MAKING A SUGAR-BOWL.
Then the man takes it out and sponges it. If it isn’t just the right shape all he has to do is wet it, and it will come right. Then he puts on the handle or puts the pieces together, fixing them just so with his fingers and knife. It isn’t very hard, but he has to be careful. The soft dishes look real cute. Then they’re ready to be burnt the first time.
We walked all around and saw here one man making cups, another, tureens, another, bird-baths, and every imaginable thing that is ever made in porcelain. Then we went down-stairs, through the dark rooms, into where the tall chimneys are. Then I found out they called them kilns. They have at the bottom a prodigious furnace, over that a tremendous oven, where they put the dishes in to bake.
But they don’t put them right in just as they are. Oh, no. There were on the high shelves all around, a lot of things called saggers. They look something like bandboxes made of firebrick. The soft dishes are put in them, the lids are put on, and then they are piled up in the oven. Then the men build a big fire in the furnace, and let it burn for several days. When it goes out they let several more days go by for the kiln to cool, and then take out the saggers. When the dishes are taken out they are hard and rough and of a yellowish white. They build the fire after they get them in, and let it out and the kiln cool off before they take them out, because the men have to go in and out the big ovens.
Wouldn’t you think a pile of soft plates and saucers would burn all together and stick fast to each other? Well, they don’t. There are little things made of hard clay with three bars and three feet, and they put them in between dishes so that one plate has one in it, and the next plate sets on top of that, so that they can’t stick together. Did you ever see three little dark spots on the bottom of a saucer? This is what makes them. There are lots and lots of these little stands lying all around everywhere, and broken pieces of them and the clay, scattered like flour all over the ground and floors thick.
We next went into the room back of the kilns. It had shelves all around, too, and there were piles of dishes after the first burning. A lot of women sat on stools on the floor and they were brushing the fire cracks with some stuff out of little bottles. This was to fill them up so that the glazing wouldn’t run in.
REST FOR FLAT
DISHES.
We went into another room at one side of the first and there’s where they did the glazing. They called it dipping. There was a large tank in the middle of the room with a deep red liquid in it. Papa asked the man what it was, and he said it was a secret preparation. The men dipped the dishes in, and they came out a beautiful pink, so pretty that it seemed a pity they couldn’t stay so. There were shelves all around this room, too, and there the dishes look like they do when we see them—the pink glazing has turned white.