The other materials, the china-stone[8] and the quartz, have first to be
reduced to the finest powder. To effect this they may, to begin with, be
roasted to effect disintegration, then crushed in a stone-breaking
machine, and finally passed through the grinding-pan in which they are
ground fine between large blocks of chert which rotate upon a pavement
of the same stone. The finely ground materials have now to be mixed in
suitable proportions either by the old process of ‘slop-blending,’ where
the different ‘slops,’ each of known specific gravity, are run in due
proportion into the big ‘blending ark,’ or, as is now usual in the case
of fine wares, by weighing out the materials in a dry state. On the
relative amounts of the three elements, the china-clay, the china-stone,
and the quartz, the nature of the porcelain after firing will depend. M.
Vogt (_La Porcelaine_, Paris, 1893) gives a useful table showing the
limits within which the materials may be varied. We may note that in the
case of a normal china-stone or petuntse being used instead of felspar,
very little additional quartz is required. These limits are: kaolin, 35
to 65 per cent.; felspar, 20 to 40 per cent.; and quartz, 15 to 25 per
cent. The larger the percentage of the first material, the harder and
more refractory will be the resultant porcelain.
This question of the composition of the paste has been the subject of
many experiments lately at Sèvres. A somewhat animated discussion has
raged around it. M. Vogt, who is the director of the technical
department in the National Porcelain Works, is well qualified to speak
on the subject. We shall not hesitate then to avail ourselves of the
conclusions which he arrives at, the more so as they put tersely some
important points of which we shall see the importance later on. I refer
especially to the relations of the glazes and the coloured decorations
to the subjacent paste.
These are, then, the results that M. Vogt arrives at:--
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