224
EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
Great Britain attention was directed to the American colonies as a source of the materials. In the year 1745, William Cookworthy wrote that he had seen samples of kaolin and petunse found on the " back of Virginia,” and that the discoverer had gone for a cargo of it. In 1765, Caleb Lloyd, residing in Charleston, South Carolina, sent a box of porcelain earth to the Worcester porcelain works, saying that it had been obtained in the mountains some four hundred miles west, in the country of the Cherokees.* There appears to have been much interest manifested in this discovery, and the clay was pronounced to be superior to that obtained in Cornwall; but, being without the undccomposed portions of rock, it could not be made into porcelain.
Miss Meteyard, in her life of Wedgwood, mentions the custom of merchants and captains to take in samples of clay and other earthy bodies on their return voyages, particularly from the ports of the two Carolinas, Georgia and Florida.! Bently supplied Wedgwood with clay imported from Pensacola, a port with which he had trading relations. Wedgwood also received a sample of the South Carolina clay, and wrote that "it would require some peculiar management to avoid the difficulties attending the use of it.”
As early as 1770 it became evident to the British potters that the pottery industry might be started in America to the detriment of their trade, and Wedgwood wrote as follows :—
“ The trade to our colonies we are apprehensive of losing in a few years, as they have set on foot' some pot works there alread}", and have at this time an agent amongst us hiring a number of our hands for establishing new pot works in South Carolina. They have every material there, equal, if not superior to our own, for carrying on that manufacture. We cannot help apprehending such consequences from these emigrations as make us very uneasy" for our trade and prosperity.”
Porcelain works were soon after started near Philadelphia? but with little success in competition with the established manufacture in England, although some very good porcelain
* “ Two Centuries of Ceramic Art in Bristol,” pp. 8-13. f Meteyard’s Life of Wedgwood, p. 367.