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International Trade and Local Potteries
With the development of potteries in the USA and Canada, mainly by potters from Stoke-on-Trent who had been brought up on English ball clays, North America also became a very important market. The English ball clay industry became an extremely cosmopolitan business with a string of long-standing trading relationships that in many cases have continued to the present day. Thanks to its coalfields and its concentration of potting expertise, the Stoke-on-Trent area has for centuries been the main centre in the UK for ceramic production - and therefore of ball clay usage. However, several important ceramic factories were established close to ball clay production. Some, notably the Bovey Pottery in Bovey Tracey in Devon and Poole Pottery in Dorset, produced tableware on a large scale. Others used the less valuable stoneware clays to produce the pale cream bricks that are a feature of many West Country buildings, as well as drain pipes, chimney pots and wall tiles - notably Candy & Co. (latterly British Ceramic Tile) in Heathfield, Bovey Tracey, Hexter Humpherson in Newton Abbot and the Marland brick works in North Devon. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries clusters of smaller art potteries were established near the ball clay areas - such as the Watcombe, Torquay Art, Aller Vale and Devon Tor Potteries in South Devon and the Bideford and Barnstaple potteries in North Devon. However, with a few notable exceptions, such as Devonmoor Art Pottery in Liverton, they used mainly red or brown firing clays from, for example, Watcombe and Fremington, rather than ball clays. The following illustrations show larger scale uses of ball clay in tableware, sanitaryware and tiles.
The 20th Century: from Depression
to Remarkable Growth Since the 1950's ball clay has also been used
in a wide range of non-ceramic applications, for example in coating
fertiliser 'prills' (pellets), as a filler in rubber and linoleum and
as an extender in animal feed stuffs. By 1970 annual sales had grown
to 700,000 tonnes, and by 2000 to just over 1 million tonnes, more than
75% of which was exported - an achievement recognised in the several
Queen's Awards for exports that were awarded to the clay companies.
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By
the second half of the 19th century the ban on exports had been lifted
and an increasing proportion of ball clay production was exported to
potteries in Europe - from Kuznetzov in St Petersburg to Villeroy &
Boch in the Saar, Porceleyn de Fleys in Delft and Pickman in Seville.
(Samples of letterheads of early ball clay customers are shown on the
left).
Pieces
of sanitaryware - wash basins and toilets - stacked on a kiln car ready
for firing in a tunnel kiln. The casting and other properties of ball
clay play an important role in the manufacture of such large pieces.
Consequently, this is one of the most valuable applications of ball
clay.
Removing
fired tableware of traditional design from a modern tunnel kiln at the
Spode factory, customers for ball clay since the 18th century.
A bathroom like this, with white bodied ceramic wall tiles and sanitaryware
will contain a lot of English ball clay. Ball clay is also used in ceramic
floor tiles. 
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