SECTION IX.—TEUTONIC, SAXON, AND GAULISH.
Great quantities of sepulchral urns have been found dating from the departure of the Romans from Britain to the 10th century, but almost no specimens exist of the domestic pottery of this period. The shapes, the char-acter of the clay, and the ornamental patterns on the cinerary urns are very much the same whether they are found in Germany, Scandinavia, Britain, or France: they mostly show traces of Roman influence; some are even coarsely-executed copies of red Samian ware, and are skil-fully wheel-made and well fired. Others are very rude, hand-made, and scarcely to be distinguished from the pottery of the early iron age. In the main, however, the urns are much neater, more glossy, and more elaborately ornamented than the prehistoric pottery. They are made of hard well-burned clay, generally grey, brown, or blackish in colour. The decoration is often very elaborate, with incised lines, some arranged in wavy bands, others in wheel-made rings. The most characteristic ornaments are simple geometrical patterns, stars, crosses, the svastika, and others, impressed in the soft cla from wooden stamps (see fig. 51).
Many urns have a ring of bosses pressed out from the inside by the potter’s thumb, and some few have bands or stripes in coarse ochre colours or white. The surface of the urns is frequently glossy, partly from the hard silicious quality of the clay, but often because it has been mechanically polished. A black shining surface was sometimes given with graphite (plumbago), as was the case with some of the Roman black pottery. A lump of graphite was found with blackened urns in a tomb at Högelberg.1
Medaeval Pottery of England and France, 11th to 15th Century.—Though great quantities of pottery for domestic use were made during this period it was extremely fragile and, being of very coarse ware, without artistic beauty, few specimens have been preserved to our times. It consisted mostly of tall jugs, globular pitchers, bowls, dishes, and drinking-cups, all of which were made for some centuries with but little variation in shape or quality. Fig. 52 shows a selection of common forms, usually made of coarse red or yel-low clay, often cov-ered with white slip, and partly glazed with a green or yellow vitreous glaze, rendered more fusible by the presence of a large proportion of oxide the lead. Somehave coarse painted stripes of in coloured ochres; others have heraldic badges or fanciful ornaments, rudely modelled, and fastened to the body of the pot; and some grotesque jugs are formed in
FOOTNOTE (page 623)
I See Du Cleuzion, La poterie Gauloise, 1872, and Cochet, Archéo-logie céramique. 1860.
the shape of animals or knights on horseback. The most graceful in shape were pilgrim-bottles, flattened globes, very like one of the forms common in Egyptian and Assyrian pottery. The common domestic pottery of the Middle Ages was made and used in enormous quantities. Though it was wonderfully cheap, yet the ease with which it was broken made it a serious and often-recurring item in the household expenses of rich or royal personages. The list of expenses of a feast on the anniversary of Queen Eleanor’s death (wife of Edward I.) contains this item, "pro Mle et D discis, tot platellis, tot salseriis, et CCCC chiphis xliis,"—that is, 42s. for 1500 dishes, 1500 plates, 1500 saucers, and 400 cups. The 42s. are perhaps equal to £25 of modern money, a small sum for 4900 pieces of pottery.
SECTION X.—MEDIAEVAL AND MODERN ITALIAN.
Sqraffiato Ware was made by covering a vessel of red clay with a coating of white slip made of some natural white earth like pipeclay. This was done by dipping or by pouring the fluid slip over the red vessel. When the white coating was dry the design was formed by cutting it away so as to expose the red body underneath. In this way bowls, dishes, ewers, and other vessels were decorated with human figures, or with graceful scroll-patterns of foliage and flowers. The patterns were then picked out with bright colours,—yellow, blue, and green; and finally the whole was glazed with a very fusible lead glaze (see fig. 53). This is probably a very early method for the decoration of pottery in various parts of Italy ; but only few existing specimens are older than the second half of the 15th century. Some of the earlier specimens have very graceful designs, of almost Gothic style, executed with great spirit, and very decorative in effect. Sgraffiato ware continued to be made during the 16th and 17th centuries, especially in the neighbourbood of Pavia; it was, however, but little esteemed owing to the greater popularity of painted majolica. Rude imitations of it were made in Germany and France.
Italian Majolica1—The history of this ware in its early stages of development is almost unknown. According to popular tradition, it was first copied from certain plates brought by the Pisans from the island of Majolica (or Majorca) in the 12th century. This is extremely improb-able; the fabrication and use of a white tin enamel were
FOOTNOTE (page 624)
1 In this article the word "majolica" is used in its modern sense to include non-lustred pottery.
known to Italian potters long before they found out the secret of lustre colours, a discovery not made in Italy till the 15th century. We know from various sources that lustred pottery from the Balearic Islands was largely im-ported into Italy during the 15th century (see above), and it is quite possible that the sight of the brilliant lustre on the imported Moorish ware set the potters of Italy to work, and led them to find out, either by experiments or from some traveller who had visited the Balearic kilns, how to compose and fire the metallic salts required to produce the lustre ; but this occurred long after the Pisan victory at Majorca. It was to the lustred ware only that the Italians gave the name of "majolica," though now it is commonly applied to all the Italian enamelled pottery of the l5tb and 16th centuries. It was the lustre only that was a fresh discovery in the 15th century; enamelled ware had been made by Italian potters many years before. This is an important point, and it should be noted that the accounts given by Vasari and several other old Italian writers on the subject are quite misleading. "Mezza--majolica" is a word of rather uncertain meaning which occurs in early writers on Italian pottery. It has been used to mean pottery covered not with a tin enamel but with a white slip, made of a white clay like that found at Vicenza; and in many museums the earlier and ruder sorts of majolica have been arranged under this name. The fact, however, seems to be that even the rudest and earliest specimens of majolica in the various museums of Europe are covered with a true tin enamel. Curious specimens of pottery, covered with a rude enamel made of the white kaolinic "terra di Vicenza" mixed with an alkaline silicate, have recently been found in tombs of the 11th and 12th centuries in various parts of Italy. These earliest attempts at what we now call majolica are coarsely decorated in green, yellow, and blue, on a white ground, with patterns of semi-Oriental style. The pigments used appear in some cases to be simply coloured glass reduced to powder,—a kind of smalto. This style of pottery is probably the mezza-majolica of Vasari. It is evidently the first step towards the production of the true majolica, in which the kaolinic clay of Vicenza is replaced by a tin enamel. This discovery is of great importance as regards the early history of Italian pottery. The few pieces yet known are mostly preserved in the office of public instruction in Rome, and are not yet exhibited in any museum.
Very few early examples of developed Italian majolica are now known. One of the most important is a small jug, 5 inches high, in the Sèvres Museum, which is made of reddish clay covered with a white tin enamel, and painted with a shield and simple ornaments in manganese purple and bright green (oxide of copper). It is supposed to have been made at Rimini, and dates from the 13th or 14th century (see fig. 54). It was not, however, till the second half of the 15th century that Italian majolica began to be largely produced. Owing to the great difficulty of determining the special towns where the earlier varieties were made, it will be convenient to treat this ware according to style and date rather than under the heads of the different potteries. During the earlier and more important period the production of majolica -was confined to a very small part of Italy. Bologna on the north, Perugia on the south, Siena on the west, and the Adriatic on the -east roughly indicate the limits within which the chief majolica-producing towns were situated; these were Forli, Faenza, Rimini, Cafag-giolo, Pesaro, Urbino, Castel Durante, Gubbio, Perugia, and Siena. Towards the middle of the 16th century distant cities such as Venice also produced fine majolica, but of the later style.
Materials.—Fortunately ample information on this sub-ject has been preserved to us. A potter of Castel Durante occupied himself for some time in writing a full description of the materials, the methods of using them, the "throwing--wheels," the kilns, and all the varied processes of his craft. His original MS., copiously illustrated with clever pen--sketches, is in the library of the South Kensington Museum, and the work was printed, with facsimiles of the drawings, at Pesaro in 1879. It is called I tre libri dell’ arte del Vasajo by Cipriano Piccolpasso of Castel Durante, and is dated 1548.
Piccolpasso himself did not produce lustred ware, but be describes the process and the special kiln it required; his descrip-tion of materials and methods, though not written till 1548, applies in all important points to the majolica of the second half of the previous century. Various receipts differing in the proportions of their ingredients are given; the following examples are selected as typical instances.
1. The clay body, "terra," was to be, if possible, clay deposited by a river. It was carefully prepared for use by being beaten, ground in a mill, and passed through a sieve, so as to bring it into a smooth homogeneous plastic state, fit for being moulded on the wheel. It was all the better for being dug out a long time before it was used.
2. The white enamel, "bianco," was composed of thirty parts of "marzacotto" to twelve of oxide of till. The marzacotto was simple powdered glass, a pure silicate of potash, made from clean sand and the alkaline tartar deposited by wine. According to Piccolpasso the decorations were painted on the enamel ground sometimes before it was fired, and sometimes after. This was an important difference. The enamel before firing formed a slightly granular and very absorbent ground, like clay in the biscuit state; and the paintings on it had to be bold and broadly decorative, not delicate and miniature-like ; the touch of the brush had to be rapid and certain ; little or no alteration could be made, as the unfired enamel sucked the pigment out of the brush and absorbed it below the surface. The earlier and more boldly decorative sorts of majolica appear to have been painted in this way on the unfired enamel, and owe much of their richness of effect to the fact that the different pigments have stink below the surface of the ground. This process may be compared to that of painting in true fresco, while the painting oil the fired enamel resembles the more deliber-ate method of the painter in oil. After passing through the kiln the whole character of the enamel was completely changed ; it formed then a hard, smooth, non-absorbent, vitreous surface, on which the finest lines and the most minute, paintings could be executed, and any part of it could easily be altered or wiped out. It was in great part owing to this change of method that the later majolica paintings became more pictorial and more minute in exe-cution, the almost inevitable result of painting on a hard glassy ground. In some instances it is not easy to decide which method of painting has been adopted, though in most cases there is a dis-tinct difference in the quality of the lines. One peculiarity is a sure test: when delicate patterns in white have been formed by covering the enamel ground with some colour, and then wiping out the pattern by using a pointed piece of stick or ivory on the soft pigment, in that case the enamel certainly was fired first. The colour could not be wiped cleanly out from an absorbent biscuit surface. Much of the delicate beauty of the Persian lustre paint-ings, especially those on wall-tiles, is due to this method of getting minute patterns in white. It was also practised, though in a much more limited way, on some of the Italian majolica. The difference of handling between "under-glaze" and "over-glaze" painting cor-responds exactly to that of the unfired and fired enamel but in the latter case another important difference is introduced under-glaze pigments require much greater heat than those over the glaze and are consequently very limited in range of colour, while in majolica painting the same pigments were used in either case.
3. The glaze, "coperta," all ordinary glass, made more fusible by the presence of lead, cousisted of oxide of lead 17 parts, silica (sand) 20, alkali 12, and common salt 8 parts.
4. Pigments, "colori," all owe their colour to a metallic oxide, yellow being derived from oxides of iron and antimony, green from oxides of copper and antimony, blue from oxide of copper, red from Spanish oxide of iron, Armenian bole, and red ochre, and black from black oxide of copper and manganese. Most of these had a certain proportion of oxide of lead, not to affect the colour but to make them more fusible. Other tints were produced by combinations of these pigments, and different gradations of tone were obtained by adding more or less of the ingredients of the white enamel.
Methods of Manufacture.—Piccolpasso gives sketches of the potters at work throwing vessels on the wheel. The wheel itself ("torno") consists of a vertical axle, with a large lower wooden disk for the potter’s foot to keep it revolving, and a smaller upper disk on which the clay was moulded by the potter’s hands,—an apparatus which differs in no respect from that used in Egypt under the Ptolemies, and is still employed in the great porcelain factory at Sèvres. The potter to the right of fig. 55 is working with a wheel like that drawn by Piccolpasso. The earlier kind of majolica is almost wholly wheel-moulded, but during the 16th century a good many plates and vases were formed after shapes copied from silver-work, with sunk bosses or gadroons. These were formed by pressing thin disks of soft clay into moulds made of plaster ("gesso"), bone-ash, and pounded marble. An elaborate description of the method is given in Piecolpasso's MS. Another practice also had arisen in his time, that of finishing the pottery on a joiner’s lathe when it was dry, but before it was enamelled or fired,—a practice unfortunately common at the present day, which makes the form of the vessel more mathematically correct, but greatly injures the freedom and spirit of touch given by the potter’s hand. After the pottery was brought to the required shape it was dipped into a bath of the materials for the white enamel, finely ground and mixed with water; and, after being allowed to dry, it was fired for the first time. The painted decoration was applied on the white enamel with brushes of various sizes, and the vessel was then dipped into a second bath of the glaze materials, finely ground and mixed with water like the enamel. It was afterwards fired a second time. If it had lustre colours, they were put-on over the glaze, and a third firing in it different kiln was necessary for the reasons explained above under the head of "Persian pottery." The application of the transparent glaze over the enamel was not absolutely necessary, and was occasionally omitted, but the finer sorts of majolica usually had it for the sake of the increased brilliance which it gave to the non-lustre colours. The kiln for the ordinary colours and first two firings, as drawn by Piccolpasso, is exactly the same in principle as that used by the potters of ancient Greece and Rome,—that is, an arched chamber in two stories, with a perforated floor between—the lower compartment for the fire, the upper for the pottery. A sketch is also given in Piccolpasso’s MS. of the lustre-kiln, in which the pottery is enveloped in flames and heated smoke. Fig. 55, from a Venetian woodcut of the middle of the 16th century, shows majolica potters at work throwing pots oil the wheel. Two different wheels are being used ; the man on the left keeps his going by giving it a succession of spins with one hand, the other works his wheel by the help of a lower foot--turned disk. To the extreme left a small kiln is shown ; the lower arched opening is for the insertion of the fuel, the upper for the pottery ; the holes at the top are for the escape of the heated air and smoke.
Styles of Decoration.—In general character the painted decoration on the majolica of the latter part of the l5th and beginning of the 16th century is very different from that of a few years later. The first retains much of mediaeval purity and simplicity of design, while the later sort follows the richer and more florid style brought into fashion by the rapidly-approaching decadence of art. The principal variety of the early class is the ware painted in blues with a yellow lustre, manufactured chiefly in the workshops of Pesaro, Gubbio, and Deruta. With these two simple colours effects of the greatest decorative beauty were produced, far more truly artistic and suited to their special purpose than the elaborate pictures in many colours painted some years later in the workshops of Urbino and Durante. In the firm precision of the drawing and extreme skilfulness of touch in the blue outlines one is reminded of the paintings on Greek vases of the best period. Some of the large plates of this ware have figure-subjects, usually sacred scenes. A very beautiful one in the Louvre has a Madonna and Child enthroned, drawn and composed with the simple grace of Raphael’s early manner. Most, however, have portraits of ladies drawn in profile, the background filled up with simple flowers, and an inscribed scroll, often with the lady’s name and the word "bella" or "diva," or with epigrammatic mottoes (see fig. 56). The design is first drawn in blue outline, with a little delicate blue shading over the white flesh and a blue edging on the ground round the outline. The dress and the ornaments on the ground and rim of the plate were finally filled in with the yellow lustre, which was sufficiently transparent to let all the blue line details over which it was painted show through. Another rarer sort of early majolica, similar in style, has a deep ruby lustre, employed instead of the golden yellow. Fig. 57 shows a fine example of it, probably produced at Gubbio, which had almost a monopoly of this special lustre, afterwards used so largely in the workshop of Maestro Giorgio. Other early varieties of majolica, painted in a simple and unpictorial way, have no lustre colours, but are remarkable for their brilliant and rather harsh green, with a good deal of manganese purple. Plates of this sort with female portraits, not generally in profile, and heraldic animals, frequently occur, as well as slabs or plaques intended for wall-decoration. Faenza and Forlì appear to have been the chief places for their production. The Cluny Museum is very rich in specimens. Cafaggiolo and Faenza also produced, during the early period, some very beautiful and highly-decorative plates, painted without lustre, but with a variety of colours arranged with a most complete harmony of tint. Some have patterns ingeniously devised after a motive suggested by peacocks feathers (see fig. 58). The chief colours are yellow and orange, various blues, and occasionally a rich deep red. Amatory plates ("amatorii"), with ladies portraits, are also painted in this way, with more elaboration and detail but not greater decorative beauty than the simple blue and yellow lustre of the early Pesaro and Gubbio ware. Specimens of the later Cafaggiolo ware bear the accompanying mark (see No. 3). Forlì was one of the earliest towns to produce a fine class of majolica ; specimens exist dated 1470, of very noble design and firm outline. A fine set of plates and vases was made there (c. 1480-85) for Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary. The flesh of the figures, like that on the early Pesaro and Deruta ware, is white, delicately shaded with Potter’s blue ; but the early Forlì potters used a greater variety of colours than were employed at most other towns: in addition to the blues they had yellow, bright green, and purple-brown, all non-lustre colours. To Forlì or Faenza must be attributed a very curious and rudely painted plate in the Sèvres Museum, decorated with a youth on horseback in blue outline; it has a date which appears to read 1448 ; if so, this is the earliest dated specimen of majolica. The enamel is coarse and crackled all over, but the method of execution is that of true majolica.
