For the Hope exhibition and the collaboration with the Battersea Art Centre project, I have chosen a collection of original Morgan Crucibles directly from the archives centre. Coming from a family of welders, the chosen object carries a personal significance. I also wanted to celebrate what the Morgan brothers brought to the modern industry.
In 1856 they founded the Patent Plumbago Crucible Company, making crucibles in a small factory in Battersea, London. The company’s success came from their use of graphite (plumbago) in the clay mix to produce a crucible that melted metal faster and lasted longer than anything else available in Europe at the time. So much so that the Patent Plumbago ‘melting pots’ were said to offer metal smelters ‘a saving of more than 50 per cent in time, labour, fuel and waste’* and were soon selling well all around the world.
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