British Manufacturing Industries: Pottery, Glass and Silicates, Furniture and Woodwork.

by Léon Arnoux; Frederick Settle Barff; John Hungerford Pollen

The kilns in use for firing the painted or gilt ware, are called muffles or enamelling kilns; they are in the form of a D, laid on its straight side, and of a length proportionate to the size and number of pieces which they are to hold. The fireplaces are arranged on one of the sides, and the flues contrived in such a manner, that the flame should travel round the whole of the outer surface, great care being taken that it should not have access to the interior through any cracks or joints which might exist in the brick-work. For ordinary goods one firing may suffice; for those highly decorated, as many as five or six may be necessary.

Let me now say a few words respecting the various wares produced by our English potters.

The first earthenware made after the time of Wedgwood and Josiah Spode was far from being so good as that made at present, and several attempts were made to bring out a pottery which should be intermediate between earthenware and porcelain. The most successful was that made by Mr. Mason, of Fenton, who, in 1813, took out a patent for an ironstone china, the body of which was fluxed by the scoriæ of ironstone and the ordinary Cornish stone. But eventually this last was found sufficient for that purpose. The name of ironstone remained to that class of pottery which is strong and resistive. Since then, however, earthenware has so much improved, that ironstone has gone out of fashion; the nearest to it is the ware called white granite, made for the American market, which is richly glazed, and made thick to compete with the French hard porcelain, which is also exported to the United States for the same class of customers. About fifty manufactories are specially engaged in producing this ware; and those in the occupation of Messrs. Meakin, Shaw, Bishop and Powell, and G. Jones, may be considered the largest. The best earthenware is made for the home market, some of which is so perfect that, if it were not opaque, it might be mistaken for porcelain. When it is richly decorated and gilt, like that made by Messrs. Minton, Wedgwood, Furnival, Copeland, Brown-Westhead, Brownfields, and several other leaders of the trade, very high prices are obtained for it.

Some of these makers do not devote all their attention to earthenware, but produce other classes of pottery. Amongst the sorts which are most connected with earthenware are majolica, Palissy, Persian ware, and flooring and wall tiles. I have given the name of majolica to that class of ornament, whose surface is covered with opaque enamels of a great variety of colours. It is only connected with the Italian or Moorish in this respect, that the opacity of the enamels is produced by the oxide of tin; but as we have not in England the calcareous clay for making the real article, we have been obliged to adapt, as well as we could, the old processes to the materials at our disposal.

At present, English majolica is very popular, and without a rival for garden decoration, as it stands exposure to the weather better than ordinary earthenware, besides the impossibility of the latter receiving the opaque enamels without crazing or chipping.

Majolica was produced for the first time by Messrs. Minton, in 1850, and they have been for many years the only producers of this article. It is only five or six years ago that Messrs. Maw, of Broseley, in Shropshire (and very lately the Worcester manufactory), have made a pottery of the same kind. The name of majolica is now applied indiscriminately to all fancy articles of coloured pottery. When, however, it is decorated by means of coloured glazes, if these are transparent, it ought to be called Palissy ware, from the name of the great artist who used these for his beautiful works. Messrs. Wedgwood, George Jones, and a few other makers of less importance, are reproducing it more or less successfully. To Messrs. Minton, however, we owe the revival of the ware, which, in connection with their majolica, created such a sensation in the French International Exhibition of 1855; and credit must be given to those gentlemen, for being on that occasion the promoters of that demand for artistic pottery, which has so largely developed of late. It is to satisfy this craving for novelties, that they have undertaken the imitation of the faïence d'Oiron, better known by the name of Henri Deux ware, a rare and costly one, which can only be produced in small quantities; and also their most recent improvement, the reproduction of the Persian wares.

In the old Persian pottery we find a real earthenware taking a precedence of several centuries over our own. There is little doubt that it can be connected with the early Arabian, Assyrian, and Egyptian, by the similitude of the processes common to all. I have no room to explain how it is that, being an earthenware, it is so much richer in colour than the modern ware made on this side of Europe. I can only mention that the body of the Persian ware may be converted into a transparent porcelain by firing it hard, which shows that the sandy clays from which these are made are sufficiently saline to become vitreous. To this they owe the property of receiving, without crazing, glazes of the softest kind, and consequently of exhibiting those colours which can only stand at a low temperature, such as the Persian red, the turquoise, and that purple or violet which makes so valuable the specimens on which it is laid. If we had in England sandy clays like those which abound in Persia, the reproduction of Persian ware would have been an easy undertaking; but in trying to reconstitute it by synthesis, there were several obstacles. Within the last three years, however, Messrs. Minton have sold a great many specimens of the ware, some of them of very large size. They may be recognized by the depth of the turquoise, which is sometimes as rich as Sèvres pieces of the best period. Their only competitors for this class of pottery are the manufactories of Worcester and of Messrs. Maw and Co.

