[Newspaper]
Publication: The Daily Constitutionalist
Augusta, GA, United States
vol. 12, no. 265, p. 3, col. 2
From the Charleston Courier, Nov. 4.
Kaoline Factory.
AIKEN, S. C.
The clouds frowned darkly day after day for more than a week upon the trip we had arranged to the Kaoline. At last the sun looked down from the clear blue, and, ordering the carriages, we discussed the breakfast in a style that would have inspired Mrs. Trollope with the deepest disgust. A lunch was hastily gotten up, and soon the horses were laboring and sweating through the sand. Our gentle beasts had evidently suffered from the high price of provender, and their appearance and obvious readiness with which they consented to walk, excited our commiseration and our apprehension. The boast of the driver as to their speed and endurance, always backed by the application of the whip, increased our pity, while it did not subdue our fear. They derived great encouragement from the consideration that they have never stalled or broken down, though they had been working for the public for an indefinite number of years. And here I am reminded of an anecdote in point. A friend of mine, while sojourning on Sullivan's Island, hired a horse and buggy for a drive on the beach in the afternoon. The harness, cracked and secured in several places by twine and buckskin, presented such a dilapidated appearance that he objected to its use. "O," said the whip, "you'd needn't fear, sir. I've been using this gear for sixteen years, and it has never yet given way."
The road we traveled took us across the railroad just below the highest piece of tressel-work. We passed the residence of Mr. H. W. Ravenel, the distinguished botanist. It is tastefully located in the center of an undulation, the slope in front and on the sides of the dwelling being planted in peach trees and several varieties of the choicest grapes. The elegant mansion of Mr. W. Gregg stands about a mile to the right. The regular rows of peach trees, their leaves reddening at the touch of fall, appear from this point to extend to the very door of his dwelling. Surpassing the track for about quarter of a mile, you obtain a fine view of the longest and highest piece of tressel-work. It was over seventy feet high, but the Company have been for some time industriously engaged in reducing its perilous altitude, by depositing carloads of earth on the supporting framework below. These deposits have attained a height of about 20 feet but still viewed from the distance you cannot repress surprise how it is that a structure apparently so light and frail could have borne for so many years the immense weight that has been passing over it daily. Your surprise gives place to doubt, that, despite the long and severe test to which its strength has been subjected, comes darkening over your mind, when your unpractised [sic] unpracticed eye beholds it from the gradually rising bank beneath. It is, however, regarded by skillful engineers much safer than the incline plane for which it was substituted.
But we must journey on to the factory. We reach it at a convenient time, for the operatives are at dinner, and taking advantage of their absence, we take the edge off our sharpened appetite beneath the bows of a beautiful tree. While our luncheon was disappearing, we inspected the exterior of the building appropriated to the manufacture of cups, saucers, pitchers, et id omne genus. It is a large and well built structure, with nothing that strikes you, accept the huge chimneys rising out of its roof. These are round, of great circumference as they emerge into the air, which gradually lessen as they approach the top. The fragments of our repast are handed to our servants, and the operatives having resumed their work, we passed through the open door into the building. We found ourselves in the midst of an imposing array of crockery. The various vessels pertaining to the table are ranged in rows on the shelves. Supposing that they were in condition to serve the purposes for which they were made one of the party attempted to lift a saucer, when the soft material, yielding to the force employed, fell from its edge. I turned round to aplogise [sic] apologize for the occurrence to a person at work on some moulds, and having witnessed the accident, he informed us that the ware in this room was drying previous to being burned in the kiln, and politely offered to conduct us through the establishment. We followed him into a wing of the building where we saw the various apparatus used in the manufacture of their ware. As you enter this room, the first thing that attracts your notice is a machine known by the appropriate name of the "Potter’s Piano." It is a wooden frame provided with pestles at regular intervals. These pestles have pieces of a hard kind of stone fastened to their ends, and work precisely like the pestles of a rice mill. There is a trough beneath, signed with granite, and it is here the clay and feldspar are pulverised [sic] pulverized. To the right stand two immense tubs, called "sagars [sic] saggers." An iron shaft runs through the centre of Each of these "Sagars [sic] Saggers", to which an instrument is attached, of which no better description can be given than by comparing it to the screw of a propeller. This iron screw works horizontally on a surface formed of blocks of granite, and composing the bottom of the enormous tub-like "Sagars [sic] Saggers." The clay and felspar [sic] feldspar, after being thoroughly pounded by the "Piano," are then ground with the bone, flint-glass, and other materials that compose the ware, in these huge tubs. In the rear of this building there is a furnace where the felspar [sic] feldspar is subjected to a high degree of heat for about forty-eight hours, when it becomes friable, and is then placed under the pestles of the "Piano."
We then returned to the building, where the edge of the saucer was pinched off, and a handle taken from a pitcher by one of the ladies. One of the rooms on the second floor contains the crockery that has passed through the fire, but has not yet been dipped into the glazing tubs; the other, the ware that is finished and ready for sale and use. We were surprised to see so many and such a variety of table utensils. They are sold at very cheap rates, and we purchased as many articles as we could conveniently carry in our carriages, especially of the work done in this new, prosperous and promising factory.
The ware, of which they have a considerable supply, is of a coarser and cheaper sort. They are now engaged in the manufacture of the finest porcelain, and we were shown a pitcher of antique form, as a specimen of the china they had made arrangements to manufacture. It was exceedingly thin, and beautifully transparent. The same material enters into the composition of both; the porcelain requiring a larger quantity of bone, and the addition of flint glass. One of the ladies, when bone was mentioned as one of the many ingredients, inquired, "What kind of bone is used?" "Any kind we can get," said our polite and intelligent guide. But, pushing her inquiries further, resolved to have her curiosity satisfied, she said "You surely don't make use of human bones?" "They are the best sort, madam," said he, a sly smile playing about the corners of his mouth. "They make the clearest and most valuable china."
He then told us that one of the workmen having his thumb cut off by the machinery, ground the bone very carefully, and mixing it with the proper material, made an excellent cup and saucer, that he uses daily, and values beyond price. Do not, fair readers, when seated around the glowing grate, inhaling the ambrosial vapor that floats away upon the warm air, fancy that the nectar of the Celestials has lost its peculiar perfume. Sip from your exquisite china in which the light reveals not a black spot, and comfort yourselves by the consideration that human bones make the most beautiful porcelain!
The Kaoline is owned entirely by several gentlemen of Augusta, Ga. They have a capital of about fifty thousand dollars, twenty thousand of which has been expended in the purchase of a hill of clay, at a convenient distance from the building. Vast quantities of this material are sent to a similar factory in Connecticut, and the tierces are returned filled with feldspar. The Kaoline is the first and the only manufactory of crockery in our State; and the enterprising company deserve our warmest thanks and liberal patronage. They have begun under favorable auspices — may success crown their efforts.
My clerical friend proposed, on returning, that we should exchange seats and carriages. Of course, I could not presume to choose either of two such groups as composed our company. But the proposal coming as it did from a married eclesiastic [sic] ecclesiastic was accepted. Our horse, much the more fleshy, and the fresher looking of the four, caused their gloomy forebodings of the morning to be realized, for they turned out to be of the sort, that when they get to the foot of a hill “are thar.” We were forced frequently, in order to induce the jaded beasts to draw the vehicle through the sand up along ascents, to disembark and become pedestrians. At last, growing tired and impatient, I took the reins, and by cheerful words and a judicious use of the lash, we succeeded in reaching Schwartz's while dusk was deepening into dark.
