The Heartbeat of the Kiln: The Indispensable Plant Technician

This page is dedicated to the skill and intuition of the Plant Technicians who kept the ceramic industry in North America thriving before the 1980s. Before we started clicking buttons to outsource things. They weren’t “role fillers” supplied by HR, they were “believers”. They understood everything in the plant; the equipment, processes, procedures, materials, recipes, kilns and firing. Managers set the pace, but the technicians made the pace possible. It was a time of local knowledge and company loyalty. They weren't temporary consultants or voices on a helpline; they owned and solved the problems. They were also mentors who passed their knowledge down.

These binders hold 40 years of recipes and techniques, kept by Albert E. Holthaus at Modern Art Products and Tierra Royal Potteries. Men like him were a legacy; they were the true "operating system" of a golden age of independence. They ensured the wheels kept turning, the fires kept burning and the quality kept enduring.

Related Pictures

Glaze calculation in the 1960s

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This batch-to-formula calculation was done by Albert E. Holthaus at Modern Art Products Company in Kansas City, MO (during the 1960s). Doing this not only seems quaint today, but suppliers put up roadblocks to doing it.

Notice that he took the manufacturer-supplied percentage analysis for each material (bottom) and calculated the unity formula for use in his batch to formula calculation (top). The recipe material weight amounts are missing in the latter; this appears to be his effort to create a documentation page of the recipe on the oxide formula level (this is what mattered to him). It was a time when frit formulas were published by their manufacturers. He also calculated the glaze's chemistry as a percentage analysis, likely to lay a basis to assess it against stated requirements from stain suppliers (certain stains only work when the host glaze chemistry meets a certain profile).

Doing this now is so much simpler. But almost no one actually does! The closest most technicians get to oxide formulas is choosing a frit from a list of ones for which the chemistry given by the manufacturer is only approximate.

Setting up a Clay Testing Program

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It is time to start managing quality control of the clay bodies you manufacture for customers. A good program ensures that your technicians are keenly aware of the variability of material supplies (both in physical properties and simple availability). But your customers are blissfully unaware, all they will see are consistent products because of the compensatory measures you take! These measures are enabled by visibility into clay body properties that only data can give. Structured procedures, a robust code-numbering system and our onboarding help can empower your staff to get started now on accumulating a history of testing data. We are practical. The supplies and equipment you need are within the each reach of any company or even individual. This is not boring lab work, our approach makes it exciting! Your group will be able to track a pipeline with hundreds of specimens going in and analyze a river of measurement data coming out.

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