Various

“ On this substructure all the pottery of the last four thousand years has been built, for behind all Egyptian, Greek or Chinese pottery we find the same primitive foundations.
We now reach the beginnings of recorded history, and as the great nations of the past emerge from the shadows they each develop the potter’s art in an individual way. The Egyptians evolve schemes of glowing colour—brilliant glazes fired on objects, shaped in sand held together with a little clay, or actually carved from rocks or stones ”

“ Meantime, in the farther East, the Chinese—the greatest race of potters the world has ever seen—were quietly gathering strength, until from their glazed, hard-fired pottery there emerged the marvellous, white translucent porcelain, one of the wonders of the medieval world.
With the dawn of the 15th century of our era, the state of affairs was practically this:—In European countries proper we find rudely fashioned and decorated wares in which we can trace the slow development of a native craft from the superposition of Roman methods on the primitive work of the peoples. ”

“ Formerly every writer on the history of pottery seemed to imagine that the very rudest pottery must have been the invention of Egyptian, Chinese or some other distinct race from which the knowledge radiated to all the other races of the prehistoric world. No conception could be more erroneous. Since the middle of the 19th century research has established beyond doubt that wherever clay was found men became potters of a sort, just as they became hunters, carpenters, smiths, &c., by sheer force of need and slowly-gathered tradition. ”

“ Europe can claim no share in the discovery of porcelain, the white and translucent pottery par excellence, for when the first specimens of Chinese porcelain were brought to Europe, perhaps as early as the 11th or 12th century, they excited the greatest wonder and admiration. ”

“ Perhaps the most characteristic paintings of Maestro Giorgio are the central medallions of cups and deep dishes enclosing a single figure of a child or a cupid in grisaille. Giorgio’s larger figure compositions, if indeed his signature in lustre may be taken to imply that he painted the designs as well as lustred them, show great inequality, some rising to a very high standard—as the dish with “the Three Graces” in the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the “Bath of Nymphs” in the Wallace collection—while in others the figure drawing is quite inferior. ”

“ When, about the middle of the 18th century, European pottery took on its modern form, of earthenware made after the English fashion, and porcelain like the French and German, the lead or felspathic glazes used brought about another revolution in the potter’s palette. The growing ideal of mechanical perfection discounted the freedom of the earlier brushwork, and printed patterns, or painting that might almost have been printed, removed the mind still farther from the richness of painted faience or majolica. ”

“ In the earlier wares the treatment is bold and vigorous as becomes true pottery colour, and the softening of the colour by the melting glaze adds to the artistic charm of the result. Painting on a fired glaze is like painting on glass—fine lines, delicate drawing, and skilful stippling or cross-hatching are just as natural in this method as they are impossible or uncertain in the other. Naturalism of rendering takes the place of conventional decorative treatment, and elaborate minuteness of finish supplants the broad freedom of direct brushwork. ”

“ The Grandidier 746 collection in the Louvre, the Franks collection at the British Museum, the Victoria and Albert Museum, as well as all the great private collections of Chinese porcelain, contain samples of this primitive and archaic-looking ware.
The great stream of porcelain decoration was, however, to take an entirely different direction. The Persian pottery with its brilliant painted decorations in blue, green and purple on a pure white ground, exercised its natural fascination over men as keen in colour-sense as the Chinese potters. ”

“ Porcelain.—By this word we distinguish broadly all those pieces of pottery in which the body of the ware is vitrified and translucent, and also, broadly speaking, in which the material is white throughout, unless minute quantities of metallic oxides have been definitely added to colour it. It is impossible to draw any hard and fast line between porcelain and stoneware, for both may be thoroughly vitrified and translucent in thin pieces—but generally the stonewares are drab, red or brown in the colour of the fired clay, and they seldom exhibit the precious quality of translucence. ”

“ An important centre of caravan traffic, a nexus of palpitating life from east and west, north and south, we cannot wonder if it developed a special pottery of its own, tinged with something of a cosmopolitan spirit. ”

“ We cannot wonder that the Spanish-Arab potters paid more attention to their lustre decoration, for that was the natural thing to do. How strong and fine a palette could be evolved for use on a tin-enamel ground was shown by the Italian majolists of the 15th and 16th centuries; and when the later developments of tin-enamelled pottery took place in France, Holland, Germany, &c., their colour schemes are only echoes of Italian majolica crossed with Chinese porcelain. Delft, Nevers, Moustiers and Rouen may each charm us with its individuality ”

“ The 19th century was distinctly the century of machinery, and, for the most part, it witnessed the displacement by mechanical processes of those methods of handicraft which made the older pottery individual and interesting even in its simplest forms. Collectors are prepared to pay very large sums for choice examples of the potter’s art of bygone centuries, but it is doubtful if much of the pottery of the 19th century will ever be collected for its intrinsic merits, though it may be preserved as an illustration of the spirit of the age. ”

