Jennie J. Young

“ Let us suppose that a piece of pottery or porcelain has been painted, and that the action of the fire has made the coloring perennial, so that we find on it a portrait or a landscape everlasting as the ware itself. Let us suppose, further, that the tints are natural, that, in short, the portrait is all that we now understand by the word, and that in the landscape nature is displayed as on canvas—then we should have a specimen of the perfect union of the potter’s and painter’s art. ”

“ Their variety is as wonderful as the wealth of their resources. One may turn{152} from a vase, representing the exercise of the most fearless and riotous fancy, to another in which the details are as realistic as the lizards of Palissy. Or, again, a vase which looks as though it might have been cut out of a precious stone, with no decoration but its inimitable color, may stand side by side with another covered with flowers so tenderly treated and delicately colored, that one is inclined to pronounce the painstaking Celestial the prince of artists. ”

“ It was by thus acquainting themselves with the beauty of Grecian art that the Romans began to display a desire for the artistic embellishment of their homes and capital. When their arms were directed against Greece, and Athens fell under their assaults, in the first century before Christ, Greek artists flocked to Rome, and for a time made it the workshop in which they labored and the school in which they taught. But with the sun itself its rays of golden light must disappear, though for a time they gild the earth and clouds with their departing glory. ”

“ The body is a common coarse earthen-ware, manipulated with very moderate skill, and the color is in no respect remarkable. But in the disposal of the grape-vine decoration, and the drawing and attitude of the bird, there is nothing more simple and tasteful to be seen on the finest Hizen porcelain. In spite of the humble material, the artist compels our admiration. It is the same wherever we turn. Art is for all, the lowly as well as the rich, and embellishes every object, the humble as well as the most costly. ”

“ So light are the pieces that it is difficult to persuade one’s self that they are not porcelain. The shapes are quaint, and suggestive of flower-cups and leaves. One style of decoration may be taken as typical. The delicious creamy buff paste, covered with crackle glaze, is sprinkled with gold, after a manner in which the Japanese have no equals. On this rich but delicate ground are many-colored flowers, birds, or insects, which harmonize admirably with the shape of the cups. In America so much beauty could be possessed only by the rich. In Japan almost any one may be its owner. ”

“ Its beauty is in its suggestiveness, which strikes us again in many of the flower-wreathed vases where there are openings of green, into which one can look as into a forest glade. The mind creates what the eye cannot see, and the glade is peopled with beings whose forms are never caught. This is, no doubt, an example of fancy helping out the artist, but the artist is none the less fortunate and skilful who can thus induce the fancy to take wing. ”

“ Nothing is too bold for the Chinese artist, and no effect appears to be unattainable or untried. He is equally at home painting on white enamel a delicate border, or rivalling the rich hues of a gaudy butterfly in a life-like imitation of the fluttering insect. ”

“ The decoration of the vitreous is sparing, and of most careful execution, as though the artist were desirous of giving full effect to the natural beauty of the ware in its unadorned purity. Decorations of this kind gradually merge into more elaborate designs, in which flowers are strewn in careless grace over the opalescent paste, or animals are represented in gold and red. In the artistic porcelain the decoration partakes more of the Chinese intricacy and richness of color. ”

“ THE ceramics of America bring us into a field hitherto unexplored, and showing few footprints of the investigators who have been led to its borders. We are here confronted by a state of things to which we have hitherto been strangers. As creatures belonging to the New World we have been taught to look with a respect in which America has no share upon the aged civilizations of Egypt, Assyria, and China. Their ancient inhabitants were the patriarchs of the world, the pioneers of civilization; we are the latter-day heirs to the arts and sciences of which they laid the foundations. ”

“ Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?” It is this absolute “power over the clay” which led men to use it for the conveyance of their first conceptions of the beautiful. The pottery of all countries shows how religion stimulated art, by furnishing it with themes, and infusing into it a spiritual signification which all could understand. The pottery of the Greeks shows best how art may embellish religion and history, and perpetuate{32} the legends belonging to neither. ”

“ A wide range is before us from which to choose—from the vulgarity of overloaded glaring colors and gilt, to the most exquisite simplicity of design and perfection of workmanship. Every house-keeper ought to visit an extensive collection, and, by comparing and contrasting one style with another, learn in what the true beauty of ceramic decoration consists. The painting and moulding of pottery and porcelain are quite as important as oil-painting and sculpture. ”

“ The great expense attending the production of works of art is not, however, the only drawback with which the American manufacturer has to contend. It may, in fact, be said that the impediments to the rapid advancement of ceramic art in America have not yet been touched upon. They consist of neither the lack of capital, enterprise, experience, nor skill.
It is a singular fact that while native manufacture advances with rapid strides, and finds on all sides a public ready to give it a hearty reception, native art must force its way to recognition. ”

“ It is thus we revert across comparative barrenness to the Renaissance, beyond which, and hidden, lie the earlier glories of Etruria and Græco-Italy. As we turn to France the sun is in front of us, striking full upon a height still cloud-capt and unrevealed, and bathing the intervening undulating landscape in the fulness of its undimmed splendor. With France the present sheds lustre, life, and light upon a long past beginning with pre-Roman Gallia, and extending through Roman domination, the darkness of the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance to the present time. ”

“ The true history of Japanese art is the history of the art we have called national; all else is but the prostitution of individual genius to commerce. In the former we find simplicity and piety mingled with a humor often quaintly clothed in clay. There is abundant material for research, for study and close examination. The art of Japan has many peculiarities, and will give an observer ideas of artistic beauty and æsthetic taste which an American or European education would never suggest. ”

