A lovely (and important) Crown Lynn story

I recently heard from Ernie Cooper, one of our Crown Lynn stalwarts from way back. 

Ernie sent me a story recalling  his last day at Crown Lynn before he left for the UK to begin a four-year ceramics degree at Stoke-on-Trent.  He was 21 years old at the time and this was 1965. Ernie had begun work at Crown Lynn as a cadet two years before. 

After gaining his degree, Ernie returned to Crown Lynn as laboratory supervisor.  Harry Jones was the chief chemist. A couple of years later when Harry retired Ernie accepted the position of chief chemist. From 1973-1975 he was  assistant factory  manager (John Heap was the factory manager). He was then promoted to general manager of Gallard & Robinson, a technical ceramics division of Ceramco operating out of Sydney.

Ernie was also involved in Clay Craft and Terra Ceramics. He is now a business consultant living in Australia. 

This photo shows Ernie Cooper as a young Crown Lynn cadet. He is measuring the thickness of glaze that has been sprayed onto a small plate. In the background you can see a kiln car loaded with Bisque ware waiting to be unloaded. 

Here is Ernie Cooper's story of life at Crown Lynn in the 1960s. 

A WALK-THROUGH CROWN LYNN POTTERY 1965

I’ve just run from home, 12 Admiral Beatty Ave, Mt Roskill, about 4 miles and it is now 8 AM. I reached the roundabout at Wolverton Road, Portage Road & Totara  Avenue (now Clark Street), as I head down Totara Avenue passing Robinsons packaging I get my first sight of Crown Lynn just beyond a vacant block on the left-hand side heading into New Lynn. It’s not very impressive a plain brick building with very high windows, this is actually the bisque warehouse but you wouldn’t know it from the outside. The first entrance is an asphalt quadrangle with the seconds shop on the right-hand side, the cafeteria on the left and the main entrance straight ahead. Alan Topham’s office is on the right between the seconds shop and the main entrance. The main feature of the entrance is a large Monstera deliciosa (fruit salad tree) I never see any fruit, it’s always removed by the Crown Lynn workers before it ripens. Later in the day you will find 1 or 2 white coated gentleman at the main entrance waiting to guide groups through the more easily accessible parts of the factory.

I don’t use the main entrance.  I carry on a little further down Totara Avenue to the second quadrangle which has the main office on the right-hand side and a series of offices on the left, one of which will to be my future office which I will share with John Heap. John would be promoted to factory manager after Fred Hoffman left Crown Lynn to run the Titian factory. But today I’m going to walk through the factory for the final time, a familiar place as I have spent the last 2 years as a cadet working in every department. My last day at Crown Lynn before heading off to Stoke-on-Trent to start a 4 year degree at the North Staffs Technical College, I will join fellow cadets Rod Humphrey and Rick Poynter who are already in their second year in the UK. 

I’m heading out to the yard at the back of the factory near the old clay pit where a lot of the raw materials are stored. There are bunkers for each of the different clays ready to be processed, Glen Afton a plastic local clay, Mount Somers from Christchurch a rock like China clay and a beautiful white clay from Matauri Bay. In the open-sided shed there are bags of Feldspar from Scandinavia and imported Talc. I well remember each time a feldspar shipment arrived, any spare labour (which included cadets) was given the job of unloading semitrailers and stacking the feldspar bags by hand 50 high in the sheds. This was hard and dusty work and after 8 hours the reward was one large bottle of beer (DB Green) for every slave. This was dusty Each of the raw materials needs to be processed in a unique way, the Mount Somers clay for example has to be broken up with a sledgehammer prior to milling. Although this is a backbreaking task it’s a popular job as sometimes you can break open one of the rocks and find spectacular crystals of Iron Pyrites (Fools Gold). In this backyard there is also the Plimortar department, an additive to make mortar more pliable, which is run by Sam Lawson (who was later father of the famous Lawson Quins) Sam later started his own mortar additive business but that’s a story for some other time.

