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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Exeter Advocate, 1924-10-16, Page 6.:. POTTERY MAKING IN CANADA Many Varieties of Clay Available, but the Better Grades Are in L,united Supply Until comparatively recently no thine, tableware was manufactured in Canada. This condition, however, has been overcome by the establishment Df a pottery at Oshawa, Ontario, and it is reported that another plant is to be operated at Port Hope, Ontario. The Oshawa plant is turning out from 50,000 to 75,000 pieces per week of tableware and art pottery, using large-' ly Canadian raw materials. Stoneware and other heavy domestic' pottery, such as teapots, mixing bowls, etc., Is made at St. John, NB., Iber- viile, Que., Hamilton, Ont., and Medi - eine Hat, Alberta. f' Pottery includes many varieties of ware and fr.,m different kinds of clay. The common flowerpot of the gardener is the simplest kind of pottery made in quantity; and the unglazed pottery of the European and Asiatic peasant and Indian pottery are examples a simple ware made for every day use, very often from the commonest brick clays. Porcelain,or china, is at the other extreme in the ceramic scale,' and this class of pottery is made from the finest white burning kaolin, with which other ingredients are mixed. There are several types of pottery between these extremes but in a gen- eral way they can be grouped into two ciassee--these which have a vitrified or non-absorbent body. and those hav-, ing-a soft body which is more or less porous, The latter require to be cover- ed with a glaze, or enamel, in order to render them watertight, but vessels of the first type may be left unglazed and still hold water. Modern pottery, however, is nearly always finished with a glaze, or enamel, whether the body is porous or vitreous. Varieties of Pottery, The Mines Branch of the Depart- ment of Mines has carried out a num- ber of investigations of the clays of Canada, and has reported upon. the suitability of these for the manufac-1 ture of pottery and earthenware. Some! of these gooda and the varieties of clays entering into their composition are as follows: Porcelain Ware—This class of ware covered with glazes and enamels and refired. Suitable. Clays in Canada. Stoneware clays are sparingly dis- tributed in Canada and are accessible in Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan. This type of clay is generally very smooth and plastic in the `natural state,and the color ranges front dark grey to almost white. Bali clays are highly plastic, fine- grained clays, which burn to a white color, but in the raw state they are dark colored, sometimes approaching Mack. It is one of the ingredients used in compounding bodies for making white earthenware, white wall tile, electric porcelain, etc. There is a great variety in composition in the dif- ferent ball clays, but none have been found in Canada, except among the great variety of white clays in south- ern Saskatchewan. The name blue clay is often used in describing certain clays which are of a Iead grey color, but the name is' meaningless and has no significance, as a, host of clays of widely different pro- perties have a lead grey, or bluish color, in the raw state. Commercial kaolins, or china clays, are residual clays. derived from a rock composed mostly of feldspar, or con- taining little or no iron oxide, Crude kaolin, so far found in Canada, is at tery industry by washing, in order to free it from impurities, generally quartz grains. The washed kaolin is known by the name, china clay. China clays are less plastic than stoneware clays and generally, burn to a white porous mass. They are nixed with ball clay, feldspar and flint for the manufacture of porcelain and white earthenware bodies. The only kaollin, so far found in Canada, is at St. Remi d'Amherst, in Argenteuil County, Quebec, Scuthern Saskatchewan is the only region in Canada where valuable clays occur in abundance. There is a variety of white and grey clays over a large area, varying from low-grade stone- ware clays to flreclays. They are mined at two localities; East End and 1 Members of the Canadian Alpine Club are shown creasing a glacier near the crest of Mount Robson, the highest peak in the Rockies, 14,000 feet above sea level. is made from the finest white, kaolin, Willows. These clays will be found after it has been thoroughly washed suitable far the manufacture of vari- to clear it .of quartz, mica, and other ons kinds of pottery, including heavy impurities. The kaolin is mixed with tableware called white granite, or iron- bail ronball clay, flint and feldspar. The kao-1 stone china. lin gives the body