CHAPTER XII

THE FACTORY TO-DAY

Its situation and surroundings—Facilities for the study of plant, flower, and animal life—Modern equipment in machinery and in hygienic improvements—The absence of lead poisoning—New impulses.

In the word factory there is nothing suggestive of poetry. In England it represents the Frankenstein who has slain many cottage industries. In connection with our own potteries there are the Five Towns, merged into one, with a quarter of a million of inhabitants. They stand for organized science and applied manufacture. Their architecture is an architecture of chimney-shafts and kilns, black with smoke. It is a prosperous district, crammed with the workers in a gigantic industry. There are visions of murky canals and great hills of accumulated rubble of the mines, coal and copper and iron, dug from the bowels of the earth and blotting out the skyline.

There are crowded byways filled with hurrying operatives, men and women and girls. The beauty of the rich, green, undulating lands of Staffordshire has been effaced by this delving of human moles. It is as though some ruthless giant had made sport of the hills and worked havoc on a smiling plain. But modern life demands sacrifices, and chinaware must be made to send to the four corners of the earth—this is the great White Country.

In Denmark things are managed differently. It comes as a welcome surprise to the English visitor, educated to other scenes, to find the Royal Porcelain Factory set in a pleasant suburb of the city near the old gardens of the Palace of Frederiksberg. One cannot have an omelette without breaking eggs: the factory chimneys are there, the green-hedged paths are surely a snare leading up to another such prison-house as are all factories the world over. Here are the heaps of quartz, and we catch the hum of the machinery. The workers are in the hive; some unkind sprite has snatched them from the pleasant ways of a delightful city set by the sea and immured them for their sins in this fortress of stone.

It suggests the story of BÖttger and his workmen imprisoned by reason of the secrets they held. Surely these workmen and artists who know the secret of the Copenhagen ware will not be allowed to escape. It is too precious a thing to Denmark that its secrets be divulged. But the reply comes suddenly when the doors are opened and the secret, that is no secret, is disclosed. These men and women are Danes, and proud of their art and filled with the love of their Copenhagen porcelain. They come and go as they will. Like bees they roam over the flowers and the gems of nature, and they return home to the hive because they love their art. That which their hand findeth to do, they do with all their might.

Facility for Study of Animal and Plant Life.—There is sunshine here in this Northern pottery. The courtyard shows a scene no other factory in the world can offer; it is bewildering to a student of potteries: a turkey with her brood proudly dominates the scene. We have with the camera caught this as a record. It is as suggestive as it is remarkable that the artists have carried their love for fidelity so far that flowers and animals and birds find themselves in suitable environment at this strange enchanted factory.

Animal life is dear to the potters here. There are over three hundred moulds of different types—wading and diving wild fowl from the remoter "haunts of coot and hern"; sea-gulls, never absent from the harbour and canals spanned by bridges over which trams pass; bears and seals, the originals of which are to be found at the Zoological Gardens close by; and if the Phoenix—that fabulous bird which lives for five hundred years, making its nest of spices and burning itself to ashes, coming forth with renewed life for another five hundred years—could be captured, it would find a place in the aviary of the factory which, Phoenix-like, has arisen with youth and vigour.

The Absence of Lead Poisoning.—In place of the white-faced factory workers, we find at the Copenhagen factory a healthy band of workmen, artisans, and artists, employed in conditions that are a credit to all concerned. The usual drudgery of a pottery is eliminated as much as possible in this factory. The latest modern appliances to ventilate the dust-laden air are in use. There are no cases of lead-poisoning, because lead is not used in the factory either in pigments or in glazes. A dining-hall and dressing-rooms have been erected for the workmen. The factory provides its own electricity and mechanical power; it is heated throughout by hot water, and has a complete system of vacuum and pressure mains.

The lady artists work in almost ideal conditions. They are installed in studios filled with flowers and plants, and in no other factory are the artistic conditions so favourable to the study of plant and animal life. The photographs we reproduce are taken of the normal surroundings of everyday work.

The writer has indelible memory pictures of the workmen at the machinery, or in the open air turning over the quartz where it lies in heaps "weathering," exposed to the sun and the frost, of slowly grinding stones revolving in a vat mixing and amalgamating the raw materials, in preparing them for the next stage of handling, revealing the slow and patient processes of the potter's art. There is something hazardous in manipulating the raw materials, crushing them into powder, and bringing them together in the correct proportions for the body. It is here that the long traditions of the factory, the well-guarded secrets in the mixing, and the skilful instinct in conjunction with scientific exactitude, come into full operation. The result is evident in the smooth, white, pearly body and the transparent liquid glaze, so technically perfect and so much admired by other potters.

One recalls an anxious and expectant group at the ovens when a firing is being removed after the ovens have cooled down from the intense heat of the grand feu, a temperature never attempted by the manufacturers of soft-paste porcelain in this country.

The laboratory holds mysteries of its own. It is an inner sanctum to which few penetrate. These little human touches indicate that there is a romance in manufacture as well as in more stirring scenes to the accompaniment of the roll of the drum or the rousing bugle-call. The potter's art is rich in associations which render the arts of peace as alluring in story as the arts of war. Many victories have been won in silence, but no less triumphant for that, and these represent man's conquest of earth and the white-hot flame of the furnace, whereby he transmutes the rocks from the quarry and the mountain-side into crystal vases reflecting those same mountains, and streams, and placid lakes, and clouds in stately procession. This is the art of the magician, and modern science has added one more laurel wreath to her victories over the elements.

The interior of a great factory where art is in the making has many exciting moments. The cruel fire is no respecter of persons. After the various steps have been taken, the grinding, the mixing, the moulding into form, the firing in biscuit, the painting, and the subsequent glazing, the creation comes out of the oven as a finished work of art. At any one of these stages a slip may mean disaster. Each successive process gains in difficulty. It is a tragic instant when the last hour is reached. After the oven has cooled the news goes round that a firing is being taken from the kiln. A knot of artists gathers round as each piece comes out. Some call for admiration; there is a hush of joyful surprise when a completed masterpiece comes forth perfect. Alas! too often some delightful dream with its tender colours has twisted out of shape in the intense heat. A graceful form has coalesced with a neighbouring vase. They stand as failures, and the workman with swift, relentless hand gives them a tap with a hammer, and they become shards. The poet-painter's dream has ended in nothingness.

New Impulses.—In regard to the future there are golden hopes and happy anticipations. The past has been glorious, the present is triumphant. A true and living school of design amid sound artistic environment has its band of artist-potters, trained under happy auspices, whose aims are set steadfastly on art that is nothing unless it be national—these are the children of to-morrow. New generations will come and go, and new art impulses will beat, as the waves breaking from the Baltic, on the little pottery set on a rock and proud in its great achievements. The future, like the vessel in the furnace, is in the hands of Fate. Taking courage in both hands, the potter-sons of Denmark will in those yet unborn days carry on the great traditions. There is a great heritage for the sons of the days to come, and looking backward, they will place the laurel wreath on the brow of the masters who, in the old days and at the present era, have fought the good fight and won the guerdon of praise from potters in far-off lands who have paid homage to the art of the Three Blue Lines.

FINIS