Page:A tour through the northern counties of England, and the borders of Scotland - Volume II.djvu/178

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from the clays found contiguous to Burslem; painted and mottled in a rude way, and glazed with lead ore, finely powdered and sprinkled on the patterns before they were sent to the kiln. Two foreigners, (for to other nations we have been in- debted for almost every original hint of manufac- tures, and for their first improvements) by name Elers, introduced, about the end of the seventeenth century, a new mode of glazing the Staffordshire ware; by casting into the kiln, when at its highest heat, a quantity of salt, whose vapours produced a vitrification of the clay on the surface of the vessel, and thus gave it a much more equal and beautiful gloss than the preceding process could afford, This was succeeded by a prodigiously great improvement in the materials of the ware itself, the addition of calcined powdered flint to the tobacco-pipe clay, which, being ground and mixed together, the mass was manufactured into the well- known white ware, that for many years was the favourite pottery of the table. But it was left to Mr. Josiah Wedgwood to bring the Staffordshire pottery to a state of perfection ; the scene of whose improvements we now visited. A place elegantly and deservedly called Etruria, since its manufacture v'ics in beauty and taste, chastity and design, with the famous pottery of antiquity made in Tuscany.

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