The Ceramics Department is in high-gear, trying to fit in well-laid plans before the end of the school year. We all have much so much work to do in our studios that taking a day off leaves one feeling guilty and very much behind. Today, we've piled into the university van at 5am to drive two hours through Pennsylvania to the northern panhandle of West Virginia. Situated along the Ohio River with coal barges floating noisily up and down, our destination is the Homer Laughlin China Company, sometimes referred to as the Fiestaware Factory.
Brightly-colored Fiestaware was introduced in 1936 and was widely popular on American tables well into the 60s. The Fiesta line retired in 1972. Over time, nostalgia for Fiesta table settings and collector enthusiasm, inspired a partnership between Bloomingdales and Homer Laughlin revived the line in 1986.
The origins of the Homer Laughlin China Company go back to 1871, when Laughlin brothers Homer and Shakespeare parternered to sell pottery wares made in their hometown of East Liverpool, Ohio. In 1873, the brothers proposed a twokiln plant on the banks of the Ohio which quickly gained a reputation for quality. In 1902, the plant was moved to Newell, WV.
Today Homer Laughlin is an industry leader in foodservice china, with at complex that houses 8 plants, including computerized kilns and state-of-the-art forming and glazing machinery. It is the parent company to fine imported Halls China from Europe, Kenilworth, and of course Fiestaware. Homer Laughlin China is the largest and most sophisticated china manufacturer still operating in the United States. They manufacture dinnerware, supply restaurant chains and cruise ships, and still take custom and commemorative orders.
Mike Tkach, a combination of Mister Rogers meets Mister Wizard, led our company tour. We met in the lobby before checking out the lab for a lesson in glaze chemistry at the industrial level.
Platters ready to be glazed.
Mike Tkach shows us easy ways to measure the specific gravity and viscosity of a glaze without expensive lab equipment.
Apparently the chem lab is testing the lapis color! "The lapis on this counter is for lead and cadmium testing! Get Your Own!"
Clay is mixed from raw materials according to the Homer Laughlin formula. Extruded clay with the optimum moisture content is measured before robots spin and press the clay into plaster molds. The plaster department remakes molds from plastic positives several times over. Logs of clay are stacked and loaded into a conveyer. Each log will be measured and pressed into a dish.
This machine molds each lump into plates before they are cleaned and dried.
Vacuum hoses gently pick up and place newly formed plates in stacks. After drying, a
glazing machine applies an even coat of glaze as the wares spin
through individually. Robots pick them up and send them on conveyors to the tunnel
kilns. Plates are then loaded onto 47 cars loaded on silicon carbide discs and racks by robots. Here are the kiln cars entering the continuously-firing tunnel kiln. This kiln has original parts dating
back to the 1920s. This factory runs
around the clock.
Fiestaware plates finally finish their grand circle Disneyland tour. It only takes 5 hours after entering the kiln to see and handle the glazed product at the other end. Afterwards, feet are polished smooth and inspected for quality, before being packed up.
Production this large requires a lot of raw material.
Beneath this floor swishes the slip slurry from which pots are molded.
Timber floors have seen a lot of traffic and a lot of history.
A vertically oriented handle mold. Slip is poured in from the top. When the handles are dry enough, they are pulled from the mold and laid on baking sheets to be attached to cups by hand. Each molded cup is paired with a slip-cast handle that was designed for it.
At the handle-attaching station, a worker cuts and cleans each handle before he grabs a cup, moistens it, slip-dips the handle, presses it on, and finishes with the sponge. A factory worker allowed me to try attaching the handle to this cappuccino cup. I don't think it would have passed inspection, otherwise the handle-fixer wouldn't have sent it home with me.
Big pots are born here in the plaster mold making department.
A bowl mold from a deco line.
Ceramic trays are pressure molded within this box at high-speed.
This robot picks up each platter and smooths out each rim.
Finished cups and cups-to-be.
This gentleman rims a line of underglaze around the edges of each platter before throwing it onto the conveyor belt.. He's been doing this for decades.
After the tour, my carpool decides to do some rural junking and stop at a riverside country diner called Apple Annie's. The establishment has desserts proportional in size to its regular patrons - and they're big. The day was topped off with spontaneous late-night volunteer hours for good measure. We scrub hockey puck marks off plexiglass at the local hockey rink until our shoulders are sore.
Cattle roping practice on a robot was the last hurrah of the day.
It took many tries but we were both able to rope one!
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