Majolica of Maestro Giorgio Andreoli of Gubbio.—The workshop of this artist, most of whose dated works fall between 1517 and 1537, was one of the largest and most important of his time. Its productions, as well as those with the signature "Mº. Gº. da Ugubio," or as in No. 4, are very unequal in merit, and even the best of them are very inferior as specimens of true decorative art compared with the majolica of the earlier classes described above the mark used most frequently by Giorgio is shown in No. 5. A somewhat similar monogram was used by an earlier potter; an example dated 1491 is shown in No. 6. Though net the inventor of the ruby lustre, which was then so much admired, Giorgio appears to have been the chief potter of his time who used it. The fact is, the pro-cess was a difficult one and required special skill, not in the preparation of the oxide of copper pigment but in the firing so as to expose the colour to actual contact with the reducing flame without the pottery itself being shattered to pieces. Even with the best skill of the Gubbio potters a large proportion of the lustred ware perished in the kiln. The majolica potters of many other towns were in the habit of sending their otherwise finished wares to Gubbio for the sake of having the additional brilliance derived from lustre colours. In some cases a space for the lustres was left white; in others rude dabs and splashes of ruby and yellow lustre were applied over completely finished paint-ings of landscapes or figure-subjects, often in a very coarse and tasteless fashion. Some delicately painted plates are quite spoiled and vulgarized by the heavy touches of lustre that have been put over them. The ruby is in fact rather strong and hard in tone, and needed very careful applica-tion to make it harmonize with the quieter non-lustre colours; it is far more salient and metallic-looking than the fine yellow lustre of the early ware. In addition to the ruby, "gold" and "silver" lustres were used at Gubbio. The latter are a deep and a pale yellow. The pale silver lustre was made from oxide of silver; the gold was a mix-ture of copper and silver oxides. A great deal of the pro-duce of Giorgio’s workshop is very rude and of no artistic merit, while the best and most carefully painted wares usually err, in accordance with the rapidly declining taste of his time, in being far too pictorial. Copies of pictures crowded with figures, arranged without regard to the shape of the vessel they were meant to decorate, and painted with all the colours of the potter’s palette, were most highly esteemed. Many of them are from designs by Raphael and other great painters, but are really quite unsuited for ceramic decoration. Giorgio’s earlier works are, on the whole, in better taste, and some later portrait heads are very good. Fig. 59 shows a fine tazza in the Louvre signed at the back "ex o.1 Giorg.," which is both nobly drawn and harmoni-ous in colour; its date is about 1525. The fav-ourite subjects on the pictured ("istoriata") majolica of Gubbio and elsewhere are scenes from Roman mytho-logy, especially Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and stories from classical history. Unluckily contemporary history is rare; the British Museum has a good specimen, a plate painted with the defeat of Francis I. at the battle of Pavia.
It was at Urbino and Castel Durante that the produc-tion of elaborate pictured majolica was mostly carried on, especially between the years 1530 and 1560, under the patronage of the reigning dukes of the Della Rovere family. Francesco Xanto Avelli, Guido Fontana, and Niccola da Urbino were specially celebrated for this class of work, and often used Marc Antonio Raimondi’s engravings from Raphael’s designs to decorate their plates and vases.2 Many of these are painted with great delicacy and richness of effect in spite of their unsuitability for their special purpose and the comparative poverty of the potter’s palette, which was, of course, limited to colours that would stand the severe heat of the kiln. The pictured wares of Urbino sometimes have the Gubbio lustre colours, but the best are without them. Another class of design was also used at Urbino with much better decorative effect. It con-sisted of fanciful and graceful arabesques or floral scroll-work mingled with grotesque figures or Cupids, all skil-fully arranged to emphasize the main contours of the plate or vase. Branches of the oak tree in flowing and slightly geometrical lines are a frequent motive of de-sign, chosen in compliment to the Della Rovere dukes, who bore an oak on their coat of arms. All these, but especially the pictured wares, were highly paid for, and sometimes were valued as much as silver plate. They were mostly "piatti di pompa,"—meant, that is, to hang, on walls or ornament sideboards rather than for actual use. Some of the early productions of one of the Urbino potteries are marked with the graceful monogram No. 7.
In a short sketch like this it is impossible to give even an outline of the many varieties of majolica produced in such profusion during the 16th century, but a few others of the more important kinds may be mentioned. The Faenza potteries produced one of the most beautiful of the later varieties, chiefly plates with wide flat rims and deep centres, called "tondini," the borders decorated with delicate and minute arabesques, painted in several tints of a deep ultramarine blue of wonderful richness and decorative effect. In the centre is usually a coat of arms or a single figure, with a brilliant jewel-like touch of orange or deep red, which sets off to the utmost the blues of the border (see fig. 60). One of the most remarkable specimens of majolica painting, treated with the deli-cate minuteness of an illuminated MS., is on a plate in the British Museum from the Faenza workshops. It is a scene of the death of the Virgin, surrounded by the apostles, copied with slight adaptations from an engraving by the German master Martin Schöngauer. The Italian ceramic painter has slightly but skilfully altered the composition to fit it to the circular form of the plate, and has also given a more graceful cast to the mannered German faces of the original. The execution is wonderfully delicate and miniature-like, almost wholly done in different tints of blue, with a little yellow to suggest flesh colour, and high lights touched in with pure white enamel, the main enamel ground being white slightly tinged with pink. It is evidently the work of a very able artist, and is a little picture of gem-
FOOTNOTES (page 627)
(1) For ex officina, a hrase borrowed from the Roman potter’s stamps, see p. 619 supra.
(2) A namesake and relation of Raphael’s was a skilful painter of istoriati pieces ; and hence has arisen the tradition that the great painter occasionally decorated majolica (see RAPHAEL).
like beauty, though in no way specially suited to the requirements of ceramic art, for which a bolder and less realistic style of treatment is really the most suitable. Some fine early plates of Faenza make are signed with No. 8 mark; a common later mark is the monogram FA(enza)—see No. 9. Another plate, also in the British Museum, has a painting copied from a design by Albert Dürer, the Scourging of Christ. This highly-laboured and minute style of painting was largely practised in the potteries of Siena, which produced plates of great beauty, with borders of graceful scroll-work and grotesques in white and different tints of blue, with usually a rich russet-brown or orange ground. Tondini from Siena are often decorated in this way with a central medallion containing a minute landscape, painted with wonderful minuteness and finish. The landscapes are very delicate in colour, and, though often not more than an inch and a half in diameter, have a wonderful suggestion of atmosphere and distance which recalls the lovely sunset-lit back grounds of Perugino’s pictures. A very beautiful plate in the British Museum, painted in this minute style with the scene of Scaevola before Porsena, is signed on the back, "fata ï Siena da Mº. Benedetto." Other plates by the same very clever and refined painter are decorated only in blue, with touches of pure white on the creamy enamel ground. The Kensington Museum has a good specimen, with a central painting of a hermit and landscape background, surrounded by a delicate border of arabesques. Little is known of the artist. Another signature which occurs on Siena ware is No. 10, in one case conjoined with the date 1542. Majolica with plain blue enamel is a rare variety, and has been attributed to Luca or Andrea della Robbia, some pieces being marked as in No. 11, apparently for "Luca della Robbia, Florentia." It has no painting, but was partly gilt; in colour the enamel resembles the plain blue pottery of Persia mentioned above. It consists mostly of vases moulded with flutings and bosses after a metal design ; very few pieces exist. The beautiful sculpture in enamelled terra-cotta made by the Della Robbia family will be treated of under the head of ROBBIA.
Venetian majolica was not largely produced till towards the second half of the 16th century. In the earlier part of that century the few potters of Venice appear to have chiefly occupied themselves with attempts to produce true porcelain. The earliest dated specimen of Venetian majolica is of the year 1540. Some of this ware is very decorative in effect, and has paintings of graceful and elaborate foliage, scroll-work, and arabesques, designed with great intricacy. It is in blue and white, the main enamel ground being a very pale blue, and the design in deeper shades of blue with high lights in pure white. Others have landscapes in blue and white, with graceful, but too realistic borders of fruit and flowers in yellow, green, and blue, somewhat later in style. Mark No. 12 occurs on some of the finest Venetian majolica. Towards the end of the 16th century there was a rapid falling off in the artistic beauty of majoiica paintings, and not solely in the execution : the pigments also became thin and poor, with very often a disagreeable "granular" look. Some effective pottery was produced atVenice, c. 1590-1620, with a deep ultramarine blue enamel ground, on which designs were painted in white, a style of ware which was largely manufactured at Nevers in France a few years later (see fig. 62 below).
All through the 17th and 18th centuries majolica in a degraded form was produced at many places in Italy ; but most of the old kilns, such as those of Deruta, Gubbio, and Faenza, fell into disuse. The latest kind of majolica, decorated with coarse paintings in blues and yellows of rather harsh tint, was largely produced at Turin, Genoa, Venice, Savona, Castello, Naples, Montelupo, and other cities. The older potteries at Pesaro and Urbino still continued in work, but produced nothing of real merit. A common mark on Turin ware is No. 13 ; and on Savona majolica one of the two forms in No. 14 often occurs. In the beginning of the 17th century spirited copies were made of the magnificent Rhodian pottery, such as that shown in fig. 48 above but with pigments very inferior to those of the originals. At Capo di Monte, near Naples, a manu-factory of pottery and porcelain was started under royal patronage in 1736 ; but it was more celebrated for the production of porcelain than of enamelled wares. Of late years clever imitations of the old majolica have been produced in Italy, especially from the workshop of the marquis Ginori. Even the old lustre colours are successfully reproduced; but most of the modern majolica is marred by a want of spirit and freedom, the natural result of its being a too servile copy of a bygone style.
Shapes of Majolica.—The most carefully finished and finest paintings are as a rule on plates, which were of various forms, from almost flat disks to the tondini with wide flat rims and deep bowl-like centres, Many of the jugs, vases, and ewers are extremely graceful in form some suggested by the bronze vessels of ancient Rome, others inken from Greek vases. Piccolpasso gives sketches of the principal shapes, and a long list of special names, not now of much importance, as they varied in different manufactories and even workshops in the same town. The character of the non-pictorial decorations combines many different elements of style. In some of the patterns we see a survival of earlier mediaeval and native Italian taste and invention. Others, especially the large ewers of Cafaggiolo and Faenza, have flowers taken from Persian pottery, but treated in a thoroughly original way. Some plates, painted in the silver lustre only, are almost imitations of Hispano-Moorish ware or actual majolica made in the Balearic Islands. In all the scroll -patterns, mingled with grotesques, it is easy to trace the influence of the ancient wall-decorations froin the baths of Titus and other buried buildings, the discovery of which at the beginning of the 16th century did so much to destroy the lingering mediaeval spirit and substitute a pseudo-classical style, which finally had so fatal ail effect on all branches of art in Italy.
Collections.—The chief collections of the majolica of Italy are those of the South Kensington Museum (perhaps the most completely representative of all), the Bargello in Florence, the museums of Milan, Venice, Turin, Pesaro, Urbino, and other places in Italy. The Hôtel Cluny and the Louvre in Paris, the Ceramic Museum at Sèvres, as well as Limoges, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, and St Peters-burg, have good collections. The British Museum collection is not large, but it is one of the most important, from the number of "signed" pieces that it contains, and from the fact that nearly all its specimens are remarkable for their exceptional beauty or some point of special interest.1
Literature.—For Italian majolica, see Vasari, Lives of Battista Franco, Buon-talenti, and Luca della Robbia (ed. Milanesi, 1882); Meurer, Italienische Majolica-fliessen, 1881 ; Corona, La Ceramica, 1879; Vanzolini, Istorie delle fabbriche di Majoliche, Pesaro, 1879 (a most valuable reprint of the best old treatises on the subject, including Piccolpasso’s illustrated MS.); Darcel and Delange, Faïences Italiennes, 1864; Fortnum, South Kensington Museum Catalogue of Majolica, 1873; Jacquemart, Les Majoliques de la collection Campana, 1862, also article in Gaz. des Beaux-Arts, xiii. p. 289; Drake, Venetian Ceramics, 1868; Lazari, Notizia delta raccolta Correr, 1859; Raffaelli, Maioliche lavorate in Castel Durante, 1846; Bonghi, Majoliche di città di Castello, 1856; Casati, Les Faïences de Diruta, 1874; Campori, Maiolica di Ferrara, 1871 ; Delsette, Maioliche di Pesaro, 1845 ; Frati, Maioliche di Pesaro, 1844; Torteroli, La Maiolica Savonese, 1856; Pungileoni, Pitture in Maioliche di Urbino, 1857; Brancaleoni, Mastro Giorgio di Gubbio, Pesaro, 1857. For information on the marks on majolica, see Genolini, Maiol. ital., Marche e Monogrammi, Milan, 1881; and De Mély, La Céramique ital., Sigles et Monogrammes, Paris, 1884. Many valuable articles on majolica are scattered through the volumes of the Guz. des Beaux-Arts.
SECTION XI.—SPANISH AND PORTUGUESE.
Spanish.—Spanish pottery is for the most part a coarse imitation of Italian majolica, chiefly made at Valencia, Triana (Seville), and Talavera. Some of the enamelled ware made at the last-named town is elaborately painted with figure-subjects in blues, yellow, green, and manganese purple, of extremely bad taste and feebleness of drawing.2 The simpler pottery made at Valencia a little before and after the year 1700, though rudely painted, is very decora-tive in effect. Large plates often have conventional flowers or profile heads, somewhat after the style of some of the earliest majolica of Italy, and are coarsely painted in blue and yellow. In the 18th century good enamelled pottery
FOOTNOTES (page 628)
(1) The year 1884 will be memorable in the history of majolica for the sale and dispersal of the important collection formed in the 18th century by Sir Andrew Fountaine of Narford. A few specimens were secured for the South Kensington and British Museums, but some of the finest pieces were bought for France, especially a magnificent Faenza plate, dated 1508, which fetched £966. Several of the Pesaro and Urbino dishes sold for between £200 and £300.
(2) See Casati, Les Faïences de Talavera, 1874.
was made at Alcora, painted only in blues, often in the Chinese style. Some large vases of Moorish shape have very effective blue and white paintings of animals, flowers, and landscapes.1 A quite different style of enamelled pottery was made at Puente del Arzobispo in the 16th or 17th century. Specimens are rare ; they consist chiefly of plates decorated in a very skilful and effective way, somewhat after the fashion of Moorish wall-tiles, "azulejos" (see TILES). They are made of coarse red clay covered with white enamel, through which (before firing) the outline of the design was scratched down to the red body. The spaces between the incised lines were filled in with coloured enamels, rich blue, green, and orange, and the whole glazed with a very fusible lead glaze. The simple and mosaic-like patterns thus formed, either conventional flowers or heraldic animals, are extremely decorative and telling.
