Crockery—An Important Factor

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 31, 31 October 1929, Page 7

Crockery—An Important Factor

Crockery requirements for the Chateau Tongariro were wisely left in the hands of Messrs. Gibson's and Paterson's, Ltd., who represent the Grindley Hotel Ware Company, Ltd., of Tanstall, Staffordshire —the only firm of potters in the world who confine their business to the manufacture of one grade of pottery only. Exceptionally durable, this ware will effect an economy of 7-5 per cent, in the crockery account- of any hotel, restaurant, institution, or college, etc.,, using crockery. Special materials are used in the making of Grindley Hotel Ware, and these are tested at every stage of manufacture. By using a third more coal the ware is given that vitrified glaze which means toughness and durability and practically eliminates for the purchaser the chipping and breakage which is the cause of so much annoyance and expense. The manufacturers leave it to the buyer. "Take a Grindley plate,” they tell him, "and endeavour to chip it with any ordinary hotel plate.” No further demonstration is required. In addition to its inherent toughness, a distinctive feature is the underglaze colourings. Patterns and badges are guaranteed to be absolutely permanent, whereas on an ordinary plate, the designs in time wear off. Grindley Hotel Ware is certainly the world’s toughest product in china stoneware. It costs more than the competitive ware, owing to the expensive process of manufacture, but the characteristics make it the least expensive, resulting in it being used the world over by. Government railways, railway and shipping companies, hospital boards, hotels, colleges, convents and similar, institutions. Getting near home, this ware is extensively used by the Commonwealth and Victorian Railways, ,by the Tasmanian and New Zealand Governments, and by the large shipping companies, hospitals, and hotels of Australia and New Zealand.

Resistance tests are being systematically carried out at the factory laboratory (in addition to the daily experiments made by hotel servants). The doomed plate or teapot is fixed firmly in position and a steel ball at; the end of a pendulum swings down and hits the target. By steadily lengthening; the-swing the. harder blows are struck until the .end comes, and the resistance is then mathematically computed. The real testing is done, of course, in the sculleries of the Empire, but through daily experiment at the factory, a manufacturer knows that improvement is,steadily, if slowly, progressive, and that "death”- only results from _ unfaii violence. Pottery, however, is not enamelled metal, and the pottery manufacturers are facing a version of the old battle between the irresistible shell and the unpierccable armour plate—and the initiative is still with the enemy. Clay, which most people think of as the dullest, most ugly-of substances,, is really nothing of the sort. In au her. long catalogue of products clay is pre-eminently Nature s

lady. Clay is wayward; ununderstandable, almost temperamental. Potters do much with it, but are still striving to understand the true nature of what they deal with. They take the clay, form it, fire it, colour it, glaze it. But the work is just a mass of experience brought to bear hopefully on a particular case. It is odd stuff, and provides the raw material for the most complex and interesting, though at the same time the most anxious, of all industries.