Ceramic Tiles:How it is made

1 'And now for manufacture' 2 The tile body and materials 3 Making the 'body slip' 4 Filter pressing and grinding 5 'making' 6 'Floor tiles and mosaics' 7 Casting Recesso fittings 8 Hand-making Faience 9 Firing the green ware (1) 10 Firing the green ware (2) 11 Floor tiles and mosaics (1) 12 Floor tiles and mosaics (1) 13 Glazing (1) 14 Glazing (2) 15 Glost firing 16 Sorting & sizing 17 Fireplaces 18 Packing & dispatch 19 Products (1) 20 Products (2) 21 Products (3)

"And now for MANUFACTURE" Believing that an adequately illustrated description, at once brief and comprehensive, of the manufacturing methods we employ in this year of grace 1937 will not only be of interest to our many friends at home and overseas, but will also serve to demonstrate to all and sundry how excellently we are equipped for the production of high-class tiling, we have devoted the greater part of this our centenary booklet to such a description. To begin our manufacturing story by defining the word we shall use so often, " tile," according to the Latin root from which it is derived, means simply a covering. Tiles are, in fact, a specialized form of covering for use on building surfaces; and since there are three types of building surface roofs, walls and floors it is not surprising that there are three types of tiles roofing tiles, wall tiles and floor tiles With roofing tiles, however, we shall not in these pages be concerned. Beyond the fact that they are of baked earthenware are they have little in common with the other two classes mentioned, and their manufacture is more akin to that of bricks than to that of the more refined products we are about to describe. Our interest is rather with the interior surfaces of a building its walls and floors for both of which it is our business to provide coverings in the form of tiles at once pleasing, hygienic, and enduring. Tiles for walls and floors may be either glazed or unglazed. Generally speaking wall tiles are glazed and floor tiles unglazed, but the rule admits of exceptions. " Floor tiles " is, however, understood in the industry as referring unless the contrary is expressly stated exclusively to the unglazed kind; and we shall be using the accepted terms in classifying our products under the two general headings of Glazed Tiles on the one hand and Floor Tiles on the other. In this brief sketch of our methods of production we shall deal for the most part with the making of ordinary glazed tiles, both because they form the bulk of our output and because only in their case does the full cycle of our manufacturing process come into play. We shall not, however, neglect our other products floor tiles, "Recesso" fittings, and faience which will be dealt with here and there as the special features of their production best link them up with our main theme

THE TILE " BODY" A glazed tile consists of two quite different parts, the backing or " body," and the glaze; and naturally the body is made first, and the glaze applied afterwards. This gives us the two main stages of tile manufacture, with the first of which the making of the body we will now deal, dismissing the question of glazing until later. BODY MATERIALS AND WHERE THEY COME FROM The body of a glazed tile consists of one or more kinds of clay, usually with an admixture of certain other substances. Taking for particular examination the standard white body used in over ninety per cent of our glazed tiles, we find that it is composed of two kinds of clay china clay and ball clay in conjunction with two other materials, flint and Cornish stone. China clay is clay in its purest form the "kaolin" of the Chinese. It gets its English name from the country where it was used and the beautiful ware of the same name made a thousand years before either china clay or the art of china manufacture was known to our Western civilization. The principal source of supply is Cornwall, where it is found in great abundance. Ball clay, which comes chiefly from the shires of Devon and Dorset, differs from China clay in that it contains certain organic impurities impurities, however, of a kind very valuable to the potter not found in the latter. Flint is found in large quantities in certain chalk beds, chiefly in Southern England, and on many of our beaches, notably those of the English Channel. For Cornish stone, a form of granite partially decomposed through thousands of years of exposure to the elements, we are indebted to the county from which it takes its name.

China Clay and Ball Clay bays.