Portuguese.—Little or no enamelled pottery of Portuguese workmanship earlier in date than the 17th century is known to exist. Rato was one of the chief places for the manufacture of enamelled wares, which are coarsely painted, like the latest and poorest kinds of Italian majolica, and are not earlier in date than 1767, when the Rato potteries were first started. Other earlier specimens of unknown make also exist, and are marked with an "R," like the Rato ware, to which they are very superior both in design and execution. The best arg in blue and white only; many are marked with various dates during the 17th century.
Biscuit Pottery of Spain and Portugal.—The earliest kinds now existing of Spanish pottery without either enamel or glaze are chiefly large wine-jars, "tinajas," about 3 or 4 feet high, of graceful amphora-like shape, stamped with simple patterns in relief. Some of them date from the time of the Moorish occupation. Both Spain and Portugal have always been remarkable for the fineness and beauty of their potter’s clays, and consequently have for long excelled in the production of simple biscuit wares, uncovered by either enamel or glaze. Very graceful pottery of this sort is manufactured even at the present day, the shapes being traditional, handed down from century to century with but little change, many vessels being still modelled after the old Roman forms. Some of this ware is of a white porous clay, like pipeclay, and some is of a fine red, close in texture, with slight surface gloss, almost like the Roman "Samian." One common kind is decorated in a very fanciful and ingenious fashion by the application of simple but rich surface ornaments, modelled by hand in relief, or applied in the state of semi-fluid slip. Other curious water-jars are made double, the outer vessel being pierced with patterns of open-work. A third variety has sparkling particles of quartz stuck on its surface while moist, a very old method of decoration, which was even practised by the potters of prehistoric times. On the whole, the modern biscuit wares of Spain and Portugal are among the most truly artistic and interesting of any that are now made in Europe. It is still a living art, with simple beauty both in material and shape, not a laboured revival of a dead style, or dull copy of the artistic productions of a far-off time when fitness linked with grace came naturally to the humblest workman.
SECTION XII.—FRENCH FROM THE 16TH TO THE 18TH CENTURY.
During the 16th century two very different but equally remarkable sorts of pottery, decorated with great elaboration, were made in France. One was that invented and manufactured by Bernard Palissy, which was a fine earthenware, usually modelled in relief, covered with a white tin enamel, and painted with many bright colours (see
FOOTNOTE (page 629)
1 See Riaño, Spanish Handbook, South Kensington Museum, 1879.
PALISSY). The other, Oiron pottery, popularly called "faïence Henri deux," is very different both in design and execution. This rare and curious ware, of which only about forty pieces are known, was made by a potter called François Cherpentier for his patron, a rich and artistic widow lady, named Hélène de Hangest, who established a workshop and kiln at her Château d’Oiron, in the province of Thouars, between the years 1524 and 1537. The manufacture was carried on by Hélène de Hangest’s son for some years after her death, but the pieces then produced are inferior in quality, and soon ceased to be made at all. This ware is not enamelled; it is simply a fine white pipeclay, to which a delicate cream-tint is given by a very slight tinge of yellow in the lead glaze. Its forms are very elaborate, sometimes extremely graceful, but occasionally too fanciful, and overloaded with ornament. It consists of plates, tazze, holy-water pots, ewers, salt-cellars, and other varieties of shape, generally forms more suited to metal than to clay, ornamented with very graceful interlaced strap-work and arabesques, such as were much used by the great Augsburg and Nuremberg workers in silver. The method in which many of the ornaments are executed is the chief peculiarity of the ware : they are first incised or stamped into the soft clay of the vessel, and then the sunk patterns are filled up with different clay pastes, tinted with dark brown, soft yellow, or buff. Many of the delicate leaf ornaments appear to have been formed with a metal stamp ; some are exactly the same as those used by contemporary bookbinders. The ornaments are not all done in this laborious manner; some are simply painted under the glaze, especially on the later productions of Oiron. Monograms and emblems occur frequently, the salamander of Francis I., the "H. D." for Henri deux, the royal interlaced crescents, or coats of arms (see No. 15). Fig. 61 shows a beautiful covered tazza in the Louvre, made during the reign of Francis I. There are eleven pieces of this ware in the Louvre; the Kensington Museum has five; but the greater number of known specimens are in the possession of members of the Rothschild family. It was at one time thought to be the production of a pottery under the patronage of Henry II, and hence the name by which it was formerly known; but its real origin was established from clear documentary evidence published in M. Fillon’s valuable monograph on the subject.
Throughout the period we are now considering enamelled pottery was produced at a very large number of French towns, often with the help of potters from Italy ; and the introduction of the tin enamel soon superseded the earlier sort of ware with a bright green or blue glaze, which at the end of the 15th and beginning of the 16th century was the chief and most artistic kind of pottery that was made in France. The change was not wholly a gain, as pieces of the older ware were moulded in relief with designs of great beauty—mostly Gothic in feeling—especially those made at Avignon, Savigny, and Beauvais; the reliefs on the older French ware are very delicate and sharp, and often of great decorative effect. Nevers was one of the chief manufactories of enamelled ware ; from about 1570 to the end of the 17th century it produced mostly poor copies of the later sort of Italian majolica. After that a strong Oriental influence set in, and a peculiar ware with a deep-blue enamel ground was made, very like that produced by the Venetian potters. Some of this, painted in white enamel only, with Persian designs, is effective and pleasant in colour (see fig. 62). Other pieces have flowers, treated in a more realistic way, painted in harsh yellow, green, and red, quite out of harmony with the rich blue ground. J. Bourdu, a potter working at Nevers from 1602 to 1620, signed his ware with mark No. 16 ; another, named H. Borne, used No. 17. During the 18th century Nevers chiefly produced pottery of Chinese forms, painted in blue with Chinese figures and flowers, and also a large quantity of pottery painted in many colours with coarse designs, somewhat after the Delft style. The 17th-century enamelled pottery of Rouen is the finest of the later French wares. It is mostly painted in rich red and blue only, with very minute and well-designed arabesques of geometrical form, adapted, not copied, with great skill and taste from Oriental de-signed (see fig. 63). Very large plates, wine-coolers, hanging cisterns, and ewers are made of it. One very rare variety has the blue and red pattern on a deep orange ground, but it is very inferior in artistic effect to that on the white ground. The finest specimens were made before 1700 ; after that time the painting became coarser. Copies of Chinese wares were also made at Rouen in the 18th century, all gaudy in colour, and mostly poor in execution. The Rouen Museum has the best collection of its native ware ; there are very fine specimens also in the South Kensington Museum. During the 18th century Moustiers produced some very decorative pottery, painted in various shades of blue, with delicate wreaths, masks, and arabesques, somewhat after the Rouen fashion. Other colours were also used in very minute patterns, but the simple blue and white is the best. Blue and white pottery with fairly good designs was also manufactured at St Clond, Sceaux, and Saint Amand, as well as many other French towns, during the first half of the 18th century. Most, however, of the French wares of this date are little better than imitations of porcelain, and their decoration feeble copies of Chinese or Japanese designs.
Literature.—For Oiron ware, see Delange, Recueil de . . . Faïence . . . dite de Henri II, 1861 ; Fillon, Les Faïences d’Oiron, 1863 (best work); Tainturier, Les Faïences dite de Henri II, 1860. For Rouen ware, see Delisle, Faïence de Rouen, 1865; Pottier, Histaire de la Faïence de Rouen, 1870; Ris-Paquot, Faïenees de Rouen, 1870. For other French potteries the reader may consult Clement de Ris, Faïences Françaises, Musée du Louvre, 1871; Mareschal, Faïeaces Anciennes et Modernes, 1867 ; Tainturier, Porcelaine et Faïence (Alsace et Lorraine), 1868; Houdoy, La Céramique Lilloise, 1869; Davillier, Faïence de Moustiers, 1863; De Segange, Let Faïence de Nevers, 1863; Pouy, Les Faïences d’ Origine Picarde, l874; Fillon, L’Art de Terre chez les Poitevins, 1864. The various volumes of the Gaz. des Beaux-Arts contain many valuable articles on the whole subject.
SECTION XIII.—MEDIAEVAL GERMAN, DUTCH, &c.
Though little is known of the early ceramic history of Germany, it is certain that the application of a tin enamel and enamel colours was known to the potters of that country even in the 13th century. Some plaques, with heads in relief, painted in various colours over a white enamel ground, still exist at Leipsic; they were made for wall-decoration, and are said to be of the year 1207. At Breslau there is a monument of enamelled clay to Henry IV. of Silesia, made about 1300. According to one story, the use of a white tin enamel was perfected at Schelestadt by an Alsacian potter who died in 1283. Other examples exist, though few in number, at various places in Germany, sufficient to show an early acquaintance with the method of producing enamelled ware, which, however, seems to have fallen into disuse, and during the 15th and 16th centuries to have been superseded by the fine sorts of stoneware, in the manufacture of which the German potters were so widely celebrated.
Grey stoneware, richly decorated with delicate stamped patterns in relief, and generally, though not always, covered with a lead glaze, was produced in great quantities in Germany, Flanders, and Holland from the end of the 14th century till quite modern times, and was very largely imported into England and France. Much of this stoneware (called by the French "grès de Flandres") is decorated with great delicacy and taste; its tint, grey, brown, or cream-white, is very soft and agreeable. The earlier specimens have reliefs of a Gothic character, always stamped with great crispness and sharpness, not the least blunted by the process of firing; many have elaborate coats of arms, or branches of simple foliage, which spread gracefully over the surface of the vessel; others have bands of figures, very minutely treated in slight relief. Another method of decoration was by incised patterns, impressed from relief-stamps; sometimes, as was the case with the Oiron ware, bookbinders’ dies were used for forming such patterns in the soft clay. Some of the cream-white ware is left unglazed, but most kinds have a vitreous lead glaze, either colourless or mixed with oxide of cobalt or mariganese. These two colours, indigo-blue and purple-brown, are often used to pick out the relief-patterns, thus making the design more effective. Owing to the use of old stamps and traditional designs much of this pottery has patterns considerably older than the ware itself, the date being frequently introduced among ornaments which look very much earlier than they really are. Fig. 64 shows a common form of jug, called a "greybeard" from the grotesque head modelled on the neck. The body of the jug is covered with very graceful scroll-work of oak branches in low relief.
Another curious variety of German pottery, consisting chiefly of tankards and jugs, made to imitate enamelled metal-work, was manufactured mostly at Kreussen in Bavaria. The body is of hard red clay, covered with a dark-brown enamel, the designs in slight relief being taken from the Augsburg or Briot style of metal-work,—strap-work, wreaths, grotesques, or human figures. A favourite design has reliefs of the twelve Apostles, little more than an inch high, under flat architectural canopies; a strong Gothic feeling in the treatment of such figures occurs on tankards made as late as the end of the 17th century. The coloured decoration of this ware is very brilliant; the minute figures or ornaments are picked out in bright enamel colours—red, green, blue, and yellow –altogether producing a very striking but thoroughly unceramic effect. A quite plain stoneware, with surface slightly mottled with grey and brown, appears to have been one of the most esteemed varieties during the 16th century, judging from the beauty of the silver rims and lids with which wine-jugs of this kind were usually mounted. The mottling was produced by the brownish glaze running in the kiln into a granular surface, which formed a pleasant texture, something like that on an ostrich’s egg. The best qualities were made at Cologne, and largely imported into England under the name of "Cologne" stoneware. A rude kind of sgraffiato ware was also made in Germany and Holland during the l7th and 18th centuries. Coarse red-clay vessels were covered with a slip of white pipeclay, and rude figures, often of saints or kings, were scratched through the white down to the red body. The whole was then glazed with a yellowish lead glaze. Böttger, the first maker of Meissen porcelain, manufactured curious varieties of pottery at the beginning of the 18th century,—especially Potter’s a ware like red jasper, which was so hard that it was cut and polished by the lapidary’s wheel. It is usually marked with No. 18.
Good collections of German pottery are in the museums of Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Löwenberg, Minden, and private collections at Nuremberg; the Kensington Museum has also a number of fine specimens.
Holland.—Holland, especially the town of Delft,1 produced very large quantities of pottery covered with a fine white enamel. The early specimens date from the end of the 16th century. Much of this ware is very soft and pleasant in tone, and very decorative in effect, especially that in blue and white only. Designs of great variety occur, some copied from Persian or Chinese originals, others with coats of arms surrounded by graceful borders, formed of medallions and wreaths. A clever arrangement of peacocks’ feathers is a common and very effective motive, used especially for plates. Other sorts of very inferior artistic merit have paintings of flowers or human figures, coarsely executed in rather harsh colours—yellow, green, and red—mingled with the more harmonious cobalt blues and manganese purple. Many pieces of Delft ware are marked with maker’s initials, as No. 19 or No. 20, probably two members of the Kulick family, of about the middle of the l7th century.
But little pottery of any real artistic value was produced in any Western country during the 18th century, with the exception of the commoner and cheaper sorts of wares, with little or no ornament, which were still made after the old traditions. The fact is that the increasing introduction of Chinese and Japanese wares and the widely-spread manufacture of porcelain in the West gave the death-blow to the production of pottery designed and decorated after simple and natural methods. The enamelled pottery of the 18th century was mostly little better than a bad imitation of porcelain, a material which has a beauty quite its own, and requires forms and methods of decoration very different from those that are suited even to the most finely-enamelled earthenware.
Literature.—See Menard van Hoorebeke, Recueil des Antiquités, 1867; Weckherlin, Vases en Grès des XVIe et XVIIe Sièles, 1860; Jouveaux, Histoire de . . . Böttger, 1874.
Scandinavian.
The pottery of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden for the most part resembles that of Germany. Sweden, especially during the 18th century, was very active in the production of enamelled pottery, but little of it possesses any originality either in form or design. Perhaps the best variety is a ware made at Stockholm, covered with bluish white enamel, on which simple patterns are painted in white. The potteries of Marieberg knd Rörstrand2 also turned out large quantities, painted mostly with very weak designs; some are imitations of Oriental wares, while other kinds are decorated in a realistic French style.
SECTION XIV.—ENGLISH FROM THE 16TH CENTURY.
Little except the commonest sort of domestic pottery was made in England during the 16th century. The grey mottled stoneware described above, which was largely used for sack-jugs and tankards, appears to have been wholly a foreign import, mostly from Cologne. A common item in 16th-century inventories is—"a stone jugge or pott, garnished with silver and double gylted." The silver-mounted lids were often added by English silver-workers, and are frequently very elaborately embossed and chased. It was not till quite the end of the century that certain Dutch potters started in London the making of stoneware. This English-made ware is hardly to be distinguished from that of Cologne or Holland, as it was designed and manufactured in the foreign way. Large globular jugs, stamped in relief with a grotesque bearded face and other ornaments, were one of the favourite forms. Such were called "greybeards" or "bellarmines," from the unpopular cardinal of that name, of whom the bearded face was supposed to be a caricature (see fig. 64 above). Great numbers were made in the Low Countries and copied by the Dutch potters in London. In 1688 two German potters named Elers settled in Staffordshire, and there produced hard stoneware of very fine quality. Their process, however, soon became known to other potters.
The common wares of this time were mainly produced in the Staffordshire potteries; some were decorated in a very rude but effective way by dropping fluid white slip through a quill on to the surface of vessels made of red
FOOTNOTES (page 631)
(1) See Havard, Faïence de Delft, 1878.
(2) See Céramiques Suédoises du XVIIIe Siècle, 1872.
clay. The whole was then covered with a coarse lead glaze, made from powdered lead ore (sulphide of lead), sprinkled through a sieve on to the soft clay. The process of firing produced a vitreous glaze, composed of silicate of lead, the silica being taken up from the clay body. Thomas and Ralph Toft made a number of large plates, drinking mugs or "tygs," and candlesticks, decorated in this way with rather elaborate designs (see fig. 65). The potter’s name and the date frequently occur among the slip ornaments, which are sometimes in red and brown on a white ground, as well as white on red. About the year 1680 a new sort of glaze was invented, very useful for the common kindsof hard stone ware, and extremely durable, namely, the "salt glaze," applied by throwing common salt (chloride of sodium) into the hot kiln when the process of firing was nearly complete. The salt was volatilized and decomposed; the soda combined with the free silica in the clay, and a coating of hard silicate of soda was formed. A very high temperature is required for this process, which is chiefly used for drain-pipes and vessels to hold corrosive acids, the salt glaze being almost indestructible.
