INDUSTRIES 



The fragments represent a considerable variety 

 of production. Sauce-boats are the most abun- 

 dant, and besides the ordinary tea and dinner 

 services there are many dolls' tea services. The 

 only product peculiar to Lowestoft seems to have 

 been the birth tablet with an inscription on the 

 middle and pierced with a hole to hang up by. 

 The discovery of moulds is of special interest. 

 Some are fluted with large or small flutes. Some 

 are of a ribbed pattern, others decorated with 

 dots, cable-work, or basket-work. There are 

 moulds for separate parts of the articles made, as 

 teapot-spouts, lids, and handles, the latter some- 

 times in the form of a flower or spray of leaf ; 

 also for knife-handles decorated with designs 

 copied from Worcester or Bow. Indeed one of 

 the chief results of this discovery is to enable 

 the expert to assign to a Lowestoft origin china, 

 especially embossed china, which might other- 

 wise have been regarded as inferior work of 

 another make. This is the more important as 

 the factory had no distinctive mark of its own. 



The conclusions that emerge from Mr. Spel- 

 man's investigation may be summarized as follows, 

 substantially in his own words : 



I. Lowestoft ware is porcelain, not pottery. 2. It 

 is soft paste, not hard ; the cruder pieces resemble 



Bow, the finer Worcester ; the paste is creamy white, 

 some pieces being very translucent whilst others are 

 practically opaque. 3. It is often very rough in 

 modelling and the bottom of the pieces is roughly 

 finished. 4. The glaze has a bluish or sometimes 

 a greenish tinge, and this glaze has run thickly into 

 crevices, is continued over the bottom rim and the 

 flanges of teapot lids. 5. The decoration is often 

 poor though sometimes good ; the blue is apt to run. 

 6. The models in use at other factories both for form 

 and decoration were copied without scruple, and the 

 marks were commonly but clumsily forged. ' 



Professor Church gives a list of twenty-two 

 pieces dated from 1761 to 1795, and adds : 



A large number of other pieces enamelled in colours 

 with roses and other flowers, chequered work and 

 scale patterns . . . may be assigned to Lowestoft on 

 the evidence furnished by their resemblance to the 

 signed pieces. . . . The paste of Lowestoft is not so 

 soft as that of Bow or Chelsea. It is slightly yellowish 

 by transmuted light, the glaze being rather bluish and 

 not over bright. There are specks and black spots on 

 most of the pieces, while the blue is of a dull cast. 

 The painting is feeble in drawing, but otherwise 

 reminds one somewhat of the style of St. Cloud por- 

 celain except where direct imitation of Chinese design 

 has been attempted. 



AGRICULTURAL IMPLEMENTS, MILLING 

 MACHINERY, LOCOMOTIVES, ETC. 



The making of agricultural implements, and 

 of agricultural and milling machinery, with 

 which is associated the manufacture of road 

 engines and other locomotives, is the most im- 

 portant modern industry of Suffolk, whether it 

 is measured by the number of men employed, 

 the amount of capital invested, or the, extent of 

 the market served. Though it is established 

 also in Bury, it belongs more especially to the 

 eastern part of the county, where it balances the 

 textile industries of the west. It is to be found 

 on a larger or a smaller scale in most of the 

 eastern towns and in some villages. It was 

 founded in the last quarter of the eighteenth 

 century. The Leiston works of Messrs. Garrett 

 were established in 1778, the Wickham Market 

 Iron Works of Messis. Whitmore and Binyon 

 in 1780, the Orwell works of Messrs. Ransome 

 in 1789, and the Peasenhall works of Messrs. 

 Smyth in 1801. But its great achievements lie 

 in the nineteenth century. In the thirties and 

 forties several Suffolk firms began to acquire a 

 world-wide reputation. Since that time the 

 expansion of the industry has been continuous ; 

 the number of those employed in it is still in- 

 creasing, and it looks confidently to the future. 



The small country town of Leiston, far re- 

 moved as it is from all the great natural lines of 



communication, and from any effective outlet 

 by sea, is not a site that could have been con- 

 sciously chosen before the days of railways for 

 great works destined to supply a world-wide 

 market. The achievement of this result in so 

 remote a spot is indeed a convincing proof of 

 energy and enterprise, and the situation of the 

 Leiston works sufficiently indicates the simple 

 origins out of which they have grown. Down 

 to the last quarter of the eighteenth century the 

 farmer was supplied with all the agricultural 

 implements then in general use by the village 

 blacksmith or wheelwright. The original es- 

 tablishment of Mr. Richard Garrett, the great- 

 great-grandfather of the present Messrs. Garrett, 

 was little more than a roadside smithy, where 

 horses were shod, and ploughs and harrows made 

 and repaired. Mr. Garrett, however, acquired 

 a special reputation for scythes and sickles, and 

 gradually came to manufacture these on a large 

 scale. In this industry, and in the production 

 of ploughs and harrows, turnip-cutters and chaff- 

 cutters, fifty or sixty men were employed, and 

 the smithy became a factory by the addition of 

 a wheelwright's shop and a foundry. 2 



1 Spelman, 72-3. 



* The Engineer, 8 Aug. 1884, p. 109; Agrw. Gaz. 

 26 Mar. 1888, p. 285. 



281 



