Arthur Hayden

COPENHAGEN ART FAIENCE.

Dish, with tropical bird, decorated in rich colours. Designed by Christian Joachim.

CHAPTER XI

COPENHAGEN ART FAIENCE

The inception of a new technique—The slow growth of a new art—The old masters of majolica—The great promise of a new school—The rich output of colour and inventive form.

The student of ceramic art well knows that porcelain and earthenware, although as poles asunder in their technique, do oftentimes touch one another in apparent affinity. For instance, what is more earthen than the brown crumbling body of the Dutch delft ware? It is a poor relation of porcelain. But the Dutch potter had in mind the great prototypes of the East. His dishes and his jars were an attempt to copy blue-and-white Kang-He porcelain. He covered his brown body with a white enamel and painted his tulips and his Batavian-Chinese designs to imitate the Dutch East India Company's examples he had before him. He created a new art, but he started as a copyist. Beautiful as is Delft, it is really only a simulation in earthenware of blue-and-white porcelain. Similarly in regard to English earthenware, with the noteworthy exceptions of a few types essentially true to the technique of earthenware, it is singular how peculiarly obtuse the Staffordshire potters have been to the limitations of earthenware. They have assiduously attempted to bring it into line with porcelain in its decoration and its appearance. The line of demarcation between earthenware and porcelain has become in England very indefinite, owing to the fact that true porcelain is not manufactured in this country. In consequence, the artificial composition of the body of English porcelain, where calcined bones form an addition to the Chinese formula of true porcelain, has brought it into closer relationship with earthenware than is the case in any other European porcelain. "Semi-porcelain," a term in English ceramics, is not to be found elsewhere. It is still a moot-point whether to classify Wedgwood's jasper ware as earthenware or porcelain. "Ironstone china," a hardware introduced by Mason in 1830 and copied by other potters, is earthenware, and the instances could be multiplied of confusion in nomenclature. But where, as on the Continent, only hard paste that is true porcelain in the Chinese manner is produced, save at SÈvres, the distinction between this and earthenware is most clearly defined.

At Copenhagen, therefore, the manufacture of faience at a porcelain factory was a leap into the unknown. Not only were different kilns to be employed, but a different technique and especial conditions governed the manufacture. The theories which had been skilfully put into practice and the ideals which had been reached in the art of porcelain were alien to the new departure in the field of faience. To have welded together the two arts and the two techniques would have ruined the enterprise at its commencement. The two streams were allowed to run apart, and the result is an artistic achievement no less noteworthy than the Renaissance of the Royal Copenhagen porcelain. The mantle of Philip Schou has descended on his son-in-law, Frederik Dalgas, who has ably continued the traditions of his predecessor in the management of this national enterprise. The inception and development of this art faience of Copenhagen is due to Mr. Frederik Dalgas, who brought a keen and virile intuition into this new field of ceramic adventure. Whereas in the porcelain there is delicate artistry and finesse, in the faience there is breadth and vivacity of colour schemes. Never do the twain touch each other in kinship. The faience is not a poor kinsman of the porcelain. It is a new creation, a fresh and forceful note in ceramic art. It has a relationship with bygone majolica of another land. It is a transplantation of a southern stock into a northern clime. One is reminded of those labels at Kew Gardens indicating that certain rare trees from sunnier lands have been acclimatized and have become beauty spots in a far country.

The Slow Growth of a New Art.—It is always interesting to the student to examine specimens belonging to the experimental stage of an art. It is here that the potter struggling with his new technique betrays in his motifs suggestions as to its origin. There are very few wares in ceramic art that stand out as supremely original. In some way or another they bear relationship to earlier potters' work, as a rule. Whole schools of artistic potters have been avowedly copyist. This is a truism in regard to European ceramic art as a whole: it is admittedly derivative from Oriental prototypes. But in regard to various branches of pottery apart from porcelain, there is little doubt that it has a long lineage. It is therefore possible to compare the stages of evolution of faience in the Western countries and to realize that since Greek and Roman and Etruscan days man was a progressive potter, though even in this field derivative technique came from east of Suez. The earliest examples of the Copenhagen faience suggest that the old Italian majolica models had lingered in the memory of the potters making their essay into a new domain. Those who have carefully watched the slow but sure growth of this art faience of Copenhagen will have come to realize how surely the potter has put his foot on a new plane and established something that is characteristic and original. He has by a gradual process year by year added new forms, created dishes and beakers of sound design, and perfected the decorations in colour till they have reached something which is gay without being garish and exuberant in rich colouring without being other than surprisingly harmonious. One wonders how the Oriental rug-weaver can place his blues and his reds seemingly so disastrous to tone effect. But there they are, and, either by strong contrast or perfect harmony, the results are artistically true. It is the same question one asks of the colour effects in the Copenhagen art faience. They are perfectly luscious and strikingly original. No one else has employed these combinations of pigments, nor their wide range of colours. They appear to have been produced by magic. But to any one with a working knowledge of a great factory will come the reflection that the apparent magic is the wizardry of genius, and genius has been defined as the infinite capacity for taking pains. The strenuous work, the long vigils, the indefatigable and indomitable determination to accomplish the mastery of the technique is here evident. It is the strong and fruitful harvest of a slow growth carefully tended in an especially artistic environment by trained minds.

