The Cornish China-Clay Industry

A.L. Rowse finds that for more than 200 years Cornwall has been making an important contribution to British pottery.

The china-clay industry of Cornwall It had its small beginnings with Cookworthy’s and west devon is a unique extractive discoveries of the perfect components for making industry and also, with its production of hard china—which had been a secret of the two million tons of china-clay and china-stone a Chinese for centuries—from the 1750’s.

It is a year, an important one in the nation’s economy. fascinating industry; many people who know the West Country must be aware of it from the immense white sand-hills and the deep pits beside them which have turned the hinterland of St. Austell into a lunar landscape of strange beauty.

The industry has been going for two hundred years, and yet this is the first time that there has been a history of it.1 It should be said at once that, though written by an outsider to the area, it is a completely satisfactory job, thorough and competent, accurate and reliable, with a grasp of the technical operations that is much to be commended in a lady.

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