WE now approach a point in our history which stands within sight both of the wonders of early Greece and of the beginnings in the Middle Ages of the best ceramic art of Europe. From Persia, as a centre, art travelled north and west by many devious routes ere it touched the European shores. But behind the Persian is the older civilization of Babylonia and Assyria, to whose glories it succeeded. We are thus once more brought back to Egypt and Egyptian influences. After spreading to the east they extended northward, and in Greece are met by others transmuted by a passage through Assyria and Phoenicia, but springing from the same prolific source on the banks of the Nile. Persia, after acquiring from Egypt’s eastern pupils her earliest knowledge, adapted the lessons thus derived to her own ideas, and spread it across the tracts already followed by others who had learned directly from her teachers. From both the south and east these lines of original and derivative art converged toward one point, the eastern shores and islands of the Mediterranean and Greece. To show how difficult{199} it is to disentangle the web of footprints, let us glance at Cyprus, as revealed to us by the discoveries of General Luigi Palma di Cesnola (Fig. 145), and described in his work upon “Its Ancient Cities, Tombs, and Temples.” The record may be read by all who visit the Metropolitan Museum of New York. We choose Cyprus because it was virtually the meeting-place of the East with the West. Assyrian, Egyptian, Phoenician, and Greek influences contend for the mastery.

enlarge-image
Fig. 145.—General Luigi Palma di Cesnola.
Fig. 145.—General Luigi Palma di Cesnola.

There is no certainty as to the derivation of the first settlers. They may have been either Phoenicians or Cilicians, and thus only another branch of the great Semitic family to which the Phoenicians belonged. Or colonists may have arrived from Cilicia and Phoenicia at about the same time. There is less reason for believing that any settlers came from Egypt, although the first historical conquest of the{200} island was effected by the Egyptians. This event took place about B.C. 1440, during the reign of Thothmes III. How long it remained under Egyptian control does not exactly appear, but it next passed into the hands of the Tyrians at a date prior to B.C. 1000. It was next conquered by Sargon, King of Assyria, and when, about B.C. 600, Apries, King of Egypt, took Sidon, he included Cyprus in his conquest. Amasis, the successor and murderer of Apries, completed the work of the latter. The Cypriotes then turned for deliverance to Cambyses of Persia, and Cyprus became a dependency of the great eastern power. Again the island was shaken by revolt, and the greater part of its people joined the Ionians in an unsuccessful attempt to throw off the Persian yoke. The Athenians and LacedÆmonians, after taking a portion of Cyprus (B.C. 477), abandoned their conquests. Then came the rebellion of Evagoras, King of Salamis, whose father had been dispossessed by the Persians, the result of which was that Evagoras recovered his own kingdom, but the island still remained tributary to Persia. It then fell under the control of Alexander of Macedon, and was held by his generals for a few years after his death. Ptolemy Lagus, or Soter, again brought Cyprus under Egyptian rule, and lastly came the arms of all-conquering Rome. We need go no farther. We stand in Cyprus,{201} upon a battle-field crossed by the armies of every nation of antiquity with any claim to warlike renown, and find in it at once the theme of ancient poets and the prize of ancient warriors. So far we may travel in the track of war, but the history of art is affected less by the conquest of battle than by permanent occupancy and the more peaceful conquest of colonization. Thus we find Phoenician art leaving a deeper impress upon Cyprus than any other, and one to be detected even amidst the confusion of Semitic and Hellenic remains. This art developed, on the one hand, into something bearing a semblance of an independent Cypriote character, and, on the other, into a form more distinctively Greek. Phoenicia was the country in which the Assyrian and Egyptian elements of decorative art were combined, and being brought on the other side into contact with Greece, the history of Greek art is thus continued backward into a remote antiquity.

The early Phoenician settlers located themselves chiefly on the southern and eastern sides of the island; the Greeks chose the north and west. Both were evidently actuated by the same motive, viz., to give the preference to the localities nearest the land from which they had come. The Phoenicians founded Paphos, Amathus, and Citium; the Greeks founded Salamis, Curium, Neo-Paphos, and several other towns. Tencer and Agapenor, two of the Greek heroes from the Trojan war, settled in Cyprus, and the island is thus introduced into Grecian legend. As time passed, the Greek and Phoenician elements underwent a more or less complete amalgamation. The Greek language became the prevailing tongue, and the Phoenician religion became the common creed. Aphrodite, who sprung from the foam of the sea, and was wafted to the shore of Cyprus, was the{202} Tyrian Astarte, the Assyrian Mylitta. Her worship extended over the whole island, and was engaged in with all the licentious impurity of the Oriental original. Greece rose as Phoenicia declined, and her people spread beyond the limits of their ancestral settlements. One civilization rose upon the ruins of another, and died in its turn; and Cesnola found them piled one upon another in strata, to be opened up and read like the stony leaves of the geologist’s book.

That this is literally the case can be very easily shown. General di Cesnola began his excavations at Larnaca, on the southern shore of the island, or near the ancient Citium, or Kittim, a Phoenician city. Near this city have been found a number of terra-cotta statuettes, which General Cesnola ascribes to the fourth century before our era. He thinks they were imported from Greece. They were accompanied by others, poorly executed, and some figures suggestive of Phoenicia and Egypt. It was here that the vase, (Fig. 150, was discovered. Crossing the Santa Croce range, he found, at Dali, on the plain of Messaria, the necropolis of the Phoenician city Idalium. He began his excavations among the Phoenician tombs, and exhumed a great quantity of pottery of several shapes. The vases are of light-colored clay, and are variously decorated with geometric patterns and concentric circles in brown color. One of them (Fig. 148) has a Phoenician inscription, and all the others were evidently Phoenician. Above the tier of tombs from which these were taken, a second tier was discovered, of a different epoch, and containing objects of a totally different character. Earthen-ware gave place to glass in all the shapes found in Greek pottery, the amphora, lekythos, krater, kylix, and others. Many were of a formation so evidently late that the discoverer ascribes them to the GrÆco-Roman period. Here then, was Greek and Phoenician work reposing in juxtaposition. An explanation was found by returning to the Greek tomb which had{203} been first opened, and under it was discovered the continuation of those of the Phoenicians. The Greek Idalium had grown upon the ruins of a Phoenician predecessor, and hidden under the ashes of the one Cesnola found the necropolis of the other. On prosecuting his researches in the latter, the type of pottery again altered, and the decoration of concentric rings reappeared. At Alambra, west of Dali, he found a number of small clay images—horsemen, warriors, chariots, a representation of a procession, and vases of two kinds. He made excavations in five burying-grounds, all apparently belonging to the Phoenician Idalium; and from a mound in the same district he obtained a collection which, from the combination of Egyptian and Assyrian forms and decoration, may be assumed to contain some of the most ancient relics of Phoenician art. Two green-glazed bowls have Egyptian paintings, and the vases occasionally take the form of animals and birds.

enlarge-image
Fig. 150.—Assyro-Phoenician Vase, from Larnaca. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Museum.)
Fig. 150.—Assyro-Phoenician Vase, from Larnaca. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Museum.)

Striking eastward from Dali, the explorer reached Athieno, near the ancient Golgoi, and there came upon a necropolis and an ancient temple of Venus. The most remarkable fact concerning the statuary brought from this locality is that the lines of nationality are so broad and well defined. General Cesnola then determined to push his {204}explorations toward the East, and, after visiting Salamis, turned westward to Paphos, Neo-Paphos, and then northward to Soli and other places on the northern shore. Returning to the southern shore, a number of terra-cotta vases and figures of the Phoenician type and Egyptian green-glazed vessels were exhumed at Amathus. A statuette of Astarte and figures of Egyptian deities were found almost together. Lastly, General Cesnola visited Curium, a city said to have been founded by an Argive colony. There he found pottery of the usual mixed types, including vases, terra-cotta figures, and one large vase (Fig. 151), so strongly marked with Greek influences that he ascribes it to the earlier period of Greek art. Both General Cesnola and Mr. A. S. Murray think that it may have been taken to Curium from Greece. Its four handles, its great size, and its elaborate decoration make it unequalled among the vast number of Cypriote relics in the Metropolitan Museum.

In constructing a theory of the progression of Cypriote pottery it is necessary to examine closely the different styles of ornamentation. On some we find Assyrian symbols and characteristic styles of decoration; on others the figures are as evidently Egyptian. Thus the{205} archaic vase from Larnaca (Fig. 150) is just such a work as might be expected from the Phoenician founders of Kittim while still directly under the domination of Assyrian ideas. The pattern between the animals is distinctively Assyrian. In a similar manner the vase (Fig. 146) is decorated with an Egyptian figure, but in the subsidiary decoration—the plaited pattern on the sides and the concentric circles arranged vertically—there is nothing indicative of Egyptian influence. We see in it the work of a potter who combined an Egyptian suggestion with a more independent form of ornament. It has already been said that, of all the nations of antiquity, the Phoenicians are most strongly marked by influences emanating from Egypt, on the one hand, and from Assyria on the other. To this people, therefore, we may attribute the two vases last referred to.

It is also necessary to bear in mind that, while certain symptoms of independence on the part of Cypriote potters must be appreciated at their full value, there are no evidences of the potter’s art ever having developed among them to any great extent. It is possible that the effeminate, voluptuous nature of the people prevented the attainment of artistic superiority. It is also possible that their skill in working metal may have distracted their attention from clay. In either event we discover no well-defined gradation from the lower to the higher, such as we find in Greece. Cyprus may have been still wrapped in slumber, while Greece was striding forward in the full vigor of its young life. It may have been following its ancient models, while Greece was turning from the old to the new and original. It is difficult, therefore, to ascribe with precision the Cypriote pottery to any given age. A rule by which to determine such questions has been laid down in this way: vases painted with linear designs are the most ancient; then follow those with animal figures; lastly come those with human forms. Cypriote pottery makes the application of such a rule extremely hazardous and difficult. How apply it to the vase with vertical rings{206} and human form and head (Fig. 146)? The figure is Egyptian, and might, for that reason, carry us back to the conquest by Thothmes III., were it not that it represents the latest style of decoration according to the accepted rule, while the remainder of the decoration belongs to the earliest.

The practice of ornamenting with concentric rings is an application to pottery of a pattern borrowed from working in metal. Cyprus was famed for its copper, and, from the legendary age downward, exported armor and weapons of bronze. It is not singular, therefore, if on some of the ruder relics of the potter we should find this ornament. In the curious circle of vases (Fig. 153) we see arranged round the base the concentric rings, which were in time transformed into the Greek spiral. The same pattern is exemplified in the specimen from Curium (Fig. 154), from which, and from several others in the Metropolitan Museum, it might almost be inferred that the vessel had been shaped to suit the favorite style of decoration. A cognate style, also having its origin in metal-working, is that represented in the vase from Dali (Fig. 148), sufficiently authenticated by its Phoenician inscription. It belongs to a very large class, which appears to extend from the earliest times down to the beginning of purely Greek art. It will be observed that the squares run both horizontally and perpendicularly, an arrangement{207} much more noticeable in many other specimens. One of the earlier examples is seen on the bird-shaped vase in the illustration (Fig. 155. In what is probably a much later vessel, a swan with circular body and triangular wings makes its appearance. This is the rude attempt at decorating with figures of an artist skilled only in geometrical designs. One point is to be particularly noted before leaving these vases, viz., that in that bearing the Phoenician inscription, the vertical lines or bands give place to horizontal bands round the upper part of the body and neck. The Greeks invariably make use of the horizontal band.

enlarge-image
Fig. 155.—Phoenician Vases, found at Dali. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)
Fig. 155.—Phoenician Vases, found at Dali. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)

enlarge-image
Fig. 156.—Phoenician Vase, from Curium. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Mus.) Fig. 157.—Phoenician Vase, from Curium. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Mus.)

Fig. 156.—Phoenician Vase, from Curium. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Mus.)

Fig. 157.—Phoenician Vase, from Curium. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Mus.)

The approach to Greek art is marked by the introduction of several new features. In the vases from Curium (Figs. 149, 156, and 157), the lines are horizontal, the shapes improve, and the spout, consisting of a woman holding a pitcher, is indicative of a skill in moulding and an originality in designing, having little in common with the ruder forms from the same city. This is one of the ideas{208} which seems never to have occurred to the modern potter, whose most fantastically turned and severely shaped spouts contrast most unfavorably with the simple yet apt design of his old Phoenician predecessor. The Phoenician vase with animal figures from Dali (Fig. 158), is the ancestor of a large class of early Greek pottery similarly decorated. The shape and the encircling horizontal bands recall early Greek work, and the animal forms point to an Asiatic influence transmitted in part through Phoenicia, but probably also through other channels, to Greece. The style is rare among Cypriote vases. It is carried farther in the large vase from Curium (Fig. 151), which is remarkable as a combination of the Cypriote rectilinear method of decoration, the earlier form of the Greek fret, the Asiatic style of animal decoration, and the culmination of the Cypriote rows of concentric rings found in the bands of spirals. This is one of the most remarkable vases in the Cesnola collection, and also one of the most important links between the art of Greece and those of Phoenicia and the East. Even admitting it to have been made in Greece, and thence taken to Curium, it is in perfect harmony with the Phoenician vase last referred to, on the{209} one hand, and with that bearing the Phoenician inscription on the other.

The Greek vase and cups from Dali (Fig. 159) show a new motive in the decoration. The spirals give place on the vase to a running scroll, painted with a free hand; and in the kylix on the left, the concentric circles become semicircles, festooned round the lip after the fashion of lambrequins. In the kylix on the right, the rectilinear designs and enclosed squares become the fret. It will be seen hereafter, when we come to speak of Greece, how the forms of the kylix improve.

While we cannot assign an exact age to any of these works, we can see how the beginnings of the art of Greece can be traced to a much more remote antiquity than was previously apprehended. Mingling in the heroic age with a people uniting in itself much of the civilization of Assyria and Egypt, the Greeks were acquiring the knowledge which their own artistic genius subsequently turned to such brilliant account. The highway is complete from Greece to untold antiquity. We learn, therefore, from the relics brought together by General Cesnola, that the view taken of the devious course followed by ceramic art is correct. Egypt gave instruction to all. In her is the spring of ancient art. The Phoenicians studied under her Assyrian pupils, and the two branches, from Phoenicia and Egypt, met in Greece, and there appeared in a new form, more refined, and reflecting a higher ideality and a keener sensitiveness to the subtlest lines of beauty. Di Cesnola has found in Cyprus{210} their point of contact, and has disclosed to our eyes the teacher and scholar sleeping in a common grave.

enlarge-image
Fig. 159.—Greek Vase and Cups, found at Dali. Cesnola Coll., (N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)
Fig. 159.—Greek Vase and Cups, found at Dali. Cesnola Coll., (N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)

Should it be asked if in Cyprus alone we must look for the ceramic remains of Phoenicia, the Land of Palms, the answer must be negative. It is true that few relics have come down to us from the sites of her domestic industries. But let us glance briefly at the history of that wonderful country, wonderful alike in enterprise and in science. Ptolemy Claudius, writing in the second century, says that Phoenicia extended from Egypt on the south to the Eleutherus on the north, and eastward to the confines of Syria; or, in other words, that to it belonged the entire eastern shore of the Mediterranean. Like all other eastern nations, it changed its boundaries as the successive waves of war swept over it. First came the Persians, then the Greeks, and, lastly, the Romans. When enjoying its independence, in an earlier age, it was the disseminator of the knowledge which, to a great extent, it acquired in Egypt. To Greece it gave its alphabet, the foundation of the literature which has kindled the admiration of the scholars of all times. Its navigators passed the Pillars of Hercules and reached the shores of England. Phoenician colonies were founded all along the Mediterranean, at Utica and Carthage on the south, and at Marseilles in Gaul. Here, then, was a{211} people gathering in from every side all that the world could give of art and science, and spreading its knowledge with every keel which, from the great ports of Tyre and Sidon, furrowed the Mediterranean. As might be expected, therefore, the remains of its ceramic art and the evidences of its influence are found in Cyprus, Malta, Egypt, Carthage, Greece, Sicily, Rome, and Etruria.

