Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 40.djvu/335

Rh gases. By this method tiles and architectural terra cotta, as well as enamel brick, enameled when green, and thus requiring only one firing, are successfully burned without the use of saggers. Mr. Eudaly also constructs a square down-draft kiln on precisely the same principles, but better adapted to the manufacture of common brick, fire-brick, and sewer-pipe in large quantity, the brick-kilns having a capacity of 80,000 to 300,000, the inside arrangement being such that the heat can be driven to any part of the kiln without altering the fire in the furnace. Thus all the bricks are burned of equal hardness, a vast improvement over the old-fashioned clamp kilns with open tops.

With the failure of natural gas supplies in the West, artificial fuel-gas is destined to become the principal agency in the firing of ceramic products. Its extreme cheapness and perfect adaptability to the needs of the potter will insure its extensive use in the near future. There seems to be no reason to doubt that it will, ere long, supersede wood and coal as a kiln fuel.

At the last convention of the United States Potters' Association, held in Washington in January, 1891, it was decided to open a Pottery School with the co-operation of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art, at Philadelphia, under the efficient management of Prof. L. W. Miller, where designing, modeling, and chemistry shall be taught, and the student fully equipped for usefulness as a practical potter and artist artisan.

American potters have much to learn, but the day is not far distant when, as is the case with other industries, we shall lead the world in this, the oldest and most interesting of the mechanical arts. The Columbian Exposition of 1893 will serve as a powerful impetus toward this end, and the World's Fair Committee appointed by the United States Potters' Association, and composed of such progressive potters as Messrs. J. N. Taylor, Homer Laughlin, J. H. Brewer, James Moses, E. M. Pearson, D. F. Haynes, and C. E. Brockman, will insure a creditable representation of American goods in this branch of the Exhibition.

It is true that American manufacturers have excelled the