The trades of that day dependent on potting were: Makers of the crates wherein to pack the ware; gilders; cobalt-refiners and colour-makers, of whom Machin and Bagguley of the new “Waterloo” Road were perhaps the most important; enamellers; engravers of designs on copper, from which the transfer prints for the under-glaze blue printing were made; flint-grinders; lead and litharge makers for the glaze; saggar makers; lathe makers and lawn manufacturers.

The lawn manufacturers made the lawn sieve through which the clay body in the slip state was passed in order to remove all coarse particles. Indeed the preparation of the clay body was now carried out so carefully that magnets were used to attract any particle of iron that might be ground up with the flint; and the old process of evaporation which converted the slip into the solid clay body gave way about 1860 to the clay press now used to squeeze out the water from the clay. Samuel Allen, lathe maker of Dale Hall, is the sole representative to be found in 1818 of the makers of potters’ machinery, now so important a branch of manufacture. But the “jiggers,” which exactly reproduce plates by the thousand, and the “jollies,” for the mechanical moulding and pressing of hollow ware, were the creation of a much later age. Even now these machine tools may be said to be in their infancy though they are developing under the hands of skilled engineers such as Messrs Boulton of Burslem.

A subsidiary manufacture which does not appear on the 1818 list at all is that of borax. Borax, or as it was originally called “tincal,” had been first introduced about 1796 when it was brought from Thibet. In that year Ralph Wedgwood (see [p. 87]), who spent his life inventing things, and was then a master-potter at Ferrybridge in Yorkshire,[171] took out a patent for “making glass upon new principles” by using this tincal. By Hickling’s patent of 1799 it was also applied to the enamelling of metal vessels, and it appears again in the leadless glaze of Mr. Rose of Coalport in 1820.[172] All this time, however, the price was almost prohibitive of the commercial use of borax. In 1815 it cost 3s. to 4s. a lb., and it was only on the development of the Etruscan borax deposits in 1828 that it came into general use as a flux for the glazes, partially displacing the lead oxides. As the borax—as well as the soda used in the glaze—is soluble in water, glazes containing these have to be “fritted” or vitrified before being ground with the other components into a slip for dipping the ware. This melting or fritting, besides making the glaze insoluble in water and suitable for dipping, will, if the lead be fritted with the other components and not just ground in afterwards, make the lead more or less innocuous. Unfortunately, however, the fritted lead requires more exact firing to produce a good glaze, and can hardly compete commercially at present. Glazes can be made without any lead at all by using borax alone as a flux, but the surface is always full of imperfections and less glossy than that given by a leaded glaze.

The first important manufactory of borax in the Potteries was that of Wood, Kuntz & Co.,[173] a firm in which the sons of Enoch Wood were interested. Because the risk of lead poisoning is always present in the preparation and uses of the lead glazes, attempts have been made for 100 years to produce a good glaze free from lead—or rather free from unfritted lead—soluble in hydrochloric acid. Josiah Wedgwood produced such a glaze, but it gave a rough surface wherewith it was useless in those days to try to compete. The Society of Arts awarded its gold medal in 1823 to Job Meigh of Hanley for his invention of a leadless glaze. But Meigh’s leadless glaze was only to be applied to coarse red pottery.[174] Of recent years Mr. Furnival and Mr. William Burton have done most to make safe glazes commercially practicable. There is no doubt but that by the use of borax a safe glaze, free from lead, can be made; it will not be mechanically perfect perhaps, but artistically it need not be considered inferior to the heavy smooth lead glaze.

About 1826 an even more dangerous lead process was introduced by Henry Daniel, who began in that year to make stoneware “china” in Shelton. This was the process of “ground laying” and “colour dusting,” in which the enamel paints are dusted in a dry state over a sticky oily surface to which they adhere. The leaded particles of paint dust are easily breathed into the lungs and caused a heavy mortality. The ærograph, invented in 1890, which lays the ground mechanically, reduced the risks of this process, and more recently the Home Office regulations regarding ventilation, mufflers, etc., have helped in the same direction.

Among the Tunstall potters on the list of 1818 occur the names of Benjamin Adams and Jesse Breeze. Benjamin Adams was the son and successor of that William Adams who made jasper at Greengates and died in 1805. Within a year or two of 1818 he had to sell his factory, which was bought by John Meir, another Tunstall potter.[175] John Breeze had bought the house and factory built by Theophilus Smith in 1793 and called Smithfield. Smith had, in 1800, committed suicide in prison after failing three times to murder his wife’s lover.[176] His tragic end caused the name of his house to be changed to Greenfield; and in 1827 Jesse, son of this John Breeze of Greenfield, having no sons, married one of his daughters to William Adams, son of the successful potter of Stoke, and bequeathed his factory to him. In this way another branch of the Adams family returned to Tunstall. From 1827 to the present day the Adams family from father to son have continued to make earthenware at Greenfield. They have recently bought up Greengates also, and joined the two old Adams’ factories together. The firm has had a somewhat chequered career, but under the management of the present brothers and partners, William and Percy W. L. Adams, it has resumed its high reputation as one of the largest exporters of useful and ornamental ware.