The ceramic remains found on the Phoenician coast are nearly all referable to her later conquerors. One specimen is singular and suggestive. It was found at Tyre, and is a polished cruse, with round body, long neck, wide lips, and a handle joining the neck and body. It resembles the Egyptian too closely to leave any doubt of the origin of its style and manufacture. After our previous experiences we are quite prepared to meet a mythical Phoenician worker in clay; but his presence does not disturb our inferences. It merely pushes back to a prehistoric age the date when the first of Phoenicia’s debts to Egypt was incurred. Other examples, fragments with Phoenician inscriptions, give further hints of the immediate well-spring of Grecian art. Phoenician vases are found in Sicily. Egypt and Carthage teach the same lesson, and illustrate the wide-reaching enterprise of the Tyrian founders of Carthage.

Turning northward from Phoenicia to Asia Minor, the evidences of ceramic skill point to identically the same conclusion. Let us take the older first. There, as in Cyprus, we meet with early traces of Hellenic art. Across the Ægean sea, on the shores of Asia Minor, Greece again touched the older arts of Assyria and Egypt. The coffins found in Mesopotamia are after the Assyrian type. From Tarsus come terra-cotta works ornamented with green, in a simple style, closely allied to the Greek. At Rhodes has been found a vase or pitcher of turquoise blue, ribbed perpendicularly, and crossed at intervals by horizontal bands. Such specimens take us back again to Egypt. In short, the history of Asia Minor, its existence successively under Scythians, Medes, and Persians, while it was receiving the surplus population of Greece from the west, would lead us to look for what we only found in part in Cyprus, namely, native styles moulded by influences from east, west, and south. These generalizations are offered as a substitute for a more connected history, for the construction of which intelligibly the materials are wanting. Enough has{212} been said to show that through many different channels the arts of Egypt and the East set, in a long and steady stream, toward Europe; that there, meeting with the rising Hellenic civilization, they were transmuted and purified, and that from the Hellenizing process emerged the admirable art now called Greek.

Meanwhile it is to be noted that, so far, we have made allusion to only one-half of the debt which Europe owes to the East. Greece rejected the rich coloring and fantastic forms which reached her from the centre of all that was most brilliant in ceramics—the land between the Tigris and Euphrates. These were seized with avidity by Persia, the only survivor, in our time, of the four great monarchies of the East. Bright colors and gorgeous combinations were grateful to the eye revelling in the splendor almost unconsciously associated with the word “Oriental.” To Persia, therefore, we must look, not only as the great conservator of previous skill, but as the medium of its development into a higher form. That part of her inheritance from Assyria and Babylonia which concerns us now, was the knowledge of processes, of the deft mingling of colors, the production of tints, and the skilful application of enamels. We have seen to what purpose this knowledge was cultivated, in so far as the evidences found within her own borders can show. We have seen what may here be especially recalled, enamels and metallic lustre applied to pottery, with an almost bewildering brilliancy.

We now approach the question of Persia’s contributions to the art. Can, for example, none of the remains exhumed by Cesnola be claimed for Persia? It appears not, at least not with certainty, although certain plaques convey a hint of Persian workmanship. Whatever she left in Cyprus, if anything, is hardly to be distinguished from the older works of Assyria and Phoenicia. Had Persia, then, no originality, and where beyond her own limits must we look for its distinctive impress. Let us return for a moment to Persian history. We have already seen that the country was occasionally overrun by surrounding nations, but the fact is noticeable that when it could not resist, it absorbed its assailants. Its nationality was preserved even in conquest. A similar capacity for assimilation and independence is seen in its art. There can be no doubt of its having drawn from Assyria and Babylonia. Its most ancient architecture is sufficient to settle that point. But apart{213} from that, and keeping in view the influence of Mohammedanism and the influx of Chinese wares and possibly workmen in the sixteenth century, the art of Persia is marked throughout its entire course by certain distinguishing features which invasion could not obliterate. The artistic instinct was strong in the people as a whole; and conquest retarded the progress of art only to see it rise again in all its first vigor, to be spread far and wide even by those who had for a time hindered its native growth. In this way we can trace its advance to Asia Minor and Rhodes, through Egypt, along the northern coast of Africa, and thence to different points in Southern Europe.

The tracks we now follow are those of Eastern art in its second and more modern progress toward the west. Persia was its real source. When the Mohammedan Arabs overran Iran, they found art the handmaid to beauty and luxury, to which they had been strangers. Essentially nomadic, the wild fanatics from Arabia had given little attention to Æsthetic culture. They were captivated by what they found in Persia. If they modified it, it was only to make it conformable to the behests of their religion. We find, for example, a faience tile representing the sacred Temple of Mecca, in two shades of blue, red, black, and pale-green, and with a border of white and red. It is easy to imagine the caliphs of Bagdad calling to their assistance the men whose works they had seen, to complete the embellishment of their capital. The style called arabesque is in all probability of Persian origin. In every collection of note are examples of{214} what is called Saracenic pottery. The Arabs were called Saracens when they came to Europe, or met the arms of the Crusaders in Palestine. Saracen pottery, therefore, is Persian modified by Arabian taste or local style. And here, to save much trouble, and avoid the confusion into which disputants over the wares of Damascus, Rhodes, Cairo, and other localities might lead us, it may be as well, once for all, to understand that at no place of which we have any knowledge were the Saracens the first to introduce a rudimentary knowledge of pottery. What they did was to bring with them certain distinctive styles; and now, when all proofs of an earlier fabric are wanting, we may safely take it for granted that it existed, and that the invaders and colonists only superimposed a superior art. This should be borne in mind, because it would be impossible to account for the abundant remains found on certain sites by attributing them all to the Saracens. One of the first things to which the Arabs turned their attention in each country to which they carried their arms, was to raise mosques for the religions observances attaching to their faith. The tomb of Mohammed, at Medina, is covered with tiles so closely resembling those of Persia as to suggest not only Persian inspiration, but Persian workmen. In Asia Minor tiles belonging to the eleventh and twelfth centuries are abundant, of a precisely similar character. History explains their presence there by telling us that the Arabian or Saracenic conquerors sent for artists from Persia to bring their skill to the embellishment of the new domain. In this we have the key to much of the ceramic art of Asia Minor.

{215}

As to Rhodes and the origin of its faience (Fig. 162), we are tolerably certain that in Persia was the source of the skill there developed. History and tradition point to the same conclusion. Legend says that a vessel bound for Venice, and having some Persian potters on board, was wrecked on the island, and that there a manufactory was founded (Fig. 163). Possibly on this tradition the conjecture was based that a Persian colony had settled there. In any case, Rhodes was occupied by Persians in the seventh century, and then by the Greeks. When the crusading fever was at its height, the knights of St. John held the island until expelled by the Turks. It was probably these knights who captured a vessel laden with Persian pottery and artists, and compelled the latter to found the manufacture at Rhodes. At the MusÉe de Cluny are specimens of their work, plainly Persian, but adapted to the changed condition and limited appliances of the potters. The Rhodian differs little from the Persian. The colors are less brilliant, and the ornamentation in relief is like that found on vases and tiles in Asia Minor. The predominating colors are white and blue for grounds and red for designs. Similarly as to Damascus, it is beyond reasonable doubt that potteries existed there. Their ruins are said to have been found; and it is probable that, so far from importing the wares, Damascus supplied orders from without. These facts lead to the conclusion that Persian art was carried by the Saracens or their Christian opponents to the same countries that Egyptian and Assyrian art had reached centuries before.{216}

Turning now to the south and west, we follow the line of Saracenic conquest along the north coast of Africa until it reached the Atlantic Ocean. Egypt first fell under Mussulman control, and the standard of Islam was carried westward from the Nile. Thirteen hundred years after Battus founded Cyrene, the Mussulman Keironan was built upon its ruins. In Tunisia, Algeria, and Morocco the Saracenic works multiply. One traveller in Tunisia describes a mosque with the walls overlaid with tiles of many patterns. Another, crossing Algeria, visits the mosque at Telemeen, and finds azulejos (from the Arabic for “varnished tile”) equal to those of Granada, and tiling in blue, red, and yellow, again compelling a comparison with the works of the Moors in Spain. The brilliant domes and mosaic pavements of mosques and houses mark the Saracenic progress. Besides these, many examples of urns and other vessels of Saracenic fabrication have been found, colored in brown, yellow, blue, and green, in styles not far removed from the Persian. Viewed comprehensively, the pottery of Northern Africa (Fig. 164) would show pieces of local fabrication, and Persian styles and processes modified by removal from their eastern centre. What concerns us chiefly is that the Saracenic predominates. It is reasonable to suppose that the invaders, in order to decorate the edifices which quickly gave indication of their presence, sent for tiles to the seats of the industry in the East. Afterward, when the Mussulman power had been firmly established, factories were built, and a new industry rose among the conquered people. Imitations are mingled with works showing a developing originality. The Mussulman and Persian traditions become modified, and the symbolical meaning of the animals painted on the dishes and basins appears to have become obscure to the artists employing them as decoration.{217}

A great deal of the African pottery can only be taken as a basis for conjecture. Its place of manufacture is unknown. Its style is peculiar and its coloring unique. It is not impossible that European art was paying the debt it had incurred to Southern teachers. Ceramic art travelled with the Saracens wherever they went. How far that was may be estimated from the fact that they conquered within eighty years as much territory as it had taken Rome four hundred years to bring into subjection. They crossed into Spain, Sicily, and Italy, and there planted settlements. A great deal has been said of the reflet À mÉtallique and stanniferous enamel, and notably of the discovery of the latter in Italy. Both came from the East, and reached Europe through the Saracens. The employment of tin in producing a white opaque enamel was, as we have seen, known to the Egyptians, the Babylonians, and Assyrians. It does not appear to have been so highly esteemed as the silicious glaze by means of which the Persians worked their greatest ceramic wonders, but it was not forgotten. Fragmentary evidences of its use by the Saracens are found in the places which they passed, and it is, at least, more reasonable to suppose that through them the process reached Europe, than that it was rediscovered there. One is almost wearied with the endless conjectures on these matters. We find a certain art in the East. We trace the different channels of communication with Europe. We find Greece touching Asia Minor, trade binding Phoenicia with every port in the Mediterranean, Etruria bringing to her own ports the manufactures of Eastern experts, colonies settling in all manner of places and coming from many sources. It has been plainly demonstrated that the lines of intercourse cross and recross in a hundred different ways and directions. When, therefore, we have it proved to a demonstration that analogous knowledge was transmitted by certain routes, it is hardly worth one’s while to discuss the European discovery of a process which we know did not originate there, however much it may have been improved.

The art which we call Hispano-Moresque might, therefore, with equal propriety, be called Persico-Spanish or Hispano-Saracenic. Spain was twice overrun by Mohammedan conquerors. In the eighth century (711) the Arabs subdued the Goths and founded the Caliphate of Cordova. It is both singular and disappointing that no ceramic{218} relic of this period has been found. The Spanish, even under the sway of Rome, had attained to a comparative excellence in the art, and the productions resulting from the union of original traditions with Arabian influences would have formed an interesting link in our history. The Arabians remained for about five hundred years, when, in 1235 the Moors overturned the Arab rule, and founded the kingdom of Granada. The Moors succumbed, in their turn, to Ferdinand and Isabella, in 1492, and between these two dates, 1235 and 1492, was the golden era of the ceramic art of Spain.

Meantime it is to be observed, as showing the possible and actual extent of Persian influence:

Firstly.—That under the Moorish sway a colony of Persians existed in Spain. This, according to Major R. Murdoch Smith, is attested by a document recently brought to notice by a Spanish traveller in Persia, assigning the town Rioja to the Persians as their place of residence.

Secondly.—That mosaic work has been found in Persia, composed of star and cross shaped tiles of different colors fitted together, and that similar tiles are made in Spain at the present time.

Thirdly.—That in Persia are found the prototypes of the Spanish style of ornamenting vaults with hanging-work, like plaster stalactites.

Fourthly.—That, according to Piot, “numerous Persian faience plaques and pieces of vases, resembling those of our own time, are found encrusted in the white marble of a church in Naples.”

Fifthly.—That Mr. Drury C. Fortnum has found a specimen of Persian ware in the church of St. Cecilia, at Pisa. The piece is clearly Persian in style, black arabesques on a blue ground, similar to others found at Rhages.

Sixthly.—That the Saracens overran Sicily in the ninth century, and that a Moorish colony landed there some centuries later.

The corollary deducible from these facts is clear, viz., that in Persian art, as brought into Europe by the Moors, Arabs, or Saracens, and by the Persians themselves, we must find the bridge upon which to cross from the ancient arts of Assyria and Babylonia to those of Italy and Spain.{219}

CHAPTER II.
GREECE.

WERE we to be guided solely by continuity in point of time and the succession of ideas, our next subject would be the art of Spain and Italy. We turn, in preference, to that of Greece. It claims the precedence due to priority of date. It holds also a position of what might be called isolation. Its general character has been indicated in the Introduction. The severity and simplicity of the taste of the Greek, and his indifference to effects in color, while permitting him to receive suggestions from Egypt and the East, led him to disregard those adjuncts of art which they held in highest esteem. To him beauty of form was everything, color little or nothing. The former he brought to such perfection that no advance has been made beyond the point he reached. Greek form embodies all that can be said of grace and proportion. We may imitate, but we can hardly hope to excel, what Greece accomplished in her early bloom. We may find prototypes in Egypt for some of her vessels (Fig. 165), but still her art, the culmination{220} of all that was best in preceding forms, is pre-eminently her own. We say this without disparagement to those who were her teachers. To Egypt, in particular, Greece turned, at a remote age, for instruction, and learned from Phoenicia and the other nations with which trade brought her into contact. In this connection the group (Fig. 166) of vases from Athens may be compared with the Phoenician from Cyprus. There are in the decoration the same geometrical designs, the same vertical concentric circles, the same animal figures which the Phoenicians drew from Assyria. But after making every allowance for suggestions from abroad, after conceding that Grecian art is the development of that which preceded it, and that it occupies a well-defined place in progressive history, we fail to find anywhere the equals of the best ceramic works of Greece.

enlarge-image
Fig. 166.—Primitive Vessels, from Athens and Argos.
Fig. 166.—Primitive Vessels, from Athens and Argos.

Taking them as a whole, they are divisible into unbaked; terra-cotta, or burnt clay, without a glaze; and glazed. The Greeks employed unbaked clay for bricks, statues, and several kinds of decoration. The former were used for city walls and buildings. Terra-cotta was devoted to similar purposes. It is not improbable that we may yet return, to a very considerable extent, to the ancient employment of this material in architecture. The Greeks made use of it for pillars, roofs, paving, bricks, friezes, cornices, lamps, statues, flower-pots, and numberless domestic and sepulchral vessels and ornaments. Bricks do not appear to have been held in very high esteem in building, but the custom of roofing with terra-cotta tiles was widely prevalent and of great antiquity. These tiles were occasionally embellished with{221} painted flowers, and designs in blue, red, and yellow. The terra-cotta figures vary in color from red to bright yellow, and are soft in texture and easily marked. Terra-cotta models were used in casting, and in the same material were made copies of statues, like those in plaster of Paris of our own time; and some painters were even accustomed to make terra-cotta models of the figures they afterward painted. Of the specimens which have come down to us a very great number consists of small statuettes of the gods.

enlarge-image
Fig. 167.—Greek Vase, from Apulia. (Louvre.)
Fig. 167.—Greek Vase, from Apulia. (Louvre.)

The vessels of terra-cotta are either domestic or sepulchral. The{222} largest was the pithos, which, as we have seen, was large enough to hold a man satisfied with such limited domestic conveniences as Diogenes. There were also amphorÆ, large vases, somewhat smaller than the pithoi; phialai, or saucers, plates, pots, and jugs. Of these the amphora occurs most frequently. Its name is derived from amphis—on both sides, and pherein—to carry, and it is so called because it had two handles, one on each side, to be grasped by the person carrying it. It is easily recognized (see Fig. 2) by its sharp base—so made to be stuck in the ground—its oval body, its long neck, and its generally heavy lip. The cover was conical, and sometimes the base is surrounded by a ring of clay to keep it more easily in an upright position. The height of the amphora ranged from three feet to over six feet, and it was used for holding wine, water, oil, and for storing figs and other edibles.

Various pigments were applied to terra-cotta, including white, red, green, and blue, the use of which, in painting statues and architectural decorations, formed a distinct branch of art. Colors are also found on sepulchral vases, some of which are further ornamented with applied bas-reliefs; that is, made separately, and fixed to the vase before drying. This practice was carried to such an extent as to represent a combination of the arts of potter, painter, and sculptor (Fig. 167). Closely allied to the cinerary urns were the vases intended solely for ornamental purposes. In one of extraordinary beauty, a large and finely moulded head of Pallas Athene is seen surmounted by a full figure of Victory. There are many of a similar character, representing female and animal heads. The latter are found in the rhyta, or drinking cups. The ornamental vases were often painted after being covered with a white slip: evidently the case with the piece (Fig. 168) in Dr. Prime’s collection.

