Friday, 26 April 2019
It's been raining, sometimes quite hard, off and on since yesterday morning. I went back to Newell and stopped at a little park there to walk the dogs, and found this historical marker.
Later I learned on the tour that it wasn't just the town that the company developed; they also own the water supply, and some local townspeople were at the plant paying their monthly water bill. They also built a trolley bridge over the Ohio to connect with East Liverpool, OH, (where the first factory was built) so employees could come back and forth more easily. Our tour guide is one of them - he says now it's a vehicle toll bridge, charging 75¢ one way or $1 round trip. You'd think the much newer government bridge would have supplanted it, but I saw quite a few cars using the old toll bridge.
We weren't allowed to take photos in the factory, though our guide said we could find videos on "Made In America" and "How It's Made," 2 programs that had permission to come in with cameras and were allowed to see things we weren't on the regular tour. So if you're interested, you can look them up.
There were only 3 in our tour group, including me, which was handy because the factory was noisy and I wouldn't have been able to hear the guide in a bigger group. All this information I got from the guide.
The company recycles all the glaze that doesn't get used in a run, and all the clay that isn't used as long as it wasn't fired or glazed. Reconditioning the glaze takes 36 hours, but a tank of it costs $5,000-$7,000 so it's cheaper for them to recycle. Products that are glazed but can't be sold because of defects are bulldozed into smithereens and will eventually disintegrate - because they did start out as clay from the ground, after all.
They have 2 basements in the somewhat Dickensian-looking building in my photo - the lowest level is for the old kilns; the higher basement is where it takes them 3-8 hours to re-create the clay to get it into a semi-liquid form that can be pumped to where it's needed.
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| glamorous china factory |
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| on the banks of the Ohio |
The company moved here from across the river in 1903 and has several kilns. At least one kiln is set at 2400° C. - the heat temperature creates the color in the glaze, and a specific temperature is used for a specific time. The guide showed us pieces with no glaze, and with glaze that hadn't been fired, and with glaze that had been fired. Totally different appearance.
Firing also shrinks each piece up to 15% - we could see that because the pieces not yet glazed that we saw in the factory were bigger than we knew they'd become by the end process.
They used to sell online themselves; now they use Wayfair for their shipping. They also sell retail in stores such as Kohls, Penneys and Macys.
They have 900-1000 employees. A typical 8-hour shift will produce 16,000 pieces, and they run 3 shifts/day.
There's an incredible amount of handwork done in this factory - particularly incredible when you consider their output. For instance, any piece that's round has its edges smoothed by a machine; all other pieces are smoothed by hand. All handles are attached by hand. All decorations - decals and painting - are done by hand. All the employees seemed very skilled, and most said they'd worked in the plant for a decade or longer.
They spray the glaze on the items, but bowls and cups are dipped by hand to get the glaze inside.
Every employee we encountered was friendly and willing to answer questions. One of the employees attaching handles offered to let us attach a handle ourselves, and then take the item home with us. One of our tour group took him up on it, saying they knew of a kiln near where they lived so they could fire the cup and use it.
Another of the employees attaching handles to cups took time out to tell me, "Tell your kids to stay in school - don't end up doing this." Up till that point I'd been seeing this as good work and skilled labor. It never occurred to me how someone might end up doing this work instead of anything else.
Much of the work is seriously repetitive and hypnotic to watch - I saw one of the tour group get as hypnotized as I did watching a guy creating bowls in a machine form. They were larger than cereal bowls but smaller than a typical serving bowl, and he did it one bowl at a time. The guide said he got an hourly wage and also a per-piece wage, and I think he created 4 pieces every 2 minutes. Skilled but seriously repetitive.
There was much much more information - the tour lasted an hour - but I felt handicapped by not being able to take photos to illustrate the processes it'd be really hard for me to describe by typing. I'd need to use my hands to help demonstrate what I saw.
I think when I'm ready to settle back down in a place where I can use real plates, I'll come back here to buy tableware - better prices and better selection.
On the way back to the campground I got behind a school bus. This allowed me to watch 2 brothers rush out of the bus to the waiting car and fling each other aside over and over trying to get into the front seat first. If I were the one picking them up, I'd make it a rule that the one who gets to the door first gets the seat. But it was fun to watch.
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