CERAMIC ARTS GENERAL SURVET.
21
We are to consicler, however, the difficulties linder which
we labor; tlie possession of tlie coal, the elay, tho transporta-
tion and an expanding market are not sufficient; we need the
labor and the enterprise to bring these dormant sources of
wealth togcther. As in Wedgwoods time, there aie those
who thinkthis can be done but in Great Britain, and that we
should send onr clay, our sand, and nur coal, over the ocean
to be worked into objeets for our daily use. The writer of
Wedgwood’s life, publishcd in 1865, says
“ No country situated as America then was, and is now, with her
civilization thrust centuries back by the curse oi blind and intem-
perate party strife and internecine war, can hope to gain perfection
in an art. A country in this condition gains most by the export of
raw materials and the import of manufactured goods.”
As yet we have barely begun to explore for and to under-
stand tho varied sources of potters’ materials which are known
to exist all over the country.
There is no need of looking about for anything connected
with the art, unless it be the artistic inspiration to be gaincd
by contact with older civilization and the artistic culture which
is the inheritance of mankind.
American materials are rnore and more brought into use at
the American potteries, to the exclusion of those formerly
importcd. In Chester County, Pennsylvania, and its vicmity,
there are establishments for mining, washing and preparing
kaolin or fine china clay, cqual to auy from Cornwall, in
En «'lau d. There are valuable beds of such clay in South
Carolina, Georgia, and in Illinois in Pope County, at which
last-named place a superior clay is obtained and is highly
valued at the Ohio potteries and others.
There is an abundance of fine quartz and felspar rock
throughout the Eastern and Middle States, and mines have
been opened in Maine, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware,
and Maryland. Mills to crush and griud these materials, with
expensive machinery, have been crected at seveial points on
the Susquehanna, at Trenton, and on the Connecticut, and
in various places in the West.