Before treating of glazed vases we shall give the leading denominations{223} of all vases glazed and unglazed, and then the styles of decoration of the former as nearly as may be in their chronological order. They are said to be glazed, although the glaze is so slight that, as Mr. Fortnum says, “it leaves a barely appreciable effect upon the eye, beyond that which might be produced by a mechanical polish.” It is altogether a very inferior kind of glaze, and is supposed to have been made from an alkali without any admixture of lead. The paste resembles terra-cotta, and varies in density, being in some cases scratched with ease, in others with difficulty. It can always be marked with iron. These facts are worth noting, were it only that that art may be thoroughly appreciated which, out of the poorest and commonest materials, has wrought forms of the most wonderful beauty.

The chief names with which we shall have to deal are the pithos, pithakne, stamnos, cheroulion, bikos, hyrche, lagynos, askos, amphorens, kados, hydria, kalpis, krossos, skyphos, or kothon, rhyton, lekythos, alabastros, krater, holmos, kelebe, oxybaphon, psykter, dinos, chytrai, tripous, oinochoe, prochoos, aryballos, epichysis, kotylos, kyathos, skaphe, kantharos, karchesion, kylix, phiale, kanoun, pinax, and diskos.

The pithos, already described in part, was a large, open-mouthed cask or jar of unglazed earthen-ware, which was used mainly for the preservation of victuals and wines.

The pithakne was a pithos of smaller size used for holding wine.

The stamnos (Fig. 169) was an open-mouthed jar with two handles, and a body inclined to be oval, but of great rotundity, curving inward to a comparatively narrow base. It held liquids. The cheroulia and bikoi were modifications of the stamnos, the latter being used for holding wine and solids.

The hyrche is not very well known, either in regard to its shape or purpose, but appears to have had a narrow neck, and to have been used in conveying goods a long distance. Its narrow neck is a tolerably sure indication that it was not intended to be stationary.{224}

The lagynos also appears to have had a very narrow neck, and to have been of considerable size, varying according to circumstances.

The askos (Fig. 170), literally a wineskin, which it resembled in shape, had an aperture and neck on one side, from which a handle passed over a hollow on the body to the other side. Both the askos and stamnos are frequently painted with red figures.

The amphora, already described in the form it commonly took, may be called a general receptacle, although usually employed for holding provisions and liquors. There were many different shapes, which varied according to the district where made, and the special purpose for which they were destined. The chief kinds are the Egyptian, Apulian, Tyrrhenian, Panathenaic, Bacchic (Fig. 186), and Nolan, the last mentioned being the most perfectly finished, and unexcelled in gracefulness of shape. They were decorated with either red or black paintings.

The kados is the first of the vessels for drawing liquids, of which class the hydria (Fig. 188) is the best known. Its name implies its purpose as a{225} water-pitcher. It had two small side handles, and one larger one, somewhat similar to that of the modern ewer. The kalpis (Fig. 187) and krossos were modifications of the hydria.

The kothon (Fig. 171) is supposed to have been a drinking-cup.

The rhyton (Fig. 172) belongs to the later style of drinking-cups, and its peculiarity is that it could not be set down except when empty. The base is modelled after the head of a dog, goat, deer, or other animal, and the neck or cup proper is either cylindrical or elongated and sloped.

The lekythos (Fig. 305) was an oil-jar of an elongated shape, neck in proportion, cup-like orifice, and one handle. It is decorated in all the styles of Grecian art, and is generally about one foot in height. It was sometimes made of metal or marble.

The alabastros was a diminutive lekythos, used for toilet unguents, with two small ears by which to suspend it.

The krater (Figs. 173 and 174) was the vessel in which the Greeks cooled and mixed their wine, of which it would hold about three gallons. It is the later form of a class of vessels of which the holmos (Fig. 175), kelebe (Fig. 176), and oxybaphon (Fig. 177) are the earlier representatives.

The psykter, or wine-cooler, was a double-walled vessel of the amphora type, rotund in shape.

The dinos was another form of the wine vessel, open-mouthed, round in body and base, and allied to the krater.

The chytrai were warming-pots with two handles. The tripous, or three-footed pot, was employed in a similar manner.

The oinochoe, in the shape most frequently{226} occurring, resembled a jug with a lip either round or pinched in at the sides, and with a handle rising above the orifice. The oinochoe was used in serving the guests from the krater.

The prochoos (Figs. 178 and 179) was also a jug, either with or without a handle, for either water or wine. The olpe (Fig. 180) belongs to the same class.

The aryballos (Fig. 165) was round or bladder-shaped and short-necked, and bore a close resemblance to one of the toilet vases of the Egyptians.

The arystichos was also used for serving from the krater, a usage which gave rise to several other shapes. Of the cups designed for the same purpose, the kotylos may be mentioned, although its shape is doubtful. The kyathos (Fig. 181), or ladle, belongs to the same class.

The drinking-cups were of many shapes and assumed great elegance of form. The several varieties cannot now be specified by description. The skyphos was the generic name applied also to a few special shapes now unknown. The kantharos (Fig. 182) was wide, somewhat shallow, with two handles rising well above the lip, and either with or without a stem.

The kylix (Fig. 183) was the cup most generally used, and varied in shape. In the earliest specimens it has a long stem, two handles, and is shallow and wide. The later forms are wider, and shorter in the stem, which ultimately disappears entirely. The phiale was the religious counterpart of the kylix.

The kanoun, diskos, and pinax were for table use, the two latter corresponding with our plates, with the exception that the diskos stood upon a stem or foot.

Of the vessels named those deserving closest attention, as most frequently presenting themselves, are the kylix, oinochoe, krater, aryballos, kyathos, lekythos, rhyton, hydria, amphora, and pithos. The kylix is to be specially commended for its beauty of shape, and its decoration with red figures exemplifies some of the best art of Greece.

From the descriptions given of the various vessels, it will be seen{227} that many of them were devoted to household use. Vases were also made as toys for children, as prizes to victorious athletes, for holding the viands and liquids placed beside the dead, and more recently for the ashes of the dead. Among the exceptional uses of pottery by the Greeks may be mentioned the giving of receipts on potsherds, the recording on fragments of pottery of votes for ostracizing (from ostrakon, a potsherd) a citizen, and for deciding the side to be taken by the entrants for the game called ostrakinon. This last was decided by “tossing up” a piece of pottery, and assigning a side to the player according to its falling with the red or black side uppermost. Vases were also made in honor of great men and authors, whose names are inscribed on them. All the vases now in museums, numbering, according to different estimates, from twenty to fifty thousand, were taken from the tombs of Greece, Southern Italy, and Etruria. It was the custom to place beside the dead the vessels necessary for the religious rites, the favorite vases and prizes of the deceased; and in this way they have been preserved to illustrate in our age the branch of Greek art to which they belong. No precise age can be ascribed to any one specimen.

The first glazed vases date probably from the ninth century before Christ, and from the beginning of the third century{228} the art declined. It had probably reached its highest point four hundred years before our era.

The earliest vases were made by hand, and even after glazing was introduced that method was continued. It was also resorted to in making the gigantic pithoi, which were too large to be turned on the wheel. The finer vases were made on the wheel or moulded. After being moulded they were dried and painted. There were two methods of painting. By the first the figures were outlined and then filled in, leaving them black on a red or pale ground. The vase was then glazed and fired. By the second the figures were left untouched and of the color of the paste, by painting the ground black. A color slightly different from that of the body was employed for the finer lines of the figures. The vase was then glazed and fired as before.

We now come to the successive styles of ornamentation. The natural order would give the first place to the uncolored vases, the second to those painted all over in black, the next to the different styles of figures. In addition to what has been said in the Introduction, and to go more deeply into details, the following points may be noted in regard to the last of the above stages—the ornamentation by means of figures. These first took{229} the form of simple belts of color drawn round the body of the piece. A vase of a later but still very early period has the space between the two zones passing round the widest part of the body filled in with vertical designs, alternating with small rings, each containing a cross (see Fig. 166). When animal and floral decoration was first attempted, the artist’s work was rude and the forms were unnatural. White upon black grounds indicate the earliest style. Another very ancient style has the figures, which are all those of animals, painted in dark lines upon the pale red paste (Fig. 184).

The vases of the next, or Archaic, group vary in color from a pale yellow to a deep red, on which the figures are painted in a darker color. One of its leading features is the profusion of flowers. The presence of human forms, more or less skilfully drawn, may be taken as the criterion by which to determine the later members of this group.

In the next style (Fig. 186) human figures become more prominent in the designs, and are perfectly black, with the exception of the flesh of females, which is painted white or red. Many of the subjects are taken from mythology and the heroic legends. This developed into the “old style,” where the black appears greatly improved; and while the hands, face, and exposed parts of the females are pure white, their eyes are red. The drawing is still stiff and constrained, and where attempts at perspective are made, they are eminently unskilful. White is also more plentifully distributed, and is seen in the hair and beard of old men, in horses, and in many accessories, for which red is also occasionally employed. As{230} the art developed, red figures were more frequently introduced among those in black; and we also find the artist entirely obscuring the natural color of the paste by means of a white slip, or coat, upon which he painted the black figures.

As we approach the best art of Greece the colors are inverted. The figures are drawn upon the paste of the red or yellow color of which they appear, and the rest of the vase is painted black (Fig. 187).

The “fine style,” the culmination of Greek art, was a development of that last described. The black ground, red figures, and white ornaments show the highest point to which previous styles gradually led upward. Drawing and composition are here at their best. The early stiffness has given place to a fuller grace, and there is a nobility in the figures and faces to which the earlier artists never attained. The limbs lose their unnatural distortion, the muscles are less rigid—there is, in one word, more life in the drawing. The accessories also gain by the greater freedom of treatment. The drapery hangs more gracefully, its straight-lined stiffness giving place to a more natural arrangement.

In the later specimens of this style—so markedly different from the earlier ones that they have been classed together as the florid style—there is a more minute attention to finish, a greater elaboration of dresses and other accessories, and a decided tendency toward finding the ideal human form in that which is most graceful. Gold appears in the ornamentation (Fig. 188), and arabesques encircle the necks. Polychrome vases were made at the same time, some of them showing the utmost excellence of figure-drawing, and draperies of blue, green, or purple.

When the art began to decline, taste and execution both deteriorated.{231} The figures lose their graceful proportions, and acquire a heavier appearance. They are also more crowded, and the dresses become more garish, until at last all refinement, both of conception and treatment, was lost in coarseness and grotesque puerility. The amphora (Fig. 189) illustrates the decadence.

The classification of vases by the subjects represented upon them is unsatisfactory and confusing. Scenes are taken from mythology, heroic legends, funeral ceremonies, from civil life, and from the gymnasium, which permit neither of a chronological arrangement of the vases nor of one based upon their position in the scale of art. A distinct group might, without any loss of lucidity, be made of vases decorated with subjects in relief, or with statuettes arranged upon the body and neck. This was a union of sculpture and pottery occasionally embellished by the painter’s art in the coloring of the drapery and subsidiary ornaments. Color was also applied to sculptured reliefs. A vase now in St. Petersburg is thus described: “It is a piece of very large size, with three handles, and of the finest and most lustrous glaze. It is ornamented at several heights with sculptured friezes in terra-cotta, and gilded; but that which gives it its priceless value is a frieze of figures from four to five inches{232} high, sculptured in bas-relief, with the heads, feet, and hands gilded, and the vestments painted in bright colors—blue, red, and green—in the finest Greek style imaginable. Several heads from which the gilding has become detached show the modelling, which is as fine and as finished as that of the finest ancient cameo.” Cups or vases with two heads, one on each side, such as Hercules and Omphale, illustrate the same branch of art. Such features as these, beautifully modelled relievos, ideal heads, figure scenes in which drawing and composition are almost above criticism, not less than its elegance of shape, have made the Greek vase a model for all time. We can trace Assyrian ideas in the decoration of some of the earlier vases, and Egyptian influences may also occasionally be detected. We can even find foreign models for a few of the Greek forms; but the Hellenizing process has obliterated every antecedent, and the art which Greece gave the world is as purely Grecian as if in every particular it were indigenous to the soil of that favored land.{233}

CHAPTER III.
THE IBERIAN PENINSULA.

A MERE glance is all that is necessary to bestow upon the ancient pottery of Spain before we resume the history of the Moorish fabrications in that country. Valencia is the centre to which the greatest antiquity must be accorded. Pliny alludes to Saguntum, now called Murviedro, as having twelve hundred potteries, and Martial is not stinted in his praises of their work. All the remains found there are of the Roman period, and are classed under red Samian ware, and three other groups, of which one was of a yellowish color and another of pale terra-cotta. From that time we must make a great leap across the chasm between the downfall of Roman civilization and the first Saracenic occupation of the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century. Even then there is little to guide research. Arabian azulejos have been met with, and in 1239, four years after the Moorish kingdom of Granada had been founded, a charter was granted by James I. of Aragon to the Saracen potters of Xativa (San Felipe) relieving them from servitude on payment yearly of one besant for each kiln. We have no means of identifying{234} the early works of these Saracenic workmen, and it is not until 1517 that they are referred to in literature as producing well-worked and well-gilded faiences, more highly esteemed than any other of Spanish manufacture. Several writers of the sixteenth century praise the Valencian pottery, but in the beginning of the seventeenth century it began to decline. Christian designs (Fig. 191) take the place of Moresque; and at the present day, according to Marryat, the metallic-lustred wares of Manises, near Valencia, are made by an innkeeper, who thus spends the time lying heavy on his hands by reason of a lack of guests in his inn. In the olden time the pottery of Manises was exchanged with Italy for that of Pisa, and was ordered by “the Pope, cardinals and princes admiring that with simple earth such things can be made.” Such is the difference between now and then.

From the style of the decoration it would appear that most of the Valencian remains are to be attributed to the Christian period, i. e., after the thirteenth century. The general color is yellow with mother-of-pearl lustre. St. Catherine and St. John were highly venerated in Valencia, and this veneration appears in the frequency of their representation, either actually, or by their emblems, or in invocations and passages from the gospel of the fourth evangelist. The eagle—the emblem of St. John—and the opening words of his gospel appear also, however, on wares from Malaga and Majorca; and, further, the yellow lustre was produced at Barcelona. It is, therefore, evidently unsafe to ascribe, after an examination of general characteristics, individual specimens to a specific source.

Of the Moresque pottery it is probable that Malaga was the most ancient centre. Its golden pottery is spoken of as an article of export{235} as far back as 1350. There also we are brought into contact with the famous and beautiful vases of the Alhambra (Fig. 192). The palace itself was built by Mohammed-ben-Alhamar, the first Moorish king of Granada, in 1273, with the intention, possibly of rivalling the richly decorated mosques of the Mussulman Arabs. The Alhambra vase is the only survivor of three of similar style found under the palace pavement. The others fell victims to the Vandalism of memento or relic hunters. The one still in existence is seven feet in circumference and four feet three inches in height. It is supposed to belong to about the year 1320. It is made of earthen-ware, and is decorated in three colors. The ground is white and the decorations are a golden yellow lustre and blue. The vase is not only a masterpiece of Moresque art, but a magnificent example of the decorative genius of the Moors, which spent itself in devising quaint combinations of lines and in a wealth of arabesque. There are many other pieces which, from their metallic lustre and blue ornamentation, are also credited to Malaga, and date from the middle of the fourteenth century. It is unfortunate that this exquisite art soon deteriorated. As we approach the Christian epoch we come upon the works of copyists devoid of intelligence, in whose hands the decoration they strove to follow loses its delicacy and meaning. The Valencian art with which we are acquainted was thus rising as that of Malaga was gradually, sinking out of sight. Faience was made at the latter place in the beginning of the sixteenth century. For a time the Catholic conquerors under Ferdinand tolerated the art. But intolerant zeal asserted itself, Moorish customs were suppressed, and at length the Moorish settlers were driven into exile.{236}

The third great centre of the ceramic art was at Ynca, in Majorca, the largest of the Balearic group of islands. Majorca was conquered by James I., in 1230, nine years before he took Valencia; and no Moresque specimen now known can be ascribed to a period preceding that date. The lustre of Majorca was very bright, and the ornamentation consisted mainly of scrolls and flowers. The other islands of the group, Minorca and IviÇa, were also seats of the manufacture. We shall afterward see how closely Majorca was connected by its commerce with Italy.