As I head into the factory the noise is overwhelming - the tube mills with silica pebbles and silica block lining roar as they rotate and grind the various clays into ‘slip’, Blungers add to the mayhem as they beat the more easily broken down clays to pulp. This is a 24 hour operation good job it’s well away from the nearest habitation! The mills and blungers drop their loads into underground wells where the mixing of the earthenware & porcelain bodies begin, the slip is hot from the mills, making an uncomfortable humid atmosphere. Nearby Mono pumps fill the filter presses at high pressure causing the occasional blowout which just adds to the noisy humid confusion. I’m happy to move on to the quieter Pug room where the filter cake is processed into extruded blocks and left to age for a few days. The clay preparation department is Jeff Ball’s domain, Jeff and his brother Gordon immigrated to New Zealand from Stoke-on-Trent to join Crown Lynn (they were affectionately known as right and left ball).

Gordon Ball looks after the jiggers and jollies, plate and cup making equipment, in the main part of the factory. Smaller pug mills are used to extrude the clay into smaller cylinders that are required for these machines. Jiggers and jollies rely on 2 things - plaster of Paris moulds and a forming tool, jiggers rotate a mould while the forming tool shapes the back and the foot whereas the Jollies rotate the mould and the forming tool shapes the inside surface of hollow ware.

The mould making is run by Ray Machin (another of our Stoke imports) with the help of Tam Mitchell the head modeller. There are several benches each laid out with mould making equipment, the plaster of Paris is made in batches and carried by hand back to the benches. Hemara Hemara is the gun mould maker and today he’s going for the record of the most moulds made in one day. Everyone keeps out of his way giving him the best access to the mixing equipment, there is a bonus system operating so Hemara will earn good money today. It’s now 10 AM, the hooter blows and everyone downs tools and picks up their darts. The mould room has a very active social club based on money raised from the dartboard.  There is the annual fishing trip to be paid for, every time someone gets a Shanghai everybody else must contribute six pence to the cause. Another hooter and it’s back to work.

Bob Farrington produces the forming tools for the jiggers of the jollies working out of the engineers shop. The engineer shop has recently been extended - some say to accommodate the mast of the yacht Buccaneer, Tom Clark’s latest acquisition!

The moulds with their cargo of ‘green ware’ are put into the mangle dryers which carry them through a heating zone that dries them to a leather hard state ready for fettling. And then on to the tunnel kill for the first firing. The green ware is very fragile at this stage and it’s Tony Rakich’s job to oh so carefully move the green ware from the fettlers to the drying area (you will notice the smell, Tony also dries his garlic up here!) and then on to the area where it will be loaded onto the kiln cars.

It’s time to have a word with Dr Heine, he is in charge of the bottom laboratory responsible for checking the earthenware porcelain body formulations are correct and that the various production processes are working properly. Dr Heine is a very qualified German ceramist and an important mentor for the Crown Lynn cadets. I once asked Doc if I could ring him at home and give the results of some firing tests I asked “what your home number Doc” his very German pragmatic reply “I don’t know I never ring myself”.

The tunnel kiln runs nearly the whole length of the factory from the clay preparation towards the cafeteria. At the end of the kiln the bisque is unloaded into wooden crates and trucked into the bisque warehouse. These manual hand trucks were used everywhere at Crown Lynn for trucking crates, glaze drums and anything else that needed to be moved they were also great fun to be ridden like a scooter sometimes with disastrous consequences.

It’s lunchtime now, another hooter, and we’re close to the cafeteria so I go for one of Harry Cheeseman’s famous scones. There is a hierarchy of seating arrangements usually the Stoke crowd congregate together discussing what’s happening at home and the best way to make Oat Cakes (a Potteries breakfast delicacy).

Wandering through the bisque warehouse I remember being asked to sort through some old bisque ware where I found some beer mugs, one I made especially with a black glaze on the outside clear on the inside and added some transfers and gold trim. This piece now resides at the Waitakere Library together with copies of my notes recording my journey through the Crown Lynn cadetship.

