Jump to content

Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/163

From Wikisource
This page has been validated.
THE RISE OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY.
151
depend on encouragement suitable to their abilities; and such parents, as are inclined to bind their children apprentices to either of these branches, must be early in their application, as only a few of the first offering will be accepted, without a premium; none will be received under twelve years of age, or upwards of fifteen. All orders from the country, or other provinces, inclosed in letters, post paid, and directed to the China Proprietors in Philadelphia, will be faithfully executed, and the ware warranted equal to any, in goodness and cheapness, hitherto manufactured in, or imported from England.

Subsequently the proprietors advertised for bones, offering twenty shillings per thousand "for any quantity of horses or beeves shank-bones, whole or broken, fifteen shillings for hogs, and ten shillings for calves and sheep (a proportionable price for knuckle bones) delivered at the china factory in Southwark"; concluding with the announcement that the capital works of the factory were then completed and in full operation. The projectors of this enterprise were Gousse Bonnin, a foreigner, who had most probably learned his trade at Bow, and George Anthony Morris, of Philadelphia. In January, 1771, they applied to the Assembly for pecuniary assistance, in the form of a provincial loan, the petition being given in full by Colonel Frank M. Etting in his History of Independence Hall. In their address it is stated that the petitioners "have expended great sums in bringing from London Workmen of acknowledged Abilities, have established them here, erected spacious Buildings, Mills, Kilns, and various Requisites, and brought the Work, we flatter ourselves, into no contemptible Train of Perfection." Whether they were successful in securing the loan does not appear, but later in the same year they advertised for zaffer or zaffera, without which they could not make blue ware. In April, 1772, they advertised for apprentices to the painting and other branches, and shortly after for flint glass and "fifty wagon loads of white flint stone." The attempt, however, proved a failure in a financial point, and in the latter year the proprietors made a public appeal for charity for the workmen who had been brought to a strange country and were left without means of support. After running about two years the factory was closed, the real estate was sold, and Bonnin returned to England.

Little is known of the ware made here. The fact that zaffer was used shows that blue decorated ware was made. The Bow works at that period turned out little but blue and white china, as was the case with all of the early English factories, which employed lapis lazuli and zaffer to color beneath the glaze.

The terra-cotta works owned by Mr. A. H. Hews, at North Cambridge, Mass., were founded by his great-grandfather, Abraham Hews, at Weston, Mass., some time previous to 1765. At first only the ordinary household utensils of earthenware were