We have reserved the azulejos, or tiles (Fig. 194), the best indicators of the progress of Arabian art, for separate treatment. We find in the tiles of the Alhambra, in the buildings of Seville and the Cuarto Real of Granada (Fig. 195), the products of the same skill which embellished the edifices of Persia, Arabia, and the Maghreb. They are made of light-colored clay, covered with a stanniferous enamel, upon which are laid intricate designs in blue or golden lustre. The brilliant and dazzling beauty they lent to the interior of the Alhambra, from pavement, walls, and roof, can now only be imagined. So much did the Spaniards admire the azulejos, that they were employed, not only for the embellishment of public and royal edifices, but for the houses of the wealthy. Their manufacture is continued in Valencia down to the present day.

From what has been said, the chronological sequence of the Hispano-Moresque potteries may, in part, be inferred. The most ancient is that resembling the Alhambra vase, decorated with blue and yellow lustre. As we come later down, the lustre{237} assumes more of a golden hue, and becomes exceedingly brilliant, as we find it at Valencia, when the less dazzling wares of Malaga were falling into disfavor. The ruddier copper lustres are the farthest removed from the early wares. They excel in brightness, and show less restraint and chasteness of taste, and mark the decline from those works which have given celebrity to Hispano-Moresque pottery.

The Spain of our day retains not even a semblance of its former greatness. What is best in its modern art, such as the terra-cotta of Barcelona, contains no tradition of ancient times. At the Centennial Exhibition, it was, as compared with leading European countries, poorly represented. It may be assumed that Seville, famous for its azulejos from the sixteenth century, and Valencia, which has an unwritten continuous ceramic history from the Roman epoch to the present day, would not send their inferior works to America. The former city was represented by a pyramid of wares showing great diversity of design and decoration. A large vase, best described as after the Alhambra type, was of a yellow lustre, and surrounded by narrow gilt bands. There were also a few smaller pieces of iridescent blue, green, and gold. A pair of vases with floral decoration on a red ground and black base hardly suggested relationship with the works exemplifying the exquisite taste of ancient Spain.{238}

The Valencian tiling was, as a rule, coarse and inartistic. On a series of wall-pieces were figures of some of the apostles, and a landscape, fairly drawn, but weak in color. The artist manifested an unfortunate predilection for a shading of brownish purple, which enhanced neither his figures nor landscapes. The old style of mosaic tiling was represented by some specimens composed of small star-shaped and elongated hexagonal tiles. There was no sign of the preservation of even a tradition of Hispano-Moresque art. We may turn to Spanish history for an explanation of this decadence, and find in the latter an illustration of its history. Its art was essentially foreign; and when it fell entirely into the hands of the Spanish, on the expulsion of the Moors by the bigotry of Philip II., its doom was sealed. We read the history of the ceramic art during its best days in Spain as an additional chapter to the Saracenic and Maghrebrian, and as that of a branch which, by the accident of location, and not from its having any element really Spanish, came to be known as Hispano-Moresque.

We nowhere find any literary evidence that the Persians who settled in Spain exercised any practical influence upon its ceramics. Very likely they did; and, further, it is not improbable that commerce may have brought Spain into a closer connection with the East than is generally suspected. The early Hispano-Moresque works are so clearly suggestive of Eastern influence, that one is almost led at times to question their right to the name conferred upon them. As if to give the half-shaped doubt a more decided form, we remember also that as the art becomes more purely Spanish it declines from its ancient beauty. We can only admire and criticise the odd combinations of color and form; and while indulging in conjectures as to the immediate fabrication of the pottery under consideration, we must regard it as illustrative of the development of an art of Oriental origin.

The manufacture of artificial porcelain in Spain was instituted, about 1760, by Charles III., who took with him a number of workmen and artists from Naples. This accounts for the similarity between the Spanish and Neapolitan productions. The works were situated in the gardens of the Buen Retiro at Madrid, and were kept strictly secluded from visitors. The ware was of fine quality, and was said by some writers who had seen specimens at the palace, to rival that of{239} SÈvres. La China, as the Royal Manufactory was called, was blown up by Lord Hill during the Peninsular War, in 1812. A second manufactory was established at Moncloa, near Madrid, in 1827. Mention is also made of a factory of natural porcelain at Alcora, in 1756, but the reference must be accepted with hesitation.

Of the ceramics of Portugal very little is known; but that little is sufficient to lead us to wish for more exact knowledge. In this matter, Portugal has not yet, in fact, been appointed to any recognized place in history. Her ceramic art has not been known to Europeans for more than ten years, and to Americans for little more than one; and we have no means of telling whence it was derived. Probably it came from Spain, as we learn that the Portuguese use azulejos as extensively as the Spaniards. We are further told that many of their imitations are exceedingly clever. Of the truth of this we have had ample evidence. None of the imitation Palissy ware exhibited at the Centennial was more realistic and full of life than that of Portugal. Some majolica vases, with coiled snake handles, were very creditable. The snake evidently plays an important part in Portuguese ceramics, as we met with it elsewhere, and notably as the handle of a fish-shaped dish. Very remarkable were the unique and droll little figures of painted pottery, sometimes grouped into a humorous scene, sometimes single, and illustrative of the national costumes. The humor which the Portuguese contrived to infuse into their art evidently lent the pottery section of their department at the Centennial its greatest attraction; and combined as it was with excellent modelling and colors, the nature of which we can hardly specify, it excited our curiosity to learn what historical background there may be to the art which now chooses such expression. A natural porcelain factory at Vista Allegre, near Oporto, is mentioned, and the faience fabrics of Rato and Caldas.{240}

CHAPTER IV.
ITALY.

THE ceramic art of Italy, beginning with the Roman and Etruscan, and coming down to the Renaissance in the fifteenth century, is the successor of those of Greece and the East, on the one hand, and of the Saracenic and Hispano-Moresque on the other. There have been two questions under discussion in reference to the latter period, viz., Where did Italy acquire her knowledge of the use of stanniferous enamel? and, Whence did she draw her skill in the application of metallic lustre? We shall find, on examining the evidence, that the great works of her artistic prime were the results of a derivative and not of an original art. They are only original in so far as they indicate a point in advance of Italy’s predecessors. We have said that Oriental art culminated in Greece. Italy presents us with a later point of union between two lines issuing from the East. We find subjects and forms recalling at once the ideals of Greece and the rich mythological and legendary sources from which were drawn the aids to her prolific imagination. We also find that the Greek restraint in the use of colors is thrown aside, and that Italy availed herself to the full of the skilful{241} processes and methods of embellishment brought to her shores from Persia, and by the Saracens and Moors from their settlements in Africa and Spain.

There are thus two great divisions of Italian pottery: the ancient Roman and Etruscan, and that of the Renaissance. Between these two there is a long period of darkness, extending from the last smouldering glow of the art of Italy, after Constantine took the seat of the imperial power to Byzantium, to the entrance of the Saracens into Europe.

In considering the ancient epoch, one pertinent fact may be borne in mind, viz., that the best remains of the art of Greece have been found beyond its own borders, and that its history might be written from those discovered in Italy alone. Dividing Italy into three sections, we shall have Magna GrÆcia, Campania, and Etruria. Of these the latter has the greater antiquity, in so far as its ceramic remains are concerned. Greek colonies settled all along the southern part of the peninsula and in Sicily, and such relics as are found there may, in the mean time, be dismissed as corresponding in style with those of the same dates produced in Greece.

Although the same rule might be held in a less broad sense to apply to Etruria, it is deserving of more lengthened consideration. When, in 1825, the great discoveries were made at Vulci, the learned world was divided as to the places to which the vases should be credited. Some maintained that they were made in Greece and imported; others, that they were made in Etruria by Greek workmen; others, that they were really Etruscan; others, that they were partly native and partly imported from Greece; and still others, that many of them came from Magna GrÆcia and Sicily. To reconcile these suppositions, without affecting the eastern origin of Etruscan art, we are reminded that the Pelasgi—the name given to the ancient inhabitants of Greece—founded Agyllos, on the coast of Etruria. Bunsen places the first introduction of art into Etruria at this remote period. We come next to the arrival of Demaratus in Tarquinii, about the year B.C. 655. Demaratus was a wealthy Corinthian, of the family of the BacchiadÆ. On the usurpation by Cypselus of the government of Corinth, Demaratus fled, accompanied by all his family, and, landing in the above named flourishing city, married an Etruscan bride, and by her had a{242} son, Lucumon, who afterward occupied the throne of Rome under the name of Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of the Romans and the first of the Tarquins. Demaratus was either accompanied or followed by certain of the artists who had brought celebrity to Corinth for its pottery, and thus the art of Greece, as it was at that period, might have been introduced into Etruria. It must, however, be admitted that the story of Demaratus is not as clear as might be wished, the authorities differing as to his status in Corinth, and as to Lucumon, who is considered by some as having been merely one of his companions. The Tyrrheno-Pelasgians were driven from the sea-coast probably in the sixth century before Christ. We would from these facts be led to expect specimens of ceramic art, firstly, rude and indigenous; secondly, showing signs of the same Oriental origin from which Greece derived its first lessons; and thirdly, examples of pure Greek fabrication mingled with Etruscan imitations. In regard to such a collection as that found at Vulci, it may thus be assumed that there is a modicum of truth in each of the suppositions above referred to. There cannot, in any case, be any reason for calling in question the statement that, in the main, Etruscan ceramic art was of Grecian birth. We are speaking of the productions of 2300 years ago. Etruria was open to the little world surrounding the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Its ships brought enamelled bottles from Egypt, which its citizens set in gold and placed in their tombs. It had maritime connections with Spain, Phoenicia, and perhaps with England, and with the southern ports of the Italian peninsula, and those of Sicily. It imported both potters and their wares, and turned from its own ancient standards to a higher. While the immigrant Greeks were making such wares as they had made at home, the native Etruscan artists were imitating, clumsily and awkwardly at times, but gradually improving and approaching their teachers more nearly. Etruscan art, with the exception of the earlier specimens of rude aboriginal skill, must, therefore, be studied as an offshoot of that of Greece.

The oldest examples, more distinctly indigenous than any of the succeeding styles, are of a brownish color and rude shape, and are decorated with bands and knobs or studs in relief. One peculiar shape bears a resemblance to a miniature rustic cottage, and belongs to the sepulchral class. Others, which are painted, recall the art of Greece{243} in its first devotion to Phoenician or Egyptian models. They may, therefore, be referred to the age when the Tyrrheno-Pelasgians still held their settlements in Etruria, and are probably the work of these settlers and of the aboriginal inhabitants who preceded them. When the Etruscans overran the settlements of the Pelasgi, a red and black ware was introduced, and soon afterward we are brought more directly into contact with Grecian art by importations.

The best Etruscan works are of black paste (Fig. 197), toward which the brown changed as it improved. The ornaments are incised flowers, and bas-reliefs of animals and human faces, executed, designed, and arranged in styles decidedly Oriental. On one found at Vulci are monsters like the Egyptian sphinx, winged and woman-headed. It is probable that, of the two styles of ornamentation, the incised is the more ancient, and that the black ware, as a whole, belongs to between the seventh and third centuries before Christ. The prevalence of Egyptian forms and symbols in connection with this class, such as the scarabÆus and ostrich eggs painted with strange winged monsters, gives additional probability to our estimate of their age, and shows how far Etruria availed herself of the act of Psammetichus I. of Egypt, who, B.C. 654, threw open the ports of that country to foreign traders. Contemporaneous with these are large vases of red ware corresponding with the Greek pithoi. The decoration displays a knowledge of the art of Egypt and the East, mingled with examples of that of Greece. The yellow ware is allied to the Doric; and specimens of a still paler color, ornamented with Grecian subjects, modified and adapted to Etruscan ideas, mark the close of the art. It at no time attained to any very great excellence, and declined early. Both of these facts are easily explained. In the wonderful collection of Signor Alesandro Castellani are many beautiful{244} specimens of Etruscan bronze, carved gems, and work in gold. These are ascribed to the third, fourth, and fifth centuries before the Christian era; and it is only natural to suppose that the delicate skill acquired in the manipulation of such materials should have given rise to a distaste for the humbler though more obedient clay. Many of the vases suggest the transition from pottery to bronze in the evidence which their decoration gives of having been imitated from metal.

When we turn to Rome, little investigation is required to satisfy us that there is no such thing as an independent Roman ceramic art. Whatever Rome possessed was acquired from without, not developed from within. One could expect no artistic sense to manifest itself among the horde of refugees, outcasts, and criminals who surrounded Romulus in his little castle on the Palatine hill. His successor, Numa Pompilius, in aiming a blow at idolatry, may have also retarded the growth of art. He forbade the use of images, and for one hundred and sixty years after his death no statue appeared in the temples of Rome. This brings us down to the Etruscan monarch, Tarquinius Priscus, who placed in the Roman capitol a terra-cotta statue of Jupiter, by an Etruscan artist. Whatever the Romans required they obtained from Etruria, until they found a new source of supply in Magna GrÆcia. That they made very slow progress in the arts may be inferred from one incident which happened nearly five hundred years after Numa had issued his order against idolatry. While the second Punic war was raging, the Roman consul, Marcellus, besieged Syracuse, a Corinthian city in Sicily, and, after taking it, sent its paintings and statues to Rome, in order that his countrymen might learn from the art of Greece, and acquire a taste for such works. Syracuse fell B.C. 212, and eleven years afterward the war was brought to an end. 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. Greece was enslaved. Her ancient spirit was crushed. She had{245} taught the world the lesson intrusted to her, and with political independence sank art and literature, though not without leaving imperishable monuments behind. As the tree withered, so did the branches; and the expatriated Greeks in Rome and the long-subdued colonies of Magna GrÆcia, deriving no longer any warmth from the centre from which they came, were quickly lost to sight. There also, as in Etruria, richness took the place of beauty. Gold, silver, and gems were more to the luxurious Romans of the empire than ceramic art, and that which had embellished the palaces of kings was left to the gods and the poor.

The different kinds of unglazed Roman ware may be divided, according to the color of their pastes, into yellowish white, red, gray, and black. The yellow paste was the coarsest, and was used for large pieces, such as the dolia and amphorÆ. The smaller pieces of this color are of a better quality. Many of the household vessels were of red ware, such as plates, bottles, and jars. Some of it, as, for example, the false Samian, was dipped in a slip. The gray class comprises amphorÆ, and flat cooking-pans, and includes some specimens which have all the characteristics of modern stone-ware. The black paste was largely employed in making dishes and other table utensils, such as cups and candle-sticks.

The leading kinds of glazed pottery were the Aretine and red Samian wares. The latter of these is the more celebrated (Fig. 199). Its prototype is to be found in the red ware of the Greek islands. The paste is close and fine, and the glaze is clear and very thin. The similarity in texture of all the specimens points to the conclusion that{246} they were made in one place. The Samian ware has, like the legionary tiles, been found wherever the arms of Rome were carried. Like the unglazed red pottery, it was extensively used for table services, and may broadly be said to have been the chief domestic ware of the Romans. The ornamentation consists of mouldings in relief, incised rings, and intaglio patterns.

The Aretine ware is also red, and is very like the Samian in many respects, but of a lighter shade, and more finely decorated, chiefly in relief. There are also two kinds of black Roman ware, one of dark paste, the other of red paste colored black. The ornamentation of the first is generally very simple, while that of the latter, in some cases, resembles the mouldings on red ware. Like the Samian, it is found over the greater part of Europe.

One of the most interesting branches of Roman ceramics—the various uses of terra-cotta, we pass with a brief reference. The oldest statues are terra-cotta, and of the same material are water spouts, window frames, friezes, capitals, and pillars. Terra-cotta statues were made from the early days, when Etruria was the centre from which Rome supplied itself, down to the Empire, although in the interim the conquest of Magna GrÆcia and Greece had rendered the beautiful Greek marbles and bronzes accessible to the Romans. The architectural bas-reliefs were highly esteemed by the Romans themselves, and show that the Greeks, both at home and residing in Italy, applied themselves to this particular branch of art with devotion and success. The subjects are generally Greek, and are taken from both mythology and history. The gods of both greater and lesser orders appear under many of the characters ascribed to them, and the adventures of Ulysses and Achilles, the feats of Theseus, and the labors of Hercules, are a never-failing treasury of effective subjects.

