Eliza Meteyard
Published: 2013-09
Total Pages: 182
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This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 edition. Excerpt: ...needed further improvement. Bentley knew that his friend had already made experiments with this view, and he urged their renewal. ' You want a finer body for gems?' replies Wedgwood ' I think a fine China body would not do. I have several times mixed bodies for this purpose, but some of them miscarried, and others have been lost or spoiled for want of my being able to attend to and go ' VVedgwood to Bentley, June 13, 17 70. CHAD. VII. EXPERIMENTS. 311 on with the experiments. At present I cannot promise to engage in a course of experiments. I feel that close application will not do for me. If I am stronger in the spring something may be done.'1 Instead of waiting for the spring, he soon afterwards set earnestly to work, and early in February 1773, just prior to a visit to town, he reports, ' I have made some very promising experiments lately upon finer bodies for Gems and other things, some proof of which I shall bring along with me.'2 This experimental business, both relatively to useful as to ornamental ware, brought prominently under Wedgwood's notice the whole question of the southwestern native clays, and the Patent which restricted or monopolised their use. We therefore find him referring to Cookworthy's Patent, in order to see how far he might proceed in his improvements. The Patent restricted him not only with respect to improvements in useful ware but with bodies for ornamental purposes, as moorstone was in some of them a necessary ingredient; although the substances which at this period principally engaged his attention for the improvement of bodies designed for ornamental purposes, were those only used hitherto by the porcelain makers of France and Germany, and occasionally...