It will be noted that all the raw materials described come from the South. How then is it that " the Potteries " is in the Midlands? From the historical point of view the reason is that the origin of the great North Staffordshire industry dates back to the days, several centuries ago, when the potter's needs were limited to the rougher marls and clays of which common earthenware was made, and to the coal needed for baking or " firing " it: and the Potteries area was, and still is, endowed with an abundance of those things. But apart from the historical reason there is the practical one that it is more necessary for a pottery to be near its coalfield than to be near the source of its other materials, since it takes something approaching three tons of coal to produce one ton of pottery. Moreover, North Staffordshire furnishes the industry with much more than coal: it is rich in marls eminently suitable for the making of such things as floor tiles, and more important still in the refractory or fire-resisting material known as fireclay, large quantities of which are essential to every branch of pottery manufacture.

3,000 tones of Flint awaiting treatment.

MAKING THE "BODY SLIP" The first problem confronting the tile manufacturer is that of making an intimate mixture of proper proportions of the "body" materials above described. To facilitate this operation they are severally clays, flint, and stone alike brought to the condition of creamy liquids or rather that of finely divided particles suspended in water. In the case of the two clays this is simple enough. Each is placed in a "blunger" i.e., a hexagonal tub or vat in which powerful arms revolve continuously on a vertical shaft and slowly churned up with water to a suitable consistency. Flint presents certain initial difficulties, but these are overcome by putting this extremely hard and dark-coloured material into a special kiln and calcining it reducing it that is, by the action of fire, to a friable substance of snowy whiteness. That done, it is placed, with a liberal allowance of water, into a large stone-lined iron cylinder, and ground to almost microscopic fineness by the action of a heavy charge of uncalcined sea-shore flints, which slide and tumble down the rising side of the cylinder as it revolves. The last of our materials, Cornish Stone, is also hard, but is brought down to the required condition by being first passed through a crushing mill which reduces it to small fragments, and thereafter ground in precisely the same way as flint.

Where Flint and Cornish Stone are ground

Making the desired mixture is now a simple matter. Carefully determined proportions of the four ingredients are run into a large central vat the "mixing ark " in which powerful "agitators" mix them thoroughly together. The mixture thus formed, known as "slip" or "body slip," is next passed through "lawns" or sieves of extremely fine mesh some 20,000 holes to the square inch and then over a bed of powerful electro magnets, by which latter any particles of iron which would be liable to cause dark specks in the finished tiles are extracted. From the magnet bed the slip flows into the "finished ark," where further agitators are at work to keep the mixture homogeneous by preventing the heavier materials from settling to the bottom.

A slip-house. Magneting the slip.

FILTER-PRESSING AND GRINDING The body mixture is not yet ready for tile-making, however: it must first be converted into powdered form. To this end it is pumped under pressure into a filter press consisting of a series of large envelopes of fine canvas held between concave-faced iron plates, with the result that the water trickles away through the canvas, leaving the solid particles behind in the form of large flat cakes of the plastic compound known as potter's clay. As the press is emptied, these cakes, each weighing about a hundredweight, fall into special iron trollies shaped like giant toast-racks on wheels, on which they are conveyed into the drying kilns, there to be freed from all traces of moisture. From these kilns the cakes emerge, hard as boards, to be broken up, slightly moistened, and finally ground in pans or mills to the fine powder known technically as "dust," which is automatically conveyed to the department or "shop" in which it will be converted into tiles.

A filter press. Taking out the clay cakes

The critical reader may wonder why we first dry and then re-moisten the clay cakes. The reason is that only in this way can we be sure that the dust made from them will contain the right proportion of moisture just enough to make it bind together properly under pressure and no more. Even a small error in the moisture content of the dust may seriously effect the ultimate product; and we may remark that the same is true of small errors in almost any of the multiplicity of small processes involved in tile manufacture. Only by the most careful attention to every detail can consistently good tiles be made. "MAKING" We now come to the "making" process. The term "making," of course, covers

