16
EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
Great Britain attention was directed to the American colonies
as a source of the materials. In the year 1745, William Cook-
worthy wrote that he had seen samples of kaolin and petunse
found on the " hack of Virginia,” and that the discoverer had
gone for a cargo of it. In 1765, Caleb Lloyd, residing in
Charleston, South Carolina, sent a box of porcelain earth to the
Worcester porcelain works, saying that it had been obtained
in the mountains some four hundred miles west, in the country
of the Cherokees.* There appears to have been much interest
manifested in this discovery, and the clay was pronounced to
be superior to that obtained in Cornwall; but, being without
the undecomposed portions of rock, it could not be made into
porcelain.
Miss Meteyard, in her hfe of Wedgwood, mentions the
custom of merchants and captains tö take in samples of clay
and other earthy bodies on their return voyages, particularly
from the ports of the two Carolinas, Georgia and Florida, f
Bently supplied Wedgwood with clay imported from Pensa
cola, a port with which ho had trading relations. Wedg
wood also rcceived a sample of the Sputh Carolina clay, and
wrote that " it would require some peculiar management to
avoid the difficulties attending the use ot it.'’
As early as 1770 it became evident to the British potters
that the pottery industry might be started in America to the
detriment of their trade, and Wedgwood wrote as fol-
lows :—
“ The trade to our colonies we are apprehensive of losing in a
few years, as they have set on toot some pot works there all eadj', and
have at this time an agent amongst ns hiring a number ot our hands
for establishing new pot w r orks in South Carolina. 1 hey have every
material there, equal, if not superior to our own, for carrj ing on
that manufacture. Wecannothelp apprehending such consequences
from thcse emigrations as make us very uneasy for our trade and
prosperity.”
Porcelain works were soon after started near Philadelphia,
but with little success in competition with the establislied
manufacture in England, although some very good porcelain
* “ Two Centimes of Ceramic Art in Bristol,” pp. 8-13.
f Meteyard’s Life of Wedgwood, p. 367.
