, 1888-09-15
MAKING TERRA GOTTA.
Various Ways In Which Baked Clay Is
Turned to Account.

Various Ways In Which Baked Clay Is
Turned to Account.
l was taken into the photograph room,
q useful appendage of a terra Gotta fac.
tory. There the molds and models are
photographed and sent by mail to the
architects, who can revise them and send
them back. In the same way they pho
tograph the entire profile or elevation of
a building from the architects drawing,
INT as the successive parts of the terra
Gotta are made they are crossed out on
tho drawing. The owner of the building
comes in and says: How are you getting
along with my terra cottaf" They hand
out to him this tracing, and say: I'VE are
all finished up to there" At a glance he
can see just where he stands.
l asked if terra Gotta when baked
weighed more than in the clay.
THAT depends upon how dry the clay is
is out of it, it will gain somewhat in
weight after it is put in the fire."
l walked into one of the kilns. They
are about fifteen to twenty feet perhaps
in diameter, and are a patent kiln devised
in the extensive potteries of Great Britain
The old Roman open fire kilns were long
ago replaced there by Blashfield's muffled
kilns. The color of these kilns is white,
and they are made of fire brick. Within
inc pottery Is plleu up, anu every lew
feet you see a kin of shelf made of terra
Gotta already baked, which stands upon
terra Gotta bricks. This is to prevent the
weight of the molds pressing down
toward the bottom, by which the bottom
pieces would be squeezed out of their
shape. When the kilns are burning and a
perfect hell of flame worse than Nebuchad-
n~ezzar's furnace Is going on within it
seems just as cool outside as If there was
no fire at all.
Among the objects at the factory I no.
ticed the model of a Turkish girl, as it
seemed, bare to the waist, where hung
some kind OF Asiatic fringe or drapery.
They said that q Hebrew had put up some
kind of a club house, and had supplied
his daughter for the model, considering
that her form was worth perpetuation.
But it is no ncomm thing for a sculp-
tor to employ his own family for model
ing, and 1 understood more than twenty
years ago, when in Florence, that Hiram
Powers modelled his statue of California
from one of his unmarried daughters.
The factory has on the lower floor
washers, tanks, c~rushers, millstones to
make grit, pug mills, etc. The second
story is the entrance to the kilns, which
are burned about eight days, each holding
over twenty tons of terra Gotta The
third story is the studio and the nodded
brick factory. They burn a great many
architectural bricks here as attributes Of
the terra Gotta. The pressing and finish
ing is lone on the fourth and fifth floors,
and the sixth story is the model and
mold department.
Architecture liz the United States is
now capable of almost any kind of repre-
sentation through the plant given by
such factories as this, which has many
acres of storage room. The floors are so
large that they can lay down the entire
cornice, belt course or outline of q build
ing of great size and height III 1t. You
can in these floors show in your terra
Gotta, already modelled or baked, a height
of about $50 feet and a width of over ITO.
A few female laborers are used to go over
the tiles before they are baked and sharpen
the work.
An immense amount of terra Gotta is
kept perpetually on hand to fill passing
orders, for men are changeable in buying
things of this kind and have a mood under
the Influence of art which they may lose
the moment they turn their backs. The
public architecture of the United States
has been mainly executed in hard stone,
seldom suggestive of the purpose in
tended. Terra Gotta, with it's indestruct-
ible quality, affords the government all
sorts of possibilities, didactic, sentimental
and patriotic. Gen. Meigs had a large
order for terra Gotta executed in Boston
which represents in costume as they lived,
with oil their wagons, batteries, launches,
row boats, ~ambuiances, p%ontoons, infan-
try, cavalry, etc, the army in the time of
the civil war.
In the course of time these habits and
appliances will change, but there will
stand for hundreds of years, in legible
illustration, the people as they lived in
that great contest.-"Gath" in Cincinnati
Enquirer.