Towards the end of the 17th century a gentleman named John Dwight spent many years in experiments to improve the manufacture of pottery, and also to discover the secret of true transparent porcelain. He appears to have been an artist of great ability, and not only made domestic pottery of Cologne ware but also modelled figures and large busts in pale-grey glazed stoneware; the British Museum possesses a fine portrait bust of Prince Rupert by him, modelled with great truth and spirit, almost recalling the touch of the old Florentine sculptors in terra-cotta. In 1671 John Dwight took out a patent for his special methods of pottery and porcelain work, and set up kilns at Fulham. Many of his receipts for porcelain exist, and have been published in Jewitt’s valuable work on The Ceramic Art of Great Britain (1877), but no specimens of this early English porcelain are now known.
The Lambeth potteries were established at a very early period, but it was not till the 17th century that they produced ware superior to the common biscuit or lead-glazed varieties. Some pieces of about 1660 are marked with No. 21 mark. Certain Dutch potters settled at Lambeth early in the century, and started the manufacture of a finer sort of pottery, covered with a tin enamel. Most of this is in the style of the Delft wares, painted either in cobalt blues alone or with the coarse green, yellow, and manganese purple used in the more gaudy kind of Delft. The Lambeth potters also imitated Palissy ware, with high reliefs of human figures or plants and reptiles,—very poor copies of Palissy’s originals, the modelling being extremely blunt. The enamel ground has a pink tinge, and the reliefs are picked out in various colours. Some specimens of this Lambeth ware are dated on the back in blue with various years during the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II. Another variety has coarse imitations of late Italian majolica, while other pieces have English designs,—coarse portraits of Charles II. and his queen, with arabesque borders, all very rudely executed.
The beginning of the 18th century in England saw a great increase of activity in the production of many kinds of pottery. Numbers of patents were taken out and new kilns set up at a great many different places. Though many improvements were made in the preparation and combination of different clays and considerable advances in technical skill were gained, yet little pottery of any artistic value was made.
Wedgwood Ware.—The Wedgwoods were an old Staffordshire family, and one member at least was a potter in the 17th century. This was John Wedgwood (1654-1705), the great-uncle of Josiah, who in the next century founded the great pottery which he called "Etruria." Only one piece signed by John Wedgwood is known to exist; it is in the interesting historical collection of ceramic wares in the Jermyn Street Museum of Geology, London. It is a "puzzle jug" with three spouts and a hollow handle, made of coarse brown clay, covered with the usual green lead glaze. The potter’s name and the date 1691 are incised round the jug.1
In the middle of the 18th century, when Josiah Wedgwood was a young man, a great impulse had been given to the study and appreciation of classical art, partly through the discovery of the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and also on account of the growing enthusiasm for the beautiful Greek painted vases, which were then being sought for with great avidity in the tombs of Etruria and Magna Graecia. Josiah Wedgwood devoted his life and great talents to an attempt to reproduce the severe beauties of the Greek and Roman pottery. Unfortunately in this not unpraise worthy aim he neglected the special requirements of fictile work. His productions, delicate and beautiful as they often are, have the characteristics of anything rather than pottery. With great labour and expense he turned out from his workshops imitations, necessarily unsuccessful, of ancient engraved gems and camei, of jasper, basalt, or mottled marbles, of gem-like cut glass, such as the Portland vase, and dull copies, feeble in drawing and hard in texture, of beautiful painted Greek vases. Of natural methods of decoration suitable to pottery, or of the life and freedom of the plastic clay rising into graceful forms under the touch of the thrower’s hand aided by the rhythmical movement of the wheel, he knew nothing. Nearly all his pottery is dully scholastic and archaeological in style, and therefore must, on the whole, be regarded as a failure, though often a very clever and even beautiful failure.
Wedgwood’s most characteristic ware, in the production of which he was aided by Flaxman and other able artists, consists of plaques and vessels, Vases, cups, plates, and other forms moulded in clay, delicately tinted blue, brown, and various colours, on which minute cameo reliefs in white paste were applied while they were soft, and were then fixed by firing. Many of them have very beautiful figures, some copied from Greek and Roman gems or vases, others being specially designed for him; but all are classical in style. Some of his pieces are quite astonishing for their microscopic delicacy of detail; others have wreaths, foliage, and minute diaper ornaments applied in the same way. Wedgwood also produced very fine and porcelain-like varieties of white enamelled pottery, some even decorated with a metallic lustre, purple in colour, and mottled to. imitate marble; some are cleverly modelled to imitate large sea-shells. Indeed his technical methods were varied with the utmost ingenuity, and would need a treatise to themselves if even a rough outline were given of all the varieties.
FOOTNOTE (page 632)
1 For a full account of the Wedgwood family and their ware, see Jewitt, Life of Josiah Wedgwood, 1865 ; and Meteyard, Wedgwood and his Works, 1873.
Towards the end of the 18th century many imitations were made of the Wedgwood cameo ware by different English manufacturers, and even at Sèvres it was copied in porcelain, though with original French designs. None, however, are equal to Wedgwood’s work, either in beauty of design or delicacy of execution.
Until quite recently little or no pottery of any artistic merit has been produced in England during the present century, partly owing to the absurd notion that pottery is a sort of inferior porcelain, and should be made to resemble it as much as possible, and also very largely on account of the invention in the 18th century of a process (described below) for printing patterns under the glaze, so as to avoid the labour of painting them by hand. Other modern so-called improvements of manufacture have done much to destroy all true art in English pottery ; such are the too finely ground and artificial mixtures of different materials, the great use of the mould in preference to the potter’s wheel, and, most fatal of all, the fact that, when the pottery is thrown on the wheel, it is afterwards handed over to a workman who turns it on a lathe and rubs it down with glass-paper, as if it were a block of wood, thus removing all the surface put on the vessel by the touch of the thrower’s hand. Indeed, the great manufactory of Sèvres has now so completely lost all sense of the natural and reasonable treatment of plastic clay that the larger vases are cast whole by being poured in a fluid state into a mould, a method reasonable enough for iron or bronze but ludicrously inappropriate to plastic clay. Some few manufacturers have, however, of late tried to produce pottery shaped and decorated in a more natural way. The Lambeth pottery produces a good deal of excellent work, especially ware covered (after the Japanese fashion) with one brilliant enamel colour. Mr William De Morgan of Chelsea and Merton has perhaps made the greatest advances of all, having rediscovered the way to make and use the beautiful thickly-glazed blues and greens of the old Persian ware, and also the fine silver and copper lustres of Gubbio and Spain. He uses these splendid colours in designs conceived and drawn with the old spirit, but of sufficient originality to make them a real stage in the development of ceramic art, not a mere archaeological revival of styles and methods which have long ceased to have a significance and life of their own.
Sad though the confession is, it must be admitted that, to find a class of pottery designed with lines of natural beauty and produced in accordance with the simple requirements of plastic clay, it is, for the most part, necessary to go, not to the centres of our boasted 19th-century civilization with its countless devices for turning out work cheaply and rapidly, but rather to the humble workshops of more primitive races, among whom the commercial spirit has not yet destroyed all inborn feeling for true art and beauty.
Literature.—For English pottery, see Jewitt, Ceramic Art of Great Britain, 1877; Solon, Old English Potter, 1883; Owen, Ceramic Art in Bristol, 1873; Wallis and Bemrose, Pottery of Derbyshire, 1870; Mayer, Art of Pottery in Liverpool, 1855; Binns, Potting in Worcester from 1751 to 1851,1865; Church, Catalogue of English Pottery, 1870; some of these works deal more with porcelain than pottery.
SECTION XV.—ANCIENT MEXICAN, PERUVIAN, &c.
The pottery of ancient Mexico and Peru, certainly older than the Spanish conquests in America, and possibly dating from a much more remote age, has many points of interest. Large quantities in good preservation have been discovered in the tombs of chiefs and other important persons of those once powerful and (in a somewhat barbaric way) artistic races. Much of their pottery is grotesque and even hideous in shape, modelled in the forms of semi-human monsters; it is often made of a hard black clay, well burned, something like the early black wares of Etruria. Another kind is graceful and natural in shape, formed with great taste and skill on the potter’s wheel. Many of the forms seem to have been suggested by vessels made of gourds. The decoration is very curious; many of the simple painted patterns with geometrical designs and hatched lines call to mind the earliest type of painted decoration on the archaic pot-tery of Mycenae, and the Greek islands. The clay is fine in texture and has a slight surface-gloss, apparently the result of mechanical polishing. Fig. 66 shows a typical form.1 The British Museum has a good collection of this ware. The natives of Arizona and other uncivilized races of America even now make simple pottery decorated with taste and true decorative feeling.
SECTION XVI.—POTTERY AND PORCELAIN OF CHINA AND JAPAN.
In the methods of treatment employed in China and Japan the usual distinctions between pottery (earthenware) and porcelain (kaolinic ware) are not always observed. In many cases these two different materials are treated in exactly the same way and decorated after the same fashion. It will therefore be convenient to describe them both together.
History of Chinese Porcelain.—The chronological arrangement of Chinese wares is a matter of great difficulty. Many of the professedly historical records of the Chinese themselves are quite untrustworthy; as with all other arts, they have claimed for the manufacture of porcelain an antiquity far beyond the actual facts of the case. This exaggerated estimate of the antiquity of Chinese porcelain was for a long time supported by the supposed discovery in Egypt of certain small bottles made of real porcelain, and inscribed with Chinese characters, which were said to have been found in tombs at Thebes dating as early as 1800 B.C. The fact, however, that they are inscribed with quotations from Chinese poets of the 8th century A.D., and have characters of a comparatively modern form, shows that the whole story of their discovery is a fraud. The only native work which gives trustworthy information on the development of Chinese porcelain is a History of the Manufactory of King-te-chin, compiled from earlier records in 1815 by a native official, which was translated into French by M. Julien, under the title Histoire de la Fabrication de la Porcelaine Chinoise (Paris, 1856). According to this work, the manufacture of pottery is said to have commenced in 2697 B.C., and that of porcelain during the Han dynasty, 206 B.C. to 25 A.D. The Tsin dynasty (265-419 A.D.) was remarkable for its blue porcelain, and the Suy dynasty (581-618 A.D.) for its fine green ware. One of the most celebrated kinds of porcelain was that made about 954 A.D., deep sky-blue in colour, very glossy in texture, extremely thin, and sounding musically when struck. Even small fragments of it are treasured up by the Chinese, and set like jewels. Most dynasties seem to have been famed for a special variety of porcelain. The earlier sorts appear not to have been decorated with painting, but were all of one rich colour. Decorative painting did not apparently come into general use before the Yuen dynasty of Mongols (1260-1.368), and was brought to great perfection under the Mings (1368-1644). The porcelain of the last-named dynasty is classified in periods, four of which (from 1426 to 1567) were greatly esteemed. Probably few specimens of Chinese porcelain known in Europe are earlier in date than the time of Kang-he, the second emperor of the Tsing dynasty (1661-1722). During all periods Chinese potters were constantly in the habit of copying earlier styles and of forging their marks, so that very little reliance can be placed on internal evidence. Indeed, the forgeries often deceive the Chinese collectors of old porcelain.
Manufacture of Porcelain.—It is made from two sub-stances, "pe-tun-tse" and "kao-lin"; the latter is a white pasty substance derived from the decomposition of felspathic rocks such as granite. It is a hydrated silicate of alumina (Al2O3.2SiO2+2H2O), and derives its name from a hill near King-tih-chin, where it was first found (see KAOLIN). The precise nature of pe-tun-tse is not
FOOTNOTE (page 633)
1 See Rivero and Von Tschudi, Antiguedades Peruanas, 1851.
exactly known, but it appears to resemble kaolin, with the addition of a considerable proportion of free silica. The result of their mixture is shown in the following analysis by M. Laurent of the body of white Chinese porcelain—silica 70·5 per cent., alumina 20·7, potash 6, lime 0·5, protoxide of iron 0·8 per cent., magnesia a trace. The white pastes of which the porcelain is made are very carefully washed, finely ground, and mixed in due pro-portion. The paste is "thrown" on the potter’s wheel in the usual way and set to dry; its coloured decoration is then applied, and over that the transparent glaze is laid. This is a very hard and beautiful substance, which requires great heat to fuse it ; it is made of almost pure felspar with an alkaline flux. It is finely ground with water, and either blown with a pipe oil to the vessel or the vessel is dipped into it. The porcelain is next packed in clay boxes or "saggers," piled one above another in the kiln, in order to protect it from discoloration from the smoke. After the kiln has been heated for a considerable time to a very high temperature, the fire is withdrawn; and the porcelain is allowed to cool slowly in the clay saggers before the kiln is opened and its contents removed. Additional decoration is frequently added over the glaze, generally in enaniel colours, applied thickly so as to stand out in perceptible relief ; gilding is also added over the glaze. The porcelain is afterwards fired a second time in a more open kiln, and at a lower temperature.
The methods of decoration on Chinese porcelain are ex-tremely varied, and are applied with the most skilful hand and wonderful fertility of design; but they are always dainty and feebly pretty rather than artistic, except when there is a Persian element present. The Chinaman is a born maker of graceful toys, full of ingenuity and perfect deftness of touch, but hardly worthy to be classed as a producer of serious works of art. The general forms of the porcelain are mostly feeble, and often of extreme ugliness, while the skill in drawing is mostly confined to representations of flowers, some of which, especially the chrysanthemum and the paeony, are painted with great truth and enjoyment. With the beauties of the human form the Chinaman has no acquaintance or sympathy, and he never possessed the wonderful skill of the Japanese in the delineation of animals and birds.
Only a few chief examples among the many methods of decorative treatment can be mentioned here. A useful classification has been adopted by Mr A. W. Franks in his valuable catalogue of his own collection of porcelain, for-merly exhibited at Bethnal Green, and now (1885) in the British Museum.
1. Plain white, of a delicate ivory colour and a rich satin-like glaze. Some of it is crackled, not accidentally, but by a careful process, one of the methods of which is this. Powdered steatite is mixed with the materials of the felspathic glaze, and the porce-lain vessel or statuette, after the glaze is applied, but before firing, is set in the rays of a hot sun, which causes it to be covered with a network of fine cracks, going through the skin of glaze down to tbe porcelain body. Red pigment or black Chinese ink is then rubbed into the minute cracks, which are thus made more con-spicuous, and prevented from quite closing up in the heat of the kiln. Many speci-mens have two sets of crackle, first the coloured cracks produced before firing, and secondly an intermediate uncoloured set, produced in the glaze by the action of the kiln (see fig. 67). Most of this white ware is decorated with delicate surface-reliefs of flowers or figures very sharply moulded. Old specimens of it are now highly valued in China. It was frequently copied in the early European porcelain manufactories, such as Saint Cloud, Meissen, and Chelsea.
2. Porcelain covered with one Enamels Colour.—Enamels of many varieties of tint and great brilliance were used : the finest are blue, from copper or cobalt; deep red, another oxide of copper; yellow, antimoniate of lead ; and black, oxides of iron and manganese. One of the most beautiful is that sea-green tint called "céladon," which was early exported into England, and highly valued in mediaeval times from its supposed property of changing colour at the contact of poison. New College, Oxford, possesses a bowl of this ware, mounted in silver richly worked, of about 1500 A.D., and presented to the college by Archbishop Warham early in the 16th century. A specimen of this céladon ware is probably referred to among the list of new-year’s gifts to Queen Elizabeth as "a cup of grene pursselyne" given by Robert Cecil. The fine old yellow porcelain was only made for the use of the emperor of China, and it is consequently rare ; it is very thin and transparent, almost like a vitreous enamel. Some of the Chinese enamelled wares are made of pottery, not of porce-lain ; earthenware, in many eases, was equally good for the purpose, as the body of the vessel was hidden by the coloured enamel.