The result of all our inquiries may be summed up in this contradiction, that Roman ceramic art deserving of the name is Greek, and that the potters who were Roman have left little beyond household wares to attest their skill.

With the fall of the Roman Empire the art, which had long been declining, disappeared from view. Pottery must, no doubt, have been produced. The household necessities of the people must have been satisfied, even amidst internal disruption and barbarian invasions; but{247} there is no evidence that anything worthy of being called an art was kept alive. The revival of the ceramic art of Italy must be dated from the time of Luca della Robbia, in the fifteenth century. To account for the forms it took, an endeavor must be made to join it on to the different branches which preceded it elsewhere. The only danger to be incurred is that of being confused by the multiplicity and yet substantial unity of its sources. Without repeating what has been said in the chapter devoted to the fountains of European art, let it be remembered that, in the year 827, the Saracens conquered Sicily, and that they introduced into that island a manufacture similar to that found in Spain. They embellished the mosque of Palermo with tiles like those of the Alhambra, and these tiles were afterward imitated in works produced in Sicily itself. Afterward, in the fourteenth century, Moorish works were established at Calata Girone, or Caltagirone, in Sicily, and some pieces attributed to them are decorated with copper lustre upon stanniferous enamel. To this period belong the Siculo-Moresque vases in the Castellani collection, which date from the fourteenth century downward (Fig. 201). It is observable that the metallic lustre does not appear in the earlier pieces, which have an unmistakably Persian style of decoration. One specimen will suffice, viz., an oval vase covered with a silicious glaze, and decorated in blue and black, with gazelles and inscriptions. Meanwhile Venice and other maritime cities on both sides of the Italian peninsula were developing an extensive trade with the East. The Crusaders had been converting the old battle-ground of the Jews into the scene of another strife, in which Judaism was ignored. Mohammed preached the gospel of the sword, and the Christians took up the gauntlet thrown down by the Saracens. Is it not possible that by these two courses—trade, and the movements of followers of the Cross—some inklings of Persian art may have crept into Italy?

{248}The crusading spirit of the twelfth century was a most potent agency. In 1113 the Pisans were roused to a sense of the wrongs suffered by Christians from the piratical Saracens of Majorca. They set sail, and in 1115 the island was in their power; and their galleys returned home freighted with the spoils of war. An extensive trade between the Balearic Islands and Italy was maintained in the fourteenth century. Looking at these facts, does it appear improbable that Moorish wares and Moorish potters may have reached Italy from Majorca? Coming still later, we find Moorish refugees from Spain flocking toward Italy in vast numbers. Leaving the Saracens and Moors entirely out of the question, the art of enamelling might have reached Italy from the Byzantine Greeks.

enlarge-image
Fig. 201.—Siculo-Moresque Vases. (Castellani Coll.)
Fig. 201.—Siculo-Moresque Vases. (Castellani Coll.)

With all these facts before us, the bacini, or plates found incrusted in the walls of the old churches of Pisa, need give us little trouble. Mr. Fortnum found one Persian piece. Mr. Marryat thinks them of Moorish origin. Mr. Fortnum is of the further opinion that many of the bacini, both of Pisa and other Italian cities, are of native Italian manufacture. Each specimen must be judged separately, and it may be pointed out that with the highway of the sea open to the East and to the Saracenic settlements in Africa and Spain, with Saracens already settled in Sicily, and with the known early connection by commerce between Italy and Spain, it is difficult to specify the route by which any special ware or process must have reached Italy. We shall afterward see that in Germany tin enamel was known in the thirteenth century. If it should be asked, How did it get there? the{249} question would illustrate a good deal of idle speculation indulged in regarding its introduction into Italy. The same rule will apply to the metallic lustre.

enlarge-image
Fig. 202.—Sgraffiato of the 15th Century.
Fig. 202.—Sgraffiato of the 15th Century.

The Italians used lead glaze on their pottery from a very early period. According to Passeri, mezza-majolica covered with marzacotto was made at Pesaro as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century. Sgraffiato ware was made in a similar manner, and derived its name from the incised ornaments which were cut into the white engobe or slip (with which the ware was covered), so as to show the original color below the slip. In the example here given (Fig. 202) the incised decoration is combined with figures and flowers in relief. But the brilliant importations from Spain made a deep impression upon the public taste. The wares of Majorca were those best and most generally known, and its name, as changed to majolica, had been given to the entire class of lustred wares, although the art of lustring was already known in Italy. It is well to discriminate between the name and the article. It is quite possible that the name of the best known type should come to be applied to the entire class. Jacquemart finds the early wares of Pesaro very suggestive of Persian influence. He concludes, also, that the art of applying the metallic{250} lustre may have been communicated by Persian potters, or by others who had learned it from them, to the eastern potteries of Italy. We may conclude that, as the Majorca ware surpassed that of the early Italian potteries, the potters of Italy endeavored to derive what benefit they could from calling their own productions by the same name. Metallic lustres were used before stanniferous enamel was adopted. The invention of the latter in Italy has been generally ascribed to Luca della Robbia, but there is every reason for believing that this is incorrect. It is impossible to suppose that the Saracen and Moorish potters in Italy were unacquainted with it. It is much more likely that, being satisfied with the results of the processes to which they were accustomed, and the beauty of lead glaze, they did not care to use it.

To tell what Robbia did accomplish we must glance at his personal history. Luca della Robbia (Fig. 203) was born at Florence in the year 1399 or 1400. At first he turned his attention to the business of a goldsmith, but afterward aspired to sculpture. About 1438 his marble bas-relief of “The Singing Boys” was placed in the Duomo of Florence, and was so great a success that orders quickly multiplied. He had also done some work in bronze, but neither chiselling nor casting was sufficiently speedy. Statues must be copied from a clay model. The model was his own; the copy was, in the general case, the work of an assistant; and probably, even if he chiselled the marble himself, he could not reproduce the effects so easily reached in the plastic clay.

Luca was an enterprising artist, and it occurred to him that if he could only dispense with the chiselling and casting, his art and profit would both improve. But how could he make the clay as hard as bronze and as white as marble? Remember that Luca was a sculptor, not a potter. Whatever he did afterward, there can be no doubt that his attention was first turned to statuary. He probably decided upon{251} applying to the men who were accustomed to working in clay, to coloring it and glazing it, to help him in his difficulty. He inquired, and learned that by dipping his statuary in tin enamel and firing it, his object would be accomplished. These considerations give his supposed discovery a new aspect. If we consider that for centuries stanniferous enamel had been in use by Eastern potters, and that the Saracens were perfectly familiar with it, the secret is divested of all mystery. Luca probably acquired his knowledge in one or other of the Italian potteries. What, then, are we to credit to him? He must be admitted to have improved the enamel after a series of experiments, and to have succeeded in bringing it to the degree of fineness and opacity demanded by his purpose (Fig. 204). His first work was a bas-relief of the Resurrection, made about the year 1440, and still standing in the Cathedral of Florence. This piece is of blue and white, the latter for the figures, the former for the ground. He afterward introduced green and yellow, but these colors are very sparingly used. His{252} best works are in and around Florence. Of a Madonna in the circle above a chapel door, Ruskin, in his “Mornings in Florence,” says: “Never pass near the market without looking at it; and glance from the vegetables underneath to Luca’s leaves and lilies, that you may see how honestly he was trying to make his clay like the garden stuff.” The same colors are introduced in a bas-relief in the Castellani collection, in which the Madonna kneels before the Infant Saviour, and angels look down from above. The figures are white, the ground blue, and green is introduced in the grass. Of the same class is the preceding example (Fig. 205) from Boston.

While producing these works in enamelled earthen-ware, Robbia also painted on the flat. Of this work there are twelve circular medallions in the South Kensington Museum, and several specimens in Florence—a tondo, some tiles, and a lunette. The medallions are enamelled, and the paintings are allegorical representations of the months (Fig. 206). Vasari says in regard to the tiles: “For the bishop of Fiesole, in the church of San Brancazio, he also made a marble tomb, on which are the recumbent effigy of the bishop and three other half-length figures besides; and on the pilasters of that work he painted, on the flat, certain festoons{253} and clusters of fruit and foliage so skilfully and naturally, that were they even painted in oil on panel, they could not be more beautifully or forcibly rendered.”

Luca died in 1481, leaving the full knowledge of the process he had perfected to his nephew Andrea, who, however, was less successful than his uncle. His art is less pure (Fig. 207). He becomes elaborate where Luca was simple, especially in his heavy borders of fruit. Andrea was born in 1457, and died in 1528, and left the transmissible part of his art to his four sons, Giovanni, Luca, Ambrosio, and Girolamo. Of these, Girolamo became a monk, and one specimen of his work is said to be at Siena. Giovanni’s works are signed, and cannot, therefore, lead to any confusion. Luca, junior, settled in Rome, and Girolamo went to France, where he executed several works. Luca, the elder, had also two assistants, Agostino and Ottaviano, the former of whom displayed great talent, and worked in Perugia. The special art was carried to Spain by Nicoloso Francesco, of Pisa, who made some bas-reliefs for a church in Seville. Of the other successors of Luca we need only refer to Maestro Giorgio Andreoli, of Gubbio, who is said to have produced some pieces after the Della Robbia type (Fig. 209). The style finally passed away in the earlier part of the sixteenth century. The demand for it appears to have failed about that time. Stanniferous enamel continued to be used here and there after Luca’s death, and after the lapse of some years came gradually into general use. The oldest piece not of his style is dated 1475. For the sake of lucidity it may also be here mentioned, that the{254} metallic lustre, for which the first pressure of public demand was felt toward the close of the fourteenth century, passed into oblivion in less than a hundred years, until revived in more modern times.

Besides that of perfecting a special process, to Luca della Robbia must be assigned the credit of paving the way to the revival which culminated in the products of Gubbio. The distinction between mezza-majolica and majolica must not be forgotten, viz., that the former name was originally applied to wares covered with a white slip, then painted, lead-glazed, and lustred, and the latter to tin-enamelled ware similarly lustred. The latter was thus the highest representative of the combination of two processes, both of Oriental origin. The application of metallic lustre was Persian. Stanniferous enamel was successively Egyptian, Babylonian, and Saracenic—the Saracens undoubtedly acquiring a knowledge of it in Persia, where the beautiful silicious glaze kept it in subordination. The Moors in Spain brought it more freely into use in decoration, and with Luca della Robbia, who perfected the process still farther, raised it from the desuetude into which it had fallen in Italy, where, however, it was already known to Saracenic settlers and their pupils.

With this recapitulation of the beginnings of real Italian majolica, we may now continue our history. The impetus Italian ceramic art received from foreign contact, and from the knowledge acquired by trade, was kept up by the wisdom and devotion to the cause of art manifested by several of the{255} ducal houses. From Pesaro, under the house of Sforza, from Urbino, under that of Montefeltro, and from Florence and Chaffagiolo, under the Medicis, and from other centres, the art spread over all Italy. It is, therefore, by inquiries at these places that our investigations must be continued. Leaving out of view the questions as to the priority of Chaffagiolo to Faenza and Pesaro’s precedence in metallic lustring, we may begin with Tuscany.

The leading Tuscan towns were Chaffagiolo, Florence, Siena, and Pisa. The first of these produced the earliest Tuscan majolica. Its leading features are a thick dark blue, made from cobalt; a bright orange and yellow; a fine clear green, red, brown, and purple. Before the artists of Chaffagiolo had awakened to the spirit of the Renaissance, they issued some works enamelled on one side, with central designs of a Gothic character, and borders of orange, white, and blue. In the fifteenth century a marked improvement was made, but it was not until the beginning of the sixteenth century that the best Chaffagiolo ware was made. Their colors then become more brilliant, and are more daringly handled. Some of these pieces are dated 1507 and 1509. Metallic lustres were used about the same period. Later, the brilliancy of the enamels is toned down, and the execution of the designs is more careful and refined. Chaffagiolo continued to make majolica to the end of the sixteenth century. The pieces frequently show heraldic designs (Fig. 210) and mottoes, the letters S. P. Q. F. (the senate and people of Florence), and the letters P. S. sometimes with I. and sometimes without.

The works made at Siena (Fig. 211) are in many cases undistinguishable from those of Chaffagiolo. An artist named Benedetto produced at Siena some very fine pieces.

The majolica of Florence, if such were ever made, is now unknown. Lazari states that an artist was brought by the Grand Duke Francesco Maria to decorate Florentine vases; but assuming the truth of the statement, his works are now either destroyed or lost among those ascribed to other places. We have already learned something of Pisa as fitting out a Balearic crusade and exchanging pottery with Spain. Probably the wares it exported came from other parts of Tuscany, although it had a majolica manufactory of its own. The Pisan decoration closely resembles that of Urbino.{256}

enlarge-image
Fig. 212—The Sforza Dish. Pesaro.
Fig. 212—The Sforza Dish. Pesaro.

In the Duchy of Urbino, Pesaro, Castel-Durante, Urbino, and Gubbio are the leading centres, and absorb a large share of the interest surrounding the pottery of Italy. When the Sforza family acquired the lordship of Pesaro, they instituted pottery works there, and in 1486 and 1508 passed edicts against the importation of earthen-ware into Pesaro. The first of these protective measures was granted by Giovanni Sforza and Camilla, his father’s widow, and was commemorated by a dish called the Sforza dish, a very wonderful specimen of majolica (Fig. 212). The centre is occupied by portraits of the granters of the edict, shaded with blue on an indigo ground, and having gold and ruby lustred hair, dresses, and head-dresses. A scroll representing the edict forms a white back-ground to the faces, and is finished with ruby lustre. The borders are blue, with ruby and gold lustre. Under the house of Sforza the manufacture of mezza-majolica improved, and in 1500 fine, or tin-enamelled, majolica was introduced. Up to 1530 it steadily improved, and in that year the wife of the{257} reigning Duke of Urbino, who had succeeded the Sforza lords of Pesaro, erected a palace near Pesaro. From 1540 to 1568, under Duke Guidobaldo II., the art continued to rise, until it reached its highest point of perfection. The duke first employed Battisto Franco, an eminent Venetian artist, and Raffaelle del Borgo. Girolamo Lanfranco and Giacomo Lanfranco were also employed as artists at Pesaro. After 1560 the art began to decline.

The earliest Pesarese works very closely resemble the Persian, and are the best indications to be found of the presence of an art brought directly from Iran to Italy. These are lustred and painted in green and blue. At Pesaro we first meet with pieces showing the portraits and love mottoes by which the lovers of the day celebrated the beauty of their mistresses and gave lasting tokens of their passion. If we seek peculiar features in this majolica, we shall find them in the strong execution and finely blended tints of the early pieces, and in the yellow of the madreperla lustre combined with blue. As the art rose under the second Guidobaldo, historical scenes after the great masters present themselves, taken from both profane and sacred history—the brave Horatius defending the bridge at Rome against the army of Lars Porsenna, Samson, Brennus, Mutius ScÆvola, Judith, and other characters. In 1567 the Giacomo Lanfranco already mentioned applied real gold to majolica, and several of his pieces thus decorated are still in existence.

Castel-Durante appears to have produced faience as early as 1361, but none of its pottery can be recognized until we come down to 1508, after which the specimens multiply.{258} With the year 1580 the art passed its meridian, and declined steadily for nearly two hundred years. The characteristic decoration consists of scrolls with fantastic chimerical terminations. The colors are at first a dull green upon blue, and about 1550 lustrous rich yellows appear, and led to the decline thirty years later.

The city of Urbino was the great centre at once of majolica painting and of the ducal patronage, which gave the entire duchy its pre-eminence. From 1477, when Garducci was working in a comparatively humble way, down to 1530, the history of Urbino hardly demands notice. Its highest glory came with Francesco Xanto (Fig. 216), whose broad and generally true drawing and masterly composition mark him as one of the great artists of the Renaissance. His subjects are taken from the Latin classical and the later Italian poets, and from Raffaelle. Living at the time when the demand for metallic lustre was at its height, he applies it with a boldness and effectiveness in harmony with his brilliant coloring. All his works are signed. From him we turn to the equally illustrious Fontana family—Guido, Camillo, and Orazio, the latter of whom{259} is specially deserving of study. He attained to a higher mechanical excellence than any of his predecessors, his best works dating from after 1540, when Xanto’s career was closing; and his paintings are in consequence characterized by a softness of color and a fineness of glaze which leave him without a peer. Few pieces by the Fontana family are signed. Their most famous works are the vases for the Spezieria, ordered by the Duke Guidobaldo II., and painted from designs by Raffaelle Battista Franco, Michael Angelo, Giulio Romano, and others. Nicola da Urbino and Francesco Durantino are among the other artists who contributed to the fame of Urbino.

enlarge-image
Fig. 216.—Urbino Plate, by Xanto. Scene, the Storming of Goleta. (Marryat Coll.)
Fig. 216.—Urbino Plate, by Xanto. Scene, the Storming of Goleta. (Marryat Coll.)

