One of the “history of something” books that’s recently become popular. Author Suzanne Staubach is a potter, so most of Clay is about the history of pottery, kilns, glazes, and so forth – which is interesting enough. Ms. Staubach gets into trouble quickly when she ventures too far from her pottery wheel; for example, she lists “silica-free quartz” among the species present in fired clay, and comments on the ancient Egyptian use of clay incubators placed on heaps of camel dung to hatch guinea fowl eggs (no domesticated camels in Egypt until Roman times).


However, there’s one discussion here that I am quite grateful for – the history of the porcelain flush toilet. Years ago, I ran across a couple of satirical books:


Flushed with Pride: the Story of Thomas Crapper

And

Bust-up: The uplifting tale of Otto Titzling and the development of the bra

Both by the same author.


Needless to say, since Otto Titzling was obviously an invented name, I naturally assumed Thomas Crapper was too; thus I guffawed when a friend told me his grandmother had a genuine Crapper. Just to make sure, I checked the etymology of “crap” and determined it could be traced all the way back to Old English, long before the putative Thomas Crapper. However, I received a comeuppance on a visit to a museum in England where one of the exhibits, a flush toilet, had the clearly printed name “Crapper”. I was thunderstruck, and the issue has bothered my ever since.


Now Ms. Staubach explains it all. Some sort of flush toilet goes all the way back to Elizabethan times. (In fact, if you consider dumping a bucket down a hole “flushing”, all the way back to New Kingdom Egypt and Minoan Crete). However, the first thing recognizable as a modern flush toilet dates to 1851 and was the product of the Twynford Pottery works; the design was quickly copied by Henry Doulton. In 1873, an American potter, Thomas Maddock, figured out the tricky process of firing a hunk of porcelain that large and freed the US from its dependence on foreign toilets (Maddock’s early insistence on selling his toilets door-to-door hampered market penetration somewhat. I wonder how he did demos?) Thomas Crapper does enter the scene with the invention of a new kind of toilet valve, not the toilet itself, but was brazen enough to have his name printed on every toilet he sold in his chain of plumbing shops. I am much relieved at having this finally worked out.


Interesting enough, especially if you are interested in pottery and are willing to ignore a few errors in ceramic chemistry. Three stars, let’s say. ( )