3. Porcelain decorated with several Enamels or Glazes of different Colours.—This ware is frequently moulded in relief, with dragons, flowers, or varions ani-mals, picked out in different colours, often very harsh and gaudy in effect. Fig. 68 shows a pilgrim-bottle painted in enamel colours. The beauty both of form and of decoration for which this piece is very re-markable is mainly due to Persian influence.
4. Porcelain painted in White Enamel over a Ground of Coloured Enamel.—This is a very decorative sort of ware ; the designs, such as flowers, birds, and insects, are applied thickly in the white pigment, and are sometimes carefully modelled in low relief. The method was largely imitated by the Persians (see p. 620 above).
5. Porcelain painted only in Blue.—This is really the most artistic and highly decorative of all the varieties of Chinese painted wares. Some of the large plates and jars have very good designs, treated in a not too realistic manner. Much of the finest porcelain of this class both in form and decoration shows a strong Persian influence, the result of the intercourse between China and Persia and the visit of Chinese potters to Ispalian mentioned above in the account of Persian pottery. Nanking porcelain, painted with the so-called "hawthorn pattern," really a kind of Prunus which produces its blossoms before its leaves, was largely imported into England during the last century, and now fetches very exorbitant prices. Unluckily during the 18th century a great deal of the fine blue and white china brought into England was painted over the glaze with harsh gaudy colours in English and French porcelain manufactories, to please the degraded taste of the time, and was thus completely spoiled. Other combinations of Chinese and European work occur. Sets of porcelain were painted in China with French or English designs to suit the European market ; or plain white porcelain was sent from China to be decorated at Chelsea or Bow. Very ludicrous results were produced in some cases by this mixture of style ; engravings were sent from Europe to be copied on porcelain by the Chinese potters, who have in many cases laboriously painted an exact facsimile of the copper-plate lines with all their hatchings and scratchy look. Some of these were done for Jesuit missionaries in China, and Chinese plates with Catholic sacred subjects and figures of saints exist in considerable quantities. Statuettes of the Madonna were also made in China for the missionaries, carefully modelled in white porcelain after European originals ; some appear to be copies from 14th-century French ivory figures, and (even in the hands of the Chinese potter) have preserved a strong resem-blance to their mediaeval original. The type of the Holy Mother thus introduced appears to have been adopted by the Chinese Buddhists as a fitting representation of their goddess Kwan-lin, many figures of whom were made with but little alteration from the statuettes of the Catholic Madonna.1
6. Porcelain painted in many Colours under the Glaze.—This very large class includes all varieties of form and decoration. The colours are often harsh and inharmonious, and the more elaborate figure-subjects are nearly always grotesque and ugly. Additional
FOOTNOTE (page 634)
1 See Watkins Old, Indo-European Porcelain (Hereford, 1882).
richness of effect is often given by the over-glaze colours, added by a second firing. Many other varieties might be mentioned, but the student must be referred for further information to the list of works on this subject given below.
Both pottery and porcelain have been used on a large scale for architectural purposes in China. The so-called "porcelain tower" of Nanking was the most prominent example. It was a very elaborate structure (see NANKING), mostly constructed of pottery covered with enamels of different colours. The usual name is misleading, as only the white portions were of real porcelain. The Jermyn Street and British Museums have specimens of its bricks and elaborate architectural features.
Japanese Pottery and Porcelain.—In the main the technical methods used in Japan and the styles of painted ornament were introduced from China, and also to a less extent from the adjacent peninsula of Corea. Glazed pottery was first made at Seto about 1230 A.D. by a potter who had visited China. Porcelain manufacture was introduced in a similar way into the province of Hizen about 1513. On the whole the Japanese are more remarkable for their skill and almost endless methods in the production of pottery than of porcelain. No people ever approached them for marvellous fertility of invention and skill in the manipulation of all sorts of clay, pastes, enamels, and pigments. One of the most remarkable characteristics of Japanese pottery is its wonderful success in the imitation of all kinds of materials and texture of surface, one great object apparently being to make it re-semble anything rather than what it really is. Wood, with its varying colours and delicate grain, ivory, bronze, lac, marble, basket-work, fruits, and countless other substances are imitated in Japanese pottery with the most perfectly de-ceptive effects. The utmost amount of labour and patience is often spent with this one object, any notions of real artistic beauty being apparently never even considered.
A great deal of Japanese ceramic ware is simply copied from Chinese porcelain, and often has forged Chinese marks. It is very difficult to find out what notions the Japanese themselves really have as to what is admirable in pottery. A purely archaeological interest in old sorts of ware appears to affect them strongly, and they often put the highest value on what appears a very ordinary and rudely-made kind of pottery. As Air A. W. Franks has pointed out in his introduction to a native report on Japanese pottery, published by the Science and Art Depart-ment, 1880, the high value which they put on rude specimens of glazed pottery is partly kept up by the existence of certain curious old tea-drinking ceremonies, solemnly performed as if they were religious rites. Everything used and every detail of the performance were strictly prescribed by rule. The bowl or cup out of which the tea was drunk by the guests was to be an archaeological curiosity remark-able for its age, not for any intrinsic merit. Some of these cups which have been brought to Europe are of coarse clay, ill-formed, thick, highly glazed, and quite without ornament. One in the Sévres Museum, said to be Seto ware of the 14th century, is made of mottled yellowish brown clay, with a thick vitreous glaze. It looks quite worthless, but has evidently been highly valued by its Japanese owner , for it has a beautifully made ivory lid, and is protected by three cases,—first, fine white silk with gold cord; second, a box of polished bamboo; and, outside of all, a case of figured linen lined with silk. Others of these precious tea--bowls are red, purple, black, or grey, all very thick and coarse, but highly glazed, and carefully fitted into silk cases.
Some of the Japanese methods for the decoration of pottery are simple and effective, especially a ware made of grey clay with incised patterns—birds, flowers, and the like—filled in with white paste, and the whole glazed,- similar in method to the 16th-century Oiron ware.
The most magnificent sort of pottery is the Satsuma ware, originally introduced from Corea. It was at first manufactured in a private factory belonging to the prince of Satsuma, but afterwards produced for public sale. The most highly-decorated kinds with many colours were not made till the end of the 18th century. In minute richness it is probably the most elaborate ware ever produced. The body is a fine ivory-white clay, covered with a minutely crackled glaze. Over this, miniature-like paintings of human figures or flowers are executed in brilliant enamel colours, some of which stand out like jewelled reliefs. It is further decorated with delicately moulded patterns in gold, and, though very weak in real decorative effect, is a marvel of rich workmanship. Most of the so-called Satsuma now sold is a poor imitation of the ware, and is made in great quantities at Awata and Ôta.
It should be observed that nearly all the very elaborate and magnificent methods of ceramic decoration now so much employed by the Japanese are of quite modern origin ; before the present century the simpler methods of China were almost exclusively followed in Japan. During the last century great quantities of porcelain, chiefly deco-rated in gold, green, and a rich red, were made expressly for export, and largely brought into Europe, where they were frequently copied, especially in the porcelain works of Dresden and the early china manufactories of England.
The Japanese have little or no sense of the best kind of decorative art ; their paintings of flowers or birds, beautiful as they are, are mostly, as it were, flung across the vessel they are meant to ornament without any regard to its shape or the space to be occupied. Like the Chinese, they have no feeling for the beauty of the human form, or even of some of the nobler animals, such as the horse. The figures most frequently represented on their ceramic wares—the seven gods of good fortune—are all grotesquely hideous; and downright ugliness of the most repulsive sort is often selected and treated with wonderful ingenuity. Many of the paintings have a symbolical meaning; emblems of longevity (considered by the Japanese the chief of all blessings) are perhaps the favourite, such as the sacred tortoise, the crane, or the combination of three trees—the fir, the plum, and the bamboo—all of which have this special meaning.
Within the present century a new and elaborate method of decorating porcelain has been practised in Japan, the chief object of which seems to be to make a porcelain vessel look like a metal one. Brass cloisonné enamel is applied to the outer surface of porcelain vases or bowls ; the strips of brass set on edge which form the outline of the design, instead of being soldered to a metal plate, are fixed in some almost incomprehensible fashion to the surface of the porce-lain, and then the compartments are filled in with coloured enamels and fired in the usual way,—a marvel of technical skill and wasted ingenuity.
Collections of Chinese and Japanese Porcelain.—The Dresden collection is the most important historically, having been formed chiefly between 1694 and 1705. The British Museum is rich through the recent munificence of Mr A. W. Franks, who has presented to it the whole of his fine collection. The South Kensington Museum and the museums at Leyden, The Hague, and Sévres are rich in these wares, as are also those at Vienna, Berlin, and St Petersburg.
Literature.—For Chinese and Japanese porcelain, see Jacquemart and Le Blant, Histoire de la Porcelaine, 1861-62 ; Jacquemart, Histoire de la Céramique, 1873 ; Audsley and Bowes, Keramic Art of Japan, 1875-80; Du Sartel, La Porce-laine de Chini, 1881 ; Graesse, Catalog der k. Porzellan-und Gefäss-Sammlung zu Dresden, 1873; Stanilas Julien, Histoire de la Porcelaine de Chine, 1856; Franks, Cat. of Coll. of Oriental Porcelain, 1878, and "Japanese Pottery," in South Kensington Museum Handbook, 1880.
SECTION XVII.—PORCELAIN IN EUROPE.
Early Development.
In various places in Europe, especially in Italy and France, attempts to produce translucent porcelain like that produced by the Chinese were almost continually being made from the end of the 15th century down to the beginning of the 18th. The word "porcelain" is usually derived from the Italian "porcellana," a white shell, to the smooth polished surface of which the Chinese wares bear some resemblance. Hence it should be observed that in mediaeval inventories "a cup of porcelain" often means one made of shell or mother-of-pearl. In Italy the finer sorts of majolica were often called "porcellana," and a plate decorated "alla porcellana" meant one with a special style of painting, and did not refer to its material. During mediaeval times, when real Eastern porcelain is meant, some other word expressing where it came from was frequently added, e.g., in French 15th-century inventories "porcelaine de Sinant" is sometimes mentioned. From the 13th to the 15th century Chinese porcelain was very sparingly brought into Europe, and generally occurs among royal possessions or gifts as an object of great value. The name "china," from the country where porcelain was made, was given to it not later than the 16th century, and perhaps earlier, having been used by the Arabs long before: "china dishes" are mentioned by Shakespeare (Measure for Mea-sure, act ii., scene i.) as being things of value.
The main reason of the very slight success gained for so many years in the attempts to make porcelain in Europe was the fact that it was regarded as a highly arti-ficial substance, something between pottery and glass; the many beds of kaolinic clays which exist in Europe were never thought of as being the true material of which to make it, or, if used at all, were only employed partially and in an accidental way. The earliest attempts at the production of translucent porcelain which had any practical success took place at Venice about 1470.1 An alchemist named Antuonio succeeded in making and firing in a kiln at San Simone, near Venice, "porcelane trasparenti e vaghissime," described, in a document dated 1470, as being as beautiful in glaze and colour as "the porcelain from barbarous countries." Difficulties, however, seem to have arisen, and the manufacture was not proceeded with till 1504, when a few sample specimens were made in Venice, and others again in a spasmodic way in 1518 and 1519. No specimens of the early Venetian porcelain are now known, nor any pieces of the porcelain made at Ferrara for Duke Alphonso II. about 1565-67 by Giulio da Urbino, and mentioned with high praise by Vasari.2 The composition of this earliest European porcelain is not known, but it probably was partly made of the white clay of Vicenza—a true kaolinic paste—-often used by the majolica potters to give whiteness and fine grain to their clay.
Medici Porcelain.—The earliest manufactory of porcelain of which known specimens exist is that started in Florence, for Francesco I. de’ Medici, about the years 1575-80 by Bernardo Buontalenti (see Vasari). Francesco de’ Medici took the greatest interest in the manufacture, and, as is recorded by Galluzzi (Istoria di Toscana, 1781), moulded some of the vessels with his own hands, as compliment-ary presents to other princes. According to Galluzzi, Buontalenti did little more than improve on the method invented a few years earlier by the majolica potters Camillo da Urbino and Orazio Fontana, assisted by a Greek who had learned the secret of true porcelain in China. The discovery of the existing specimens of Medici porcelain is due to Alessandro Foresi, who observed its peculiar texture and, in some cases, slight transparency, and found pieces marked at the back in a way that quite confirmed his theory.3 These marks are the Medici arms, with its "palle" or balls, inscribed with "F. M. M. E. D. II." for "Franciscus Medici Magnus Etruriae Dux
FOOTNOTES (page 636)
(1) See Davillier, Les Origines de la Porcelaine en Europe, 1882.
(2) Lives of Artists, last section.
(3) See Foresi, Sulle Porcellane Medicee, 1869.
II." Some pieces have a rude representation of the great dome of the Florentine cathedral, and the letter "F." for "Florentia" (see No. 22). Scarcely forty specimens of the ware are known, which are mostly in the possession of the Rothschilds and Mr Drury Fortnum, in the royal collection at Lisbon, and the museums of South Kensington and Sèvres. They are all of a slightly creamy white, with a beautiful pearly texture, due to the rich glaze and the slight transparency of their paste; the glaze varies in thickness, and in some instances is slightly crackled. Nearly all are simply decorated cobalt blue, under the glaze ; the designs are of various styles, some purely Italian, others Persian or Chinese in character; a few have one flower painted in the middle of the space in a graceful and almost realistic way. A plate at Lisbon has a figure of St John with his eagle. Their forms are pilgrim-flasks, plates, ewers, and vases of different shapes, some very graceful and original.
The earliest dated example is among the five specimens in the Sèvres Museum; it is a square bottle with the arms of Spain painted in blue and a few touches of man-ganese purple; the date 1581 is introduced among the ornaments at a corner of the bottle; it was probably a gift from Francesco I. to the king of Spain. The com-position of this porcelain has recently been discovered from a contemporary MS. in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence. The paste consisted of 24 parts of white sand, 16 of a crystalline frit (powdered rock-crystal 10, and soda 8), and Faenza white earth 12 parts. To 12 parts of this mixture 3 of the kaolinic clay of Vicenza were to be added. Probably to secure greater whiteness, the vessels were covered, under the glaze, with a white enamel ; but this addition appears needless. They were then glazed with an ordinary silicious lead glaze. Though the final result has the beauty and some of the special qualities of the Chinese natural porcelain, yet it will be observed that this end was gained in a very difficult and elaborate manner, which must have been very costly. This, no doubt, is the reason why so few pieces were made, and why its manufacture ceased altogether with the death of Francesco de’ Medici, in 1587.
After the Medici ware ceased to be made there is a blank of nearly a century in the history of European porcelain. In 1664 a patent was granted to Claude Reverend, a citizen of Paris, which gave him the privilege of making "imitation porcelain, as fine as that from the East Indies." No known specimens can be attributed with certainty to his workshop, though some pieces which bear mark No. 23 may have come from his hands. In 1673 another patent was conceded to Louis Poterat, who certainly did produce artificial porcelain at Rouen. Some small pieces, salt-cellars and mustard-pots, in the museums of Rouen and Sèvres, are attributed to him, and are therefore the earliest undoubted examples of French porcelain. They are of a pearly white colour, with rich glaze, not unlike the Medici porcelain in softness of texture. The ornaments, simple and delicate arabesques, are painted under the glaze in cobalt blue only. Some pieces are signed with No. 24.
