Stoke-on-Trent, in Staffordshire, is home to the original factories for ceramic production in England and has been on my “must-see” list for years. By dint of marital negotiation, I got my ceramic museums, and Glenn got the Morgan Factory (subject of another post, still to come).

We started at the Wedgwood factory, which was clean and modern. We were surprised that the actual process of producing ceramics has not changed; it has just been automated. Much of the district’s manufacturing has been sent off to Indonesia and India, to the disgust of the locals. Wedgwood has acquired Royal Doulton, Waterford, and a few other well-known lines in the last few years and celebrated its 250th anniversary at our visit.

from Victoria Magazine Article: Celebrating 250 Years of Timeless Elegance

Victoria Magazine wrote an article on 250 years of Wedgwood History and included a link in its most recent newsletter.

The founder, Josiah Wedgwood, was a fascinating man. He came from a family of potters and was the youngest of twelve children. A real visionary, he was always experimenting, testing, and designing. He invented and perfected “creamware,” which was later commissioned by the Royal Family and became known as Queen’s Ware.

Josiah Wedgwood brought the canal to Staffordshire in the late eighteenth century, allowing production to take off. Before that, all the raw materials—coal, clay, stone, and water—were brought over land. The finished product was hauled by packhorses on wagons like the ones you can see above (can you imagine?).

Our next stop was the Gladstone Pottery Museum, an intact, working museum with five bottle ovens, some of the very few preserved today. As late as the 1960s, 2000 bottle ovens spewed pollution into the atmosphere. The Clean Air Act of 1956 finally called a halt, and the smoke-filled skyline of Staffordshire changed forever.

The working conditions of an old pottery were not to be believed. In 1861, 4065 children under ten worked in the potteries; 593 were five years old. They turned wheels, fetched and carried. Apprenticeships were seven years for many positions. Often, upon reaching the end of the contract, the apprentice was sacked and had to start over. This practice kept labour cheap and job security low. Women were paid less than men for the same position, although widely acknowledged to do better work. My cynical side says some things haven’t changed.

These are some of the machinery that worked the raw materials into the clay used to make the end products.

Machinery used to mix clay

The worst job of the lot was emptying the bottle ovens after a firing. Filled with saggars (the clay containers in which the cups, plates, etc were placed for firing) from top to bottom, the emptying process began as soon as the three-day, coal-fed 1200° C firing had finished while the oven was still blistering hot.

Saggars in a bottle oven

Cooling time was downtime, and nobody got paid for downtime, so the workers wrapped wet sheets around their heads, tried to shield their eyes and lungs, and in they went.

Saggars in a bottle oven

Naturally, the ovens had to be emptied from the top, the hottest place.

Saggars stacked to the top of the bottle oven.

It took about five hours, and no sooner was it emptied than it was filled for the subsequent firing. When loaded, the saggars weighed about 25 kilos and were carried on the top of the head, up and down the ladders.

Removing the saggars was a hot and dangerous job.

In addition to the dangers of heat, a condition called “Potter’s Rot” or Silicosis as it’s now known, was preva ent. Earthenware and stoneware pottery had a high silica content. When the pots were scraped before glazing, a lot of free silica was released and breathed deeply into the workers’ lungs, causing shortness of breath, coughs, fevers and cyanosis. Yikes!

Then we saw the glazing, decorating, and gilding. The painters and gilders had the best jobs, working in warm, well-lit studios at the top of the buildings.

The hours were long, but the most skilled were relatively well-aided. Their work was incredible for its exquisite detail. This lady was giving a demonstration of the painting techniques on modern wares.

The main downside of the glazer’s job in historical times was exposure to lead and other chemicals in the glazes, which often caused facial damage as their nasal tissues succumbed to the poisons over time. Manufacturers were resistant to change, as many of the bright colours in the glazes proved difficult to duplicate without the deadly toxins. It took a lot of persuasion and chemical advances to make glazes safe for workers and consumers.

Overall, it was a riveting and sobering day; the films about the processes were fascinating. I have an entirely new appreciation for how brutal the Industrial Revolution was for our forebears. Farming was hard, and clearly, many people voted with their feet to take up industrialization, leaving the agrarian life behind. What they got was a different kind of hard, it seems. We have a lot to be thankful for.