its pure white color, I The laboratories of the Mines the ball clay serves aa a bond and !Branch at Ottawa have tested out makes the wet body more plastic. The practically all the known plays of feldspar has a fluxing action - that makes the burned Ware hard and im- pervious, and the flint makes the ware somewhat porous so that a glaze may be applied. The mixture of these ma- terials is fired at a high temperature, glazed and refired at a lower tempera- ture, Some porcelains, siich as electri- cal porcelain, are glazed before firing, thus acoomplishing the work of two industries if the information available firings in one. at the Mines Branch is made use of. Stoneware Pottery -Articles for do- mestic use, like crocks, jugs, mixing What is "P'edlar's French?' bowls, teapots, etc., are generally • The wiseacre says that theexpres- made from stoneware whichburns to scion "Welsh rabbit" is a perversion of. a dense body of extreme hardness, Welsh rarebit, but this is a'mistake. varying in color from nearly white to The man who first made this sugges- dark grey. A great deal of the so tion had no sense, of humor. called art pottery is made from stone- ' As a matter of fact, the table fur- ware clays, nishes many examples of names of White Earthenware — The heavier viands which have an alias• of the same kind of tableware known by various humorous description as Welsh rabbit, trade names, as white earthenware, Sailors, for instance, call a shark ironstone, china, and white granite- steak "Folkestcne beef," 'and .Esther w ^re, are made from mixtures of white folk commonly call smoked herring burning clay and finely ground quartz "Digby chicken:" and feldspar, burned to a fairly dense A similar instance to Welsh rabbit but porous body and covered with a is provided by poached egg on toast. clear glaze. A great variety of orna- mental pottery is made of the white earthenware body covered with, color-- ed olor-ed glazes. • Colored Earthenware— There is a great variety of pottery made from natural impure clays, which •burn to colors ranging from light buff to deep wed. Most of these •clays soften and sse their shape if burned to too high E. temperature, consequently the body remains porous after firing, tad i, tbba Canada, and results of these experi- ments are available. It is in this work that the Mines Department hasproven itself so invaluable to industries de- pendent upon our mineral resources for raw materials, and much unneces- sary investigation and expense will be saved to Canadian manufacturers contemplating engaging in clay -using -.A» THE WORST IS YET TO COME 11(11 l�����91��mii�� 11lll(IIIIl(1Illiii 111' I + ►i;li I�lll ;ill �wa.c d..�. ��wti �Ga ., N• *II:.a,� ` Sip tao— OW `� III" • ,. Love the. Jealous. London Feasts the Eye. I praised the dadsies, .qn niy lawn, The face of every town has its dee I And then my lady mowed them down, licious differentness;' says C. B Mon. My garden stones, improved by moss., I tague, "but of all cities, Landon, after • She moved—and that was Beauty's all, Is surly. the finest•to.look at, You loss. , find it out if you have lived there in 4 When I adored the sunlight, she your youth, and then been long away, Kept a bright lire indoors for me, but sometimes revisit the .place, You She saw I loved the birds, and that, see it then, with effectually opened Made her one day bring home a ca•t, eyes, as the man who has long been in !She plucks my.flowers to deck each some tropical wild sees rural England room, revealed while histrain comes up from And make me follow where they bloom. Plymouth through two hundred miles Because my friends were kind and I of trimmed, fenced garden, half-miracu- many, lone, half -laughable, and 'whoolly en; She said—"What need has Love sof l dearieg. Fleet Street whenAt lamps any?" are being lit on a clear evening;outh- What is my gain, and what my loss? work, its ramshackle wharves and Fire without sun, stones bare of moss, mud foreshores, seen from Waterloo Daisies, beheaded, one by one; !Bridge at five o'clock on a sunny June The birds .cat hunted, friends alli morning, the eighteenth -century bank. gone— i of the river looking across, to its nine - These are my dosses; yet, I swear, teenth-century bank; the Temple's en, A love less jealous' in its care claves of peace where, the roar of the _,, Would not be worth the changing skin sparrow, twenty years away, planted That she and I are living in,' clear and edgy, like a little foreground —W. H. Davies.' figure, on that •dim background of •sound; the liberal arc of a mighty circle of buildings massed above the Embankment, drawn upon the dark- ne5s in dotted lines of light, as a night Last Flower of the Year. The