Saint Cloud was the next place in France where porcelain was produced, the manufactory being carried on by the Chicannean family, to whom a privilege was granted in 1695. The patent mentions that they had made porcelain since 1693. This early Saint-Cloud porcelain is fine in texture and glaze, and is decorated in many different styles : it is pure white, moulded with slight reliefs copied from the Chinese ; or painted in many bright colours and gold with Chinese designs; or thirdly, with paintings in blues only of flowery scroll-work and grotesques. It is marked either with a sun, or with "S. C." combined with "T." (see No. 25), and other makers’ initials. Martin Lister, physician to Queen Anne, in an account of his travels in France during 1698, mentions a visit which he paid to the Saint-Cloud porcelain works, and speaks with great admiration of their productions. The privilege was frequently renewed during the first half of the 18th century, and the Saint-Cloud manufactory continued to be the most important in France till the establishment of the royal manufactory at Sèvres.
Other places in France during this period, from 1700 to 1745, produced a certain quantity of artificial porcelain. These were Lille, from 1711, marked with No. 26 ; Paris, 1722, a branch of the Saint-Cloud works; and Chantilly, from 1725. The porcelain of Chan-tilly was specially in-tended to imitate old Japanese ware. Like the Medici porcelain, it has a white tin enamel over the paste. It is marked with a hunting-horn (see No. 27) and painter’s initials. Porcelain of every variety of style was also made at Mennecy-Villeroy from 1735, under the patronage of the duke of Villeroy, with whose initials, "D.V.," all the pro-ductions of the manufactory are marked. All these early varieties of porcelain were of the artificial or soft kind, called by the French "porcelaine à pâte tendre."
Sèvres.
The increasing success and popularity of the porcelain produced in Germany and England induced Louis XV. to establish a private royal manufactory of porcelain, which was first started at Vincennes, with a privilege granted to Charles Adam and others in 1745. In 1753 the king himself became a partner in the works, with a third share in the property. The seat of the manufactory was then transferred to Sèvres, and the official title was assumed of "manufacture royale de porcelaine de France." Before 1753 the royal porcelain was simply marked with two crossed L’s for Louis, but from that year a date-letter was made compulsory,—A for 1753 (see No. 28), B for 1754, and so on till 1777, after which a new doubled alphabet was started AA (see No. 29), BB, &c. ; this lasted down to RR (1793), and then a less regular series of marks came into use. Till 1792 the date-letter was put between the crossed L’s, but in that year the republic substituted the letter R. Later various royal monograms and marks were used.
Till about 1770 all French porcelain was artificial or "soft" (pâte tendre) ; the discovery of kaolinic clays in France then brought about the manufacture of natural hard porcelain (pâte dure) like that made in China and Japan. This gradually superseded the soft kind, which ceased to be made at the end of the 18th century. Its manufacture has recently been revived at Sèvres to some slight extent. M. Brongniart, the director of the Sèvres porcelain works from 1800 to 1847, in his most valuable Traité des Arts Cèramiques (1854), gives a full account of the materials and methods used at Sèvres during all periods. The soft porcelain was composed of white sand 60 per cent., nitre 22, common salt 7·2, alum 3·6, soda 3·6, and gypsum 3·6 per cent. This compound was roasted at a high temperature, then ground to a fine powder, and washed with boiling water. To nine parts of this mixture or frit two parts of white chalk and one of a sort of pipe-clay were added. The whole was again ground, and passed several times through a fine silk sieve. Water was added to make the powder into a paste, and it was then fit for the thrower on the wheel or the moulder. Owing to the very unplastic nature of this elaborate mixture, black soap and size or glue made from parchment were added to bind the paste together under the moulder’s hands. The glaze used for the pâte tendre was an ordinary silico-alkaline glass, made fusible by oxide of lead. The coloured decorations and gilding were added after the firing of the glaze. The hard porcelain is made of natural kaolinic clays, and is glazed with almost pure felspar,—both substances very hard and infusible. The superior softness and richness of effect possessed by the pâte tendre are due to the fact that the paintings on the softer and more fusible glaze sink slightly into it under the heat of the kiln, and are, though almost imperceptibly, blended one with another. It is easy to distinguish the two pastes and glazes: pieces of the one kind can be scratched by a knife, while those of the other resist it. Nevertheless the difference in beauty between the two kinds of porcelain has been much exaggerated, and the extravagant prices which are given for the pâte tendre are greatly due to its rarity, and to its having been produced earlier than the other. The whole question, in fact, of the valuo of Sâvres porcelain is a highly artificial and conventional one, which can hardly be considered in accordance with the ordinary rules or canons of art. Certain special qualities were aimed at, such as brilliant colours, with abso-lute smoothness of surface, microscopic delicacy of paint-ing, and the most perfect accuracy and neatness of execu-tion throughout ; and it must be admitted that the porcelain-makers gained their object with the help of ingenuity, technical skill, and unwearied patience, which must com-mand our respect and even admiration, whatever may be our verdict as to the artistic result of their labours. Still, with all possible allowances, there is no doubt that rarity, the necessary result of the slow and laborious processes employed, is the chief reason for the extraordinary value now set on this porcelain. The £10,000 which three flower-vases of pâte tendre fetched at a public auction a few years ago can be ac-counted for on no other hypothesis. The colours of Sèvres porcelain are generally harsh, and out of harmony with the pictures they surround; the forms of the various vessels too are frequently very un-graceful, and utterly unsuited to any plastic substance.
The whole of this porce-lain ware, in fact, labours under the serious artistic dis-advantage of being designed and decorated with no regard to suitability of material or method ; the elaborate picture-subjects would have been far more fit for ivory miniature-work, and are quite without breadth of decorative effect, while the shapes of the more elaborate vases are often deliberate imitations of gold and "or moulu," which in no way suggest the special properties of a fictile material (see fig. 69). It is difficult to realize the amount of thought and labour that was spent on the production of Sèvres porcelain. The chief chemists of France devoted their energies to the invention of brilliant and varied pigments which would stand the severe test of the kiln, The works of the best painters were used for reproduction among the painted decorations of the porcelain, and many artists of real talent spent their lives in painting these gaudy toys—on the whole a sad waste of labour and skill.
Sèvres porcelain made for actual use, such as tea-sets and dessert-services, are usually painted with flowers or figure-subjects, often in many tints, and enriched with gilding, but on a plain white ground. It is the purely decorative pieces, such as vases and flower-vessels, that are ornamented with the greatest splendour. They generally have panels with pictures on a white ground surrounded by frames of gold scroll-work; the main body of the piece is covered with one deep or brilliant colour. The chief colours are gros bleu, a very dark blue; blue du roi, a deep ultramarine; a brilliant turquoise blue; a bright pink, the favourite colour of Madame Pompadour, but generally called "rose Du Barry"; a bright yellow, a violet, and three shades of green were also used. These brilliant colours are often further decorated with gold; a ground with cir-cular groups of gold spots scattered over it is called "oeil de perdrix"; other kinds of diaper were also used. The most gorgeous variety of all is the jewelled Sèvres, not made till about 1780, and generally having a ground of bleu du roi or ultramarine. It is richly set with imitation jewels, chiefly turquoises, pearls, and transparent rubies, made of coloured enamel pastes, hardly to be distinguished in effect from real stones. They are set in gold, slightly modelled in actual relief, like the gilt ornaments on the richest sort of Japanese Satsuma ware.
The forms of Sèvres procelain are very varied, and, in spite of the great use of plaster moulds, many reproduc-tions of the same design were rarely produced. Clocks, barometers, and various other objects were made of porce-lain and richly decorated, and also painted panels or plaques used for furniture,—always, however, with most discordant effect. Beautifully modelled statuettes in white biscuit porcelain were made by some of the ablest sculptors of the 18th century; these usually have pedestals elaborately gilt and painted. Perhaps the worst taste of all is shown in some of the vases which have scrolls and sham metal-work moulded and gilded to produce the effect of a porcelain vase set in or moulu mounts,—a method of so-called decoration which was much imitated at Chelsea and other porcelain works. The recent "Jones bequest" to the South Kensington Museum contains a large variety of the most costly specimens of the pâte tendre of Sèvres.
Modern Processes of Porcelain-making at Sèvres.—Since the Franco-Prussian war a lare new building has been constructed for this manufacture, with improved kilns, arranged in the most commodious way. It is near the Seine, at the entrance to the park of Saint Cloud. In the same building is the important Ceramic Museum, which contains the finest collection of French porcelain of all periods, and also a large series of showrooms for the exhibition of the modern productions of the manufactory. About 250 hands (men and women) are employed in the work ; many of the painters and modellers are, as of old, artists of real ability.
The pâte dure, now mainly used, is composed of kaolinic clay, mostly from Limousin, but also imported from Cornwall ; with it is mixed a proportion of white chalk and fine sand (silica). Each material is finely ground between mill-stones, and carefully washed by being agitated with water. The powder is allowed to settle, and the lighter impurities are carried off by decantation. The various ingredients are then mixed thoroughly together with enough water to bring them to the consistence of cream. When the mixing process is complete the cream-like fluid is run off into absorbent plaster troughs, which take up the superfluous water and leave the compound in a pasty state. The paste is next turned over fre-quently on a floor so as to expose the whole of it to the air, and it is thoroughly kneaded like baker’s dough by men’s feet and hands to make it more plastic for the wheel or mould. The wheel turned by the thrower’s foot is exactly like that used in Egypt under the Ptolemies, or by the majolica potters, as shown in fig. 55. While moulding his vessel the thrower keeps dipping his hands into a basin of fluid paste ("barbotine" or slip). He also in creases the smoothness of surface on the revolving vessel by holding a sponge soaked in the slip between his fingers. Vessels ofwhich a number are required all exactly alike, such as a set of plates, are partly shaped in a mould and partly formed by a steel "template" or gauge. The thrower forces a thin disk of paste over a convex mould shaped to give the inside of the plate ; he then sets it, mould and all, on the revolving wheel, and a steel knife-like gauge shuts down upon it, thus forming the outside or back of the plate, which, as it revolves against the edge, has all superfluous paste scraped from it and is accurately formed into the required shape. When the plate or other vessel has been shaped it is allowed to dry, and is finished by being turned on a lathe and rubbed smooth with sand-paper. The handles and all projecting ornaments are moulded, or rather cast, by pouring the paste in a fluid state into piece-moulds made of plaster of Paris, which take to pieces and set free the casting, which is then fixed on the vessel it belongs to with a little more fluid slip used as a "lute." The moulded ornaments are afterwards carefully finished by hand with ordinary modelling tools. Even statuettes and groups of figures are cast and finished in this way. The vase with its attached ornaments, after being thoroughly dried, is ready for the first firing.
The kilns are like tall circular towers tapering towards the top, about 10 feet in diameter at the base inside ; they are divided into four stories, with perforated brick vaults between them. The fire, fed either with white wood or coke, is in the lowest story ; the chamber next to the fire is of course the hottest, and the top one the least hot of the three. These different degrees of heat are utilized according to the temperature required for each firing. Thus the "raw" vessels fresh from the wheel, which only require a moderate beat to prepare them for being glazed, are piled in the highest chamber, and those that are being glazed in the lowest. In order to keep the white paste from being discoloured by the smoke the porcelain is packed in round porcelain boxes (called in English "saggers"), which fit closely one upon another and are arranged in high piles. The various chambers of the kilns have small openings, closed with transparent tale, through which the progress of the baking can be watched, and test-bits of porcelain painted with carmine, a colour that changes tint according to the heat it is subjected to, are withdrawn from time to time to show hat temperature has been reached. As a rule the fire is kept up for about thirty-six hours, and the kiln with its contents is allowed from four to six days to cool before being opened.
After the first firing the porcelain is in the biscuit state, and is then ready for the glaze, which is made of felspar and quartz crystals all (pure silica) ; it is finely ground with water, and the porcelain is dipped into it, until sufficient of the fluid mixture adheres to the absorbent biscuit to form a coat of glaze. When dry it is fired for the second time, but in the lowest and hottest compartment of the kiln, this natural rock-glaze being very infusible. About 1600º C. is the usual temperature for this process.
The painted decoration is always applied over the glaze ; but within recent years a new method of under-glaze ornament has been much used, called "pâte sur pite," similar in method to the "slip decoration" mentioned above under several different heads. The biscuit ground of the vase is first tinted a uniform colour, and then the same white paste of which the porcelain is made is mixed with water and applied in successive layers with a brush, thus pro-ducing delicate cameo-like reliefs. Very beautiful designs of figare subjects or flowers are put on in this way, and additional effect is gained by the coloured ground shining through the thinner parts of the semi-transparent white reliefs. The whole is then glazed in the usual way. To return to the painted porcelain, when it has come from the second firing in a white highly glazed state it is ready for the painter. Almost endless varieties of coloured pigments are gained by the use of elaborately prepared chemical compounds, all different salts of metals. In the main the blues are from cobalt the turquoise colour from copper, the rose-pink from gold, the green from chrome and copper, and the violets from manganese. A far greater variety and brilliance of colour can be gained in over-glaze painting than in under-glaze pigments. But the over-glaze colours are very inferior in softness and decorative beauty, and are fire-quently very harsh and gaudy. Different pigments require differ-ent temperatures, and three distinct firings are used at Sèvres for the painting only: they are called "grand feu," "demi-grand feu," and "fen de moufle." Pure gold for the gilt parts in a very finely divided state is obtained by chemical solution and precipitation. The gold requires a special kiln, and firing at a higher temperature than the colour-pigments, and therefore, in the case of pâte dure, is applied first. The colours have to be put on and fired in order according to the degree of heat they require, thus very much add-ing to the painter's difficulties, which are also increased by the fact that all the colours alter in the kiln, the unfired pigments often bearing no resemblance to their fired state. Thus an elaborately painted and gilt Sèvres vase passes through six separate firings, and often a seventh when it needs final retouching.
The porcelain à pâte tendre is now made in small quantities at Sèvres. Its materials have been described above. In most respects it goes through the same processes as the pâte dure, but the gold is applied after the painting, as it requires a less degree of heat to fix it on the more fusible glaze used for pâte tendre.
Modern Sèvres porcelain has two marks—first, the mark of the paste or undecorated vase, painted in green ; second, a mark in red or gold to show that it has been painted at Sèvres. Slightly defective pieces in the white glazed state are sometimes sold and decorated elsewhere. In this case the green mark is cancelled by the cut of a lapidary’s wheel before it leaves the manufactory. M. Brongniart, in his Arts Cèramiques, has given a complete set of plates, showing all the processes, the machinery, and the kilns used at Sèvres in his time,—that is, from 1800 to 1847. Other processes are now practised. One is for making very thin cups and saucers, like Eastern "egg-shell china," which are formed by merely rinsing out a plaster mould with fluid paste, when sufficient of the paste to make the thin walls of the cup adheres to the absorbent mould ; and thus porcelain is made much thinner than it could be by use of the wheel and lathe. Another recent invention is of great importance in the forming of large vases with bodies thin in proportion to their size. Such would be liable to collapse from their own weight while the paste was soft. To prevent this, the vase is set in an air-tight chamber, its mouth being carefully closed, and the air in the chamber round it is exhausted, so that the soft vase is kept in shape by the expansive pressure of the air within it. The converse method is also used in some cases, by compressed air being forced into the vase. When the paste is sufficiently dry all fear of failure from this cause is over. In this way vases as much as 12 feet in height have been successfully made and fired.
In addition to porcelain shaped and painted after the 18th century fashions, and the new pâte sur pâte process, the present manufactory produces a great deal of fine porcelain copied exactly from the fanciful and elaborate wares of China and Japan, such as the delicate double cups and vases, with outer shells of minute open work pierced through, and many other varieties requiring great technical skill and patience. Unhappily the old faults and misdirected aims still prevent the laboured products of this great factory from having much real artistic value, or even strong decorative effect. The paintings on the porcelain are still pictures like miniatures on ivory, and the treatment and forms of the most elaborate vases are not such as would arise from a natural and rational treatment of plastic clay. The ingenious resources of modern chemistry have produced pigments of countless variety of tint, but they are mostly over-gaudy and harsh in combination ; and the modern habit, not peculiar to Sèvres, of applying paintings over the glaze, wilfully rejects the special soft richness of effect which a vitreous coating gives to the pigments under it.
