THE INDIAN CLAYS 



CLAYS 



BRICK AND 

 TILE CLAYS 



for glazed pottery, which in places has obtained a reputation for artistic 

 merit ; fire-clays, raised in considerable quantities on some of the Gond- 

 wana coal-fields ; and fuller's-earth, which is mined in the Central 

 Provinces and in Rajputana." In these brief sentences Holland has 

 furnished the chief kinds of clays met with in India. In the remarks 

 that follow, these will be severally dealt with, except that, as a matter 

 of convenience, the clays used for all kinds of pottery (unglazed, painted 

 and glazed) will be taken up last instead of second : 



Bricks and 

 Tiles. 



History of 

 European 

 Production. 



Early Indian 

 Production. 



Three Kinds. 



Strength and 

 Durability. 



Machine-made. 



k and Tile Clays. Until the middle of the last century 

 it was thought necessary to import bricks from England, and that pre- 

 judice served to destroy the hopes of Mr. George Macdonald, who in 1866 

 became virtually the pioneer of European brick-making and pottery in 

 India. He failed disastrously to interest the Government engineers and the 

 building trade in the products of his factory at Raniganj (Raneegunge). 

 In 1881 Mr. J. H. Glass directed attention to the Jabbalpur supplies, and 

 as a consequence the Geological Department deputed Mallet to inquire 

 into the clays of the Central Provinces, the result being that the claims 

 of Umaria were urged very strongly. It was pointed out that Gondwana 

 clays were abundant, coal and fire-clay on the spot, felspar obtainable 

 within four miles, while chalcedony might be collected in the Mahanadi 

 near Chandia. Messrs. Burn & Co. had meantime founded their potteries 

 on the very spot where Macdonald failed. It is said they now turn out 

 about 30,000 bricks a day, including glazed bricks for bathrooms, and 

 blue-chequered damp-proof bricks for stores and godowns. And about 

 the time of Mallet's report they extended their operations by opening 

 out their Jabbalpur works. 



But bricks were used in India long before the arrival of the English, 

 and some very old edifices, fortifications, etc., seem to have been con- 

 structed with large thin bricks not unlike those employed in ancient 

 Europe. Such bricks were recently found, for example, by Dr. Stein 

 in the ruins of the stupas, etc., of ancient Khotan, of a date of the 7th or 

 8th century. Abul Fazl, the chronicler of the Emperor Akbar's reign, 

 mentions three kinds of bricks, " burnt, half-burnt, unburnt," and ob- 

 serves that the Emperor had fixed the price for these. The first kind, 

 he adds, were usually made very heavy. [Cf. Ain-i-Akbari, 1590 (Bloch- 

 mann, transl), 1873, 223.] These three grades are met with to the present 

 day all over India, and in fact most houses, garden walls, etc., of the 

 peasants of India are mainly constructed (when bricks are 'used at all) 

 of sun-dried bricks. But if Indian fired bricks have not hitherto borne 

 a very high reputation for strength and durability, it has been upheld 

 that the cause of inferiority should more often be sought in the process 

 of manufacture than in the material used. A writer in Indian Engineering 

 (August 4, 1900) pointed out that in making bricks by hand it was very 

 difficult to get the edges sharp and well defined, the only way to obtain 

 this being to use none but well-made moulds and to reject at once any 

 mould found to be in the slightest degree cracked or damaged. That 

 difficulty is to a large extent overcome by the use of machinery, though 

 an even greater disadvantage at once arises, namely that machine-made 

 bricks have to be transported from the brick-field to the building site. 

 thus materially adding to their cost. In India it is usual to manufacture 

 hand-made bricks near the place where they are to be used, and it is highly 



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