Britain at Work
A Pictorial Description of Our National Industries

BRITAIN AT WORK. 76 majority of wares. Two, three, or even four firings, with intervening processes of embel- lishment, are needed for the most elaborate. Coloured lithographs may be transferred on the glaze ; edges may be gilded ; raised fret- work may be added under the gold ; subjects may be painted by hand in enamel—each or all of these may combine to complete the artistic effect. After the last fire, the gold is scoured with fine sand to bring out a dull “ matt ” surface, or burnished in parts with an agate to a brightly polished texture, and finally passed away for approval before packing. Such are the complex methods involved in GLAZING : THE DIPPING TUBS. producing high-class pottery, and the skill and experience involved taxes the best efforts of thirty or more separate artisans, all of whom must successfully co-operate to the perfection of each individual piece. I he failure of any of these will mar, and perhaps destroy, the work of all the rest. Within the general and ail-embracing term “ pottery ” the variety of objects generally included is infinite—from the red brick to the encaustic tile, from the garden pot to the china cup. The factories making the heavier and cheaper class of goods are, as a rule, located in the district where the clay is found. To form some conception of their extent and character many outlying places must be visited. As a rule, the red bricks and roofing tiles, as well as the garden pots and such-like, are made from alluvial clavs. These are so widely distributed that the industry can be said to belong to no particular neighbourhood. The more populous areas naturally attract the largest enterprises, and in these the use of machinery has superseded the primitive hand- making. The latter, by-the-bye, has not changed one whit since the time of Pharaoh and the Israelites, and is still amongst us in the smaller brickfields. One of the chief exceptions is that of Fletton, in Hunting- donshire, where millions of bricks are finished each week, being stamped out of the semi- dry clay, ground and delivered automatically by a continuous machine. Two distinct classes of clay are available for the potter in addition to the alluvial clays. One consists of clay deposits formed from disintegrated granite. The other embraces clays, more or less refractory, found beneath the coal measures. The chief localities producing the former are Devonshire and Dorsetshire, and in the neighbourhood of Poole and Teignmouth a number of potteries and tile-works produce sanitary drain-pipes, spirit-bottles, and, indeed, almost all classes of coarse ware, such as terra-cotta, paving tiles, sinks, gulleys, and mangers. The proximity to the seaboard, however, affords a ready means of carriage for this clay to other distant parts where either coal or customers are plentiful. Hence large pot- teries dependent on such material have been established at Lambeth, at Glasgow, at Bristol, at Newcastle-on-Tyne, and also near Liverpool. All these manufacture vitreous wares, such as are used for acids, dyes, chemicals, spirits, ales, preserves, oils, etc., as well as for the electrical insulators and conduits. This branch of the industry has been developed with much energy, and the initiative is largely due to the persevering enterprise of the late Sir Henry Doulton, who persistently en- couraged by every means the use of vitreous stoneware for domestic and manufacturing purposes. In the undertakings dependent upon the clays adjacent to the coal measures an extra- ordinary activity has sprung up during the last thirty years. The introduction of white- glazed bricks, which are produced from semi-refractory fire-clays, has afforded an admirable facing for subways and areas where