I cannot leave earthenware without mentioning the plain and encaustic tiles, articles of comparatively recent manufacture in England, but whose consumption is increasing so fast, that it may be expected in time to afford a most valuable compensation, should circumstances restrict the production of some other branch of the trade. There is no need to dwell on the advantages offered by the use of tiles. They are clean, invaluable in a sanitary point of view, free from further deterioration and expense for maintenance, and susceptible of a variety of treatment which makes them admirably fitted for decorative purposes. To the Eastern nations we owe the idea of using ornamental tiles, and it is likely that it is from the numerous buildings existing in Western Asia and the north of Africa, at the time of the Crusades, that our forefathers took the notion of introducing in Europe the encaustic tiles; their ceramic knowledge being too limited to undertake the making of painted or enamelled tiles, an essentially Saracenic and Moorish production, whose specimens nearest to us are those to be seen in the Alhambra, or in the Alcazar at Seville. An inspection of those made afterwards in Spain, in the time of Charles V., or in Italy for the Vatican, and some of the palaces in Genoa, would prove that they were made exactly in the same way. From the contrast between the opaque and transparent enamels, these tiles have a very forcible and harmonious effect, not to be met in others (the Persian excepted, though these, exclusively decorated on a cool scale of colours, cannot answer so well the requirements of modern architecture). The majolica and Delft tiles, chiefly the last, have been almost exclusively used during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and it is only within the last forty years, that we began to make them in earthenware. With the revival of this manufacture, and of almost any other sort of tiles, the name of Herbert Minton is closely associated. It was during his time, and with the assistance of Mr. Michael Daintry Hollins, that this great undertaking was carried out with such success, that hardly a new church or public building is erected where these tiles are not introduced. The making of plain tiles is new and peculiar. They are made from dry clay reduced to dust, which, being submitted in metallic moulds to a pressure of several hundred pounds to the inch, becomes so compact, that further contraction is almost suppressed, and they can be handled without risk of breaking. Encaustic tiles are made from plastic clay, in which the different portions of the design are sunk below the surface, so as to form recesses, in which slips of different colours are poured according to a set pattern. When these become as hard as the body of the tiles, the surface is made smooth and level with a steel scraper, which removes all the superfluous material, till the colours are shown standing neatly side by side with the greatest precision. It is a pretty process and interesting to witness. Besides the flooring tiles, there are many other sorts made for lining walls and fireplaces, varying considerably in style and material. There are two very extensive and perfected tile works at Stoke, viz. those belonging to Mr. Hollins and the Campbell Brick and Tile Company, in both of which all sorts of flooring and wall tiles are made. In the second, recently built, Mr. Colin Minton Campbell, the proprietor, has introduced new arrangements and contrivances in almost every department; all operations being performed on the ground floor, and in such manner that the goods shall travel the shortest possible distance from the moment they are begun to that of their completion. He has been the first to use Maw's patent steam presses for plain tiles, each of which can make twelve thousand tiles weekly, requiring only the assistance of a single person, to remove the tiles as they come out from the mould. It is by the intelligent use of these mechanical processes, that we may expect a reduction in the price of such a useful article. The firm of Mintons still continue to make their plain white printed and artistic tiles, along with their patent process for painting on mosaics. The Broseley Works, in Shropshire, belonging to Messrs. Maw and Co., have also a great name, and carry on an extensive business in tile making. Next are those of Messrs. Edge and Malkin, of Burslem. Messrs. Simpson, of London, are well known for their wall decorations in tiles painted by hand, and Messrs. Copeland, of Stoke, for their painted slabs.

The various porcelain biscuits known under the name of Parian or statuary biscuits, are specially used for statuettes, busts, and other articles for which it is desirable to get the appearance of white marble. This is a kind of hard porcelain made from a mixture of kaolin and felspar, in which the degree of hardness or fusibility is regulated by the proportion of one material towards the other. Of course, similar biscuits may be made by more complicated receipts, but the principle is always the same, viz. the taking advantage of the fusibility of felspar or Cornish stone, to secure the required amount of transparency. The light being allowed to penetrate to some depth below the surface, imparts to these biscuits a softness which is wanting in the similar productions of Sèvres, Germany, and Denmark.

In noticing the bluish-white colour of the foreign article as compared with the cream tint of our own, I must explain that this difference lies in the management of the fire, since in none of them is stain or colour introduced to procure any such result. As my readers must now understand, there is in all clays, pure as they may be, a certain amount of oxide of iron, which, during the firing process, forms silicate of protoxide or peroxide, according to the chemical composition of the atmosphere of the oven in which they stand. On the Continent, to make hard porcelain successfully, the fire must be reductive; while here, on the contrary, it is oxidizing; and it is to the formation of a small quantity of silicate of peroxide of iron disseminated in the mass, that the creamy colour of our Parian is due. Since this new material was introduced by Messrs. Copeland and Messrs. Minton, about twenty-eight years ago, a large quantity of figures, busts, and groups have been sold, and the talent of our most eminent sculptors has been put to contribution to get models adapted for this kind of ware. Parian is generally cast, which accounts for the great contraction it undergoes when fired, and much care is required for propping or supporting the various articles, as neglect or miscalculation in this respect would inevitably ruin them. Otherwise, as this biscuit is made from few materials and takes but one single firing, the simplicity of the manufacture has induced many small makers to undertake it—a fact that we should regret, if we were to take a purely artistic view of this subject. Parian, which was originally sold in biscuit state, has since been glazed, for the purpose of making pieces of decoration. The manufactory at Worcester, several years ago, made a great many coloured and gilt ornaments in the Cinque-cento style, to which it has lately added a highly artistic imitation of the Japanese lacquered ivories, for which great credit is due to the present director, Mr. Binns.