The lustres of Gubbio (Fig. 219) are inseparably associated with the one great name of Giorgio Andreoli, or, as he is usually called, Maestro Giorgio. He was a native of Pavia, and was originally a{260} sculptor; and after he went to Gubbio, in 1498, executed some works in the Della Robbia style (Fig. 209). A piece dated 1489, and signed “Don Giorgio,” is ascribed to him while he was still at Pavia, but the first piece characteristic of the master, signed and lustred, is dated 1519, and the last 1541. We have said that Xanto of Urbino lustred his own pieces, but the matter is not free from doubt. Maestro Giorgio certainly was master of the art of lustring, and the brilliancy of his ruby reds, copper, and mother-of-pearl is unrivalled. But the statement of many writers that artists at other places sent their works to Gubbio to be lustred, and allowed Giorgio to affix his name to them, is too repulsive to be accepted without protest or reservation. One can hardly imagine a more unworthy course than that ascribed to Giorgio, of laying aside his proper artistic functions and becoming merely a decorator with lustres, “indifferent,” as Marryat says, “by whose hands they were executed or from what fabric they proceeded.” It is in this capacity of decorator that the otherwise finished paintings of Xanto and others are said to have been sent to him to be enriched with lustre. The earlier Gubbio wares generally have a pale-blue ground, with grotesques and scrolls terminating in animals’ heads, and mingled occasionally with cherubs’ heads. The grounds afterward became more brilliant, and the designs include mottoes and busts in celebration either of the great men of the time or of its fair ladies. It is to be noted that Giorgio{261} lived before the accession of Guidobaldo II., and consequently did not partake of the benefits enjoyed by the Fontana family at Urbino.

From the Duchy of Urbino we may turn to Faenza. It has already been referred to as supplying an etymology for the word faience. Ganzoni, writing in 1485, speaks of the whiteness and polish of the Faenza majolica, and Lazari praises its soft tints and good drawing, which manifested themselves after the first quarter of the sixteenth century. The earlier fabrics bear strong evidences of Oriental influences, and, as seen in the Castellani collection, would carry us back to a very early stage of the art. The glaze is either lead or litharge, and some of the designs consist of geometrical combinations in manganese and copper. Other primitive pieces are of a very pale blue or white, changing at times to a blue border surrounding heads with beards terminating in acanthus leaves and scrolls attached. A slight examination of these pieces shows that the strength of the artists of this period lay in the accessories, and that they were weak and uncertain in their attempts at figure-drawing. The pieces ascribed to Casa Pirota, of which Signor Castellani has some notable examples, are those in which we discover the point of Lazari’s encomiums. These date from 1525 downward, and show the excellence{262} of drawing and brightness of decoration which gave the Faentine majolica its celebrity. The borders frequently consist of grotesques in shaded white on pale or dark blue or gray grounds. Dishes with chiaroscuro arabesques on grounds of blue, surrounding figures, busts, or heraldic designs, represent a prevailing Faentine style. A plate belonging to Signor Castellani has a blue ground in the centre, on which a coat-of-arms is laid in yellow, and the broad border of pale gray finishes with a rim of green and yellow. An exceptional piece is described as black with white reserved arabesques. Forli, Rimini, and Ravenna may be dismissed briefly. Forli produced pottery at least as early as 1396; but it was not until the sixteenth century that it made any majolica which we can recognize, and even then it might easily be confounded with the productions of Chaffagiolo and Faenza. The Rimini majolica is chiefly remarkable for its wonderful glaze.

Venice had majolica factories at least as early as 1520, and probably half a century before that date. The earlier wares are illustrated by certain pieces of faience pavement. Of the sixteenth century the earliest specimens are dated 1540 and 1543, and of this period the designs are chiefly in blue and white, sometimes soft and undecided. The ware is thin and hard, and the rims of plates are frequently decorated with fruit and flowers in relief. Scrolls on a deep blue ground, and oak leaves on pale blue, are also met with.

enlarge-image
Fig. 221.—Faenza Fruit Dish.
Fig. 221.—Faenza Fruit Dish.

With Ferrara, Deruta, and Naples we may conclude our enumeration. Ferrara was an offshoot of Faenza, whence we find Fra Melchiorre coming in 1495, Biagio in 1501, Antonio in 1522, and Catto in 1528. The artist Camillo who painted vases, the Dossi brothers{263} who designed, “El Frate,” Grosso, and Zaffarino are among those who gave Ferrara its reputation. It is probably to the Dossis that the grotesques on a white ground are to be attributed. Deruta takes us back to Robbia, whose pupil, Agostino di Antonio di Duccio, went to Perugia in 1461, and thence certainly influenced the Deruta school. With such teaching Deruta produced, early in the sixteenth century, majolica of a very high order of merit, with blue grounds and yellow lustred cherubs’ heads in relief, and arabesques. Within such borders are white enamelled inner circles, with scrolls mingled with birds and chimeras, surrounding a raised centre of deep blue bearing a bust or head. Several pieces subsequent to 1544 are signed “El Frate,” and are, as a whole, weak and unpleasing, although some others are strong and beautiful. As a rule, the artists of Deruta appear to have been{264} the direct opposites of those of early Faenza, i. e., they expend their resources upon their principal figures, and make the details entirely secondary. The earliest Deruta vases are conical, and decorated in lustre and white enamel with blue. Naples and Castelli are both surrounded with more or less mystery, although evidence is not wanting that the latter at least produced excellent majolica. With the end of the sixteenth century appear some large vases of Naples, painted in dark colors with religious subjects.

enlarge-image
Fig. 222.—Deruta Dish. (South Kensington Museum.)
Fig. 222.—Deruta Dish. (South Kensington Museum.)

The shapes which engaged so much of our attention in Greece, are in Italy too manifold and varied for classification. We are in presence of an entirely new order of things, when we find artists expending their best efforts upon decoration with enamels, lustres, arabesques, grotesques, and wonderful scrolls turning in their sweeping folds round all manner of impossible monsters, of a plain, broad-bordered dish, with no pretension to form. When the Italian artists concede something to shape, they frequently become wilful, embellishing a vase reminding us of Greece with serpent handles, or running off into{265} elaborate inkstands or quaint table wares. In the Italy of the Renaissance we are in the presence of the triumph of decoration, and it is upon decoration that we, in common with all inquirers, must concentrate attention, thankful if at times we detect a harmony between the gracefulness of a vase and the beauty of its brilliant colors.

Possibly it may be reserved for the United Italy of the nineteenth century to turn back to the earlier pages in her ceramic history, and, having filled herself with the spirit of the potters of Magna GrÆcia and Apulia, to pass down to the brilliancy of the sixteenth century, and, with both in full view, to execute something worthy of the later prime of her unity. Endless repetitions of the famous fabrics of the Renaissance have led her into spiritless imitation and boundless fraud. Some of the pieces displayed at the Centennial Exhibition were by no means destitute of merit. Faenza can still produce good drawing and effective coloring, and Della Robbia ware is still manufactured with tin-enamelled figures, which look considerably better than whitewashed terra-cotta. But let us imagine the energy and skill devoted to imitation with intent to deceive, and the painstaking labor of honest men who make no attempt to rise above the rank of copyists, to be together thrown into an endeavor to reach a new originality. Might not Italy be raised from the rank of a country resting upon a brilliant past into that of one working in the present to reach an equally brilliant future?

PORCELAIN.

To Italy and to the family of the Medici, as we have seen, belongs the honor of making the first artificial European porcelain of which any specimens have come down to our time. The result of recent researches has been to throw much light upon the interesting discovery made at Florence. Dr. Foresi, of that city, was the first whose attention was drawn to the matter. He collected several pieces of porcelain, evidently of European manufacture; and his curiosity having been aroused as to their origin, he found that the Grand Duke{266} Francis I. had a private factory in the Boboli gardens, that there experiments had been made with a view to discovering the composition of porcelain, and that success had been attained. The marks on the pieces are the letter F. and a dome, the arms of the Medici, and on one, the arms, the letters F. M. M. E. D. II.—the initials of Franciscus Medici Magnus EtruriÆ Dux Secundus—the letter F. and the dome. The latter of these were clearly the initial letter of Florence or of Francis, and the dome of the city’s magnificent cathedral. A fine specimen of the Florentine porcelain was brought to America in the Castellani collection (Fig. 223). It is a fluted dish, with the figure of St. Mark and the lion painted in blue on the bottom (Fig. 224). Under the lion’s paw is a volume bearing the letters G. and P., supposed to be the artist’s initials, and on the reverse are the letter F. and the dome. In the same collection is a plate, also decorated in the Japanese style, light blue and white, and having the dome and letter on the under side. There are not thirty pieces of this ware known. In connection with the fact that the decoration, as we pointed out when speaking of this ware under Japan, is undoubtedly Japanese, an interesting question has been raised by Mr. B. Phillips. He expresses the belief that the presence of Japanese—composing the embassy to the Pope—in Italy may have had a direct influence, not only on the ornamentation but on the manufacture of the Medicean porcelain. He then says:{267} “That these Japanese nobles visited the Grand Duke in Florence cannot be doubted. Now, as to the Medicean porcelain, we have been careful not to use the word ‘discovery’ in connection with its early manufacture in Florence. We are strongly of the opinion that the method of selecting and preparing the material from which porcelain had to be made was derived directly from the Japanese. If the decoration, as we believe has been undoubtedly proved, was taken from the Japanese, might not the method of making porcelain have been derived from the same source?” That Italy may have full credit for the Grand Duke’s success, it may be pointed out that there are two objections to the above theory.

It is nowhere stated that the Japanese were acquainted with any other than natural kaolinic porcelain, and it is exceedingly improbable that the members of an embassy had any knowledge of the combination of materials in an artificial paste. The Medicean was not a pure kaolinic porcelain, but “a composite paste having for basis quartz and a vitreous frit, with a small quantity of the kaolin of Vicenza.” In the second place, the embassy did not leave Japan until 1583, and only reached Italy in 1585. “In 1581,” says Jacquemart, “the experiments of the Grand Duke had produced their fruits, and he already sent presents of his translucent pottery to the other sovereigns of Europe.” The porcelain was, therefore, made before the Japanese arrived in Italy.

Were anything further needed to preserve for Italy the exclusive credit of one of the greatest contributions to ceramic art, it may be found in the styles of decoration of the Medicean porcelain. These are divisible into two classes: the Oriental and the Italian. The latter resembles that of faience, and consists chiefly of grotesques. Such are the pieces upon which appear the arms of the Medicean family, for whose use they were reserved. The specimens with Oriental decoration were gifts made to spread abroad the renown of the Grand Duke’s laboratory. Such a purpose could certainly not have been fulfilled with inferior works, and this class, to which the Castellani porcelain belongs, may be taken as representing the best Medicean paste. In this view the fabric was at its highest before the Japanese left their own country, as we have seen that pieces of this character were being sent over Europe in 1581.{268}

The probability is that the Grand Duke, or Bernardo Buontalenti, who really made the discovery, arrived at it by independent investigations prompted by Oriental porcelain, and that the latter and the finer specimens of majolica suggested the decoration.

About one hundred and fifty years later, or in 1735, the Marquis Carlo Ginori established a manufactory at La Doccia, near Florence. The enterprise of the founder was so great, manifesting itself in the introduction of the chemist Wandelein as director, and the importation of material from China, that in a few years the Doccia porcelain had become famous. The earlier pieces bear a close resemblance to the Chinese. The artists of Doccia excelled in modelling, and many of their groups are beautifully executed. It is unfortunate that from an early period of the existence of the workshop its artists should have engaged in imitation. After following Chinese models they turned to SÈvres, and then to Capo di Monte. More lately, Doccia has won an unenviable notoriety by its spurious imitation of old majolica and the wares of Luca della Robbia. Early in the last century Doccia became possessed of some of the moulds of Capo di Monte, and as the Doccia mark does not appear upon the pieces made from them, a wide opening was offered for fraud. It is worth noting, however, that it is by its copies and imitations that the Doccia manufactory reached its greatest financial success. The success of the counterfeit has destroyed the genuine, and the artistic is overshadowed by the commercial.

In Venetia, porcelain was made at Venice and Le Nove. The history of the manufacture in Venice is somewhat obscure. Early in the sixteenth century—and, therefore, before the Medicean ware was produced—experiments, the success of which cannot now be measured, were made by a Venetian artist. He seems, after making a few pieces, to have relinquished the enterprise for lack of support and patronage. His story is thus told: “There was an old potter in Venice about 1504-1519, whose name is unknown, of whom, in fact, we know nothing except from a few notes discovered by the Marquis Campori among the relics of the Duke Alphonso I. of Ferrara, but whose name ought to be blazoned in gold as the first European who made porcelain. In 1504 the Duke was in Venice, and his book of expenses shows an item of two liri and a fraction, paid for a piece of porcelain.{269} Fifteen years afterward his ambassador in Venice wrote him a letter, sending with it a plate and bowl of porcelain, from the ‘master,’ from whom the Duke had ordered them. And the ambassador goes on to say that the master declined to take more, as his experiments cost him too much time and money; and, further, he declines to accept an invitation of the Duke to remove to Ferrara and make porcelain there, pleading that he is too old, and does not want to leave Venice. Enthusiastic collectors imagine that a few specimens to which they can assign no other origin are works of the old Venetian, but there is no satisfactory evidence that any of his work remains.” In the absence of any relics of this ancient Venetian to substantiate his claim to the invention of a true porcelain, the honor will probably continue to be ascribed to Florence. However this may be, the existence of Venetian specimens with decoration suggestive of seventeenth century styles, would indicate that the industry was at least kept alive, and that there were several predecessors to the manufactory founded by Francesco Vezzi early in the eighteenth century. Some very beautiful works are attributed to the Casa Vezzi. In or about 1765 another manufactory was established by Geminiano Cozzi, and from it were turned out table-sets, groups, statuettes, and vases. The establishment at Le Nove, founded in 1752 by Pasquale Antonibon, produced majolica, terraglia—a mixed composition of pottery and porcelain—and artificial porcelain. Of the latter (Fig. 225) some magnificent examples have been preserved.

The most famous Italian porcelain is that of Capo di Monte. This manufactory was founded in 1736 by Charles III., whom we have already seen introducing the art into Madrid, after he left Naples to mount the throne of Spain. The founder does not appear to have{270} been indebted to any extent whatever to the discoveries made at Meissen, but to have set on foot a perfectly independent and national industry. The king frequently worked in the factory, and under his guidance and the favor of his consort, Queen Amelia of Saxony, its products rapidly improved after the first essays, which closely followed the Japanese. The Capo di Monte forms assume a distinctive character. Her artists turned to the sea, as became citizens of the Queen of the Sea, and there found inspiration. They took the shells of the Mediterranean for their models, and by combining them with coral and sea-plants, and coloring all after nature, produced some of their most beautiful works. A very handsome ewer is thus composed, the body representing an ingenious combination of shells set in a foot of coral, a branch of which climbs up the side, and, arching to the lip, forms the handle. A basin is similarly designed, and is dotted with smaller shells. Or again, a salt-cellar is modelled after a boat steered by a youth. These examples will suffice to show that not the least merit of the artists of Capo di Monte is their originality. The table services present us with some of the finest porcelain made in Europe. The paste is fine and transparent, and many of the pieces are as thin and light as the egg-shell of China.

When Charles III. set out for Spain, he took a number of the artists with him, and left to his successor in Naples the work of maintaining the industry. In this Ferdinand was not successful, and Capo di Monte rapidly sank, and disappeared altogether in 1821.

The porcelain made at all the places named was artificial. The only Italian manufactory of natural porcelain was that of Vineuf, near Turin, which began to work toward the end of last century. The body contains magnesia. The workshop was founded by Dr. Gioanetti.{271}

enlarge-image
Fig. 226.—Old SÈvres Biscuit. Judgment of Paris. (August Belmont Coll.)
Fig. 226.—Old SÈvres Biscuit. Judgment of Paris. (August Belmont Coll.)