Literature.—On French porcelain, consult Jacquemart, Histoire de la Cèram-ique, 1873; Davillier, Les Porcelaines de Sèvres, 1870, and Les Faïences et Porcelaines de Moustiers, &c., 1863; Jacquemart and Le Blant, Histoire de la Porcelaine, 1861-62 ; Lejeal, Recherches sur la Porcelaine de Valenciennes, 1868 ; Milet , L’In-vention de ta Porcelaine à Rouea, 1867 ; Guide du Visiteur, Sèvres, 1874 ; Cool Peinture site Porcelaine, 1866; Bastenaire-Daudenart, L’Art de fabriquer la Porcelaine, 1827. See also the general list of works on ceramic art.
German and Austrian.
The porcelain of Germany was, from the first, composed of a hard natural paste, a true kaolinic clay. Its success-ful production was the result of a single, almost accidental, act of discovery, and not, like that of the French, of a long series of experiments with different materials, ending in the invention of a highly artificial imitation of true porcelain. In the year 1700 a young chemist, or rather alchemist, of great ability, called Frederick Böttger (1682-1719), a native of Saxony, fled to Dresden under the accusation of practising magical arts and searching for the "philosopher’s stone." He was there taken under the protection of Augustus II., elector of Saxony, who employed him to make experiments, at first connected with medical chemistry and afterwards with the composition of pastes and clays for ceramic ware. From 1701 he worked for his royal patron, partly at Dresden and partly at the castle of Meissen, carefully guarded, and kept in seclusion almost like a prisoner, in order that his discoveries might remain secret, and also to prevent his leaving the country. For nine years Böttger only produced stoneware, though of a finer and harder quality than had hitherto been made (see pp. 630-31); but in 1710 he seems to have been in some way set on the track of the secret of porcelain manufacture. His first attempts were unsuccessful: the paste is grey and defective, and there is little or no glaze. So far no real progress had been made towards the discovery of true porcelain. But in 1710 a lucky accident, com-bined with the young chemist's ready powers of observa-tion, revealed the true nature of the required paste. Having noticed the unusual weight of some new hair--powder with which his wig was dressed, he inquired what it was made of, and, finding that it was a finely-powdered white clay from Aue, near Schneeberg in Saxony, he procured some of the clay. He made vessels of it and fired them, and found that he had discovered the material of true hard porcelain, like that from China and Japan. When Augustus II. learned the importance of the dis-covery he established the porcelain manufactory at Meissen With Böttger as its director. This establishment, 15 miles from Dresden, was more like a prison than a factory, being surrounded by high walls and shut in by port-cullises: none except workmen were ever admitted, and they were sworn to secrecy under pain of penal servitude for life. The kaolin from Aue was dug out, packed in sealed bags, and brought to Meissen with every care pos-sible to avoid betraying the secret of its importance ; no possible precaution was omitted, and yet, in one case at least, all attemps to keep the monopoly were in vain (see below, "Vienna porcelain").
The earliest productions of the Meissen (Dresden) porcelain-works are copies from the Chinese and Japanese. Some are plain white, with flowers or fruit in low relief ; others have painted under-glaze in blues only, like the celebrated blue and white china of Nanking. The first pieces painted with other colours are imitations of old Japanese china in green and red with enrichments in gold. Böttger died in 1719, and was succeeded in his directorship by George Höroldt, who introduced certain improvements in the processes of the manufacture, and increased the quantity of its annual production. In his time Chinese designs were still copied, mostly very ugly figure-subjects on white panels, the rest of the vase being coloured yellow, green, or grey, and decorated with elaborate gilt scroll-work in the worst possible taste.
After about 1725 the Eastern style of design was superseded by ela-borate miniature paint-ings of flowers and in-sects, or copies from Dutch and Flemish painters. All notion of true ceramic decoration was gone, and the porce-lain was only regarded as a ground on which to paint an imitation of an oil-painting. Another style of decor-ation soon came into fashion: china was decorated in relief with the "honeycomb" or "may-flower" pattern. In the latter kind (see fig. 70) the vessel is closely studded with blossoms of the may, moulded in a realistic way, with thin crisp edges, and then coloured and gilded, very laborious to execute, and extremely disagreeable in effect. Perhaps the chief specialty of Dresden porcelain consists in its statuettes and group of figures, the best of which were made between 1731 and 1756 under the superintendence of a sculptor named Kändler. Some of these, especially the Watteau-like shepherds and shep-herdesses, have a sort of feeble prettiness; but most have only little merit, and some are grotesque and wilfully ugly. They are generally decorated with colours and gilding; the best, however, are in plain glazed white. Elaborate can-delabra, clocks, and other objects were largely made, into the designs of which figures in the round, flowers realistic-ally modelled, and rococo scroll-work were introduced, generally in a feeble and ungraceful way. For some years after 1774 designs of more classical form, purer in outline and less crowded with clumsy ornament, came into fashion. Since then nothing of any real value has been produced in the Dresden china-works. Of late years, since the increase of prices given for old Dresden, the directors of the manu-factory have begun to reproduce their old designs, and even to use some of the worn-out moulds; the result is that the china thus produced is very blunt and spiritless, quite devoid of merit.
The old Dresden porcelain is of a fine paste, and has a good glaze, but its white is of a rather cold tint, occasionally even having a bluish shade. It is, however, both in quality of material and in design, the best porcelain that Germany has produced. During the early period the monogram "AR" interlaced (for Augustus Rex) marks the pieces made either for the king’s use or from his design. Between 1712 and 1715 pieces made for sale were marked with a rudely-sketched snake twining round a stick. Since 1721 two crossed swords have been used as a general mark; the addition of a dot or star marks special periods (see No. 30). The swords were the arms of the elector of Saxony as arch-marshal of the empire. Some pieces have "MPM" for "Meissenen Porzellan Manufactur." As at Sèvres, china from Dresden, if sold undecorated, has the cross-swords mark cancelled by the cut of a wheel. In 1863 the china-works were moved from the fortress of Meissen and established in a new and more convenient building.
Vienna Porcelain.—In 1720 one of the workmen escaped from the prison-like manufactory of Meissen and brought the secrets of the porcelain clay to Vienna, where he set up kilns and workshops in partnership with a Frenchman named Du Pasquier. They op-tained a special patent, but had little practical success ; and the Vienna porcelain was not made in large quantities till after 1744, when the manufactory was carried on under the patronage of Maria Theresa and the emperor Joseph. In 1785 there were thirty-five kilns in working order, and 500 work-people were employed. Vienna porcelain is not of a pure white, but is greyish in tint ; its paintings are very poor, and it depends for its effect chiefly on gilt-moulded scroll-work in delicate relief. Its manufacture was suspended in 1864 on account of the heavy expense it entailed on the Austrian Government.
Berlin porcelain was first made in 1751 by a potter named Wegely, who marked his ware with No. 31. It was not, however, a commercial success till Frederick the Great took it in hand. He sent a number of skilled workmen from the Meissen (Dresden) china-works to Berlin, and also ordered the manufactory to be supplied with the kaolinic clay from Aue, of which Meissen hitherto had preserved the monopoly. In quality the Berlin porcelain comes next to that of Dresden ; it is often decorated with a bright rose-pink, the favourite colour of Frederick, which was unknown at the Meissen works. Large quantities of porcelain are still made at Berlin.
Other Continental Porcelain of the 18th Century.
A very large number of other places in Germany pro-duced hard natural porcelain during the 18th century, but none of their work is of any special interest or beauty. It became, in fact, the fashion for every king or reigning prince to be the patron of a porcelain manufactory. Porce-lain was produced at Amsterdam and The Hague; at Brussels, Copenhagen, and Zurich; and in Russia at St Petersburg and Moscow.
In Italy also fine soft porcelain was made,—at Doccia as early as 1735, some of which, ornamented in under-glaze blues only, is very decorative and in good taste. Venice produced clever copies of Japanese porcelain, painted with chrysanthemums and other flowers in enamel. The royal manufactory at Capo di Monte, close to Naples, founded in 1736 by Charles III., pro-duced a great deal of porce-lain decorated in many styles, mostly in very bad taste. The best are Oriental designs painted in blues only. The accompanying marks (No. 32) were used, the fleur-de-lis in 1736, the crowned N after 1759, and the RF after 1780. All the Italian porcelain is of the soft artificial sort.
The porcelain-works in the Buen-Retiro gardens at Madrid were also established by Charles III. after he succeeded to the throne of Spain. Much of this (soft) porcelain is classical in form, and is decorated with miniature paintings in colours or monochrome. Charles III. transferred thirty-two workmen and painters from Capo di Monte when he founded the Buen-Retiro manufactory, and hence the productions of the two factories are very similar in style. One of the marks used, the lis, was common to both, the usual forms on the Buen-Retiro porcelain were those in No. 33.
Literature.—See Falke, Geschichte der k. Porzellan-Fabrik in Wien, 1867 ; Graesse, Geschichte der Gefässbildnerei, Porzellan--Fabrication, &c., 1853 ; Kärner, Die Porzellan-Malerei, &c., 1870; Kolbe, Geschichte der Porcellanmanufactur zu Berlin, 1863; Klemm, Die k. sächsische Porzellan-und Gefäss-Sammlung, 1833 ; Krünig, Cyclopedia, s.v. "Porzellan."
English.
The early history of English porcelain is rather obscure. John Dwight (see p. 632 above) was apparently the first English manufacturer who took out a patent for the pro-duction of transparent porcelain; but no specimens made by him are now known.
Chelsea Porcelain.—According to Jewitt (Ceramic Art of Great Britain), John Dwight probably founded the porcelain-works at Chelsea, which rank first among English manufactories both in date and importance. In 1745 they were in full activity; and the popularity in France of English porcelain was one of the causes which led to the establishment of the royal manufactory at Sèvres. The owner of the Chelsea works was a Frenchman called Nicholas Spremont, who continued to manufacture fine porcelain till his retirement from business in 1764.
This porcelain is very varied in style, as was the case with most of the l8th-century makes. Some of it is simply imitated from Eastern china, either in blue and white, or in the old Japanese style, which was then so popular, chiefly painted in rich red and green, with a good deal of gilding. Other pieces, more elaborate and costly, resemble Sèvres porcelain, and have miniature paintings on white panels, the rest of the vase being coloured with one uniform tint, such as the French bleu du roi or "rose Pompadour." One colour, peculiar to Chelsea, is a deep claret-red. Most of the vases have a great deal of gild-ing, both applied in patterns on the body of the vase, and also used solidly to decorate the elaborate moulded scroll-work which was fixed on the sides of the porcelain. The writhing masses of gold on Chelsea ware are prob-ably the most meaningless and stupid attempts at decoration that have ever been produced. Many of them are designed with apparently not even an attempt at beauty of form or gracefulness of curve, and are quite without the vigour that is often possessed by the grotesques of China or Japan. Chelsea vases of this elaborate sort are rare, as their production was slow, and they now fetch very high prices: £2000 has been given for a single vase such as that shown in fig. 71.
It should be observed that, till thediscovery of the half-de-composed kao-linic clay of Cornwall about 1755 by Cookworthy, all English porcelain was of the soft variety (à pâte tendre), and was really an artificial compound with an ordinary vitreous lead glaze. The painted decoration, like that of Sèvres, was applied over the glaze, with the exception of a fine cobalt blue, which was painted on the china in a biscuit state. This colour is much the finest and most truly decorative of any of the pigments, very superior in richness of effect to the much brighter over-glaze colours. That used at the Derby porcelain-works is the most beautiful in tint.
The early success of the Chelsea porcelain was partly due to the patronage of George II., who, following the royal fashion of the age, took a great interest in the manufactory, and not only bought large quantities of its productions but also aided it by importing kaolinic clay, models, and even skilled workmen from Saxony. In 1769 the Chelsea porcelain-works were put up to auction, and bought by William Duesbury, the owner of the Derby china-factory. Till 1784 he carried on the manufacture of porcelain at both places, but in that year he pulled down the Chelsea kilns and transferred all the movable plant and the workmen to Derby. The Chelsea mark is usually an anchor, either painted in red or gold, or moulded in relief; the anchor is often double (see No. 34), and in some cases has the ad-dition of one or more daggers. Some specimens first noted by Mr. Jewitt1 have quite different marks, incised on the paste before glazing, which are of special interest as being the earliest dated specimens of English porcelain. Such marks are a triangle, with the addition "Chelsea 1745."
Bow Porcelain (Stratford-le-Bow).—In 1744 Edward Heylyn and Thomas Frye, the latter a painter of some repute, took out a patent for the manufacture of porcelain at Bow. The composition they used was a curious one, being almost a hard porcelain. The clay, which was called "unaker," was brought from America, and was probably an impure kind of kaolin. It was ground and washed to separate the sand and mica; and to it was added pounded glass—a pure alkaline silicate—varying in proportion from
FOOTNOTE (page 641)
1 See "History of Chelsea China," in Art Journal for 1863.
equal parts of clay and glass to one-fifth of glass. The glaze was a similar mixture, with less of the American kaolinic clay. This paste and glaze must have been difficult to manage, since in 1748 the partners took out a fresh patent for a more artificial and softer kind of porcelain, with a more fusible lead glaze. In 1750 the Bow works came into the hands of Messrs Weatherby and Crowther, and were then called "New Canton." For some time the manufactory was successful, and employed 300 hands; but before long one of the partners died, and the survivor, "John Crowther, chinaman," was gazetted bankrupt in 1763, and the whole stock was sold off. Crowther, however, in spite of his failure, carried on the works till 1775, when they were bought by William Dues-bury, the owner of the Chelsea, Derby, and other china--factories; he pulled down the Bow kilns and transferred the plant to Derby, as he did afterwards in the case of the Chelsea manufactory. The Bow porcelain is of a fine soft milky white; many of the imitations of Chinese figures are hardly to be distinguished from the originals. Some of the Bow china, decorated only in the rich under-glaze blue, with Eastern designs, is very effective. A good many pieces are painted in the Dresden style, and coloured statuettes or groups of figures, also after German models, were largely produced. The Bow marks are very numerous, some not distinguishable from those of Chelsea; No. 35 shows four varieties.
Derby porcelain is supposed to have been made as early as 1750, possibly by Andrew Planché, a clever French refugee, who in 1756 entered into partnership with Heath and Duesbury, the last of whom afterwards became the chief china-manufacturer of England. The purchase by Duesbury of the Bow and Chelsea works has already been mentioned. The Derby porcelain is often very large, ela-borately moulded, and profusely decorated, generally rather in the Dresden style, weak in form and gaudy in colour. The Derby under-glaze blue was remarkably fine, and many of the plain blue and white pieces, with Chinese patterns, are highly decorative, as are also, though in a less degree, those porcelain services that were painted in the "old Japanese style." One of the chief specialties of the Derby works was the production of delicate white figures in biscuit china, often modelled with great skill and refinement. Unfortunately the practice of printing the under-glaze patterns, instead of painting them by hand, was introduced at Derby about 1764, and did much to destroy all the artistic value of the work (see below). The marks used were these,—first a "D" combined with an anchor (No. 36), or a crowned anchor (No. 37), used during the earlier part of the time when Duesbury was carrying on both the Chelsea and the Derby factories, 1769-84 ; next the crown was used, either over the "D" only (No. 38), or, more usually, with a saltire or crossed swords immediately under it. Another variety has crossed lines under the crown (No. 39). The Derby works con-tinued in the possession of the Duesbury family till 1814 or 1815, when Robert Bloor became the lessee and finally the owner of the place. He soon realized a large fortune, though to some extent at the expense of the credit and high reputation for excellence of work which had been gained and kept up by the various members of the Dues-bury family. He gained a great deal of money by selling off the stock, accumulated during many years, of slightly defective pieces of porcelain, which the Duesbury family would not allow to go into the market.1
Worcester Porcelain.—The china-works at Worcester were founded by a very remarkable man—Dr Wall, who appears to have possessed unusual skill as a physician, artist, and chemist. After some years spent in attempts to discover a fine artificial porcelain, he, in conjunction with other practical men and capitalists, started the Worces-ter Porcelain Company in 1751. The early productions of this factory are very artistic ; they are chiefly copies of the fine Nanking porcelain, painted under-glaze in blues only, with very boldly decorative designs. Old Japanese ware was also successfully imitated. After that the most ambitious pieces of Worcester porcelain were mostly drill reproductions of the elaborately painted wares of Sévres and Chelsea. Transfer printing was first used at Worcester for designs on china in 1756, though it had been invented and employed some years earlier for the decoration of the Battersea enamelled copper. This process was no less injurious at Worcester than elsewhere to the artistic value of the paintings. Dr Wall died in 1776, and after that the porcelain-works passed through various hands. A great impetus was given to its success by George III., who visited the factory in 1788 and granted it the title of "The Royal Porcelain Works." The earliest marks are a "W" or a crescent ; others used are crossed arrows or varieties of sham Chinese marks (see No. 40).2 The manufacture of china at Worcester is still continued with great ac-tivity; the fineness of the paste and the skilful processes employed leave nothing to be desired. Unfortunately the old fault of a too realistically pictorial style of painted decoration still prevails, and an immense amount of artistic skill and patient labour is practically wasted in producing minute but not truly decorative work. Some of the modern Worcester copies of Eastern porcelain and enamels are very delicate and beautiful, and the cameo-like method of pâte sur pâte decoration is practised with great skill and often good effect.