The Old Masters of Majolica.—The Italian school with its glazed ware of polychrome decorative effects, Faenza, Caffaggiolo, Urbino, Pesarro, and later its lustre (notably the ruby ware of Gubbio), was partially derivative from Persian and from Hispano-Moresque prototypes. Figure subjects form an important feature. Groups in contemporary costume, portraits, and religious or allegorical subjects, as well as heraldic devices, occupy the centre of the dish. But the border is a framework which is richly decorated with brilliant and varied colours. The designs are conceived in the best vein of sixteenth-century fecundity of invention. Elaborate floriate ornament is in combination with satyrs and grotesque masks, or cupids, or birds, or sea monsters. It suggests the sprightly grace which enlivens the tail-pieces engraved in contemporary Italian books. Design, till it ran riot later, was exuberant, and there seemed no end to the outburst of originality and imagination.

It is to these old masters, particularly of the Italian period from about 1480 to about 1580, that one turns for great ideas and perfect execution. Before the latter date signs were evident that the art was declining: already the secret of the Gubbio ruby lustre had been lost.

The earlier Persian pottery and the Rhodian ware, produced as far afield as Damascus and Ispahan, had disseminated the wondrous technique of the East. The Hispano-Moresque ware of Malaga and Valencia, a century earlier than the greatest period of the Italian school, gradually lost its Moorish character with arabesque design and pseudo-Arabic characters, till, in the late sixteenth century, designs in contemporary Spanish costume and broad floriate borders found favour. The copper lustre was, however, still a feature.

It is obvious, therefore, that the old masters are the fount from which so much has been derived. Nevers, Rouen, and Moustiers caught the colour-schemes of Persia and Italy, and each in turn made them her own. In studying the finest work of the old masters of faience we see that the technique is something very different from what Staffordshire has made it. John Dwight in the seventeenth, and Thomas Whieldon in the eighteenth century both worked on sound lines. It is not high art to attempt to make faience simulate porcelain, any more than it is when wall paper pretends to be marble, or leather, or tapestry. Porcelain shows as much of its white body and sparkling glaze as is possible. It depends, as does an etching, on its uncovered background for its luminous effects and its atmosphere. Faience is like an oil painting: it demands that the whole surface be covered. It has a yellow, or brown, or green, or lilac ground. The decoration, in contradistinction to porcelain, is broad and strong. There are no finicking "Chantilly sprigs" in faience. Bold, virile, and striking must be the notes that dominate faience, but withal—and herein lies the supremest difficulty—it must be naÏve and simple. It must not suggest the palace, and certainly not the boudoir. It must bespeak the open air. It is the perennial herbaceous border in ceramic art, and not the hot-house or the conservatory.

The Great Promise of a New School.—Lovers of Copenhagen ware and connoisseurs who were aware of the possibilities of faience produced under rightly understood principles have not been disappointed in the art faience which Mr. Christian Joachim has made his own under a group of trained artist potters. His is the guerdon of praise, and the laurel wreath should be placed on his head for his services to the art of his native country. He has happily received the support of a farseeing directorate. His life record will stand as a great triumph for the Copenhagen art faience. What Arnold Krog has done in porcelain, Christian Joachim has done in faience. With a fine appreciation of the limitations of his technique, and with a bold imagination as to further possibilities in modern conditions, he has sent forth his pottery with a message of gaiety and youth. No man is a prophet in his own country. But in Europe and in America Christian Joachim's work has become noteworthy. Danes the world over buy it because it is Danish. We English and other strangers buy it because it is beautiful art.