every part of manufacture, but in the potter's vocabulary it is often restricted to the actual shaping or forming of the article concerned. Tile "making," then, is done in powerful presses. Of the three main types of press available the hand, the automatic, and the semi-automatic the last named has proved the most generally useful; and of our total of no less than 140 presses considerably more than half are of this type. At the same time we have a number of completely automatic presses, operated, like those of semi-automatic type, by electricity, while for certain classes of work we still find hand presses the most serviceable. The making procedure is essentially the same in all three types. A steel well or "box" sunk in the bed of the press is filled with "dust," and a heavy steel die descends into it, forcing the dust against another die forming the bottom of the box. The pressure is such that the dust is knitted into a solid of the required size and shape a plain tile, for example, a capping, a skirting hard and strong enough to stand any reasonable handling. As the "green tiles (so called in their unfired state) come from the presses, their edges, to which loose dust may be clinging, are lightly trimmed by hand; in technical language, they are "fettled." They are now ready firing, but an interval of at least a few hours, during which they may dry, will elapse before they reach that very important stage of their manufacture.

A tile-shop, with the tiles in transit to the kilns

Tile making. All fettling dust is carried off by suction-draught hoods.

MAKING FLOOR TILES AND MOSAICS Before dealing with the question of firing we will pause to consider the making of our products other than glazed tiles. The first to claim our attention are floor tiles, under which head come also mosaics. Floor tiles (unlike quarries, which are made direct from crude unwashed clay) are made by a process substantially the same as that already described. The different colours are obtained by the use of different clays mainly of local origin with the addition, in the majority of cases, of certain stains such as oxides of manganese and cobalt. Where a vitreous, or non-porous, tile is required, felspar a rock substance which fuses during firing and fills the minute voids between the more refractory materials with a glass-like bond is added to the body mixture. Both floor tiles and mosaics are made in presses from carefully prepared dust in the same way as wall tiles. Some of the mosaic presses are particularly powerful, producing in one operation as many as 64 pieces, whose total area, however, since they are " squares, is only equal to that of one six-inch tile. CASTING RECESSO FITTINGS In the case of "Recesso" fittings, the next product to be considered, the making process differs radically from that of tiles. "Recesso," we need hardly explain, is the trade name we apply to the built-in glazed earthenware receptacles for soap, sponge, etcetera, which, introduced by us some twelve years ago, are now installed almost as a matter of course in every well-appointed bathroom. These invaluable aids to hygiene are made by the "casting" process. Plaster-of-Paris moulds of the articles required are prepared, and into them is poured a dense though quite fluid form of the above described " slip," which is delivered to the casting shops through iron pipes. In the mould the slip is quickly relieved of most of its moisture by the absorbent plaster, and in a few hours the casting has set hard enough to be removed, whereupon it is carefully finished by hand and placed in a rack to dry.

Casting, of course, is a much slower operation than machine pressing, but it lends itself to the production of articles much too complex for the latter process.

Recesso Fittings. Taking the cast article from the mould

HAND-MAKING FAIENCE Another process deserving of mention is the making of " faience " the name, derived from the once famous Italian pottery centre of Faenza, being applied in the tile trade to the hand-made pieces, often large and elaborate, used particularly for fire-place work. Here as in the making of "Recesso" fittings, but to a much greater degree handicraftsmanship still comes into play. The faience worker forms his wares out of a plastic clay compound, usually of coarse texture, which he presses and kneads by hand into every corner of the plaster mould from which it is to get its shape. As each piece becomes sufficiently dry and stiff he removes it from the mould and carefully trims and finishes it by hand. Apart from the greater latitude of design and less mechanical appearance of faience as compared with die-made tiles, faience has the advantage that its more open body has an unusual capacity for withstanding sudden changes of temperature. For this reason it is particularly suitable for use in fire surrounds, in which it is employed especially for those parts most directly exposed to heat.

Making Faience Ware from plastic clay.

