The first manufactories of porcelain in England were those at Bow, and at Chelsea, near London. In these, however, nothing but soft porcelain was made. This was a mixture of white clay and fine white sand from Alum bay, in the Isle of Wight, to which such a proportion of pounded glass was added as, without causing the ware to soften so as to lose its form, would give it when exposed to a full red heat a semi-transparency resembling that of the fine porcelain of China. The Chelsea ware, besides bearing a very imperfect similarity in body to the Chinese, admitted only of a very fusible lead glaze; and in the taste of its patterns, and in the style of their execution, stood as low perhaps as any on the list. The china works at Derby come, I believe, the next in date; then those of Worcester, established in 1751: and the most modern are those of Coalport, in Shropshire; of the neighbourhood of Newcastle, in Staffordshire, and in other parts of that county.

The porcelain clay used at present in all the English works is obtained in Cornwall, by pounding and washing over the gray disintegrated granite which occurs in several parts of that county: by this means the quartz and mica are got rid of, and the clay resulting from the decomposition of the felspar is procured in the form of a white, somewhat gritty powder. This clay is not fusible by the highest heat of our furnaces, though the felspar, from the decomposition of which it is derived, forms a spongy milk-white glass, or enamel, at a low white heat. But felspar, when decomposed by the percolation of water, while it forms a constituent of granite, loses the potash, which is one of its ingredients to the amount of about 15 per cent, and with it the fusibility that this latter substance imparts.

The siliceous ingredient is calcined flint; and in some of the porcelain works, (particularly, I believe, those at Worcester,) the soapstone from the Lizard-point, in Cornwall, is employed. These are all the avowed materials; but there is little doubt that the alkalies, or alkaline earths, either pure or in combination, are also used, in order to dispose the other ingredients to assume that state of semi-fusion characteristic of porcelain.

(The principal processes are) the grinding and due mixture of the ingredients, in order to obtain a mass sufficiently plastic; the forming this mass on the wheel; the subsequent drying of the ware; the first firing, by which it is brought to the state of biscuit; the application of the firmer colours occasionally on the surface of the biscuit; the dipping the biscuit in the glaze; the second firing, by which the glaze is vitrified; the pencilling in of the more tender colours on the surface of the glaze; and the third and last firing that is given to the porcelain.

It is not for me to determine which of our English porcelains is the best; probably, indeed, one will be found superior in hardness, another in whiteness, a third in the thinness and evenness of the glaze, a fourth in the form of the articles, a fifth in the design, and a sixth in the colours. In hardness and in fusibility, they are probably all inferior to the Dresden and to the Sevrès porcelain; for pieces in biscuit and in white glaze, from both these manufactories, are imported in considerable quantities, in order to be painted and finished here. But it is equally certain, that the last ten years have seen the commencement, and, in part, the completion, of such improvements in this fabric, as will probably place the English porcelains on an equality with the best of the continental European ones.

Advantage has recently been taken of the semi-transparency of porcelain biscuit to form it into plates, and to delineate upon it some very beautiful copies of landscapes and other drawings, by so adapting the various thicknesses of the plate as to produce, when held between the eye and the light, the effects of light and shadow in common drawings. The invention originated in the ingenuity of our French neighbours.

(To be continued.)

Notes of a Reader

IMPROVEMENT OF LANCASHIRE

The west of England has considerably the advantage over the eastern side of the island. One way or another nature did much more for it. It is true, that the eastern side was civilized much earlier; yet human ingenuity and industry have of late years been much more successfully employed in turning the gifts of nature to the best possible account. Ireland and America are customers, for whom, though they were long in coming, it was worth while to wait. After all, Lancashire is the most remarkable and characteristic feature in the comparison. From being among the most backward parts of England, this county has worked its way into the front rank. The contrast between its condition up to the middle of the last century, and the astonishing spectacle which it exhibits at present, belongs to the transformation which a hundred years create in a newly settled country like America, far more than to the gradual improvements and changes of an old English county.

It would be curious to analyze the concurrent causes, and marshal the successive steps, by which Lancashire has advanced;—not only succeeding in appropriating to itself a leading interest in the creative inventions of Watt and Arkwright, but connecting its name in honourable alliance with literature and science. The very circumstances from which a contrary presumption would originally have been drawn, have (singularly enough) principally contributed to its extraordinary progress. Lancashire owes the canals, by which the commercial thoroughfare of that end of England has been turned from the Humber to the Mersey, to the enterprise of a Peer. It owes the docks, which have about them almost a Roman presentiment of future greatness, to the spirit of a Corporation. It owes the taste and accomplishments, by which the character of its wealth has been raised above the drudgery and fanaticism of money-getting, almost entirely to the zeal of a few Dissenters. The name of Governor Clinton is not so pre-eminently united with the canal policy of America, as is the name of the Duke of Bridgewater with the canals of England. He staked his last shilling on the chance of thus cutting out an inland north-west passage to the Atlantic. The corporation of Liverpool, by an enlightened application of their vast resources, have accelerated, consolidated, and secured the realization, of every expectation and contingency which fortune threw in their way. They have hastened, not to say, anticipated, events. There can be as little doubt of the effect which the light radiating from the assemblage of Priestley, Wakefield, Aikin, &c. at Warrington; from the presence of Percival, Henry, Ferriar, and Dalton, at Manchester; and from that of Roscoe and Currie at Liverpool, spread over their circle. The literary attainments and cultivation of the manufacturers and merchants of Lancashire, as a body, seem otherwise likely long to have lagged behind their general powers of understanding, and their real station in society.—Edinburgh Review.

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The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. Volume 19, No. 548, May 26, 1832

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British Porcelain

(To be continued.)

Notes of a Reader

IMPROVEMENT OF LANCASHIRE

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