gentian was the year's last child, Born when the winds were hoarse and wild With wailing over buried flowers, Tbo playmates of their sunnier hours, The gentian hid a thoughtful eye Beneath dark fringes, blue and shy, Only by warmest moonbeams won, To meet the welcome of the sun. Tuck, The gentian her king lashes through, Looked up into the sky so blue, And felt at home; the color there The good God gave herself to wear. right to deliver the first punch by cast of the dice, struck the king a heavy blow cn the side of the head, stagger- ing him. Richard, in his turn, now struck and "landed" on his opponent's ear with such force as to kill him on the spot. Sir Waiter Scott, in his inimitable ro- mance "Ivanhoe," makes use of the story in his relation of the exchange of buffets between the King and Friar The gentian searched the fields around No flower -companion there she found; Upward from all the woodland ways Floated the aster's silvery rays. The gentian shut her eyelids tight On falling leaf and frosty night; And close her azuro mantle drew, When dreary winds around her blew. The gentian said, "The world is cold; Yet one'cl-ear glimpse of heaven 1 hold. The sun's last though is mine to keep! Engh—now let me go to sleep." —Lucy Larcom. Strong Men of Old. Feats of great strength have at all times excited much interest, and the more extraordinary -examples have been deemed worthy of record by his- torians. Remarkable though present- day feats undoubtedly are, they have often been eclipsed by those recorded in bygone days. One o1 the mast famous strong men of antiquity was Polydamas, the Thes- salian, who lived about 400 B.C. Won- derful stories are told of his colossal size and strength. On one occasion he is said to have held a wild bull so firm- ly by one of its hind feet that the ani- mal in its struggles to release itself, wrenched off its hoof, while another feat for which he was renowned was the stopping of a chariot when driven at full speed by seizing the wheel. Richard Cceur de Lion was an ex- ceptionally strong man, and it is re- lated of him that, while a prisoner in Germany in the hands of the emperor, he gave a terribly practical proof of the force of the blow he was able to deal with his clenched fist. The son of his principal warder had invited the royal' captive to an ex- change of blows, and, winning the being known as "Scotch woodcock," and an Australian leg of :.mutton as "Colonial goose.. In the sixteenth century slang was called "Pedlars French, and everybody has heard a cash register called a "Jew's piano." The fur trade has many aliases of this, kind, like "bunn9 - seal," "marsh -squirrel, and "Alaskan sable," all of which are camouflage names for, substitutes for the raal! at- tSah. Sunrise at Midnight. You may think this impossible, but It is not. It is a fact which you have only to go to the• proper place to wit nese. This proper place is North Cape, latitude seventy-two degrees. At this point, the sun, at one time of the year, does not set for several weeks; at. an- other, it does not rise for several. At last, an the proper day, according to the almanac, it shows its face. ' Af- terwards, it remains for ten or twenty minutes, then goes down, and at length does not set at all, but makes an almost perfect circle round the sky, in full view. At North Cape, during the time the sun does not set, the inhabitants tell i that It is 12 o'clock at night by seeing • the sun rise over the mountains. In IStockholm, the sun, in June, sets a , short space before 10 o'clock. During the night, it is very light, owing to the passage of the sun round the earth to- ward the North Pole, and people can see to read at midnight. At the end sof the Gulf of Bothnia, there is a mountain, where, on the 21st of June, the sun does not set at all. This Happens only on that night. The sun touches the horizon, but does not sink below it; in five minutes, it be- gins to ascend again. Reverse English, A native clerk in Manilla" came into hia master's office and asked for a transfer to some other department, or even another island. "But why do you want to Ieave here?" asked the superior officer. "Because," the man repllied, "I am homesick." "Oh, well, in that case there is no need for a transfer. I can arrange for you to have a little vacation and then you can come back. Where is your home?" "Right here, boss," was the doleful reply, "and I am sick of it." IVO?;> era k Tx 4. Sir Samuel Wilson, the new governor of ,Iamaioa;•=left London recently with his wifeand family to take over his post. Their Only Hope. They were raw recruits that the ser- geant was trying to knock into shape, train brings, you into Clearing Crass; Very, very