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.
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. 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
