The American South as a large porcelain producer

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Deleted member 67076

Kaolinite, the major ingredient in porcelain is found in many parts of the world, not limited to but including the US South. Which had me thinking, what if the region developed a major porcelain production and crafting business of porcelain goods? How would this affect things and develop the economy of the region?
 
It would be culturally interesting, but I doubt it would make a great economic or political difference. As yopu write, kaolinite is found in many places. The key to porcelain production being an economic success is skill and cachet. That is why Sevres, Jingdezhen and Wedgwood are still in business. Getting the skilled labour to the South and then creating a market for the product beyond their region would be a challenge, but might be doable. Maybe a group of European porcelain workers emigretes (the Wedgwood workshops supposedly were home to a fair number of radicals who might feel disaffected, or just be blacklisted/gaoled in the backlash after 1789). They set up a production and it supplies copies of European porcelain during the continental blockade, creating a market as 'nearly the same thing, and cheaper' than Sevres. I wonder if the planter aristocracy will not end up looking down their noses at it because of that.

But even so, most porcelain is produced regionally, not traded globally. The market for upscale ware is small and dominated by traditional makers. Everything else is usually manufactured quite locally (there is no industrial country without at least one porcelain manufacture). The Southern US is a bad location because outbound freight competes with cotton for space (driving up transport costs) while inbound is cheap (due to empty space to be filled with bulky cotton). Porcelain could not displace cotton or tobacco because neither of those are easily produced in the North, Canada, or Europe, whereas porcelain can.
 
An interesting question would be how the industry would be set up. Porcelain does not work weöll as a cottage industry, but it needs neither complicated machinery nor a great capital outlay. You could have manufactures grow up around a kaolinite deposit and proceed to deforest the neighbourhood until they depended on a distant fuel supply. Perhaps it would be a semi-itinerant industry like woad farming, moving as resources deplete.

New Orleans sounds like a perfect place for it - fuel can be brought down the Mississippi/Missouri system, and the city allows for a sufficient labour pool.

The founders of the industry would almost certainly be immigrants. A successful manufacture will need to train labourers, and many of them will set up shop independently like they did in all other American industries (making for interesting technical developments, no doubt). I can't envision this being a slave occupation, despite the labour retention issues, though slaves for heavy labour might well be included in the capital stock of a successful manufacture. Perhaps porcelain design could be a labour market niche for Southern white women?
 
New Orleans sounds like a perfect place for it - fuel can be brought down the Mississippi/Missouri system, and the city allows for a sufficient labour pool.
It all depends on when and where a reputation catches on. There is plenty of kaolinite on the Mississippi River. The cement for the original Panama Canal was made in Mark Twain's Hannibal, Missouri. Any point on the lower Mississippi can earn a special reputation, be it Memphis, Baton Rouge or New Orleans. What is it about Waterford, Ireland that makes it so special for crystal? Why are Swiss movements the best for clocks and watches? Why does Havana make better cigars than Mobile? America's last lead mine is in Herculaneum, Missouri, south of St. Louis. If you create a haven for craftsmen, a reputation is established.
 
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