In an examination of the art tendencies of the new school, it would appear that in the attempt to be surprisingly original there is the wilful abandonment of anything suggestive of Persian, or Rhodian, or Moorish, or Italian ideals. The motifs are especially modern, and the schemes of colour are skilfully handled in a novel manner, and owing to scientific development the potter's palette is more extensive than heretofore. The promise has already been fulfilled, and connoisseurs await later developments with no little curiosity.

The Rich Output of Colour and Inventive Form.—The illustrations to this chapter lack colour, and therefore they cannot do justice to what is one of the most important features in the new art faience. Among the pigments that are used are the following, no incomplete range in comparison with what has gone before in this ceramic field. The Dutch found blue the least refractory of colours, and adhered largely to its use till later they employed yellow. Rouen employed yellow and red and green. But Copenhagen has a palette consisting of cream, yellow, green, blue, red, lilac, and a warm plum colour or purple. This latter colour, the product of scientific modernity, is wielded with a sure hand by Christian Joachim and his school of artists. It is in such examples as the dish and the placque with tropical birds (illustrated, pp. 307, 311) that the rich colour effects procurable are seen at their best. In the placque extreme simplicity and artlessness of design is exhibited in the floral border. In the dish the border is luxuriant with colour, although broad in treatment. Such examples are extremely decorative, and exhibit this branch of ceramic art on a high level. They attain their excellence by methods of their own. They cannot be confounded with the productions of any other factory, either older or contemporary. Their originality is a factor not to be eliminated in adjudging them.

In vases and other vessels demanding attention to form there is apparent the striving, natural in all potters, for unique forms. A fine vase with rich floral decoration (illustrated, p. 315) follows the early Italian drug pot. Another breaks new ground, and its square hexagonal surfaces require a touch of geometric ornament, rarely found in Copenhagen faience (illustrated, p. 319). Punch-bowls with covers, having as a knob a full-sized lemon in natural colours, are novel and utilitarian. The modelling of Mr. Harboe and of Mr. Slott-MÖller is deserving of recognition. A Midsummer Night's Dream was performed some years ago in the open air in a glade in the Deerhavn, near Copenhagen, before some thousands of people. It is natural, therefore, to find little faience figures of Bottom the Weaver, of Flute the Bellows-mender, and of Philostrate the Master of the Revels, of Puck, of Oberon and of Titania, and of delightful fairies. These are not conjured up from the German translation by Schlegel of Shakespeare's plays, but from Shakespeare's own imaginings, minus the addition of the heavy hand of German Kultur. We do not remember that Staffordshire has attempted to reproduce Shakespearean characters in clay, though at one time, after Wedgwood, Jupiter and Venus and other alien gods and goddesses were found on every cottager's mantelshelf. The Copenhagen figures of Clown, Columbine, and Harlequin are pleasing in their graceful simplicity (illustrated, p. 327).

Boxes—bonbonniÈres as the French term them—are produced in great variety. We reproduce two, broadly decorated and having covers with original design of bird and wood sprite. This latter follows the true canons of plastic art. He is as rotund, with no breakable projections, as a Japanese ivory button netsuke. With them is illustrated a vase Persian in character, but with modern colour effects. All this is excellent, but one asks for more. In wishing the new school of the North bon voyage, we may be allowed to express a hope that it will continue its outburst of resplendent colour and perpetuate its virile design, that it may worthily vie with the great masters of faience in the South and in the East. In regard to personal inclinations, the writer would like to see sometimes embodied in the decorative borders of placques and vases the interlaced work of Runic design, symbolic of the Norse mystery and magic. If the Italian saints find place on the tazzas of Faenza, surely Thor and Wodin, who gave their names to two days of the week, and other heroes of Northern mythology, should be embodied in this Copenhagen gallery. The triumphs of the Vikings and their sagas quicken the imagination. Of heroes of later date, one could wish to see Cnut at the English seashore, or the rugged portrait of old Christian IV.

It may be that these vain cravings for pages from the past run not attune to the dreams of the master potter with an eye to the future; possibly decorative technique forbids—but here are the stray lines of a foreign spectator in kindly spirit.

The ware is marked in green with an italic A to signify its origin from the parent Aluminia factory as early as 1863, and to this are added the three lines so well known as a Royal Copenhagen Porcelain mark.