Eastwood Vale.—W. H. Goss (see “[London Road, Stoke-upon-Trent]”).
Eastwood Works.--Formerly carried on by Mr. Thomas Twyford, and afterwards by E. Hampton & Son, these works passed, in 1864, into the hands of the present proprietor, Mr. George Howson. The productions are entirely confined to sanitary ware, made of the ordinary Staffordshire fire-clay, washed inside with a white slip; sometimes blue printed.
Dental Manufacturing Company, Limited, Broad Street.—This manufactory was established by Mr. J. S. Crapper, in 1856, and by him carried on and gradually developed until June, 1873, when it was purchased from him by this Company, Mr. Crapper remaining the managing director. The Company have other manufactories and depôts at 25, Broad Street, Golden Square, London, and in Grosvenor Street, Oxford Road, Manchester. It is one of the largest porcelain tooth producing manufactories yet established.
The dento-ceramic art is, naturally, of recent origin, but it has already almost reached perfection; the artificial teeth so closely resembling the natural, that the false are undistinguishable from the real. In durability nature is by this manufacture excelled; since the porcelain tooth lasts much longer than bone or ivory. Surprising, however, as we find the exact imitation of nature, it is, perhaps, still more surprising to learn that it is only obtained by a variety of at least 100 different shades and tints of colour, and of about 1,000 different shapes and sizes of teeth. Being a new branch of Ceramic Art I have no hesitation in giving fuller details than usual. They are furnished by my friend Mr. Goss.
“The material of which the teeth are composed, although differing in the proportions of its ceramic ingredients from any other porcelain body, is yet strictly porcelain. It is a vitreous, translucent body, consisting of silica, alumina, and potass, with the alumina in smaller and the potass in larger proportions than in any other porcelain body. Feldspar is the chief constituent, to which some silica, in the form of quartz, is added, and, in some instances, a small proportion of china clay. The colouring materials are the oxides of titanium, uranium, cobalt, manganese, platinum, and gold. From these bases the company obtains, as before said, about one hundred tints and shades, ranging from the delicate blue-white—the poetic “pearl”—to the dark tobacco stain. We have seen an American account of the matter, however, in which a palette of thirty-nine times 64,000 varieties or gradations of colour is claimed from the same bases for dental selection, and the different shapes and sizes of teeth are estimated at 10,000 instead of the 1,000 which the Company claims in its modesty.
“The materials being finely ground together, the teeth are either cast or pressed in metal moulds, the inner surface of the moulds being oiled, as is usual when metal moulds are used in potting, to prevent the adhesion of the clay or slip. It will surprise most potters to learn of ceramic articles being made, or cast, from ‘slip’ in metal moulds; but this is successfully done at the company’s works, the moulds being warmed to facilitate evaporation and the ‘setting’ of the material, which is sooner effected in this body than in any other porcelain, on account of the small proportion of alumina in its composition. In those teeth which are furnished with platinum pins the latter are fitted into small holes in the mould before the casting, and the end of the pin, which is inserted into the tooth, being headed, the firing secures it inextractably in its place. The machine which cuts up and ‘heads’ the platinum wire is a marvellous little creature. A correspondent of an American paper writing of it says, ‘Here is a spitefully busy little machine, too busy with one particular process to tell us what it is doing, and yet we discover that it is eating platinum wire and spitting out tiny pins at the rate of six hundred a minute. Each comes out with a solid head like that of a brass pin, with rough indentations in the other end, so as to be firmly held in the plastic body of the tooth until fierce heat makes the union indissoluble. The strength, infusibility, and incorruptibility of platinum make it the close companion of mechanical dentistry.’ The teeth being removed from the moulds and sufficiently dried, are seamed and otherwise finished off by young ladies with very delicate handling. They are then placed on fire-clay trays and baked in a furnace until they are properly vitrified and have attained the necessary polish from surfacial fusion.
“The White House, where the Company’s manufacturing operations are carried on, and on which stands the residence of the managing director, has some old potting associations and history. It was many years ago the residence of Mr. Richard Hicks, of the firm of Hicks, Meigh, and Johnson, from whose executor (Mr. Charles Meigh) Mr. Crapper purchased the property, and still retains it, letting to the Company the Porcelain Tooth Works. Hanging on the wall of the Company’s office is a printed quotation from Josiah Wedgwood:—‘All works of taste must bear a price in proportion to the skill, taste, time, expense, and risk attending their invention and manufacture. Those things called dear are, when justly estimated, the cheapest; they are attended with much less profit to the artist than those which everybody calls cheap. Beautiful forms and compositions are not made by chance, nor can they ever, in any material, be made at small expense. A competition for cheapness, and not for excellence of workmanship, is the most frequent and certain cause of the rapid decay and entire destruction of arts and manufactures.’ This quotation, beautifully and ornamentally lithographed, has emanated from Philadelphia, and nearly every dentist in the United States has a copy of it displayed in his operating room. Not only do our American cousins generally highly appreciate the productions and the career of the great Josiah, but the dental community especially, although they do not claim to be potters, proudly claim to be his followers in ceramic art and science.”