FIRING THE GREEN WARE We have now to consider the firing of the different wares that have been made. Until about a quarter of a century ago all pottery firing was done on the "intermittent" principle, usually in the large bottle-shaped ovens which give the "Five Towns" so characteristic an appearance. The oven having been filled with ware, its fires were kindled, maintained for the necessary time, and allowed to die out. Now, however, "continuous" firing is firmly established and rapidly becoming more general. In this system the oven or kiln, commonly in the form of a long, straight tunnel, is kept constantly at firing temperature, and an unbroken stream of ware-laden fireclay trucks moves continuously through it, the construction of the kiln interior and of the trucks being such that there is no excessive heating of the trucks' iron bogeys or of the rails on which they run. To discuss the relative merits of these two systems is beyond the scope of the present booklet. Suffice it to say that at the Brownhills factory which is devoted almost entirely to the production of white glazed tiles we use only the continuous method, while at the parent plant, with its greater diversity of products, both systems are in operation, improved types of bottle-shaped ovens being used for the firing of "green" ware, and continuous kilns for the firing-on of the glaze a subject with which we shall deal later.

Overhead conveyors at Pinnox Works....

...forming a traffic highway 2,300 feet long.

By whichever method they are to be fired, the green tiles, "Recesso" fittings, or faience pieces are first of all placed in " saggars " receptacles which might be mistaken for crude pie-dishes from a giant's kitchen made from local fireclay. If, as is suggested, the name "saggar" is a corruption of "safeguard," it indicates their primary object, which is to protect their contents during firing from direct contact with the flames by which they are surrounded. Let us follow some charged saggars through the particular firing process suited to their contents some saggars of wall tiles, let us say, to be passed through a tunnel kiln, and some of floor tiles or mosaics, to be fired in an up-to-date bottle oven.

Some modern 'bottle' ovens at Pinnox works

Biscuit kiln, Brownhills. Mr. Geoff Corn inspecting the output.

In the case of the tunnel kiln, some 120 saggars containing perhaps 100 square yards of tiles are placed on the platform of a heavy fireclay truck, which is then slowly hauled by an endless wire rope to the charging end of the kiln. Here it joins the long train of trucks already filling the kiln from end to end. Electric propelling gear urges it, with the fifty odd trucks ahead of it, slowly forward on its four days'

firing journey, on which it will be followed by other trucks at intervals of two hours or so. As it moves forward through the 120 odd yards of the kiln's length at about four feet an hour, it encounters steadily rising temperatures, until, after some 48 hours, it enters the actual firing zone. Here it or rather its load passes through a long barrage of flames clean, smokeless and intensely hot flames caused by the burning of "producer" gas, for the making of which we have one of the finest plants in the kingdom which completely envelop the saggars, raising them and their contents to white heat. Leaving the firing zone a day later the truck and its load begin slowly to cool. Twenty-four hours more and, still cooling, they are out of the kiln and on the returnw ay. moving slowly towards the "emptying" benches. Arrived there the tiles are removed from the saggars and placed on inspection tables, while saggars and truck are moved forward to the "placers" a few yards further on, reloaded, and sent off on one more of their endless sequence of journeys.

A 'bottle' oven interior. 'Setting in' prior to firing.

Floor tiles and mosaics will go through firing experiences essentially the same as, though differing widely in detail from, those just described. Ten or twelve hundred square yards of them, packed in two thousand or more saggars, will be carried into the gloomy vaulted interior of a great bottle-shaped oven, whose

narrow entrance will then be solidly bricked up and whose fires lighted. For the next five days the temperature of the oven will rise steadily till it stands at about 1,250 degrees centigrade slightly above the melting point of cast iron. The fires will then be allowed to die down, and two or three days later, when the heat has sufficiently diminished, the oven door will be broken through, and the saggars conveyed to the sorting warehouse to be relieved of their contents.

'Drawing' a 'bottle' oven. A peep through the entrance.

FLOOR TILES AND MORE PARTICULARLY MOSAICS At this stage of our process, when the firing of green ware has just been completed, we come upon the essential difference between wall tile and floor tile manufacture that whereas wall tiles have still to be glazed, floor tiles have already become substantially a finished product, since they have only to be graded (some will be sold as "seconds," and some those with anything like serious defects will be destroyed) and "sized" (of "sizing" we shall speak later) and they are ready for dispatch to customers. Mosaic, however, although essentially the same as floor tiles from the manufacturing point of view, is not in the same position as its larger relatives in regard to marketing: for whereas floor tiles are sold loose, mosaic is commonly sent out, strange though this may appear to the unitiated, mounted on paper.

