Before Bristol Patented Zinc in 1738, a Valley Near Udaipur Had Been Distilling It for Centuries — 252 Clay Pots at a Time

Forty kilometres south of Udaipur, a valley is floored with broken clay pots. Each is the size of a large aubergine, open at one end, and there are so many that villagers built house walls out of them. In 1983 a team from the British Museum, the M.S. University of Baroda and Hindustan Zinc began digging into the heaps and found furnaces still holding their last load of pots. The pots are retorts for distilling zinc, a metal Europe could not make on purpose from its ore until a Bristol brass-founder patented a process in 1738. How old are the Zawar furnaces, what exactly did they do, and did anyone in Bristol know?