Pottery industry

“ The “bit-stones” have long since been replaced by “spurs” and “stilts” and other small earthenware objects, the special manufacture of which is now a great industry by itself. The single stilt and spur factory of Thos. [60] Arrowsmith in Burslem employs now 230 hands on this manufacture alone.
Burslem in 1750
Scale 100 yards to the inch
Based on a plan by Enoch Wood
If the old potters had had to rely only on the thrower’s wheel for their shapes, no improvement in whiteness of ware, or in the salt glaze, would have availed much to increase the demand for earthenware. ”

“ The manufacturer is quite as much a teacher as the writer or the artist, and he is frequently a much more effectual one. In pottery especially, where the wares of one kind or other are hourly in the hands of every person in the kingdom, it behoves the manufacturers to produce such perfect forms, and to introduce such ornamentation, even in the commonest and coarsest ware, as shall teach the eye, and induce a taste for whatever is beautiful and perfect and lovely in art. The mission of the manufacturer is to create a pure taste, not to perpetuate and pander to a vicious and barbarous one ”

“ When I speak of the china manufacture, it will be seen that, besides the Staffordshire potters, several very clever men at Bow, Chelsea, Plymouth, Worcester, Derby, and other places, were at work to establish the manufacture of the soft and hard porcelain, proving beyond a doubt, that most energetic efforts were being made to raise the pottery trade of England to the same level as that of France or Germany. ”

“ The only group of industries which can compare with potmaking in intellectual importance is that of the textile fabrics; basketry and weaving. But whereas basket-work and all forms of matting and cloth are perishable and will burn, broken pottery is almost indestructible, just because, once broken, it is so useless. It follows that evidence so permanent, so copious, and so plastic, that is to say so infinitely sensitive a register of the changes of the artist’s mood, as the potsherds on an ancient site, is among the most valuable that we can ever have, for tracing the dawn of culture. ”

“ When once improvements in manufacture began, invention followed invention; and though the records during the second quarter of [56] the eighteenth century are full of entries of patents, registered for the performance of every possible and impossible pottery process, yet most of the improvements—especially the vital changes in body and glaze made by Astbury and Booth—became public property unchecked by patent law. ”

“ The 19th century was distinctly the century of machinery, and, for the most part, it witnessed the displacement by mechanical processes of those methods of handicraft which made the older pottery individual and interesting even in its simplest forms. Collectors are prepared to pay very large sums for choice examples of the potter’s art of bygone centuries, but it is doubtful if much of the pottery of the 19th century will ever be collected for its intrinsic merits, though it may be preserved as an illustration of the spirit of the age. ”

“ Individual work of merit is being produced every year in this country, and it will not be long before the solitary potter of to-day, moulding his pieces and testing his glazes in some little workshop, like a brown chrysalis, will perfect his ware; so that the tiny workshop will expand into a great building, and another beautiful ware will be added to modern American pottery. ”

“ Unless one wishes to make pottery on a large scale, as a business, the expense and care of owning one’s own kiln is unnecessary. There are makers of art pottery near the principal cities who for a reasonable amount will fire one’s pieces admirably, and with much less risk than an amateur could possibly115 do them—that is, providing one uses the same kind of clay as is employed by the owners of the kiln where one’s pottery is to be fired. ”

“ Slowly a demand for painted pottery was created among collectors and amateurs, and in France and other countries artists began to dabble in the painting of pottery. In some cases the artist retained his freedom, painting pieces obtained from some pottery manufacturer, which he sold on his own account after they had been decorated and fired; or he became attached to a particular factory and his productions were sold by the potter; or the artist became an amateur potter, and either worked alone or encouraged other artists to co-operate with him. ”

“ Could all the work actually bestowed upon one of these vases, and as it can be seen before firing, be seen after firing, the faience of Limoges would resemble that of England or any other pottery which is painted on the glaze. But the process is different, and after the firing the detail of the work melts away, leaving behind that fascinating harmony of colors which has never before been produced on any pottery. Nothing has as yet been invented to replace work and care ”

“ An art like pottery-making, which is nearly as old as the human race, is naturally approached with some degree of reverence. One thinks of its old masters in various lands and ages—how they were content to spend a lifetime in the study and practice of it.
There is, however, another thought that comes to mind—that this art, like every other, had to have its beginning. Moreover, every potter, from the primitive man who first realised that clay which held water could be moulded into portable vessels for a like purpose, to the artist potter of to-day, has learned the first steps of the craft. ”

“ When, about the middle of the 18th century, European pottery took on its modern form, of earthenware made after the English fashion, and porcelain like the French and German, the lead or felspathic glazes used brought about another revolution in the potter’s palette. The growing ideal of mechanical perfection discounted the freedom of the earlier brushwork, and printed patterns, or painting that might almost have been printed, removed the mind still farther from the richness of painted faience or majolica. ”

“ It is useless to look for the glorious colour of Persian faience, Italian majolica, or Chinese porcelain, in modern wares produced by manufacturing processes where mechanical perfection is demanded to a degree undreamt of before the 19th century. The finest modern pottery colour is only to be sought in the work of those enthusiasts and experimenters who are striving to produce work as rich and free as the best of past times. ”

“ To induce talented men to devote their time to the decoration of pottery, is perhaps the greatest difficulty met with by our leading manufacturers. As long as the making of the ware only was concerned, they had to call for the assistance of practical men, such as potters, chemists, or engineers, the number of whom is fortunately great in England, and whose services can be secured by money. ”

