Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/135

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
and its Green Border-Land.
121

Wedgwood's ware, and tea-drinkers who can see Elkington's best tea-pots, and are yet unable to read the shortest syllables of the language they speak. But multitudes even of these feel their minds illuminated to new perceptions of refining taste as they look admiringly upon these beautiful productions of genius and art; and if they cannot decorate their shelves with them, they can and do paint their cottage windows with the sweet sheen of living flowers. Thus any one, who appreciates at their true value these self-diffusing and cultivating influences, will see in such an establishment as Elkington and Co.'s something more than the finest specimens of gold and silverware. As regards the productions of these articles it is unrivalled in Great Britain, and only surpassed in extent by one establishment in France.

It may indicate the amount of raw material which is worked into an infinite variety of articles by this establishment to state one or two facts connected with the process. There are four coating vats, each of which deposits twenty-four ounces of silver per hour, and a fifth that deposits twelve ounces. As they work ten hours a day, the daily amount of silver thus fused and diffused is 1,080 ounces, or sixty-seven and a half pounds avoirdupois, or about 400 pounds a week. About one-third of this amount is the weight of gold deposited on various wares in the same way. Allowing five