Egersund faience factory

eyer was the son of the magistrate in Dalane and lived in Egersund. Johan Feyer was interested in geology and travelled around Dalane in search of metals and minerals. At the Leidland farm on Eigerøya, he realised that there were deposits of clay. Feyer realised the potential of the clay deposits and came up with the idea of starting a pottery in Egersund, where the clay could easily be transported by boat. He got his father interested in the project and Johan Feyer travelled to Newcastle-upon-Tyne to learn about stoneware production. After completing his apprenticeship in England, he travelled back to Norway. The clay deposits at Leidland and an area on the north side of the Lunde river, Damsgaard in Egersund were purchased and the factory was built.

History

Work on the factory began in 1847 and the first buildings were completed in 1848. To train the workers in Egersund, Feyer brought along English skilled labourers. The first two English labourers were William Ball and Joseph Holmes. When Holmes stacked the goods in the furnaces, he used his wife as an interpreter. He gave her the orders and she pointed and explained to the Norwegian labourers to the best of her ability. The Norwegians did not understand the English labourers and several firings were destroyed. Despite great initial difficulties, Feyer became the sole owner of the factory in 1849. In 1851, in addition to Feyer, the workforce consisted of 2 clerks, 2 English master craftsmen, 4 journeymen, 9 adult labourers, 7 boys and 2 lady's maids, a total of 26 permanent workers. In addition, there was a crew of 5 men each on 2 vessels and 3 clay diggers. The pottery had become the town's largest workplace.

The factory in the 1860s

The work of pottery making was a craft. The potters worked with a potter's wheel. The potter's wheel was turned by a man or woman sitting on the floor and turning the wheel like a grindstone. In addition to turntable moulding, there was also a foundry. The English influence was strong, and the English technical terms gradually slipped into the Norwegian language. Names such as tray shop, shop for throwing, foreman's shop and pressing shop are known from the early days. The pottery grew steadily throughout the 1850s with 55 workers in 1855. It then declined until operations ceased in 1860. The production of brown stoneware had gradually started in several places in the country. Competition from the Sandnes area was particularly strong. The clay there was of higher quality and easy to extract.

The pottery becomes an earthenware factory

The cessation of pottery operations led a group of workers, together with local capital interests, to set up a new ceramic company, Eie Stentøifabrik, on the other side of Byvågen. It came into operation in the autumn of 1862.

In 1863, Feyer issued an invitation to subscribe for shares in a company with the aim of converting the pottery into a plant that would produce earthenware. Earthenware production was to be based on materials and raw materials from England. To raise money to start up the new factory, Feyer sold his share in the world's largest titanium iron ore field that he had discovered in Sokndal for £9,000 to an English company. By 1865, 50 people were working at the factory. Trial production of earthenware had begun. This time, Swedish workers from the Rørstrand factories were brought in as apprentices. In addition, English labourers were also brought in.

In the beginning, the factory brought over finished flint pulp from England, but this only lasted a short time. The factory soon switched to producing the mixture in Egersund based on English blue clay and kaolin, Danish flint and Norwegian quartz. The factory grew rapidly. In 1866, 70 people worked at the factory. By the end of 1870, the number had risen to 164. Of these, 32 were women and 12 children under the age of 15. In the 1880s, Egersund's Fayance factory was the second largest industrial plant in Rogaland. 200 workers were employed

In the beginning, earthenware production was based on the import of both raw materials and models. Gradually, the factory in Egersund trained its own modellers and decorators. This gave the factory independent production based on its own designs.

Feyer had spent large sums of money on exploring for metals and minerals. Among other things, he had invested large sums in a company that drilled for coal in Jæren. Egersund's Fayance factory went bankrupt in 1876. It was sold to a partnership consisting of people from Stavanger and Egersund. Johan Feyer was offered the position of manager, but declined. The position of manager was then offered to his brother Christian M. Feyer, who accepted it. After the reorganisation, the factory was renamed Egersunds Fayancefabrik Co. In 1883, it became a limited company under the name A/S Egersunds Fayancefabriks Co. After the factory acquired new owners, there was a strong focus on mechanising operations. In 1881, a locomobile was installed to drive the turning machines. In 1885, a new stationary steam engine was added which, in addition to the turning discs, also powered the mills and delivered shoals to the drying rooms. Production and sales increased steadily and in 1897 the factory employed 250 workers.

The factory also made great progress on the product side. The products were constantly improved. The product range was expanded and new glazes were experimented with at the factory. The factory participated in exhibitions in Norway and abroad, where it won prizes and honourable mentions. In 1898, A/S Egersunds Fayancefabriks Co. participated in the National Exhibition and the International Fisheries Exhibition in Bergen. The factory received several awards for its products.

At the same time as the factory expanded production and the number of employees at the end of the last century, outlets for the factory's products were established in Bergen and Oslo. The goods from the factory in Egersund were sold all over the country. Customers in Troms and Finnmark counties were supplied with products featuring images of the Russian tsarist family and Russian inscriptions intended for the Pomor trade.