“ It will thus be seen that the history of modern American art and manufacture does not extend much beyond a century. Progress has been rapid, and the trade has developed with gigantic strides.
It is estimated that there are in all seven hundred and seventy-seven pottery establishments in the United States, including those for all kinds of ware, from terra-cotta to porcelain. All, or nearly all, these have sprung up within twenty-five years, and many of them since the Civil War. The productive capacity of some of the leading centres may be judged from the number of kilns they require. ”

“ The wealthy classes were no longer patrons of pottery but of porcelain, and when, after 1786, the newly perfected English earthenware was thrown upon the French market, the French faience-makers had to give up their works, or adopt the manufacture of this neater and, for domestic purposes, more suitable form of pottery. ”

“ It is customary, therefore, to expose the goods first to a hard fire, which, according to the size of the ovens and the quality of the ware, may last from forty to fifty hours.
From the biscuit oven, the goods, if they are to be left white, may be sent to be glazed; but if they are to be decorated with a printed pattern, they must be forwarded to the printing department. Printing on pottery is comparatively a modern invention, its chief advantage being the cheap rate of production. ”

“ The 19th century witnessed a great and steady growth in the output of porcelain and pottery of all kinds in Europe and the United States. Mechanical methods were largely called in to supplement or replace what had hitherto remained almost pure handicraft. The English methods of preparing and mixing the materials of the body and glaze, and the English device of replacing painted decoration by machine printing, to a large extent carried the day, with a great gain to the mechanical aspects of the work and in many cases with an entire extinction of its artistic spirit. ”

“ Those who are denied this study at first hand will find in museums plenty of material—quaint bowls and jars, some of them smoke-stained and cracked, but all wonderfully well preserved when one thinks of their age. From the rudest pots, made by inferior tribes, we can trace the progress of the craft gradually advancing until, in the pottery found in or near Mexico, we see what may be considered the masterpieces of American ceramic art. ”

“ The history of pottery is in a good degree the history of man. All nations have done something in this way, from the rude clay pots of the barbarians, through the gayly-painted dishes of the incipient civilization, up to the culmination of the art, when perfection seems to have been reached in China through the centuries extending up to the sixteenth. This manufacture, which reached in China and Japan to the point of finest art, has not been surpassed by any civilized race, if equaled. ”

“ Why they should want a hundred pieces of this work one may well be at a loss to know, unless it is true that to own what nobody else has is always a pleasure.
Throughout the southern countries of Europe, in Spain, France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and on the southern shores of the Mediterranean, this kind of pottery is made and used, and in some cases it has much merit in its forms; when decorated, it often reaches a naïve and fascinating kind of art. ”

“ The late 18th century marks the period when pottery was no longer produced, as Italian majolica, the Henri-Deux ware, the Palissy wares, the best faience of Nevers, Rouen, Moustiers, Delft or Nuremberg had been, for the noble or the wealthy, but when it was largely in demand by the poorer classes, anxious in their turn to have a useful ware which should imitate the more costly porcelain used by the great. ”

“ Inside the great brick chamber, workmen are stacking the saggers filled with pieces of pottery, some of which, not yet packed, are standing on tables near at hand. They look wan and pale, faint grayish-green, or leaden gray. Not until they have felt the fierce heat of the kiln will they glow with living green or will the beauty of their blues appear. Yellow that is almost orange seems to be only a deep cream colour before it is fired. Then there are pieces of green, or unbaked clay, to be fired in the biscuit—that is, without the glaze. ”

“ Neatness, serviceableness and durability, English domestic wares undoubtedly possess in a degree unknown to any earlier type of pottery, but the general use of transfer-printing as the principal method of decoration, and the absence of any distinctive style of ornament, must cause them to take a low rank in comparison with the wares of past centuries, when mechanical perfection was impossible and rich colour and truly decorative painting were the chief distinctions of the pottery of every country. ”

“ After the first coat, gum tragacanth is added, as in glazing on green clay. The fourth coat need not entirely cover the piece, but the top should be carefully glazed. If for any reason the pottery has to be re-fired, it should be reglazed, but two coats only will be necessary, and the glaze need not be quite so heavy as that used on the biscuit. Do not be discouraged if your pieces need a second or even a third firing, for often the most beautiful results are obtained by re-firing. Quality—that combination of richness, and depth of colour and texture—rarely comes with the first firing. ”

“ Nothing can exceed the deftness and skill with which, under the magic touch of the experienced workman, shapeless lumps of this prepared clay are fashioned into cups, dishes, vases and every conceivable form of the most delicate pottery. It is so quickly done, too! One handy operative can make two hundred cups a day. Once moulded into shape, the piece of pottery is dipped into liquid enamel which gives it hardness and brilliancy. It receives too the stamp of the manufacturer. ”

“ In the United States something has been done; and the public mind is now asking, “What is it that makes ‘pottery and porcelain’ so attractive to scholars, statesmen, women, and wits?”
In some degree we have answered this question. My part of the work has been to gather where I could such historical and technical facts and such illustrations as seemed most valuable, not only to the student but to the collector.
Many of these came from Europe, of course, where since Queen Anne’s day the love of “old china” has at times risen to enthusiasm. ”

“ They help to date the sites; they reflect cultural and economic levels in the areas of their use; and they throw light on manufacture, trade, and distribution.
Satisfying instances of these uses were revealed with the discovery in 1935 of two distinct but unidentified pottery types in the excavations conducted by the National Park Service at Jamestown, Virginia, and later elsewhere along the eastern seaboard. One type was an elaborate and striking yellow sgraffito ware, the other a coarse utilitarian kitchen ware whose red paste was heavily tempered with a gross water-worn gravel or “grit.” ”