In 1772 the first porcelain-factory was established at Limoges by Messrs. Massier, Fourneyra & Grellet _frères_, under the protection of the wise and liberal intendant Turgot. It is the decoration of the porcelain that gives it its value as well as its charm. Its manufacture is comparatively easy and simple. The kaolin, a dry, whitish-yellow clay, is first taken in lumps from the quarry and carried to one or another of the numerous mills lining the Vienne, where it is ground fine and reduced to a liquid paste closely resembling bread-dough. In this shape it is carried in sacks to the factory, where, having been again worked over to secure fineness and pliability, it is ready for the moulder's or the turner's hands. Nothing can exceed the deftness and skill with which, under the magic touch of the experienced workman, shapeless lumps of this prepared clay are fashioned into cups, dishes, vases and every conceivable form of the most delicate pottery. It is so quickly done, too! One handy operative can make two hundred cups a day. Once moulded into shape, the piece of pottery is dipped into liquid enamel which gives it hardness and brilliancy. It receives too the stamp of the manufacturer. It is then placed in what is called a _gazette_ to be put into the oven to bake. The gazette is composed of a pair of deep earthen saucers fitting tightly together and forming a circular box, varying in dimensions according to the sizes of the objects to be baked. The greater part of those in use are little larger than an ordinary soup-plate. In this gazette the piece of porcelain is hermetically sealed up, and then it goes into the oven with thousands of other gazettes, until the great circular furnace, twenty feet in diameter and two stories high, is packed full from side to side and from bottom to top. Then the doors are closed, the fires are lit, and for a period varying from thirty-four to fifty hours the baking process goes on at a temperature of thirty-two hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Even after the fires are extinguished the heat in the furnace continues intense, and twelve hours more must elapse before it subsides sufficiently to permit the workmen to enter, remove and open the gazettes, take out the porcelains, which are now hard and brilliant, and send them to the artists for decoration. There are in all some seventy of these ovens in Limoges, with an average capacity of six thousand pieces. As most of them are kept going night and day, the reader can form some idea of the amount daily manufactured.