CHAPTER VIII.
THE AMERICAN CHINA MANUFACTORY.
A S we have already seen, s!everal partially secessfuI
attemots had been     toward the manufacture
of porcelain by progessive              ed
States previousto te et to Mr. William Ellis
Tucker, of Philadelphia, belongs the honor of being the
first to supply the home market with a purely American
product of this character. The story o  is remar -able
lifeiwor1 arid thehistoryof the factory which he established,
the first important one of its kind on this side of the
Atlantic, cannot fail to prove of especial interest to the
ceramic student. Commencing his investigations with no
previous knowledge of the composition of the ware, nor of
the processes of its fabrication, 16 set reso utely to work
to discover its hidden mysteries, and, wholly-unaided by
the practial experience of others, he succeeded in a few
years in perfecting Trom new and untried materials, a
porcelain equal in all respects to the best which England
had produced after eioht  ears of continual experiment.
His body was neither that of t e French potters nor the
true bone of the English, but partook of the characteristics
of both, the proportion of phosphate of lime, as shown
by analysis, being about eight per cent., a very much
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