At the back of the bisque warehouse is the Murray Curvex decorating room with Jim Byrne the manager, Jim was a colourful character famously banned from the New Lynn RSA. Jim was playing snooker there one night and as he got down to play his shot the lights were turned out for the ode - in a very loud voice Jim said ‘what silly bugger turned the f----ing lights out’ earning him an immediate ban! The Murray Curvex room was the only air-conditioned part of the factory the gelatine bombs and the ceramic inks used to transfer the geometric patterns from the engraved plates to the bisque ware required a constant temperature. The original Murray Curvex machine was imported from Stoke and the others were made in the engineering shop using this original as the pattern - Kiwi ingenuity!

Bisque ware was glazed by spraying or dipping, the 8 to 10 glaze spraying booths ran parallel with the main tunnel kiln and each station was manned by 2 people one spraying the back and second spraying the front. After spraying, each piece was placed into cranks ready for the gloss firing in the Prouty Kilns. The spray booths were semiautomatic and required constant adjustment, the job of Henry Sadler (and me when I was assigned to that department). This job I didn’t mind at all as there was a particularly attractive lady who operated one of the machines and that one always got my special attention!

It’s a short walk from the cup dipping line to the Prouty Kilns which operated 24 hours a day 7 days a week. You could look through the kiln and see the bright red hot zone (~1000° C) in the middle section of the kiln. Occasionally there would be a crash, the cranks would collapse causing a huge mess and stopping the pushing mechanism. Clearing these crashes quickly was essential to keep the production line moving and on more than one occasion I saw Fred Hoffman don a fireproof asbestos suit and get pushed into the hot zone to grab some of the red-hot rubble. Jim Nash was the only person Fred trusted to push him in and pull him out of the Inferno. Under normal circumstances the fired ware from the Prouty Kilns, which was still quite hot, was stacked into the ubiquitous wooden crates awaiting the next process.

The next process was again a rather noisy operation where the pin marks from the firing supports were chipped off using tungsten tipped tools attached to a special vibrating machine. Some of the busiest days I had during my cadetship was keeping the buzzing machines supplied with glazed ware and trucking the finished product into the glost warehouse. Harry Bird looked after this section, a hard taskmaster.

The Decorating room was a short walk from the chipping machines, originally the decorating processes were overseen by John Cowdery but earlier in the year he left and handed the managing of the decorating room to Maude Bowles.  The decorating room was staffed by some of the most gorgeous girls in New Zealand but Maude ran a tight ship and anyone trespassing in her area was given short shrift. This was always the most desirable place to be for the end of year Christmas party! Ah! The end of year Christmas parties (often referred to in more colourful language) sadly I’m not going to see another one of those for a few years!

The decorating room - from a postcard sent to me by Ernie Cooper 

My last port of call is the glaze preparation area, for me this is probably the most interesting of the production processes at Crown Lynn. The Department was originally run by Ron Absalom but more and more he was relying on George Dabb for the day-to-day operations. Little did I know that many years into the future Ron would come to work at Terra Ceramics. I found the frit making and the glaze colouring agents fascinating probably because of my interest in inorganic chemistry and geology. The glaze preparation area was always wet underfoot so the standard footwear was Wellington boots rolled down to mid-calf - not quite the height of fashion. There is a glaze laboratory which tests glaze formulations and formulates new glazes and decorating techniques and this is where I first met Peter Beach who I remember as an enthusiastic ceramic experimenter. Peter was often in at 5:30 AM to make sure he was the first to see new test pieces out of the Prouty Kiln.

It’s 5 to 5 PM now and there is already a line at the clocking off machine, on the dot of 5 there is a mass exodus and it’s time for me to jog home. I think back about the many nights I had stayed back to 9 PM to supervise the ‘twilight’ shift the compensation for which was a Chinese meal in New Lynn.

Well all the hard work has been done, the tickets are booked and the goodbyes said; I’ve had my pep talk from Tom Clark and walked away with a rack of his old pipes, he has just given up smoking, again? So tomorrow I’ll fly out from Whenuapai to Nandi then on to Honolulu and LA with a further stop in New York before landing in London 3 days later. I’ve got a letter of introduction to Blyth Colour Works in Stoke-on-Trent and the North Staffs Technical College is expecting me so let the adventure begin.

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I am so grateful to Ernie for this beautiful and informative story. I am glad he took the time to write it all down for us to enjoy.

ENDS