William Burton, Harry R. H. Hall, Albert van de Put, Henry B. Walters, Robert L. Hobson and Bernard Rackham

“ It must be pointed out that the great change implied in the replacement of patterns painted in blue under the glaze by those painted in colours over the glaze profoundly influenced the style of painting. 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. ”

“ The Grandidier 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 clays found on or close to the earth’s surface are so varied in composition and properties that we may see in them one of the vital factors that has determined the nature of the pottery of different countries and different peoples. They vary in plasticity, and in the hardness, colour and texture of the fired product, through an astonishingly wide range. To-day the fine, plastic, white-burning clays of the south of England are carried all over Europe and America for the fabrication of modern wares, but that is a state of affairs which has only been attained in recent times. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ 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. ”

“ In discussing the pottery of these peoples we have already pointed out at what a very early period they had developed the production of rich and beautiful coloured glazes—the Egyptians as a jewel-like decoration of small pieces made in a very sandy paste, or actually carved from stone, and the Assyrians, on a bolder scale, in their glazed and coloured brickwork. ”

“ Champion’s Bristol factory lasted from 1773 to 1781, when the business had to be sold to a number of Staffordshire potters owing to the serious losses it had entailed. The Bristol porcelain, like that of Plymouth, was always a true felspathic porcelain resembling the Chinese, but made from the china clay and china stone of Cornwall. It is, therefore, harder and whiter than the other English porcelains, and its cold, harsh, glittering glaze marks it off at once from the wares of Bow, Chelsea, Worcester or Derby. ”

“ 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 essential point about the potter’s clay of the best tin-enamelled wares, whether Spanish, Italian, French or Dutch, is that the clays are those known geologically as “marls,” which contain a large percentage of carbonate of lime. Such clays always fire to a pinky red or buff colour, and give a ware that is strong and yet light in substance, and on no other kind of clay does the tin-enamel display its full perfection (see Deck’s La Faience) . The analyses of certain tin-enamelled wares are useful as showing the essential constitution of the best pottery bodies for such purposes. ”

“ Neatness, serviceableness and durability, English domestic wares undoubtedly possess in a degree unknown to any earlier type of pottery, but the general use of transfer-printing as the principal method of decoration, and the absence of any distinctive style of ornament, must cause them to take a low rank in comparison with the wares of past centuries, when mechanical perfection was impossible and rich colour and truly decorative painting were the chief distinctions of the pottery of every country. ”

“ The 19th century witnessed a great and steady growth in the output of porcelain and pottery of all kinds in Europe and the United States. Mechanical methods were largely called in to supplement or replace what had hitherto remained almost pure handicraft. The English methods of preparing and mixing the materials of the body and glaze, and the English device of replacing painted decoration by machine printing, to a large extent carried the day, with a great gain to the mechanical aspects of the work and in many cases with an entire extinction of its artistic spirit. ”

“ In Italy we find a carefully levigated red clay in use, great care being devoted to its preparation and admixture. But apart from decoration and style there is a great similarity in the general appearance of the Italian and provincial pottery made under Roman influence, and it is often very difficult to decide whether the vases were manufactured where they had been found or were imported from some famous centre of manufacture. The secret of the glossy red surface seems to have been common property and found its way from Italy to Gaul, Spain and Germany, and perhaps even to Britain. ”

“ It is only toward the end of the 16th century that we find the first examples of porcelain decorated with colours fired over the glaze. It seems probable that the practice grew out of the use of enamels on metal, which had spread from Byzantium to China, and which the Chinese developed with remarkable skill. It is important to remember that the very nature of the glaze of Chinese porcelain, necessitating such a high temperature to melt it, severely restricted the under-glaze palette to cobalt-blue and the glorious but uncertain copper-red. ”