Page:On the economy of machinery and manufactures - Babbage - 1846.djvu/120

86 into the mould, and then throws the clay into it with some force; at the same time rapidly working it with his fingers, so as to make it completely close up to the corners. He next scrapes off, with a wetted stick, the superfluous clay, and shakes the new-formed brick dexterously out of its mould upon a piece of board, on which it is removed by another workman to the place appointed for drying it. A very skilful moulder has occasionally, in a long summer's day, delivered from ten to eleven thousand bricks; but a fair average day's work is from five to six thousand. Tiles of various kinds and forms are made of finer materials, but by the same system of moulding. Amongst the ruins of the city of Gour, the ancient capital of Bengal, bricks are found having projecting ornaments in high relief: these appear to have been formed in a mould, and subsequently glazed with a coloured glaze. In Germany, also, brickwork has been executed with various ornaments. The cornice of the church of St. Stephano, at Berlin, is made of large blocks of brick moulded into the form required by the architect. At the establishment of Messrs. Cubitt, in Gray's-inn lane, vases, cornices, and highly ornamented capitals of columns are thus formed which rival stone itself in elasticity, hardness, and durability.

(114.) Of embossed China.Many of the forms given to those beautiful specimens of earthenware which constitute the equipage of our breakfast and our dinner tables, cannot be executed in the lathe of the potter. The embossed ornaments on the edges of the plates, their polygonal shape, the fluted surface of many of the vases, would all be difficult and