I do not know what lead rivets were used for that Mitzi Rossillon asked
about in her posting of April 9th, however, I doubt that they were used for
china repair.  Rivets used to repair china in my collection are generally
brass or iron.  Rivets used to repair china are more like staples in shape
and they are not hammered into place.  To repair the china, two small holes
are drilled part way into the body on either side of the break and a brass
or iron wire is bent into a staple shape with the points of the staple bent
slightly toward each other.  When the staple is sprung into place in the
drilled holes, it holds the piece together.  Sometimes a vessel will be
riveted when a crack appears to prevent the vessel from breaking, in which
case one rivet might be enough to do the job.  When a vessel is broken,
several rivets would be used to put the vessel back together again.
Riveting is rarely done today because we have good strong glues.  In a book
titled Mending and Restoring China (1970) Thomas Pond states:

            In 1963 a 5 guinea book was published on china mending, and of
      its 420 pages over half were devoted to riveting and doweling.  I
      have found riveting difficult and unsatisfactory and have always
      avoided it.  In fact my greatest pleasure is to extract all rivets
      and re-mend and restore with modern glues, which are were not at the
      disposal of restorers until ten years ago.

      Illustrations of a rivet repaired Mason's Ironstone mug and a Canton
porcelain saucer are illustrated on Amy Earls's web log (
http://www.greatestjournal.com/community/potterynews ).  The Canton saucer
still has a paper label from the person who did the repair.

Peace
George L. Miller and Amy C. Earls
URS Corporation
561 Cedar Lane
Florence, New Jersey

P.S.  Did any one out there see our posting on dyed body wares we posted on
Amy's web log?