufacture. But we cannot leave the district without speaking of the beautiful railway-station at Stoke; and we can as little think of this station without comparing the singular changes which time has produced in the mode of intercommunication between the several towns of the Pottery district, and between the district as a whole and the other parts of England. About the year 1750, one of the chief manufacturers at Burslem was in the habit of sending five or six times every day to the nearest collieries for coals to burn in his kilns; each horse made two or three journeys a day, bringing about two and a half hundred-weights of coal on his back each time. The coal was neither weighed nor measured; but a price of sevenpence was paid for this quantity or horse-load, roughly guessed. Ground flint, for the pottery, was at the same time carried in square tubs, on horses' backs; each horse carrying two tubs, and each tub containing four pecks. The same kind of horse-carriage was employed in other ways. For instance, five horses were engaged by the same potter to carry crates of finished ware to a neighbouring town, and to bring back clay from thence; each horse carried a crate of ware on a pack-saddle, and brought back two or three hundred pounds of clay, in panniers slung on either side of him. The roads were narrow and bad, and each horse was muzzled, to prevent him from biting the hedges as he went along. It was a grand thing when a cart with four horses was employed instead of the pack-saddles: the cart used to convey crates of goods to the larger towns of Staffordshire and Shropshire, and bring back goods for the shopkeepers of the Potteries, as well as clay and other materials for the potters. Sometimes travellers were employed to traverse different parts of England, to find a sale for the goods: their accounts seem to have been kept in a rough sort of way; for they simply emptied their pockets of all the money received on the journey, after deducting travelling expenses, and then received a certain weekly sum as salary. As late as 1780, the southern end of the Pottery district, near Lane Delph, was not traversed. by a single vehicle; horses with panniers brought the materials and carried away the goods, and a horse-post brought the letters. But when Josiah Wedgwood commenced his career, or rather, when he was advancing in prosperity, such a state of things was not likely to continue. He cut with his own hands the first sod of the Grand Trunk or Trent and Mersey Canal, and witnessed the completion of that great undertaking in 1777. This canal forms so many junctions with others, that it is not easy to determine where it begins or where it ends. It is sufficient to say, however, that it places the pottery district in communication with every part of England. One line of canal, beginning near Stoke, extends through Etruria, Burslem, and Tunstall, to Congleton, Macclesfield, and Manchester. Another winds round Shelton and Hanley, to Leek and Uttoxeter. Another goes by way of Stone to near Stafford ; from whence one branch extends to Wolverhampton and Birmingham; and another past Rugeley to the navigable part of the Trent, near Alrewas. Except when the winter's frost puts an end to all navigation, these canals carry an immense tonnage of goods to and from the Pottery district. The Pottery railways have only just been opened: it remains to be seen how far they will occasion a diversion in the goods' traffic. The Hare castle tunnel, in the Macclesfield canal, a |