CHAPTER V.
FRANCE.

TURNING as we leave Italy we seem to look back across a wide, unbroken plain, from the midst of which rises a mountain range, its summits{272} glowing with the rays of the setting sun behind us. 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 early pottery of Gallia has been variously viewed, but there seems no reason for withholding from the ancient Celtic potters the credit of having adopted a high and pure standard of art before the Roman power was established. It has even been questioned, in the light of a full knowledge of the subject, if the Romans did not, by the introduction of new models, retard the growth of native skill and destroy an art superior to their own. Judging from the examples still remaining, it is at least unquestionable that the Celts had, at a very early date, arrived at ideas of simplicity and elegance of form far in advance of those entertained by contemporary nations. These works, moreover, give no indication of foreign influence, and probably represent the last stage of native art, before it was disturbed by the entrance of the invader. The ornamentation is chaste almost to severity, and although in some instances it shows a community of style with the early German pottery, it is generally independent and distinctive. We do not assign an age to these pieces, but it appears probable that they were preceded by a ruder pottery also referable to the ancient Celts. The earlier remains, supposed to belong to the pre-Roman era, have been found in the North, and are of a very primitive character, evidently made entirely by hand, without the assistance of either mould or wheel. The paste is dark-colored and coarse. There is also a class equally rude, in so far as the composition is concerned, but giving in the shapes a suggestion of Roman influence. Red Roman ware has been found in every part of Gaul, and a furnace was discovered in Auvergne. At Bordeaux red, black, white, and yellow Roman pottery has been exhumed, and several localities are indicated at which potteries existed.{273}

As we approach the Middle Ages, and begin to detect evidences in France of a knowledge of processes with which we are already familiar, and to question ourselves as to their special origin, it may be well to keep the following facts in view: firstly, that Marseilles was founded by a Phoenician colony; secondly, that pottery of the South of France, after the Arabs had spread over the States of Barbary, so closely resembled the Arabian as to suggest at once communication with the North of Africa; thirdly, that France was open to the same influences of trade, intercourse, and immigration which had so powerful an effect upon Italy. Let us allude to one point, the probable transmission of lead-glaze from Greece to Rome, and thus to the Gauls, for an illustration of the untraceable route by which knowledge was spread, and for an explanation of the phenomenon so often witnessed of a certain product revealing itself in the most incomprehensible manner at a point far removed from the accepted centre of works of its class.

In the twelfth century Oriental ideas in France begin to supersede those of Gothic inspiration, and Christianity and chivalry together operate a decided change in ceramic ornamentation. Processes gradually improved. At Poitou, in the thirteenth century, green-glazed conical urns were made, and Beauvais had already reached celebrity. More interesting is the fact that, at Hesdin, Jehan de Voleur was, toward the close of the fourteenth century, acquainted with stanniferous enamel. In France, therefore, as in Italy, this secret was known long prior to the supposed discovery by Luca della Robbia. It is, however, to Italy that France is indebted for the access of spirit infused into its ceramic art in the sixteenth century. Italy supplied models to the French potters, who had been busying themselves with ornamentation of Gothic origin and Christian devices and legends. And, further, Italian artists flocked to France between the close of the fifteenth and the latter part of the sixteenth century, and settled at Lyons, Amboise, Nantes, and elsewhere. After a time the Italian taste they represented and their technical skill were turned into a channel more thoroughly French, and to the building up of an art purely national.

Among those who assisted in this great work no name is more eminent than that of Bernard Palissy (Fig. 227). We have already characterized his life as the great romance in the history of ceramics, and{274} certainly it reads more like a romance than sober fact. Let us look at it a little in detail. His father was a humble artisan, and the honor of his birthplace is ascribed to La Chapelle Biron, between the years 1506 and 1510. His education was of the most limited kind, including merely reading and writing; and at an early age he began professional life as a worker in glass, a combination of the glazier and painter. His artistic instincts were thus kindled; and besides acquainting himself with drawing, painting, modelling, and geometry, he studied the Italian masters, copied their works, and devoted part of his time to literature. Thereafter, to add to his stock of knowledge and widen his experience, he began to travel, and visited Germany, Flanders, and the several provinces of his native country. As he travelled, he worked as surveyor and glass-painter, and studied chemistry and natural history. It is with some astonishment that we find this man, unknown to the world at large except as a potter, investigating the subjects upon which the noble science of geology was afterward built, and theorizing upon the elasticity and power of steam.

enlarge-image
Fig. 227.—Bernard Palissy. (From a Painting in the HÔtel Cluny, Paris.)
Fig. 227.—Bernard Palissy. (From a Painting in the HÔtel Cluny, Paris.)

He finished his travels in 1539, settled at Saintes, married, and devoted himself to his original profession and to land-measuring. A few years later he saw the beautiful enamelled earthen cup—whether Oriental, German, or white Ferrarese need not concern us—which turned the entire course of his life. He wished to imitate the enamel{275} without knowing anything of its composition, and embarked upon the long series of experiments which led him, through numberless trials, to eminence and fame. He presents at this period one of the most curious figures possibly in all history, that of a man apparently bent upon shutting out all benefit that might have been derived from the experience of others, literally “groping in the dark,” as he says of himself, and determined to make up for lack of technical knowledge by assiduous experiment. He ground, built furnaces and fired them, tried the potter’s oven of Chapelle-des-pots—all to no purpose. Having accepted a surveying mission he returned with treasury replenished and ardor unabated.

Surely, no man ever knocked with such pertinacity at the door of knowledge. He met his first success by trying a glass-maker’s furnace. One of the pieces came out “white and polished.” This was food to live upon, and he began to build a furnace of his own, doing all the work himself—three masons in one. At length it was finished, and the first attempt ended in failure. He tried again, becoming poorer and poorer, so that he could not buy wood for his furnace. In his strait, he took the tree-props from his garden, his furniture, and house-flooring for fuel. “My shirt had not been dry for more than a month; and also, to console me, they laughed at me, and even those who ought to have helped me went crying about the town that I was burning my floor, and by these means made me lose my credit; and they thought me mad.” He was evidently in a bad way when he dropped into wearing a wet shirt for a month, and thinking that any one ought to have helped him. After a short rest, he turned his attention to the preparation of a new furnace.

To carry out this new plan, he was compelled to mortgage his credit by employing a potter to assist him. His assistant he kept in food by the friendly offices of a tavern-keeper, who seems not to have shared in the madness theory. After six months he felt himself obliged to pay off his help, and did so—in clothes, part of his own scanty wardrobe. Still he was not to be beaten. He finished his furnace single-handed, put in his pieces, and started the fire; but still the gods were inexorable. The pebbles in the mortar used in building the furnace cracked under the heat and flew in splinters, sticking in the glaze of his pieces, and spoiling them. Remorselessly, he broke them{276} all, declining even to give his importunate creditors a single specimen in part payment of his debts. One can imagine the storm such conduct raised, and to make matters worse, “I met with nothing in my house but reproaches, and received maledictions instead of consolation.” The ashes spoiled his next batch, and when he resorted to seggars the unequally distributed heat marred the enamels. He was now, however, too near victory to be altogether discouraged, and finally, after fifteen or sixteen years of unheard-of struggle and misery, this indomitable genius produced the long-sought enamel, and the secret of his well-known rustic pottery was discovered.

Fame and patronage came with success, but Palissy’s troubles were by no means ended. Having embraced Protestantism, he fell under the edict of 1559, saw his workshop destroyed, and was only saved from death by the intervention of the king. Under the protection of Queen Catherine de Medici, he first went to Rochelle, but was afterward summoned to Paris, and there, in a workshop erected in the garden of the Tuileries, produced some of his best works. Saved by court influence from the massacre of St. Bartholomew, he afterward, in 1588, fell into the hands of the Leaguers, and in the following year, at the age of eighty, died in the Bastille.

His first success was the production of the white enamel, which appears to have engrossed his entire attention. His second attainment was a jasper glaze, the examples of which show a mixture of brown, white, and blue, and which he deemed only worthy of using as a means of temporary subsistence. His third and most famous achievement was the Rustiques figulines (Fig. 228), with which{277} his name is most intimately associated. These are known by imitations almost everywhere, and consist of variously shaped dishes and vases ornamented with shells, frogs, lizards, snakes, fish of several varieties, and leaves (Fig. 229). He was succeeded by certain members of his family, upon whose death his specialty was lost. At the Centennial Exhibition several imitations were shown in the French, Swedish, and Portuguese departments. Of these the best were those of M. Barbizet (Fig. 230), of Paris, the son of an artist who is said to have rediscovered Palissy’s method, some fifty years ago, and who introduced his father’s discovery into commerce in 1850. Pull, of Paris, and Avisseau, of Tours, are also modern imitators who have been very successful in approaching their model. Pull began to produce his imitations in 1856, and has even deceived connoisseurs. One of his pieces has been sold at as high a figure as £240. Mr. Walters, of Baltimore, has an excellent example by the elder Avisseau. With the exception of the works of Avisseau, Pull, and Barbizet, the imitations of Palissy ware are neither skilful nor in any way attractive; as independent works of art, accomplished on the suggestion supplied by him, they are hardly deserving of serious consideration.

What is to be admired or condemned in Palissy as a man requires no mention; the admirable in him as a potter has been already pointed out (see Introduction, page 42). Passing now from his rustiques figulines, we find him, after his settlement in Paris, carrying his peculiar style into works of a totally different general character. In one piece a figure representing Charity is surrounded by a rustic frame, and a Magdalen kneels in another among shells and plants. In these, as in his rustic pottery, the figures are admirably executed{278} and the coloring vigorous. His palette was limited to a few colors, of which yellow, blue, and gray were the chief, although sometimes we find him introducing violet, green, and brown. Some tiles are attributed to him, but the statuettes formerly ascribed to him are now generally conceded to be the works of other hands. His vases, basins, and dishes are extremely varied, and are decorated with subjects taken from contemporary life and from history. A very remarkable vase now in the Louvre is blue, with yellow ornaments in relief, and not less characteristic are his large oval cisterns, with masques, foliage, fruit, and shells for ornaments. One of these (Fig. 231) is a perfect marvel of soft and harmonious coloring. The heads are white; the drapery white, with yellow fringe, and in its heavier folds blue; the fruit and feathers white, gray, red, yellow, and blue; the ground gray in tone, and composed of blue, maroon, and green. In two specimens of dishes the ground is white, upon which reptiles lie in strong relief. None of his pieces are signed.

enlarge-image
Fig. 230.—Barbizet’s “Palissy Ware.” (Tiffany & Co.)
Fig. 230.—Barbizet’s “Palissy Ware.” (Tiffany & Co.)

One would imagine the idea to be prevalent that Palissy executed nothing but Rustiques figulines, if we are to judge from the tendency of imitators to produce pieces of that character, and from the prevailing taste of collectors, who appear to demand lizards and fish as essential to the correct imitation of the master. Having given as full{279} a view of his great works as may be necessary to appreciate their variety and beauty, let us revert once more to the fact that Palissy was original in two respects: firstly, in his methods; secondly, in his adoption of natural objects as models. He deliberately shut out all influences which might consciously or unconsciously have affected his aim; and as a consequence, although tin enamel and reliefs were in vogue all over France, he emerged from his obscurity, and lived through the period of his eminence without being affected by either German or Italian ideas or processes. He must be accepted as the exponent of an art emphatically French. His imitators have used his moulds, and his pupils have followed his styles; but even when possessing the secrets and skill, copyists seldom catch the intelligence of their master, and thus we find that on his death his art declined.

enlarge-image
Fig. 231.—Palissy Cistern.
Fig. 231.—Palissy Cistern.

While Palissy was still in early manhood, the famous and wonderful Henri Deux ware, or Faience d’Oiron, had been made. There are only sixty-seven pieces in existence; and the mystery which for a long time enveloped its manufacture, its rarity, and its beauty, have both surrounded it with a peculiar interest and rendered specimens almost fabulously valuable. At a sale in 1865, no less a sum than $5500 was given for a biberon. This ware was made about 1530, by a potter named FranÇois Cherpentier, and Jehan Bernart, secretary and librarian, both in the service of HÉlÈne de Hangest, widow of Artus Gouffier, Sieur de Boisy. How this lady came to acquire a taste for ceramics, it is not, in view of what heretics call China-mania, hard to imagine. In any case, she built for Cherpentier and Bernart a workshop{280} and furnace near the chÂteau of Oiron, and there the admirable Henri Deux ware was made. After the death of HÉlÈne de Hangest, in 1537, Bernart appears to have continued his labors under the superintendence of her son. This faience, therefore, which has created more curiosity—the place of its manufacture was not known until 1862—than any other, and been more lavishly praised, owes its existence to the whim or enthusiasm of a woman.

It is an entirely exceptional ware. The paste is a pipe-clay, pure, fine, and white. Upon the first or inner layer, a second layer of a still finer and whiter clay was laid, in which the design was engraved. Colored pastes were then used for filling in the cavities, and the surface was then made level. So closely did the work resemble niello in metal that the name “Faience À Niellure” was given to the ware (Fig. 233). On the earlier works arabesques in zones, initials, and heraldic designs were thus engraved, chiefly in black, brown, and red. The zones are also frequently yellow, and the borders brown. A further ornamentation consists of frogs, shells, lizards, and wreaths in relief. After the death of HÉlÈne de Hangest the decoration assumed an architectural character, and soon afterward the colors lost their beauty, the forms their elegance, and{281} the art, as a whole, degenerated. For a period of about twenty years the faience was made which puzzled ceramists for over three centuries. Copies of this ware, by Minton of England, are in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and in the collections of Mr. Walters, of Baltimore, and Mr. W. L. Andrews, New York.

Having referred to the specialties of Saintes and Oiron, we now turn to the other centres of French ceramics, grouping all its porcelain together in a separate section. Beauvais, Poitou, and Hesdin have been already alluded to incidentally. Of the remaining seats of the faience manufactory in France, a few are selected for their importance as producing styles more or less distinctive, such as Rouen, Nevers, Moustiers, and Limoges.

Rouen may be taken as representing independent Norman art. Marreot Abaquesne was engaged there in enamelling from 1535, and two tile pictures from the chÂteau of Ecouen, dated 1542, are still in existence, representing, in blue, green, yellow, and white, Mutius ScÆvola and Marcus Curtius. Abaquesne worked until 1557, and after that date the manufacture of tiles was continued by others. In 1646 Nicolas Poirel, Sieur de Grandval, obtained a privilege or patent for making faience, and immediately transferred it to Edme Poterat, already established in the business in Saint-Sever. To this potter is, in all probability, due the most distinctive styles of decoration practised at Rouen, those resembling lambrequins and lace (Fig. 234.) These are modifications of the Oriental type. In 1673 another patent was granted to Louis Poterat, a son of the former, for the making of “porcelain similar to that of China, and of violet faience painted with white and blue and other colors, in the{282} manner of that of Holland.” After the expiry, about 1700, of Poirel’s patent, manufactories multiplied rapidly, and reached an aggregate of eighteen, from which some estimate may be formed of the number of artists and potters engaged at Rouen.

As to the successive styles, there is no doubt that designers drew largely from the works of the gold and silver smith. Flowers in wreaths and bouquets surround landscapes painted on white. Then came the senior Poterat’s adaptation of Oriental designs in the lace and cognate styles already mentioned, at first in blue camaÏeu, and afterward mingled with red. Equally well known is the brilliant decoration À la corne (Fig. 235), in which many-hued flowers issue from a cornucopia, and dazzling insects fill in the interstices between the flowers. All these styles have been imitated both throughout France and in other countries. No faience of the eighteenth century was more rich and artistic than that of Rouen. Many of the pieces are of large size and highly ornate in character.