Fajansen and World War I

After the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, it was a turbulent time for the factory. The faience was dependent on raw materials from abroad, especially from England. Since England was among the warring parties, this became difficult. Another difficult situation was created by the economic boom. Prices for raw materials and shipping rose from month to month. In 1915, Germany announced that the seas around England were a war zone. Ships from neutral countries could now be sunk by German submarines. From 1916, the situation in Norway got worse. "There was a serious shortage of supplies for both everyday consumption and raw materials for industry. Price controls were unable to prevent prices from collapsing across all borders in the world." Conditions around the world had an impact on the factory in Egersund. However, this did not spell disaster for the workers. The rich herring fishery outside the town required large amounts of labour. As the factory cut back on operations, the dismissed workers took jobs in the herring fishery. Eventually, the number of workers was reduced from around 400 in 1912 to 80 in 1918. In the annual report for 1917, it is reported that 250 workers, both male and female, have resigned to take better-paid work with the herring buyers in the town.

After the World War, the factory gradually started up again. But it wasn't until 1920 that the annual report reported that operations were almost back to normal, with ¾ of the usual workforce. The First World War marks a turning point in Fajansen's history. Before the war, the factory was the most important workplace in the town. During the war, herring salting took over this role. In 1920, Fajansen was again the largest workplace in Egersund. The workers were older skilled labourers and many young people just starting out. During the interwar period, Fajansen strengthened its position as the town's most important workplace. The factory was not only seen as the town's most important workplace. Most people also saw it as the only secure workplace in Egersund. For a young person, there were few opportunities outside Fajansen. "There were some in my generation who served their apprenticeships, but as soon as they finished they were sacked. Because then they had to hire a new apprentice. It was cheap labour" (E.F.A.1589). Unemployment was high. Finding work at Fajansen was a dream for most people. It is said that a boy had three options in Egersund One was to get a job at Fajansen. Then he was considered well-off. The second option was to travel by sea. The third was to emigrate to the USA.

Between the wars, Egersund was dominated by Fajansen. Located in the centre of the town, the large brick factory buildings stood out strongly from the surrounding wooden houses. Life in the town was largely organised around working hours at the factory. When the workers had their lunch break from 12.30 to 14.00, the city came to life. Four hundred workers simultaneously streamed out of the factory gates and walked home during their lunch break.

Ceramic production

All ceramic production uses burnt clay (Greek: keramos) as the most important raw material. By adding various additives to the clay, it is possible to produce a mass that can be processed in the desired way. In this way, ceramic products of various kinds can be obtained. Ceramic products are divided into several categories. The following main categories can be useful: brick, earthenware, flintware, stoneware, bone china, porcelain and vitro china. In addition to earthenware, Fajansen in Egersund also produced stoneware, flintware and later corundum ware. With slight variations, the main features of production are the same for these three types of goods.

All ceramic production can be divided into two distinct phases. During the first phase, the objects are moulded from a plastic clay mixture. They are then fired from around 1000 to 1200 degrees centigrade. During the firing, a number of chemical and physical changes take place. The water is driven out of the clay. This causes the object to shrink. At the same time, the material is transformed from being a fragile, loose packing of minerals to a solid, hard material. At temperatures above 1,000 degrees centigrade, the individual raw materials fuse into a hard mass. This fusion gives the object completely different properties from the raw material. Burning is irreversible. It is not possible to convert the burnt material back into raw material, as in the metal and glass industries.

As mentioned, the clay forms the basis for production. The clay came from England. It was transported to the factory in boats that docked at the factory site. From the boat, wheelbarrows were laid out and the clay was rolled ashore with wheelbarrows and stored in large basins. Coal, which was used in large quantities for burning and heating the factory, was also transported in bulk by boat from England. The coal was unloaded on the other side of the swing bridge over the Lunde river. The swing bridge limited the size of the boats that could enter. The coal was unloaded using hired labour as for the clay. In addition to clay and coal, flint from Denmark and quartz from Norway were used as additives in the clay mixture.

From the silos, the clay was rolled in stretchers to the pulp mix. The two types of clay, ball clay (blue clay) and china clay (kaolin), were mixed together with quartz, flint and biskarax (wreckage of unglazed objects). Before the flint could be used, it had to be burnt. The stone was layered with wood in the flint kiln. It was then lit. The flint was heated and cracked. The crumbled flint mixed with biscuit crackers was rolled into silos. From the silos, the mass was discharged into ball mills, where it was finely ground to be mixed into the clay. After the mills had ground the flint and quartz to a milky consistency, the clay was mixed in large mixing vessels with rotating propellers.

From the mixing vessels, the clay was piped to the filter press. Here, the water was pressed out through sheets of sailcloth fabric. The presses were operated by muscle power. Pressing was heavy work. A lot of water had to be squeezed out before the clay reached the desired moisture content. From the press, the clay went to the pog. In the pogue, the clay was prepared for use in the workshops. The clay came in two types: A viscous one, which was pressed into sausage-shaped blanks for use in the moulds, and a thin-flowing slurry, lick, for use in the foundry. The work in the pulp mix was considered the heaviest and dirtiest in the entire factory.