Assembling geometrical mosaic

The mounting or assembling process is a fascinating one, whether the mosaic to be built up is of geometrical character or of the freehand type known as "Roman" mosaic. In the former the work is done with the help of an assembling frame. This consists of a flat board measuring about two feet by one, cut up into geometrical figures, such as hexagons or squares, by thin metal strips embedded edgewise in, and projecting slightly from, its surface. A quantity of mosaic tablets of the required size and shape having been heaped on to it, the frame is shaken smartly for a few seconds, when most of the tesserae or tablets fall into position in the spaces outlined by the strips. Any spaces left vacant are filled, and any new colour needed is introduced, by hand. That done, a sheet of stout paper treated with special adhesive paste is pressed on to the mosaic. A flat board is then placed over the paper, and frame, mosaic, and board are carefully turned over together. Finally the frame is lifted off, and the mosaic, now lying papered side downwards on the board, is left to dry.

Building up a sanctuary floor in Roman mosaic

The assembling of Roman mosaic is necessarily of a less mechanical nature. Here the complete design to be built up is accurately drawn, and the colours to be used indicated, on one or more large sheets of stout mounting paper. The artists' work completed, this paper is cut up into small sections of a size suitable for handling, each section being numbered in accordance with a prepared key plan. The sections are then given to skilled mosaic workers, who faithfully build up the design in mosaic material, of which they paste in position small cut pieces of the size, shape, and colour called for by the design. In this way surprisingly beautiful work is done.

Checking a large mural mosaic prior to despatch

The fixing of mounted mosaic, whether Geometrical or Roman, is a simple and a fairly rapid process. The fixer prepares the usual bed of cement and sand, presses the mosaic, paper side upwards, firmly into it and allows an hour or two for the cement to harden. He then carefully lifts of the now wet paper and thereby reveals the pattern, finishing his work by going over it with a "grouting" cement or mixtrure to fill in the joints. It need hardly be said that mosaic prepared and fixed in the manner described costs far less than that built up in situ by the laborious piecemeal method formerly employed. Before leaving this subject we may remark that mosaic, though more generally used for floors, is applied also to walls. This is perhaps more particularly true of Roman mosaic in which we have carried out many very rich designs, including a great deal of church work, for the adornment of walls as welI as floors. A small amount of glazed Roman mosaic (built up from cut pieces of glazed tile, gold glass, etc.) is also used. especially for decorative strips in coloured wall tiling.

GLAZING We have now to return to our glazed tile manufacture and deal with the second main stage of the process that of glazing. While the departments described have brought the tiles destined for glazing as far as the biscuit state, another section of the Works has been engaged in preparing the glaze with which they are to be coated.

Fritting. Molten glass running off from the kiln

This glaze is simply a form of glass, so that one part of the tile-making process is carried out in what is in effect a miniature glass factory. Here such materials as felspar, China clay, flint, soda, potash, lime, and oxide of lead are mixed together in carefully determined proportions, placed in a special form of kiln, and fired to a white heat. The molten glass thus formed is run off into water, by which means it is suddenly and violently chilled. The effect of this is that it sets in bent and shattered pieces, with the result that the " frit " as this glassy material is called is much more amenable to the next treatment it is to receive that of grinding than if it had been allowed to cool gradually. The grinding is done in rubber-lined cylinders; and as plenty of water is introduced with the frit, the product of the process is a "slop" or thick liquid. There are of course many types of glaze some will fire clear, some opaque, some bright, some matt but all are based on a frit such as that described. The different colours are obtained by adding to the "slop" glaze certain staining materials, notably certain metallic oxides such as

those of copper, manganese, iron, cobalt, and uranium. The purpose of the glaze in tile manufacture is both utilitarian and aesthetic: utilitarian in that it seals the pores of the biscuit, thus providing an article that does not harbour dirt and is therefore hygienic; aesthetic in that it endows the tile with a pleasing often a very beautiful finish such as it does not possess in the biscuit state.

