The Making Of Wedgwood Reel 1 (1958)

this was a man's dream that practical idealist Josiah Wedgwood the first born in 1730 Potter and humanitarian who built the first garden factory in England and named it etruria much of it still stands today a hundred and seventy years later this dream was again realized when another generation of wedge woods once more moved their flourishing business away from the city to Bala stone in the Staffordshire countryside they moved here not to destroy the Peace of the place but to establish another garden factory where beautiful things can be created in beautiful surroundings many of the 2000 employees live in the village which has grown up with affect others arrived by special train wedgewood once more adds a name to the map the older Toria is now surrounded by coal mines and on works to get to the new factory you walk through fields there could be no more fitting memorial to the first Josiah a man of science and vision who is himself a fine craftsman with a keen appreciation of beautiful things the basic materials from which pottery is made have changed little in 200 years bo clay from Dorset and Devon white china clay and china stone from Cornwall Flint's from the seashore for the production of fine translucent bone china ground-up bone is needed there are many good unfamiliar sex and words to be heard in a coffin these clays go into a plunger where each is mixed with water till it reaches a creamy consistency Flint's are Kelson Dan a furnace and crushed they are transferred by the overhead conveyor to be finely ground with water all ingredients are blunt up as they say in water blending together in a liquid form before the final mixing the ingredients have to be measured out on a weighing machine speaking of ingredients we must differentiate between China and earthenware half the weight of China is bourbon the rest is China stone and China clay it is translucent and delicate looking but strong enough to stand on Queens were which is fine earthenware is made mainly from ground flint ball clay china stone and china clay which is all mixed up in what is called an arc afterwards the liquid clay is put through a press with nylon filter cloths the water is squeezed out through the filters leaving the clay and slabs rather like plasticine it is then put through a pug mill this machine with revolving knives squeezes any air pockets out of the clay which is now ready for the Potter to use and there is still a Josiah Wedgwood Chairman and Managing Director seen here with two of his senior colleagues Victor Scallon head of the art department and Norman Wilson production director new designs having seen the stuff which is the raw material let's go now to those who'll give it form the designers they start on drawing boards they work also with the brush and create designs both abstract and from nature contemporary and traditional to meet a worldwide demand when pottery is fired the water from the clay evaporates and it shrinks the outlines which the artist draws allow for this contraction the modeler then makes a perfect prototype in clay from which molds are made in foster pets and a new design becomes a reality side-by-side with modern machinery and in the perfect surroundings which science has made possible is the ancient craft of throwing on the potter's wheel it is much the same today as it was in biblical times the main difference being that the old foot pedal of the fir has been superseded by the electric motor there the thumb and those various skilled fingers are as important as ever the veteran LAIV which was made for the first Josiah Wedgwood by Belton and what is still in service preserved not as a relic but because it does a good job of course it could be electrically operated but this Scotsman prefers his power unit to be the woman who he's worked with for many years there's been no strike since the firm was founded in 1759 six generations of crops Gottesman like the one who owns these hands that have worked for Wedgwood for 54 years he's an ornament fixing the Rams head handles to the fluted bars turned out by the old lathe the sculptor John flex Minh in 1775 designed the dancing ARS a decoration on Wedgwood Jasper which is still famous and collected throughout the world each figure is made by hand in a separate mold taken from the 18th century original the first Josiah prized Jasper above all his productions he knew the labor of its invention and the difficulty of its manufacture for nearly 200 years connoisseurs have acclaimed the beauty of just it is still sold all over the world another 18th century design is this orange bow it has been molded in clay and is now being cut and pierced difficult work this because the clay won't give a second chance but typical of the way in which the crafts of the past flourish in the present the most familiar everyday object your dinner plate and it arrives simply from this ball of clay flattened into a pancake they call that a batch in the bottles it's flying onto a plate moved this plate has to be made in two colors the first color bat in the center has its edges cut off so the room is formed by a second white bet the second bet of another color is flung on top of it notice that plates are made upside-down then the plates are stacked on their molds in the dryer when they are dry they're taken off the mills and put through the process of Toey which is smoothing with a piece of toe to obtain a perfect finish it could be a dusty job this but the suction pipe draws off the dust before it can do any damage at last they're ready to be fired the other domestic utensil which is always with us the cup that serves this morning noon and night we take it for granted but what artistry is here the pre-weighed ball of clay goes into the cup milled on a jollying machine she who shapes the things so