“ We find elaborately decorated pieces, the great virtue of the floral ornamentation of which is, that it is—not true, but—new. A new leaf or a novelty in flowers is a valuable discovery; and the répertoire of the potter is filled with designs in which nature has no part. If nature be brought within the artist’s reach, it will be followed more closely; and the result might be the realization of Ruskin’s idea—the rendition of absolute similitude in outline, color, and perspective. ”

“ A fourth shows us a barn-yard pair, a duck and drake, the latter preening himself in the sun, under which his many-hued plumage glitters{299} with a lustre almost iridescent. On a fifth a gayly feathered open-throated songster appears to be warbling his even-song upon a tiny spray. Flowers are painted with all the splendor of nature, and cling round the forms with gracefully sweeping stem. One in particular is made attractive simply by its color, a mottled gray, into the depths of which we look as into the clouds hanging over the couch of the sun in the early mornings of summer. ”

“ As in criticising a book, it is less essential to measure the difference between one’s own ideas and those of the author, than to look at the subject from the author’s stand-point, and to examine the result from the inside, so, in estimating art, it is equally essential to enter into the artist’s views, and to study not only the ideal he means to portray or the real he tries to imitate, but also what he considers essential to imitation and portrayal, and the intelligence to which he addresses himself. ”

“ The artists of the Orient, on the other hand, either restrict themselves to subjects which can be treated upon a judiciously limited part of the surface, or throw aside compositions entirely, and trust to floral designs, isolated figures, repetitious decoration without unity of design, or to beauty of colors alone. Everything contributed to exalt their estimation of color for its own sake, and to it we accordingly find that they devote the regard entertained by the Greeks for form. ”

“ There are vases which, while offering for our admiration a beauty which is eternal, are yet invested with a chameleon-like power of change. They never allow monotony to break their charm. It may consist of a mere color. Take the old turquoise-blue of China. The eye can scarcely catch the fleeting shades, to determine whether the vase is blue or green. While daylight lasts, the blue is dominant, but when the lamps are lit in the evening, the blue gives place to a green of greatly increased brilliancy. ”

“ A frequent design is a home scene, in which a lady sits near a table attended by two children, and with one or two vases standing round. These glimpses of domestic life afford some little insight into the usages of the people, the courtesies of society, and the occupation and pastimes of the young. When the pieces are larger in size, the subjects are taken from court life, and very rarely from religion. When strong contrasts are resorted to—as by coloring the inside green and the outside rose—the effect is no less pleasing. ”

“ The disposition of the decoration, which at first seems stiff and formal, is not only in harmony with the shape of the beaker, but is the only one by which its beauty of form could be fully brought out. When historical incidents are the subjects of the painting, the execution of the figures is admirable. It is in such pieces that we can best appreciate the accuracy of the artist, and his admirable control of his brush. ”

“ We have seen that in Egypt religion set a limit to art. Practically the matter resolved itself into this, that the potter-artist could rise above neither the god he worshipped nor the sacred symbol he revered. Priestcraft is necessarily conservative. Change and improvement involve a departure from the old, and the ancient gods might be left behind and their shrines deserted, were art to rise above the delineation of the artistic abominations which were encased in sacred tradition as the symbols of deity. The image cannot change any more than the god. ”

“ The rule appears to be to study the antique, but instead of copying or reproducing the works of the ancients, to follow their example in choosing subjects from the every-day life of the artist’s own time. We nowhere see a copy of ancient statuary or feel a breath of borrowed inspiration. Every subject is taken from modern literature, or from life in America in the nineteenth century. ”

“ It is just possible that the Japanese derived a hint of what their own imitations were likely to be considered by the more fastidious Europeans, from their own opinion of European imitations of the decorations of China and Japan. For it must not be imagined that the imitation was all perpetrated on one side. It is no unusual thing for the frequenter of dealers’ emporiums to find a European vase surmounted by the Dog of Fo, or decorated by birds nowhere visible except to the imagination of a Celestial artist. Art cannot exist in slavery. ”

“ We have similarly, in the faience vases of Haviland now under consideration, constant hints of inspiration drawn from the simplest forms of nature. A branch falls upon a vase and becomes its ornament. A butterfly hangs for a moment on fluttering wing and drops from its flight, and it too becomes an ornament. The workman leaves his unfinished work at night, and when he returns at day-break, finds that a lizard or an asp has crept upon the still slimy vase to bask itself in the first rays of the morning sun. It darts out of sight, but it has left an idea which appears in the decoration ”

“ In porcelain, even to a more marked degree than in pottery, the peculiarities of Japanese art are noticeable. It brings before us, in their greatest perfection, the careful attention to finish, the harmonizing of the most minute detail with the general design, the boundless variety of form, and the general tendency to subordinate the latter to ornamentation and color. The porcelain is less capable of resisting heat than that of the Chinese. ”

“ As if completely to subvert the statements of the first visitors to Hindostan, China, the great seat of the porcelain manufacture, has acknowledged its indebtedness to that country, and the extent to which it has imitated its styles. There is no reason for supposing that a country which had early shown a wonderful capacity for reaching the highest forms of architectural magnificence, and for executing work of the nicest delicacy in the precious metals and gems, lent to China alone its ideas of ceramic beauty. ”

“ Any ulterior use of color, as for picture-painting on the flat surface of porcelain plaques, does not appear to have occupied their attention to any very great extent. It is in isolated figures and flowers that we can best study the marvellous delicacy of the Chinese or Japanese brush, and the fidelity with which the suggestions of nature are followed. There is little absolute imitation. Color is paramount, and its beauty obscures the incongruities of Oriental art. ”