A corner of the colour-glaze room. Tubs of glaze ready for use.

The various methods of coating biscuit tiles with glaze may be reduced to the two heads of machine glazing and hand glazing. Naturally the former is used for classes of tiles produced in bulk, such as white glazed tiles, and the latter for those made in smaller quantities, more particularly those in which a mottled effect is required.

White-glazing by the waterfall process

Most of our machine glazing of white tiles is carried out on the "waterfall"

principle. Over a horizontal traveling wire belt is placed a vessel at the bottom of which is a long fine slot at right angles to the belt. The vessel is kept constantly supplied with liquid glaze of milky consistency, which escapes through the slot and falls in the form of a thin sheet. Through this sheet the wire belt carries a constant stream of tiles, so that their faces turned upwards become coated with glaze. As most of the glaze's moisture is almost instantly absorbed by the porous biscuit, the handling of the newly-glazed tiles, though requiring care, presents no serious difficulty. Another mechanical or semi-mechanical method of glazing is that of aerographing, or airpressure spraying, which we use for our "Recesso" fittings and for stencilled borders. The latter, in fact, are doubly aerographed, the "under-glaze" black or colour of the pattern being sprayed on through a stencil, and, the stencil removed, a colourless transparent glaze similarly applied over the whole face of the tile.

Mottling and Dipping

Of the hand-glazing methods the simplest is that of "dipping," in which the tile's face, held downwards, is brought momentarily into contact with the surface of some glaze contained in a bowl or similar vessel. Most of our mottled effects are produced by the use of two or more different-coloured glazes, the ground colour being usually applied by dipping, and small quantities of the mottling colour or colours by being dabbed on here and there with a sponge. There are, however, a great many "tricks of the trade" used in mottling such, for instance, as dipping a tile in glaze A, mottling over this with olive

oil (which will evaporate on firing), and finally dipping in glaze B, which last will provide the mottle by "taking" only where the oil has not touched the first glaze.

Majolica Colouring. Handpainting. Tubelining

In the case of embossed tiles, such as key-pattern and chequer borders, the different-coloured glazes are applied to their respective parts of the tile with camel-hair brushes, the raised lines of the pattern preventing them from flowing into one another. Tube-lined tiles are glazed in the same way, but in their case the biscuit itself is flat, the raised lines being formed of a thin clay mixture applied immediately prior to glazing exactly as lines of icing sugar are applied to cakes. Handpainting as the term is understood in the tile industry is freehand painting in oil colours on the fired-on glaze. Its decorative possibilities are almost unlimited, being, in fact, akin to those of oilpainting on canvas. Hand-painted tiles undergo no less than three firings, the final one to fuse the colours into the glaze to which they have been applied.

Colour-glazing 'Armitage' sanitary ware for Edward Johns & Co. Ltd.

Apart from our products a certain amount of "Armitage" sanitary ware is glazed by us, in extremely beautiful shades of mottled green, blue, grey, and amber, for our associated house of Edward Johns & Co. The glazes used blend perfectly with those of our corresponding tile series a fact which has given rise in Richards Johns bathrooms to a perfection of harmony not readily to be obtained with components from unrelated sources. GLOST FIRING

'Placing' white-glazed tiles for firing

The firing by which the applied glaze is fused to the face of the biscuit is known as the "glost" firing the firing, that is, of the "glost" (i.e., the glossed or glazed) ware. All our glost firing is done in tunnel kilns. Of these we have in commission no less than five, of an average length of about 220 feet five insatiable monsters each of which must be fed with a truck of ware at intervals of about an hour. This, of course, involves night work. All trucks, however, are loaded during the day, and the skeleton night staff has only to feed the kilns at the scheduled times and to maintain them at their proper temperatures.