expertly exalts in a special trade name the cup jollier the shape and polish of the cup is achieved when it's put partly dry on an automatic turning machine this one happens to be a bone china cup but the manner of making the earthenware is very similar there's no mystery about those who carry out the next process handlers their task is simply diff it handles the cups not so simply it's a highly skilled craft the handles are lifted out of their molds paired to fit the contour of the cup moistened and deftly placed hope now costume the making of a Wedgwood Edna VARs liquid clay is poured into the moon after it stood for exactly the right length of time the surplus fluid is poured out of the moon the mold is then opened up revealing the vars in a semi-hard state when completely dry it's finished off by the fettle it's carefully smooth done the milled marks a sponge Dutch then the top is leveled off the firing of the clay pieces at one time Wedgwood pottery kilns built smoke into the sky above it Korea now at Ballston a skillfully loaded truck carries its load into smokeless electrically heated tunnel kilns nearly a hundred yards long each truck takes 75 hours to make its journey through the furnace within which it encounters temperatures between 1200 and 1300 degrees centigrade the first Josiah Wedgwood earned his fellowship of the Royal Society by the invention of the first instrument to measure very high temperatures a similar principle is still used to countercheck the modern pyrometers then comes blazing when the fired pieces are taken to the dipping house for a deft twist in the glazed tab when fired again this time in the glossed kiln a fine film of glass is left over the whole piece here comes a gloss pod truck some of the pieces are already decorated others will be decorated later the task of the engraver may well come next this one is working to a design for a commemorative plate ordered by an American College which of course is a special order steady hands carve the design out of a copper plate with a steel graver at other times he may be working on one of the traditional battens using his copper cylinder from which the pattern will be transferred to the pieces of where each tap becomes a tiny portion of the finished design the design which is being printed is Napoleon IV first ordered for the ex Emperor Napoleon when he was in captivity in santolina it is transferred from a heated roller printing press to tissue sheets the sheets are cut up and placed around the rim of the plate it seems quite casually but in fact for the most precise skill then the Wedgewood back step vital proof of identity after grazing and firing the printed outline is painted in by hand you this is only one of several methods of applying designs here is another one where the design is printed in full color on lithograph paper then applied in much the same way as the print the Strawberry Hill patent it won an award of the year from the Council of industrial design the lithograph sheets are printed in designs to fit all the shapes made in any one range and before they can be printed there is much costly and careful preliminary work to be done the Wedgewood signature goes on again and traditional workmanship in the hands of one who has been doing it for more than 30 years she is the head of the Wedgwood school of freehand painters freehand painting is of course one of the oldest decorative processes and the design is the old Wedgwood vine pet still in demand offer just on two centuries more skilled brushwork the line the plate must be dead center and rotated by half the color seen there are just before five the heat will greatly change and enriched this very rich Wedgewood pattern is called ruby Tonquin first the outline of the pattern is printed and far next the pattern is painted in with ivory color and fart again then the pattern is painted out with stained water soluble stencil the paint is covered with an oily substance then dusted over with a color made from gold oxide it is a series of all deals as it were this process the soluble stencil dissolves leaving the pattern ivory but the oil repels the water and the powder color remains to appear as a deep Ruby after a further two farms later the pattern is printed over in pure gold and the piece reef odd and finally benched having received at least 7 firings at temperatures between 700 and 1,300 degrees centigrade in the course of its production a little of the magic of this cross friendship can be seen here in a succession of plates at different stages of their ordeal before the final and losting grace is achieved you

Channel: British Pathé

Views: 504,097

Rating: 4.9110413 out of 5

Keywords: pottery, porcelain, Ruby, Hill, Napoleon, 2709.01, footage, British Pathe, Wedgwood, BritishPathe, Dancing, DOCS, Reuters, documentary, Barlaston, Strawberry, Tonquin, artists, Josiah, factories, Ivy, paintings, Etruria, Wilson, Norman, Hours, Vine, Staffordshire, Victor, Skellern, newsreel

Id: DDDBQh8YpfA

Length: 19min 18sec (1158 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 13 2014

Reddit Comments

[u/scrochum]

another video of the same factory from a few years earlier, with a lot of the same bits covered
and one from a few years later
interesting to see how similar it is over these 25 years, but with a complete change in the next 25 years, when they were bought out by waterford glass from ireland, and in the 25 years up to now, going through administration and finally being acquired by fiskars, a finnish company but all throughout, the actual production is incredibly similar

[u/wylthirsk]

I can totally recommend visiting the Wedgwood museum/visitor centre if you are ever in the area, its a hugely interesting experience.

[u/carnefarious]

What's with the useless flair a mod put in the title? You already said it is production.