Chapter 49 Paper and Porcelain
Chapter 49 – Paper and Porcelain
The next day, Paul once again invited Quiller Foster to the hall, accompanied by the crowd from Lichtman Adventures.
Quiller happily guessed, “My friend, I guess you’re going to show me those ‘knickknacks’ of yours today, aren’t you? “
“That’s right! ” Paul snapped his fingers, turned his head and said in a loud voice, “Someone! “
Only to see two servants walking over with two trays and placing them on the table, the tops of the trays were covered with cloth, so the contents could not be seen.
Quiller said with a smile, “Hmm? Mystery is in full swing, huh? “The crowd of adventurers also showed speculative expressions.
“Watch this!” Paul lifted the cloth off the first skewer in one swift motion, “First one, ‘paper’.”
“Paper? “The crowd was puzzled, you’re being so mysterious just to show us the paper?
Meru, the head of the adventuring group, looked huffy, “Is Lord Lord teasing us? “
Paul shook his finger and said, “Don’t be anxious everyone, this paper of mine is extraordinary, it is not made of sheepskin, but made of very cheap raw materials, and the production process is simple, saving a lot of labor and material costs, the price is far lower than sheepskin paper. “
Queller heard Paul say about the new type of paper in the port of Fulan, so he wasn’t really surprised, he picked up a piece of paper and kept rubbing it, exclaiming, “This ‘paper’ is really good, it can replace parchment. If it’s really as you said the other day that it can be manufactured in large quantities, the future should be very promising. By the way, what is this made of? “
Paul balked, “Sorry, trade secret. Even if you are my friend, you can’t disclose it. “
“Hmph! How petty. So what’s the second tray? “
Paul lifted the cloth on the second tray, “Keep your eyes open and look oh so carefully! I call this thing ‘china’.”
“Whoa! ” The crowd let out a gasp as they saw what was on the tray.
It was a porcelain dish, flawless white and crystal clear, this was the first feeling the crowd had after seeing it.
Similar to medieval Europe, most of the people in this world used vessels made of pottery, those with a bit of condition used vessels made of metal, such as copper or something, and the upper class nobles used silver vessels.
But no matter how to maintain, metal products can not avoid the problem of rust, after a period of time will not be as bright as before. Porcelain sells much better, face value than the yellowish pottery and copper high to know where to go.
Paul smugly introduced: “How is it? Good-looking, right? And it won’t rust! “
When the Europeans in order to obtain the secret formula for manufacturing porcelain took great pains, and finally or French missionary Perry Ontrecolet undercover JDZ, lurking for more than ten years to get the raw materials and secret formula, after sending it back to Europe from a long distance, the Westerners were finally able to produce native porcelain comparable to Chinese porcelain.
In fact, the biggest core of the porcelain secret is two: kaolin (or magnet) and high temperature.
Luckily, not far from the town of Lakeville found kaolin, Paul recruited a group of potters, set up a cellar factory, began to experiment with firing porcelain.
At first it was not ideal, because the temperature is not good control, firing porcelain needs more than 1200 degrees of heat.
In order to solve this problem, Paul looked for glassblowers to create the world’s first mercury thermometer to, although there are errors, but barely enough, but of course, not directly into the cellar to measure the temperature, otherwise non-explosive can not be, and the mercury thermometer can not reach more than 400 degrees of the measurement range. The use of thermometers to measure the temperature around the porcelain cellar, combined with Paul recalled the spit temperature measurement method – that is, spit in the mouth of the kiln, saliva in the evaporation of the mouth will become jumping beads of water, and then according to the height of the beads of water jumping to determine the temperature – and finally created a sustained Stable high temperature of more than 1200 degrees.
Another important step before firing in the cellar is glazing, without which porcelain can be fired, but it will be rough.
The glaze is made by mixing clay and water with wood ash, stirring well, and filtering before use.
This step affects the appearance of the finished product, but the trial production did not care so much, perfect glazing techniques need to be slowly to find out the craftsmen.
When Paul recovered the port of Frankland, the craftsmen of Lake Town after a lot of experiments, finally tried to produce the first batch of decent porcelain.
In front of this dish is one of the test products, there is no common porcelain on earth as beautiful as the picture, because the color to the porcelain pigment formula are not a secret, Paul is afraid of chaos with the words of the impact of firing, so the test products are not painted, first to solve the problem of whether or not it is painted on the technology so that the craftsmen to slowly study.
Trial products are not perfect, there are a lot of flaws, far from being able to call it white and flawless, but it is enough to make these otherworldly natives of Queller shocked.
Queller excitedly asked, “You …… you want to sell this kind of thing?”
Paul proudly nodded his head and replied, “Of course, this is only a preliminary experimental product, there are still quite a few flaws, far from being called perfect. In the future I want to sell, it’s even more beautiful than this one, and there will be all kinds of beautiful patterns painted on it.”
The young master of the Foster family exclaimed; “This will set off a storm!” Even if Quiller hated the camping in the family, he had still inherited a few business genes after all.
Looking at the crowd of Lichtman Adventure Group who were also staring at the porcelain plates in a daze, Paul exclaimed, “I announce that each of you present will be given a trial batch of porcelain, and I will issue certificates in the name of the Gleiman family to certify that they are the first batch of porcelain in this world. Although this batch of trial products is far from being able to be called perfect, but if the porcelain can be sold in a big way, their collection value will be far from being able to be measured.”
Dean from the adventuring group said in a panic, “How can this be, this kind of thing is too valuable for us to accept. Oops-” Dean’s foot was stepped on hard by the leader Meru.
Meilu made a worshipful gesture towards Paul and said, “Lord Gleeman, I’m sorry, I feel a million regrets for my previous misunderstanding of you, in fact, you are neither horny and lewd, nor timid and cowardly, it turns out that you are a generous, kind and caring good man for your people.”
Paul clasped his hands in front of his chest and puffed out his chest, “Hmph! Have you finally seen my true side?”
Lol? That’s not right, was the previous me that image in your eyes? Never mind, I’m happy today, I’ll be a grown-up.
He boarded up his face, “This is not a gift for nothing, oh, after you return to the south, you have to publicize more for me.”
Queller and Meru promised in a loud voice.
One made a promise, “The merchants in our place will definitely fight to ask you for representation.”
One’s eyes were glowing, “Get rich, get rich!”
Well, the son of a Convocation Establishment and a big-name adventuring group should be able to generate no small advertising effect.
(End of chapter)