Bristol porcelain is of interest as being the first hard natural porcelain made in England. As early as 1766 attempts were made by Richard Champion to make an artificial paste, with the help of the American "unaker" or kaolinic clay, which was being used successfully at Bow, but no results of any importance seem to have followed his experiments. The successful production of Bristol porcelain was due to the discovery in Cornwall of large beds of kaolinic "growan" stone or "china" stone, first brought into use by William Cookworthy, a Plymouth potter. This discovery and the succeeding one of similar beds in Devonshire were of great commercial importance to England, and the beds have ever since produced enor-mous quantities of material for the manufacture of fine hard porcelain both in England and abroad.
This china stone (see Cock, Treatise on China Clay, 1880) is not a pure kaolinic clay like that found in China, but is simply a granitic rock, partially decomposed, and soft and friable, but still retaining both quartz and mica in addition to the felspar which is the essential base of kaolin. In China the processes of nature have carried the decomposition and sorting of the different com-
FOOTNOTES (page 642)
(1) See Haslem, Old Derby China Factory, 1876.
(2) For fuller information, see Binns, Potting in Worcester, 1865.
ponent parts of granite to a further stage. There the decomposed felspar has, by the action of rain and running streams, been deposited in an almost pure and finely-divided state in beds by itself, almost free from quartz and flakes of mica. In using the Cornish china stone, therefore, various natural processes have to be artificially performed before the paste is sufficiently white and pure for use ; but when this is done it is little if any inferior to the Chinese kaolin. The stone when dug out is white with grey specks, and is so friable as to be easily reduced to powder between millstones. It is agitated with water, and run through a series of settling troughs ; thus the lighter flakes of mica, which are very injurious to the paste, are washed away, and the pure felspathic kaolin is deposited free from impurities. Free silica is added in a fixed proportion ; it is usually obtained from flints, first calcined and then finely ground to powder, which are an important ingredient in the composition of both fine pottery and porcelain. The Jermyn Street Museum has a complete collection of all the materials used in china manufacture.
William Cookworthy at once recognized the value of his discovery, and set up china-works both at Plymouth and at Bristol. No. 41 shows the mark of the Plymouth porcelain, and No. 42 those that were used at Bristol. In 1774 he sold the Bristol factory to Richard Champion, still retaining a large royalty on the china stone. Champion signed his ware with No. 43. The production of Bristol porcelain continued till 1781, when the works were sold to a Staffordshire company, and the manufacture of hard porcelain was no longer carried on there. Though fine in paste and unusually transparent, the Bristol porcelain has no special artistic merits. As with most other English wares, the best in colour and design are copies, with more or less adaptation from Eastern china; some of them are very large and magnificent. The figures and flower-reliefs in biscuit porcelain are also delicate, and often cleverly modelled, with wonderful realism.
Some fine blue and white china was produced towards the end of the last century at Lowestoft, and at Liverpool as early as 1756 ; and many other china-works were established in various parts of England. In the beginning of the present century Swansea and Nantgarw in South Wales produced porcelain which was highly esteemed; but the delicate shades of difference in the paste, glazes, and styles of decoration of these numerous varieties of British porce-lain are not such as can be described in a few words ; nothing but careful examination of the wares themselves will enable the student to distinguish between the produc-tions of the different manufactories. Swansea ware bears various marks, of which No. 44 is one example.
Modern Methods of Manufacture.—The methods and materials now employed at Sèvres in the production of porcelain are in all essential points much the same as those practised elsewhere (see above). The chief centre in England of the manufacture of pottery or non-translucent earthenware is in Staffordshire, near the borders of Cheshire, where a large district devoted to this industry goes by the name of "The Potteries." Worcester, Lambeth, and many other places in England also turn out annually large quantities of pottery. The processes employed may be divided under the following heads:—(1) choice and mixture of clays ; (2) washing and grinding the materials ; (3) throwing on the wheel and moulding; (4) kilns and methods of firing; (5) glazes; (6) pigments and methods of decoration.
1. Choice and Mixture of Clays.—The extensive beds of fine Dorset or Poole clay supply the chief ingredient in the manufacture of of English pottery. This is too fat a clay to be used alone, and is therefore mixed with a certain proportion of free silica to prevent it from twisting or cracking in the kiln. Another ingredient is added to the mixture for the finer wares, namely, the Cornish or Devonian china stone, a kaolinic substance used in the manufacture of porcelain (see above), which makes the paste finer in texture, whiter, harder, and less brittle. These three substances are mixed in various proportions. The following makes a fine cream-coloured ware,—Dorset clay 56 to 66 parts, silica (flint) 14 to 20, china stone 17 to 30 parts.
2. Washing and Grinding thv Materials.—The Dorset or Poole clay is finely ground between mill-stones, mixed with water to the consistency of cream or slip, and then passed through fine silk sieves to strain out all grit or palpable Particles. The china stone is treated in the same way, with the additional precaution of wash-ing away all the flakes of mica, which come from the decomposition of the granitic rock front which the china stone is derived. The silica is obtained from flints, which are easily ground to fine powder after being heated red-hot and thrown into water. These three substances, brought into the state of fluid slip, are repeatedly pumped up from vats and passed through the sieves ; they are then easily mixed in due proportion by being pumped into graduated vats. The water is next evaporated from the fluid mixture in large boilers heated by a complicated arrangement of flues, and the com-pound is left in a soft pasty state, full of air-bubbles, which have to be got rid of by constantly turning over and beating the paste till it is quite smooth and compact, and sufficiently plastic to be thrown on the wheel. Coloured earthenware, such as that edg-wood used to make, was prepared by the addition of various substances to the fluid slip. A black colour was given by protoxide of iron and manganese, red by red ochres or red oxide of iron, blue by oxide of cobalt, and green by protoxide of chrome. These coloured pastes are but little used now.
3. Throwing and Moulding.—After sufficient kneading, the clay is made up into balls of a convenient size for the thrower to mould into shape upon his wheel. The methods both of throwing and of moulding are the same for porcelain as for pottery (see p. 638 above). Unfortunately in England, as at Sèvres, the thrown vessels are usually finished on the lathe ; only the commonest kinds of ware escape this process, which takes away all life and spirit from the wheel-formed pottery. Consequently it is the cheapest and commonest wares that now, as a rule, have most natural beauty of form and really artistic spirit. Handles and other parts which are shaped in piece-moulds are either cast by pouring fluid slip into the plaster--moulds, or are formed by Pressing and dabbing thinly-rolled pieces of soft clay into moulds made in two parts. The moulded halves of the spout or handle are fastened together while still wet, and the edges at the junction pared down and trimmed with a modelling tool. Plates, basins, and the like are formed by the combination of a mould and a shaped gauge as described above (Sèvres).
4. Kilns and Firing.—After the vessel with its moulded handles or spout is thoroughly dry it is ready for the first firing. The usual Staffordshire biscuit-kiln is a circular building, about 18 feet in internal diameter at the base, narrowing towards the top. It is about 18 to 20 feet high, and is very carefully built of refractory fire-bricks, strengthened by rings of wrought-iron which clasp the outside. It is surrounded by eight to ten furnace openings, with flues arranged to distribute the heat equally throughout the kiln. The pottery is fired in drum-shaped "saggers" or boxes, made of fire-clay, which are piled one above the other, as in the case of the Sèvres porcelain. The fire is kept up from thirty to fifty hours, and is then allowed to die out. Several days are allowed for cooling before the kiln is opened and the saggers with their contents withdrawn.
5. Glazes.—The composition of glazes for pottery varies very much according to the custom of each manufacturer. For the most part they are transparent silicates of alumina, rendered fusible by oxide of lead ; this compound is made by a mixture of Cornish china stone, flint, and white lead. The best quality of glazes have borax and some alkali added as a flux, in which case the proportion of lead is reduced. Those glazes that contain much lead are easily scratched, and can be decomposed by many acids ; thus there is always a risk of lead-poisoning if vessels coated in this way are used for cooking purposes. The materials for the glaze are finely ground with water and made into a thin white fluid. The biscuit pottery is rapidly dipped into vats of the milky mixture, and suffi-cient to form the glaze adheres to the absorbent clay in an even coating all over the surface. After being dried the pottery is ready for the second firing in the galazing kiln, which is very similar in construction to the biscuit-kiln, only, as a rule, rather smaller. It is packed in clay saggers, as in the first firing, but a stronger heat is required to fuse the finer kinds of glaze than was necessary for the baking of the raw pottery. Salt-glazing has been described above (p. 632), and is only used for the coarser sorts of ware.
6. Methods of Decoration.—In the case of pottery decoration is usually applied on the biscuit-ware before it is glazed by the trans-fer-printing process. The required design is engraved on copper plates ; the pigment is ground fine and mixed with a tenacious compound of oil and gums. An ordinary rolling press is used to print the engraved patterns in the oily pigment upon strips of tissue-paper, which are carefully applied and pressed face downwards on the biscuit-ware while the oil is yet wet; and so the pattern is transferred to the absorbent clay. This requires great dexterity from the difficulty there is in fitting the printed strips neatly on to curved surfaces. The paper is then washed off, and the printed ware is baked at a moderate temperature in what is called the "hardening" kiln, which is done before the glaze is applied, in order to drive off the oily medium with which the pig-ment was mixed. The transfer process is quite fatal to all artistic beauty in the designs ; it is hard, clumsy, and mechanical, the very opposite of a rational method for the decoration of pottery, which above all things demands freedom of hand and a spirited touch. Painted decoration which is executed by hand is now usually applied over the glaze, both because it is easier to do, not requiring so certain a touch, and also because the soft subdued colours of the under-glaze pigments do not suit the modern taste for what is bright and showy. The pigments used are necessarily oxides and salts of metals which will stand the heat of the kiln. Only those few which can stand the very high temperature of the glazing kiln can be used under the glaze. The over-glaze colours, on the other hand, only need sufficient heat to fix them on the surface of the already fired glaze ; and this is often done in a very slight and imperfect way. These colours not only lose in effect from want of the softening vitreous coat through which under-glaze colours are seen, but they are also very inferior through being unprotected, and therefore easily injured by scratches and ordinary wear. In old times the value of a protecting coat of glaze was so strongly felt that even paintings on enamel, like those on Persian pottery and Italian majolica, usually had a thin vitreous glaze added over the smooth enamel, with the double object of protecting the paint-ing and increasing its soft richness of effect.
The discoveries of modern chemistry have added very greatly to the number of metallic salts which are available for the decoration of pottery. Almost every possible tint can be produced for over-glaze painting. Oxides of cobalt are used for various shades of blue and grey up to black ; antimony, usually combined with lead, gives yellow ; oxides of copper give deep red or brilliant blues and greens according to the proportion of oxygen that they con-tain ; oxide of chromium gives a good quiet green ; manganese gives violet and even black ; gold gives a fine ruby red ; and uranium a rich orange. The various oxides of iron give a great variety of colours—reds, yellows, and browns. Oxide of zinc is largely used, not as a pigment in itself, but in combination, to modify other colours. The oxides of iron, cobalt, and chromium give very stable colours, capable of hearing a very high temperature, and can therefore be used for under-glaze painting ; most of the others can only be employed for over-glaze work. Over-glaze pigments cannot be used alone, but require a flux to make them combine with the glaze. Oxide of lead, borax, uitre, carbonates of potash or soda, and other substances are used for this purpose.
Literature.—English porcelain: Nightingale, Early English Porcelain, 1881; Binns, Potting in Worcester, 2d ed., 1877; Owen, Ceramic Art in Bristol, &c., 1873 ; Porter, Manufacture of Porcelain, &c., 1832; Tiffin, Chronograph of Bow, Chelsea, and Derby Porcelain, 1875; Wallis and Bemrose, Pottery and Porcelain of Derbyshire, 1870; Jewitt, Ceramic Art of Great Britain, 1877,—the most complete and comprehensive work.
Museums illustrative of the General History of Pottery.—The Musée Céramique of Sèvres is the best and most complete for the student of all kinds of pottery. In England the Jermyn Street Museum of Geology has a small, but very widely-illustrative collection of pottery and the various materials used in its manufacture. The South Kensington Museum is rich in almost all kinds of mediaeval and modem pottery, but it is unfortunately very badly arranged. The British Museum possesses a very large number of specimens of prehistoric pottery, Greek vases, mediaeval English, and very choice examples of Persian and majolica wares. The other chief European museums are mostly each rich in some special department of ceramic art.
General Literature on Pottery.—Brongniart, Traitès des Arts Cèramiques, 1854; Jacquemart, Histoire de la Cèramique, 1873; Marryat, Pottery and Porcelain, 3d ed., 1868; Birch, Ancient Pottery, 1873 ; Cataloque of Pottery, Museum of Geo-logy, Jermyn Street, 1876 (a very useful and well-illustrated work) ; Bonneville and Jaunez, Les Arts Cèramiques, 1873; Brongniart and Riocreux Musèe de Sèvres, 1845; Figuier, Les Merveilles de l’Industrie, 1873-75; Greslou, Recherches sur la Cèramique, 1864 ; Guillery, Les Arts Cèramiques, 1854; Jacquemart, Les Mer-veilles de la Cèramique, 1866-69; Magnier, Manuel du Porcelainier, Faïencier, &c., 1864; Mareschal, Les Faïences, Anciennes et Modernes, 1867; Maze, Recherches sur la Cèramique, 1870 ; Ris-Paquot, Histoire de to Faience Ancienue, 1873-74 ; Salvetat, -Le~.ons de Ciramique, 1857 ; Waring, Ceramic Art in Remote Ages, 1875 ; Ziegler, Etudes Cèramiques, 1850; Jännicke, Grundriss der Keramik, Stuttgart, 1879; Champfleury, Bibliographie Cèramique, Paris, 1881 (gives a very large and complete list of works on pottery and porcelain, in all languages); Soden Smith, List of Works on Pottery and Porcelain in the Kensington Art Library, 1875.
On Pottery and Porcelain Marks the reader may consult Barth, Porzellan-Marken und Monogramme, 1873 ; Chaffers, Handbook of Marks and Monograms, 1874; Demmin, Guide de l’Amateur de Faïences et Porcelaines, 1873; Graesse, Guide de l’Amateur de Porcelaine, &c., 1873; Palliser, The China Collector’s Companion, 1874-75 ; Ris-Paquot, Dictionnaire des Marques et Monogrammes, 1874 ; Hooper and Phillips, Manual of Marks, 1876; Bowes, Japanese Marks, 1882. Many other lists of ceramic marks occur also in the various works mentioned under previous heads. (J. H. M.)
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The above article was written by: J. H. Middleton.