“ The glazed wares of the Han dynasty already mentioned are quite unlike any contemporary pottery produced in Syria, Egypt or Europe, for the body of the ware is so hard that it can scarcely be scratched by a knife, and the dark-greenish glaze has become iridescent by age as though it contained oxide of lead. The easily-fired friable wares of Assyria, Egypt and Greece seem to have had no attraction for the Chinese, and the glazes on their hard-fired wares were naturally different from those already described. ”

“ By this law the census office for the first time was allowed to call into existence and to control an adequate local staff of supervisors and enumerators. The scope of the work was so extended as to make the twenty-two quarto volumes of the tenth census almost an encyclopaedia, not only of the population, but also of the products and resources of the United States. Probably no other census in the world has ever covered so wide a range of subjects, and perhaps none except that of India and the eleventh American census has extended through so many volumes. ”

“ Examination shows it to be much more than a surface polish or than the gloss of the finest Greek vases, and we shall have to wait for a final determination of its nature until some one who is at once a chemist and a potter can reconstruct it synthetically. Whatever its nature and method of production, it is certain that the glaze itself was a transparent film which heightened the natural red colour of the clay, until in the finest specimens it has something of the quality of red coral. ”

“ Fired in an open fire, or in the most rudimentary form of potter’s kiln, such pottery may be buff, drab, brown or red—and these from imperfect firing become smoked, grey or black. How many generations of men, of any race, handed on their painfully acquired bits of knowledge before this earliest stage was passed, we can never know; but here and there, where the circumstances were favourable or the race was quick of observation, we can trace in the work of prehistoric man in many countries a gradually advancing skill based on increased technical knowledge. ”

“ A cypress is usually planted beside the grave, its odour being supposed to neutralize any noxious exhalations from the ground, and thus every cemetery is a forest, where by day hundreds of turtle doves are on the wing or perching on the trees, and where bats and owls swarm undisturbed at night. Especially for the Turkish women the cemeteries are a favourite resort, and some of them are always to be seen praying beside the narrow openings that lead down into a parent’s, a husband’s, or a brother’s grave. ”

“ With the introduction of this many-coloured Chinese porcelain into Europe the same practice was eagerly followed by our European potters, and a new palette of colours and fresh styles of decoration soon arose amongst us. Painting in on-glaze colours, being executed on the fired glaze, resembles glass painting, and it generally offers a striking contrast both in technique and colour-quality to the painting executed in colours under the glaze. ”

“ The study of Greek vases has thus received an additional impetus from the light that it throws on the early civilization of the country, and its value for the student of ethnology. But it has always appealed strongly to the archaeologist and in some degree also to the artist or connoisseur, to the former from its importance as a contribution to the history of Greek art, mythology and antiquities, to the latter from its beauty of form and decoration. ”

“ Early in the 18th century a fine, white, thin, salt-glazed ware was made in Staffordshire, in many quaint and fanciful forms largely influenced by Chinese porcelain—still an object of wonder and mystery. Teapots, coffee-pots, tea-caddies, plates, dishes, bowls, candlesticks, mugs and bottles were made in great variety, and at its best the ware is a dainty and elegant one, so that a brisk trade was developed in the district, and, for the first time, a distinctively English pottery was exported to the continent and to the American colonies. ”

“ The late 18th century marks the period when pottery was no longer produced, as Italian majolica, the Henri-Deux ware, the Palissy wares, the best faience of Nevers, Rouen, Moustiers, Delft or Nuremberg had been, for the noble or the wealthy, but when it was largely in demand by the poorer classes, anxious in their turn to have a useful ware which should imitate the more costly porcelain used by the great. ”

“ Under the Sung dynasty China enjoyed great material prosperity, and all the arts were cultivated assiduously. Pottery of distinguished merit was made in many districts, and much of it has been classified as porcelain because the body is whitish and vitrified, though it is much inferior in finish and in translucence to the perfect white porcelain of later times. It is necessary to realize, too, that we have no record of any pottery with painted decoration until perhaps the very end of the 13th century; such ornament as was used consists entirely of designs incised or modelled in the clay. ”

“ Throughout Europe, and over the greater part of the world, leaded glazes have been continuously used and improved for all ordinary pottery, and it is only with certain special hard-fired types of ware that they have yet been successfully replaced. Chinese porcelain and all the European porcelains made by analogous methods are fired at so high a temperature that a glaze by felspar softened by lime and silica is found most suitable for them, and the hard-fired stonewares, rich in silica, are often glazed with a salt glaze, or a melted earth rich in oxide of iron. ”