Trucks from the glost kilns cooling prior to unloading

The glost firing occupies about 40 hours, trucks of ware passing through the kilns exactly as in the biscuit firing already described. For glost firing white glazed tiles are usually "placed" vertically in saggars, care of course being taken to see that there is nothing in contact with their glazed surfaces. Coloured tiles, on the other hand, are fired lying flat on the platforms or stages of open fireclay frameworks, a strictly horizontal position being necessary in their case to keep the thick glaze, which becomes fluid during firing, evenly distributed. This "open" firing is possible because the glost kilns are of the " muffle" type, in which the burnt gases or "products of combustion" do not enter the kiln, as in the biscuit firing, but are conducted down each side of it in flues, from the walls of which the heat reaches the ware by radiation and convection. SORTING AND SIZING

unloading glost ware

Glost firing over, the tiles are taken off the trucks and sorted into their different categories according to colour, size, shape, etc., the process being greatly facilitated by the use of over-head conveyors and roller sorting tables. This done, the different groups are very carefully looked through, and any tiles that fall short of the high standard of quality we set ourselves to maintain are put aside, and either broken up, classed as "seconds," or in the case of certain types of fault sent back for retouching with glaze and for refiring.

In the glost warehouse sorting and inspecting coloured tiles

A final process in the case of white glazed tiles is that of exact size-grading, or "sizing." All earthenware contracts in the course of firing of biscuit firing, that is, the slightly lower glost kiln temperature causing little or no further change of size. The degree of contraction varies with the degree of firing, and since it is impossible to give every tile precisely the same firing treatment (different parts of the cross-section of even the same truck-load experience slightly different temperatures) some of them contract slightly more than others. Since any notable size variation would cause trouble when the tiles came to be fixed, we make use of ingenious machines which sort them into classes with a maximum variation of a thirty-second of an inch. Great care is taken that deliveries to a given regular client, or for a given contract, are as far as possible of the same exact size, our large output placing us in a very favourable position in this respect. Particulars of the precise size of the units they contain are printed or stencilled on all packages of white glazed tiles, and tile fixing firms, by paying attention to these, may easily avoid the difficulties arising from size variation. Coloured tiles are sized in the biscuit state, different exact sizes being allotted to different colours.

size-grading white-glazed tiles

FIREPLACES

The Baxterley

Though the vast majority of our glazed tiles, including those intended for fireplace work, are sold loose, we have a "slabbing" department where we make up fire surrounds, together with hearths and kerbs, to be sold as complete units. In the slabbing of a fire surround the individual tiles or faience pieces of which it is to be made are laid out, face downwards, on a bed built to the design and contour of the particular surround required. A backing of rapid-hardening cement mixture with suitable reinforcement is then applied, and allowed twenty-four hours or so to set and harden. The surround is then lifted from its bed, and the joints are raked and pointed. A final cleaning, and it is ready for dispatch.

The Sherborne

The Berkeley

PACKING AND DISPATCH

The belt conveyor connecting warehouse and packing house

We have come to the end of our manufacturing process, and it remains only to look into the question of the packing and dispatch of the goods produced. Realising as we do that it is of little use to take an infinity of pains in the making of our wares if they are to be broken before they reach their destination, we do everything possible to ensure their safe and sound delivery. Our dispatch conveyor system reduces almost to vanishing point the risk of their being damaged during handling in the Works, and the soundness of our methods of packing is abundantly established by the fact that transit breakages, whether in home deliveries or in overseas shipments, are practically negligible.

Loading lorry from the belt conveyor

Most of our products for the home market are packed in cartons and delivered to their destination by our fleet of lorries. Export goods, in strong skeleton crates, are taken by lorry to their port of departure and placed alongside the steamers in whose holds they are to cross the seas. In the great majority of cases they leave from Liverpool or Birkenhead, to be conveyed thence to Australia, New Zealand, Canada, South Africa, India, Hong Kong to every corner of the British Empire, in fact as well as to South and Central America, the West Indies, and every other country where trading and tariff conditions are such as to permit of their entry.

Main export packing house

Some varied examples of Richards Tilework

'El Canto' Cinema, Havana, Cuba

The kitchen, Peninsular Hotel, Hong Kong

Richards Mosaics: Ecclesiastical and Secular:

Richards Mosaics: Ecclesiastical and Secular: