soda, and lead, some of which are fused in a kiln, and while in a molten state drawn off into water, the compound thus produced receiving the technical term of "frit." The other ingredients are added to the frit, and the whole ground together for use. This ware is subjected to a great degree of heat, and transparency is imparted to it during the first burning. The glaze is afterwards added, and being softer than the "body" is fused at a lower temperature; thirty hours go to the first fusing and fourteen to the second. Having made clear the distinction between earthenware and china, a word is necessary upon the clay used in the manufacture of porcelain.

An authority upon ceramic art states, that without doubt the best kind of china-clay is got in Cornwall, from the mines of St. Austell. The process for obtaining the clay is difficult, and cannot be easily set forth. Clearing away the surface of the ground to a depth of some twenty to thirty feet, which surface is called by miners the "overburden," little rivulets make their appearance. These are conducted to various parts of the mine, and receive the crumbling mass which falls down as the miners operate with their pickaxes. The water containing the clay runs off into large pits or "catchpools," in the lower part of the mine, and is from thence pumped up into huge settling tanks. From the tanks the water is drained off, and the clay is put on to pans and dried. The streams near the china-clay, or Kaolin mines, run white in Cornwall, and one writer says that "from their excessive whiteness they might be flowing with milk rather than water." But to Derbyshire.

Decidedly the most direct, and in every way the pleasantest, route from London to Derby, the busy county town of the shire, is via the Midland Railway. This main artery of the English railway system traverses Herts, Beds, Leicester, and the valley of the Trent, the traveller reaching Derby, the headquarters of the line, well within three hours. "It is the Midland Railway that has made the town," is the unanimous verdict of the townspeople, and this becomes at once apparent to anyone visiting the huge and well-conducted locomotive works. of the Midland, where no less than 12,000 men are regularly employed.

At a distance within a quarter of an hour's walk of the Midland Railway station at Derby runs the Osmaston Road, parallel with the London Road, and at the top of the road on the right-hand side stands an imposing and classical-looking building, ornamented above the portico by the royal arms. This building is none other than the Derby Porcelain Manufactory, and it is from this building that there

continually issue those marvellously beautiful and highly artistic productions, known as Crown Derby Ware, bearing the time-honoured mark, a crown over two Ds, with the words "Royal Crown Derby" surmounting the design.

Intensely interesting is the history of the old Derby China factory, which in its infant days occupied a site on the Nottingham Road, near the foot of St. Mary's Bridge. It would seem to be, to some extent, a matter of conjecture as to who were the original founders of the Derby China Works. Three names, intimately associated with these works, are those of William Duesbury, John Heath, and Andrew Planché. The three men appear to have entered into an agreement of partnership which bears date January 1, 1756, and is headed, "Articles of Agreement between John Heath, of Derby, in the County of Derby, gentleman; Andrew Planché, of the same place, china maker; and William Duesbury, of Longton, in the County of Stafford, enameller." The agreement was probably never ratified, and ultimately we find one of the trio, William Duesbury, at the head of affairs, making earnest effort to establish the work he had undertaken. From the first he laid it down as of the utmost importance that he should "secure the services of clever artist workmen; men who were as thoroughly in earnest as himself." He made the best use of his opportunities to do so. One of these opportunities was the discontinuance of the porcelain works at Bow and Chelsea, by which William Duesbury came into pcssession, by purchase, of the plant in both places, and the best of the models and moulds. Some of the best workmen accompanied him to Derby, and others stayed on the Chelsea Works, under the new master, for twelve or thirteen years, when the Chelsea factory was finally closed.

To say that William Duesbury succeeded in his labours to raise Derby China to excellence, both in quality and artistic decoration, is to say the least that can be said of his efforts. There is a tradition that his Majesty King George III. made a visit to the manufactory in 1773, and that as Duesbury had made several beautiful things for King George and Queen Charlotte, he took this opportunity of acquiring the right to use the Royal Crown in marking his productions.

Another distinguished visitor to the Derby China Works was Dr. Johnson, attended by his friend and biographer Boswell, who thus describes his visit: "I admired the ingenuity and delicate art with which a man fashioned clay into a cup, a saucer, or a tea-pot while a

boy turned a wheel to give the mass rotundity. I thought this as excellent in its species of power as making good verses in its species. The china was beautiful, but Dr. Johnson justly observed it was too dear; for that he could have vessels of silver as cheap as were here made of porcelain." Dr. Johnson was not to know that samples of articles made in his days would sell a hundred years farther on for their weight in gold.

Thirty years later than the draft of agreement between Duesbury, Planché, and Heath, William Duesbury died, and his son, bearing the same name, stepped into his father's place, and the King and the Queen continued their patronage. Services were made for the Prince of Wales, afterwards George IV.; William Pitt, the statesman; the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, and other celebrities. arduously did the second Duesbury devote himself to his art that he ruined his health, and died before he had attained the prime of life, his eldest son being but ten years of age.

So

In 1809 an advertisement appeared offering the Derby China factory for sale, and in 1810 or 1811 it passed into the hands of one Robert Bloor. Of an energetic and commercial turn of mind rather than an artistic, Mr. Bloor's aim seems to have been to render the works a commercial success, and a marked change is observable in the articles produced after 1811. He resorted to the sale of what is technically distinguished as "seconds ware," that is, pieces slightly imperfect, not having passed the numerous turnings to which the clay is subjected satisfactorily. Never until Bloor's time had any such imperfections been offered for sale; the worst had always been destroyed at once, and those slightly injured put on one side.

The accumulations of many years' "seconds ware" were in the factory, and by Mr. Bloor's direction quantities of this stock were sold in various towns throughout Great Britain and Ireland. At first Derby China was a name to conjure with, and the imperfect pieces were readily bought up by undiscriminating purchasers, and readymoney flowed into the coffers of Robert Bloor. This short-sighted policy led to the decline of the works. The best artistic workmen, finding that the public readily bought imperfect goods, became careless in their productions, thereby nullifying the excellent results obtained by their predecessors.

In 1828 Mr. Bloor's health of mind gave way; he never recovered it, and for sixteen years the China Works were left entirely to a manager, Mr. James Thomson, who was as able as he was honest, and steered the business clear of many dangerous rocks.

The sole surviving descendant of Mr. Bloor in 1844 was a granddaughter, who had married a maltster and corn factor of the name of Clarke. This Clarke took out a statute of lunacy in the year of his marriage and carried on the China Works for four years, i.e. till 1848, when they were closed, and the whole of the plant-including moulds, models, and unfinished stock, raw materials, benches, stools, in short every article, however trifling-was purchased by Samuel Boyle and transferred to the Staffordshire Potteries. The purchases filled no less than twenty canal boats.

On the close of the Nottingham Road factory, one William Locker, who for forty years had been connected with it, and to whom the break up had been a sore trouble, proposed to several of the old hands-Samuel Fearn, John Henson, and Samuel Sharpe, potters, and Sampson Hancock and James Hill, painters and gilders-that each should contribute of his knowledge, experience, money, and tools, open new premises and commence the manufacture of Derby China, thus continuing it as one of the trades of their native town. The proposal met with acceptance, and between twenty and thirty years the partners-losing now one and now another by deathcarried on the business in King Street.

It was in 1877 that the managing director of the Royal Worcester Porcelain Works, Mr. Edward Phillips, having severed his connection with the Worcester Works, conceived the design of erecting the present china factory in the Osmaston Road. An acre and a half of land was bought adjoining the Derby Workhouse, upon which a mill and slip-houses were erected, and in the same year the old workhouse and its spacious grounds were sold by auction, and purchased by Mr. Phillips and his partners. Immense additions have been made to the workhouse, and, of course, extensive alterations, so that to-day Osmaston Road Porcelain Works are among the most satisfactory of art-producing centres. In 1878 the first goods undecorated were sent away, and "by 1880 the whole manufactory had, in every department, been brought into full working order." It is sad to find that the following year, Mr. Phillips, after a very brief illness, passed away. There is, however, consolation in the reflection that it would have been even sadder had he died before the completion of his scheme, and while the works were undeveloped and details undecided.

It may interest some if we here append the names of the leading artists and modellers who have helped to make the glory of Derby ware. Our authority is Mr. Jewitt. He gives the principal modellers as

Spengler, Stephan, Coffee, Complin, Hartenberg, Duvivier, Webber, and Dear. The principal painters, according to the same authority, were Boreman, Billingsley, and Hill, famous flower and landscape artists; Brewer and his wife, Bernice Brewer, who painted both landscapes and figures; Pegg, a Quaker, who "surpassed in faithful copying of nature in single branches and flowers, and in autumnal borders"; Samuel Keys, a "clever ornamentalist"; Steel, a fruitpainter; Cotton and Askew, two "highly gifted" painters of figures; Webster, Withers, Hancock, Bancroft, and others, flowerpainters; Lowton, "clever at hunting and sporting subjects"; and Robertson, at landscapes. The fellow-pupil of the celebrated portrait painter Reynolds, Wright, of Derby, on several occasions supplied drawings and gave advice, in addition to others of emi

nence.

One of the Wedgwood family was at one time employed at Derby, having bound himself for three years to work at "the arts of repairing or throwing china or porcelain ware," for the sum of fourteen shillings per week.

We now pass on to consider the actual making and decoration of china, as it is carried on at the present time in the Royal Crown Derby Works.

The famous old Derby blue and the red, and the style of decoration and gilding are reproduced in all their original fulness. The true spirit of the old workmen has been caught by thrower and modeller, and the consequence is that, "but for a slight difference in the composition of the 'body' and the modern mark, the productions might almost be taken to be genuine old examples."

Passing through the works we arrive at the clay and stone yard. Here we are confronted by numerous pyramids of Cornish granite, flint, felspar, and clay. There is not the slightest connection, so far as an ordinary visitor can distinguish, between these very ordinary wayside-looking materials and the elegantly designed and elaborately coloured vases in the finished-goods department. Yet the connection is nevertheless very real. From the yard we pass to a large rough and ready building, the home of innumerable vats fitted with runners of Bakewell stone, ceaselessly running round and round, moved by centrifugal force.

The running and the roaring together-for they are not by any means noiseless runners-is not without due effect upon the material run upon or "run down." The vats contain water, and into the liquid proportions of dry china-clay, Cornish stone, fiint, and ground