No advance in any industry has been more sure than in that of pottery
and chinaware, under the American tariff, or more rapid in the past
four or five years. It took Europe three centuries and the jealous
precautions of royal pottery proprietors to build up the great
protectorates that made their distinctive trade-marks of such value.
The earlier lusters of the Italian faience were guild privacies
or individual secrets, as was almost all the craft of the earlier
art-worker. Royal patronage in England was equivalent to a protective
tariff for Josiah Wedgwood; and everywhere the importance of guarding
the china nurseries has been understood. We have in this country
broadcast and in abundance every type of material needed for the
finest china ware, and for the finer glasses and enamels. The royal
manufactories in Europe were hard put to it sometimes for want of
discovering kaolin beds in their dominions, but the resources of the
United States in these particulars needed something more than to be
brought to light. The manipulation and washing of the clays to render
them immediately useful to the potteries depends entirely upon the
reliance of these establishments upon home materials. The Missouri
potteries have their supplies near home, but these supplies must be put
upon the market for other cities in condition to compete with the clays
of Europe. There are fine kaolin beds in Chester and Delaware counties
in this State; there are clay beds in New Jersey, and the recent needs
of Ohio potteries have uncovered fine clay in that State. This shows
that not only for the manufacture itself, but for the development of
material here, everything depends upon the stimulus that protection
gives.
Ohio china and Cincinnati pottery are known all over the country. The
Chelsea Works, near Boston, however, are as distinguished for their
clays and faience, and for lustrous tiles especially (to be used in
household decoration) can rival the rich show that the Doulton ware made
at the Centennial. Other New England potteries are eminent for terra
cotta and granite wares. On Long Island and in New York city there are
porcelain and terra cotta factories of established fame, and the first
porcelain work to succeed in home markets was made at the still busy
factories of Greenpoint. New Jersey potteries take the broad ground of
the useful, first of all, in their manufacture of excellent granite
and cream-colored ware for domestic use, but every year turn out more
beautiful forms and more artistic work. The Etruria Company especially
have succeeded in giving the warm flesh tints to the "Parian" for busts
and statuettes, now to be seen in many shop windows. These goods ought
always to be labeled and known as American--it adds to their value with
any true connoisseur. Some of these establishments, more than others,
have the enterprise to experiment in native clays, for which the whole
trade owes their acknowledgments.
The demand all through the country by skillful decorators for the
pottery forms to work upon, points to still greater extensions in this
business of making our own china, and to the employment and good pay of
more thousands than are now employed in it. A collection of American
china, terra cotta, etc., begun at this time and added to from year to
year, will soon be a most interesting cabinet. Both in the eastern
and western manufactories ingenious workers are rediscovering and
experimenting in pastes and glazes and colors, simply because there is a
large demand for all such, and they can be supplied at prices within the
reach of most buyers. It needs only to point out this flourishing state
of things, through the "let-alone" principle, which protection insures
to this industry, to exhibit the threatened damage of the attempt, under
cover of earthenware duties, to get a little free trade through at this
session.--_Philadelphia Public Ledger_.
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