THE PRODUCTS OF CLAY AND FIRE 



warlike expeditions ever undertaken, although they 

 failed so completely in attaining the object for which 

 they were projected. 



THE MANUFACTURE OF POTTERY 



The processes necessary to the manufacture of pot- 

 tery are many, and range from the simplest to the most 

 complicated and delicate. Yet in a general way the 

 methods have been the same all over the world through- 

 out the ages, until the nineteenth century, when the 

 introduction of machinery in the Western nations 

 changed their methods and gave them the advantage 

 over the Orientals in the better forms of commercial 

 pottery. The potter's wheel a revolving horizontal 

 disk upon which the clay is molded had been the 

 most essential machine to the potter in Asia as well 

 as in Europe, as it had been two thousand years earlier 

 in Greece and Rome, and still earlier in Egypt. Nor 

 should it be understood that power-driven machinery 

 replaced it, or changed it materially except in the 

 matter of adaptation of its driving mechanism. For 

 certain kinds of wares, where the individual skill of 

 a workman is essential, the potter's wheel is likely 

 to remain always in use; but in the great factories, 

 even where very fine grades of commercial china are 

 made, the wheel is now gradually being replaced by 

 other machinery. 



But the potter's wheel, while so essential to the man- 

 ufacture of fine earthenware, was not responsible for 

 the improvement hi the ware from the unglazed, crudely 