raw, he called them, and the long line of d somthing else as well, as you may noiseless!,* down thebig silentships riverropping, past guess, if you know anything about ser- Greenwich and Grays, on the ebb at a seants. n this end - .occasion they were being in- structed !midnight high tide—O, there are in the use of the rifle. They fired at one thousand yards range, and missed the target alto- Why, when bitten by an .insect, do with the same result. By easy gether, Then at eight by hundred yards, we instinctively rub the affected part? - stages Massage, as applied not only to an in- sect distance was reduced to thirty sect bite but to almost any other in- jury, such as a bruise, is an instinct, almost universal. Its first reason is to wipe away the insect, or to assure ourselves what damage has really been effected. In the econd place, we unconsciously set up a counter -irritation of the nerves, which tends to distract our attention from the original ailment; and thirdly, A Bee's Travels, by the actual pressure of the rubbing we check the flow of the blood in the Experts figure that a bee must travel area of the trouble and so "slow down" 40,900 miles to get a pound of honey. our capacity for feeling the pain. less• courses to this feast." Rub Insect Bite. yards, but still not a shot got home. At last the patience of thier in- structor was exhausted. "Fix bayonets," be ordered. "Charge! It's your only hope!" - A Long Wedding Feast. In India the wedding feast lasts for about twenty-four hours, sc.. 1' The Bowdoin is shown after its trip in the Arctic regions, where it car- ried Capt. Donald MacMillan and his crew, for 333 days of travel through snow and ice. Warnings of Earthquakes 1 Given by Sea Tides. The recent discovery that tides are definitely affected by earthquakes has led to the announcement here that quakes may be predicted in the future by a close observation of abnormal rise and fall of the ocean in the vi- cinity of known tremor centres, says a Tokio despatch. The authorities of the Weather Bu- reau in Chiba Prefecture, near Tokio, had an opportunity to test their theory when it was observed that the tide had been rising .steadily off the toast at Choshi until the day of a quake•when it had passed what is known as the. danger point. On the morning follow- ing the tremor the water had receded , and was four feet below the former mark. ' This fact, they believe, con- firms the belief that serious disturb- ances in the earth's crust are preceded by an abnormal rise in the tide. Before the earthquake disaster of September 1 the tide at Choshi had reached the clanger mark some three months prier to the catastnophe. The Boso promontory„which forms the extreme southern end of Chiba Perfecture„is .thought to be about fifty miles from a spot in the Pacific agreed by experts to be an earthquake zone. This zone,-the',authorities point out, is the cause of, a serious disturbance in the :earth's crust ,at,intervals of 100 years, The last catastrophe thought. to have originated in this quake centre was a tidal wave which inundated Tokio and surrounding territory seven- ty years ago. According to this esti- mate, another colossal disaster is due In about thirty years. But the authori- ties in Chiba are reassuring the ,resi- dents' with the theory that they will he able to predict the quake by the ttides. and give out a warning. Another, Purpose. Diner—"i say,waiter--do you. call. this bean soup?" Waiter—"The cook does, sir," "Why thebean in this soup isn't big enough to flavor it!” Affixing Great Seal Takes Twenty Minutes. Affixing the great seal, the lord chancelllor's most treasured posses- sion, ossession, is nowadays an impresdve cere- mony. Used to ratify the patents of peers, baronets, and judges of the high court, as well as: for important state documents, the present sealwas struck at the royal mint shortly after the King's accession. It is made of silver, measures six inches in diameter and cost £400. Up to within recent years the gree£ seal of England never left the lord. chancellor's keeping. It was carried* by him on all his journeys at home and abroad. Nowadays it is kept in a safe att•the crown office. Affixing the seal takes twenty min- utes. Whenever it is used .two officials. of state, known respectively as "Chaff Wax” and 'the "Sealer," have to be present. In olden days theirs was a whole -time appointment. Now the titles are held by minor officials, a. , dummy great seal being used, except in the instances named above. Her Fortune. "What would you say her fortune is?" "It isn't supposed to flavor it, sir. "A small but attractive figure en 1It is just supposed to .ohristen it!"- pre, ves it, I'd say," ^