TEAPOTS GROW ON TURNING WHEELS

Dominion, Volume 27, Issue 306, 22 September 1934, Page 8

TEAPOTS GROW ON TURNING WHEELS

A Potter And His Craft

OLD INDUSTRY REVIVED IN WELLINGTON Not very far from the busy heart of Wellington potters’ wheels are spinning, and jugs, teapots, vases, flowerpots, insulators, are daily conjured out of the crude clay. Few people are aware of this Industry that is growing up in the Capital City; few, indeed, realise that the potter is no stranger to New Zealand. Some of the secrets of this unusual craft were revealed yesterday when a “Dominion” reporter visited the pottery in Newtown. First ho was shown the potter's wares. Mostly of dark-coloured glazed earthenware, attractively mottled In blues, browns and yellows, they appeared to have a high degree of finish. There was nothing very light or delicate, there was no china. “That will come,” said the potter. “You cannot expect us to run before we have learned to crawl. These potteries have only been working for ten months.” He led his visitor into a backyard. “This is the clay,” he said, indicating a heap of unlikely-looking rock debris. “Most folk never guess that clay is only rock gone rotten. They say good pottery cannot be made here In this country because we have no proper ball-clay. Well, ball-clay Is so called because it used to be made up into balls to sell; before that it was simpy rotten rock like this, like any of the clay hills round Wellington China clay is rotten granite, but most of the best modern china is fifty per cent, beef-bones. New Zealand -has plenty of beef-bones, and of clay, felspar flint and all the other ingredients, we should be able to make excellent china. And in due course we shall.” Mailing Teapots. The potter paused beside a trough containing a steaming mess reminiscent of a mud-volcano without the smell. “We slake the clay with water until we have a thin yellow milk, that will strain through a sieve with a flue mesh of about 120. The finer the ware to be made, the finer the mesh. After that the liquid is boiled in this trough, and allowed to thicken and cool until the right consistency is obtained. After that it is ready for working. “Now to-day we are making teapots. Come and see how it is dqne.” A young man with astonishing dexterity slapped a pancake of damp clay on to a spinning mould, and fitted it to the inside with his hands. That was the bottom half of the pot. A slightly smaller mould made the top; the two were slapped together, and there was the pot, without handle or spout. A knife of hoop-iron trimmed off the line where the two moulds met. “He can produce three a minute,’ said the potter. At a potter’s wheel nearby, another man was making teapot lids. He roughed them out with deft fingers, using no tool other than the wheel. When slightly harder and drier, they were trimmed on another wheel with hoop-iron tools; there they were given a knob and a flange. The vent hole was cut with the butt-end of a common pen-nib. Meantime, the bodies of the teapots had, by the addition of handle and. spout, been completed. The two fittings were made in moulds, into which liquid clay was poured, and after it had set at the outside to the correct thickness, the liquid in the centre was spilt out again; as soon as it was hard the handle or spout was trimmed with a knife and stuck onto the body of the pot by means of a clay compound. Turning on a wheel, the pot was given a basic pattern in coloured clay, and was then ready to be fired. The oven was a conical brick affair, about ten or twelve feet across the floor. It already contained a quantity of unbaked crockery, in earthen containers.

Cooking the Ware.

“You must not call this a kiln,” said the potter. “A kiln is only heated to about 700 degrees or 800 degrees centigrade, but we cook at about 1300 degrees. We only fire the oven once a fortnight, when it is stacked full. After about 27 hours the oven is allowed to cool, and the ware taken out. It is then dipped in the glaze and rebaked; and very often it is cooked again a third time, after being stippled with a glaze of another colour. “All my workmen are New Zealanders —New Zealand trained in, these work-shops. I .started with some lads from the Technical and the Elementary Schools, some unemployed labourersa tile-fixer, a ‘messenger-boy’ of fifty from the House of Representatives. “I started by giving them clay , and letting them play with it; then I set them to making flower pots, and later finer work. This boy here can turn out twenty dozen teapots lira day. I can make sixty dozen. When we have better equipment, we shall be able to produce a hundred dozen, I hopeNormally, of course, to master any .single branch of the craft, requires a five to seven years’ apprenticeship. “Although I myself come of an Eng lish family long associated with this craft, and was trained in the Staffordshire potteries, I can honestly claim that this is a one hundred per cent, New Zealand industry. Even the machinery was made in the Dominion. And our wares compare very favourably with the better-priced English products. -. “As for the Japanese crockery, let me tell you a story. There was a line of Japanese teapots selling very well for a while, until customers began to complain that they did not make nice tea. Well, the handles were hollow: the tea leaves stuck in them and rotted there. AU tea was stale tea from those teapots. And. as for price.” concluded the potter, “our New Zealand-made teapots are selling at the same prices as the Japanese ones—one shilling to one and six.”