The modern soft-paste bone porcelain consists of nearly equal portions of china clay, china stone and bone ash, fired to a temperature of about 1250 C. and then glazed with a feldspar and china-clay glaze and refired.[149] The chief porcelain factories at this time were at Worcester and Derby, but they were soon outdistanced and beaten by the better conducted factories of Spode, Minton and Davenport, who managed to centre the china trade in North Staffordshire, just as the earthenware trade had been localized there in the previous century. To modern taste all the china of the first half of the nineteenth century, with its florid colouring and lavish gilding, seems to warrant little success or praise. In their own day however the success of the Spodes was very great. The second Spode died in 1827; William Copeland had died in the previous year, and in 1833 a third Josiah Spode died also. From the executors of the last Spode the whole factory was bought by William Taylor Copeland, M.P., the second of the name, Alderman of the City of London. [Illustration: HERBERT MINTON 1793-1858] Mintons have long been the historic rivals of Copeland, late Spode. Their factories are almost side by side in Stoke, lying along the Newcastle canal, which was cut in 1795. Just across the Trent, too, lay Whieldon’s old works at Little Fenton. Wedgwood, in his list of the potters of 1715, says that there were then only two factories in Stoke—Ward’s and Poulson’s. He meant probably that the factories carried on when he wrote in 1785 by Ward and Poulson were in existence in 1715. However that may be, in 1793 Thomas Minton, financed by a Mr Pownall, joined Joseph Poulson, a practical potter already at work, and began to make “blue-printed” ware at Stoke.[150] A few years later they began to make porcelain. In 1802 the firm was “Minton, Poulson & Co.,” and by 1817 it had become “Thomas Minton & Sons.” This first Minton died in 1836, and it was his son, Herbert Minton (1793-1858), that brought the Minton china to its highest perfection, and started the manufacture of encaustic and dust tiles. A word should be said here on the methods of gilding—so marked a feature of both Spode and Minton china. Originally, when gilding was put on the ware, it was laid on in the form of gold-leaf, and attached with printers’ size. This sort of gilding does not usually wear well, and it was only in his very late years that Wedgwood began to burn gold into the ware.[151] About 1790, the method of painting on the gold with mercury, and burnishing it afterwards, was introduced from the Continent, and a new decoration was super-imposed upon the already overladen ware. It is only within the last decade that a form of liquid gold has been discovered which requires no burnishing, and yet is fairly durable.