To Nevers it has been usual to accord the honor of being the earliest producer of enamelled pottery in France, but without good reason. The evidence appears to be rather in favor of Rouen. When Louis Gonzaga became Duke of Nevers, he sent for a number of Italian artists, and from that date, about 1565, the production of faience at Nevers took its rise. In 1578 the brothers Conrade came from Albissola, near Genoa, and, settling at Nevers, were patronized by the ducal family. Their works date from 1602, and it was not until thirty years later that a second manufactory was established. The influence of the Conrades upon the art is very doubtful, notwithstanding the monopoly they appear to have enjoyed. One thing may be accepted{283} as certain, that there existed a Nivernais style prior to that introduced by them. Louis Gonzaga, the patron, as we have seen, of ceramic art, died in 1595; and as the Conrades did not establish themselves until 1608, although they had been working for a few years previously, we have a period of forty-three years to account for, dating from the accession of Gonzaga, during thirty of which that prince was alive. The Nivernais styles may, therefore, be divided into the Franco-Urbino prior to the Conrade, the Italo-Chinese which existed under them, the Italo-Nivernais, and the Franco-Nivernais. The Franco-Urbino is marked by a predominance of blue and yellow, by violet tracings, a yellowish flesh tint, a peculiar copper-green, and a scarcity of red. A favorite form of vase handle is the dragon, and the sea is represented in lines of wavy blue. The styles of Persia, Japan, and China began to manifest themselves under the Conrades, and continued down to near the middle of the eighteenth century. We have, after the Persian, blue grounds with white and yellow ornamentation, and white grounds with polychrome and blue decoration. At the same time we find minglings of Italian and Oriental designs. After 1640, however, the traces of Italian influence become less distinct. The Italian school is disappearing, foreign artists are giving place to natives, and down to the end of the eighteenth century there are obvious traces of the styles of Rouen and Moustiers. From that time Nevers declined.

Moustiers has only been known for a few years, but facts have been discovered which prove it to have held a highly important place in ceramic art. Situated in the Lower Alps, its works were long attributed to other places, although its geographical position near Marseilles and Italy would naturally point to it as one of the most favored centres of ProvenÇal art. It is chiefly known by the productions of the Clerissy family and of Joseph Olery. Pierre Clerissy’s works extended from 1686 to 1728, and to this period some of the finest specimens belong. The pieces are generally large oval or round dishes, with hunting or scriptural scenes as central decorations, and borders either of flowers or masks and fabulous monsters and arabesques. The paintings are in blue, upon a very pure white enamel. In the succeeding styles the centre scenes after Tempesta were abandoned. One piece has in the centre a small medallion representing Diana, the huntress, equipped for the chase and accompanied by her dogs. Surrounding{284} it are arabesques, grotesque figures, heads, busts, and amorini, and for an outer border there is a narrow edging of the lace-like pattern of Rouen. Olery (Fig. 236) seems to have abandoned entirely the styles of Clerissy. He enriched his palette with violet, green, brown, and yellow, and revelled in floral decoration. Heavy wreaths of flowers surrounding a series of medallions, with bouquets between, form a deep border for scenes from mythology and the classics.

enlarge-image
Fig. 236.—Moustiers Faience Dish. By Olery.
Fig. 236.—Moustiers Faience Dish. By Olery.

Intercourse afterward obliterated the lines between distinctive styles. Olery went to Spain, and probably acquired there his taste for polychrome decoration (Fig. 237). Spanish artists accompanied him on his return, and worked, no doubt, in the light of their national traditions; and toward the end of the century it is impossible to recognize the styles of either individual artists or schools. Clerissy’s workshop was continued after his death by his partner, Joseph Fouque, whose family retains it to the present day.{285}

enlarge-image
Fig. 237.—Moustiers Dish. Polychrome.
Fig. 237.—Moustiers Dish. Polychrome.

Allied to Moustiers, as representing the art of Southern France, is Marseilles, a city in every way favorably situated for the prosecution of the faience industry. Of its earlier works, dating as far back as the fifteenth century, nothing is known; but toward the end of the seventeenth century a workshop was founded, in which was made an authenticated faience. The distinguishing feature of the decoration is the combination of violet from manganese with cobalt blue. The style bears a general resemblance to that of Moustiers, and it is probable that the works of the two factories are frequently confounded. About 1750 the Marseilles faience was exported in immense quantities; and from that date, when the name of HonorÉ Savy appears in the list of potters, polychrome decoration became more prevalent. Savy was, in 1777, on the visit of the future Louis XVIII., authorized to call his workshop “Manufacture de Monsieur, FrÈre du Roi,” and is said to have then adopted the fleur-de-lis as his mark. The mark alone cannot, however, be accepted as indicating with absolute certainty a work of Savy. The same potter is said to have invented a particular green; but it appears to have been common to the other potters of Marseilles, as it is found upon pieces by Joseph Gaspard{286} Robert and Mme. Perrin. Robert ranks next to Savy in faience, and was making porcelain at the time of the royal visit.

In Strasburg we find the origin of a style of faience painting which, although displaying unquestionable excellence of workmanship, was carried to such an extent that the suitableness of the decoration to the earthen-ware body was completely lost sight of. Reference is made to the porcelain style, by which decoration more properly reserved for porcelain was applied to faience. The Strasburg paste is of comparative fineness, the glaze is excellent, and the colors brilliant. The first factory was established by Charles FranÇois Hannong in 1709. In 1721 Hannong associated himself with a German potter from Anspach, named Wackenfield, and in 1724 started a second workshop at Haguenau. The latter ultimately fell to Balthasar Hannong, a son of Charles; and the Strasburg establishment was carried on by another son, Paul Antoine. The latter worked industriously, and brought the establishment up to a very high position. On his death, in 1760, it was carried on by his son Pierre Antoine, who transferred it to Joseph Adam, his brother, and in 1780 the production ceased. The best period was that between 1740 and 1760, when Paul Antoine was proprietor.

The places mentioned, Nevers, Rouen, Moustiers, Marseilles, and Strasburg, are the centres from which emanated the leading old styles of decoration. An exact classification is impossible, since, as Marseilles faience often bears a striking resemblance to that of Moustiers, the works of Strasburg, on the other hand, are closely related to those from Marseilles. After them comes a centre, more interesting because very recently arriving at eminence, from which has emanated a style different from that of any of its predecessors.

Limoges is as yet scarcely known in the history of pottery, although there is a probability, almost amounting to a certainty, that it will hereafter be accepted as one of the leading representatives of the ceramic art of France in our day. We find, in 1737, a decree granted in favor of Sieur Massie, empowering him to establish a workshop of faience at Limoges. The discovery of kaolin at St. Yrieix appears to have directed the attention of potters from faience to porcelain. One piece of the Massie period, dated 1741, is now in Limoges. A border, resembling those of Moustiers, surrounds the figure{287} of Justice enthroned and holding the sword and scales. Religion, Truth, and Law attend her, and Crime is crushed under her foot. Other equally remarkable pieces may be in existence, but Limoges nowhere appears in the records as producing any faience of importance or of a very high order of art.

Within the past few years the aspect of affairs has changed, and the Havilands of New York have made for Limoges—in conjunction with Auteuil, near Paris, where much of the moulding and decorating is executed—a place in the history of pottery as lofty as that which it occupies in the history of enamelling. Notwithstanding all that has been said of Saracenic and Italian decoration, we believe that it was reserved for Haviland to show the real decorative capacity of faience, and to demonstrate the possible harmony between decoration and its excipient. For a long time Limoges was known solely as a seat of the porcelain industry. It was in this way that Americans first became familiar with its name. When the time came for Haviland to turn his attention to faience the change above referred to set in. He did more than merely institute a revival of an obscure industry. While Montagnon of Nevers was following closely in the track of his predecessors, and other manufacturers, both French and Italian, were busy with imitations of dead styles, Haviland set a gigantic task before himself, and it is to the credit of Americans that they have been among the readiest to appreciate his works and to encourage his efforts. His faience is remarkable by reason of its combining three very important qualities—novelty of process, originality of decoration, and the strength of drawing and color which are most perfectly in keeping with the material on which they appear.

We have already pointed out the difficulties with which artists on clay have contended. The action of the fire made the result, in so far as the coloring is concerned, always more or less of a problem. Too much or too little heat changed the entire aspect of the piece. Although, therefore, we find in Italy and elsewhere great painters furnishing designs for the decoration of pottery, we seldom find them actually engaged upon the ware itself. Artists naturally prefer the medium which preserves their individuality of touch and finish. This personality the fire destroyed. All that was distinctive of the individual palette and brush vanished under the heat. What the exact nature{288} of the Havilands’ new process and the composition of their palette may be we have not the means of discovering. We know, however, that the painting is laid upon the clay before it is fired, that the piece is then glazed, and is afterward baked for between twenty and thirty hours. Body, glaze, and colors are therefore subjected to the fire together. The glaze is alkaline, and is similar in its general character to that used on pate tendre porcelain. We need not inquire into the preparation of the colors. It is claimed that the possession of the latter brings the result of any operation within such bounds that it can be calculated with a reasonable approach to certainty. Let it be fully understood what this implies. It means that with palette practically unlimited, any artist can apply himself to the decoration of earthen-ware, and find his work emerging from the furnace stamped as clearly with the individuality of his design and execution as if he had applied it to a painting upon a panel or canvas.

Among the artists engaged upon the Haviland faience are M. and Mme. Bracquemond, MM. Lindeneher, Noel, Chaplet, Damousse, Lafond, and Delaplanche. With Messrs. Chaplet, Laurin, and Lafond, the new enamelling process may be said to have accidentally originated at Bourg-la-Reine in 1873, and M. Bracquemond was the first to appreciate its value and to bring it under the notice of the Messrs. Haviland. The latter at once saw its merit, and by farther experiment and the use of the resources at their command, brought it to perfection. The works of their artists have made America as familiar with their faience as it formerly was with their porcelain. The process having been discovered, the second step was the adoption of a style. Here we meet with a peculiarity of the ware. We speak of schools of painting, and our language implies a limitation, a peculiarity of technique. All artists who follow nature closely must needs belong to the same school. Their success in the reproduction of natural effects is a bond of union, which brings them together across the boundaries of special methods of treatment. Each of Havilands’ artists may have his specialty, but we find no broad dividing lines. Their subjects are taken from nature or from imagination, which is only a wider field based upon the natural. The sympathy between them lies in the new sense of the capabilities of their art. The brush is wielded with a stronger hand, and the designs appear bolder, at times

{290}

{291}{289} almost reckless. There is no striving after what might be called “prettiness of style.” Where we have been accustomed to restraint we find largeness and liberty. There are no longer minute divisions of surfaces to be covered in detail with graceful precision, but designs of full artistic completeness and strong simplicity. Color is applied with a commensurate boldness, which carries the conviction that here at last we find a decoration suited to its basis of earthen-ware.

enlarge-image
Fig. 238.—Memorial Vase. Haviland Faience. (Smithsonian Institute.)
Fig. 238.—Memorial Vase. Haviland Faience. (Smithsonian Institute.)

A recent visitor to the workshop of Haviland & Co., near Paris, where much of their faience is painted, thus describes what he saw: “While in Paris, I studied the way in which the vases are painted, and was surprised to find what an amount of care is expended upon them. They demand more exact treatment than China or English faience. The artist works as if the material were canvas. A bouquet of flowers, for instance, is minutely painted, and the shades of the grounds are all carefully studied. Nothing is left to chance. During the process of firing everything fuses, and it is then that the appearance of boldness is produced. If a vase were painted, as on a cursory examination it appears to be, with a bold brush and careless hand, the result would be a mere daub of no value. The peculiar talent of the artists consists in producing an effect of boldness and carelessness with a great deal of work and a close imitation of nature. Could all the work actually bestowed upon one of these vases, and as it can be seen before firing, be seen after firing, the faience of Limoges would resemble that of England or any other pottery which is painted on the glaze. But the process is different, and after the firing the detail of the work melts away, leaving behind that fascinating harmony of colors which has never before been produced on any pottery. Nothing has as yet been invented to replace work and care; and when anything you may see presents something pleasing, be certain that both have been lavished upon it. No writing or music seems so easy to imitate as that which cannot be imitated; and it is the part of a good author to conceal the method he employs.”

There are now in the Smithsonian Institute at Washington three pieces of Haviland faience which may be taken as exemplifying much of what has been said. These are the Memorial Vases (Fig. 238) and Bracquemond’s tile-piece allegorizing Human Progress. Let us take the vases first. They are the joint productions of MM. Bracquemond,{292} designer, and Delaplanche, sculptor, and are intended to commemorate the Centennial of American Independence. The broad and easily understood conception is intensely American, and was, in fact, due to American inspiration. They fitly stand in the capital, not only as lasting memorials of the hundredth anniversary of America’s entrance into the great commonwealth of nations, but as a congratulatory compliment from the ceramic artists of France.

Viewed in the light of history and of historical usage, they both acquire a fresh interest, and are better understood. They are exceptions, in the idea they represent, to the myriad ornamental vases which load our cabinets and shelves. We have already seen that, from the most ancient days of Egypt downward, vases were employed for the conveyance of religious sentiments. The Chinese followed the same course, and joined with it the custom of using pottery as a reward, or for the purpose of conferring a mark of imperial distinction upon officers deserving well of the state. Vases were also made the media between friends for the conveyance of compliments or congratulations. We might, in this connection, revert once more to the Greeks, who carried the Oriental practice still farther. By that people vases were, as we have seen, used as prizes, as wedding presents, as pledges of love or friendship, the legends they bear enabling us at this distant day to listen to the whisperings of passions which burned and died over two thousand years ago. We also find such commemorative vases as that which bears the legend, “The beautiful horse, twice conqueror at the Pythian games.” On many others are inscribed the names of the great men of antiquity, its kings and its poets. Some of these belong to times posterior to those in which the persons they were intended to honor lived, and may, therefore, be called commemorative in the same manner as statues. Throughout the Middle Ages we find the same usage more widely prevalent. When, therefore, the artists of France decided upon commemorating the American Centennial, they had, as a precedent for making a memorial distinctive of their art, the usage of the potters of all countries back to the most remote times.

In regard to design and decoration, these vases will bear consideration in detail. There is one very large class of Greek vases which represent what we have called the union of pottery and sculpture. In one we have the helmeted head of Pallas Athene surmounted by{293} a figure of Nike, or Victory. On others are Tritons bearing NereÏds, Medusa’s head, pennate figures, and the winged steeds of Aurora. The artist had no thought of utility to hamper him in designing accessories. It is said that M. Bracquemond, while in the Louvre, was attracted by one of the Grecian vases of this class found in Apulia (see Fig. 167). The style is full of grandeur and pomp. The form of the vase would be heavy and clumsy were its outline unrelieved by the decorating figures. On the neck stands a divinity in graceful drapery. Lower down, on the sides, are two statuettes of deities, and on either side of Minerva’s head surmounted by Nike in front are two Tritons, with their horse-feet pawing the air. This vase suggested to M. Bracquemond a design for the Memorial Vases in Washington. All that he thus derived, however, was merely a suggestion.

The details of the design may be gathered from a description of the vases themselves. One is intended to represent the year in which the United States won independence; the other the hundredth anniversary of that event. Between them is a whole century of history. The vase “1776” rises from a base consisting of greenish, foamy waves, lashing angrily against rocks surmounted by a circlet of cannon modelled after the ordnance of Revolutionary times. In this we have the whole story of the struggle for independence, and of the turmoil and confusion of the strife. It is worth noting that this symbolical use of the wave ornamentation is strictly classical. When the potters of Greece sought a symbol of caprice and mutation, they could find none more expressive than the foam-crested waves of the sea. From the cannon the body of the vase swells gracefully outward, and attains its widest girth near the top, where it curves rapidly inward to the upper rim. The orifice is closed by a star-covered dome of blue, from either side of which spring statuettes of Fame and Victory. On a pedestal on the rim in front stands a bust of Washington, modelled by Houdon, after one formerly owned by Lafayette, and now in the Louvre.

The ornamentation on the body is simple and expressive. Green fronds cross each other above the cannon, and smaller branches and stars are sprinkled over the whole surface. On the front is the American eagle with outstretched wings, with the national colors on either side. Above it, and immediately under the bust of Washington,{294} in small gilt letters, are the names of the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

The base of the Centennial vase, “1876,” symbolizes peace and prosperity by means of fruit, cereals, and the implements of husbandry. Above the eagle, in place of the names of the signers of the Declaration, are those of the Presidents, from Washington to Grant, and the surmounting bust represents Columbia. In other respects the two vases are alike. The story they tell is plain, and for every observer to read. Out of the struggle of a hundred years ago have come liberty, peace, and prosperity. The designer was exposed to dangers which he has coped with successfully. He has achieved something grateful to American patriotism without throwing originality aside. The American flag, the eagle, Washington, and the Goddess of Liberty, compose a group which, but for their artistic combination, might have been viewed with the indifference begotten of familiarity. As they stand, it becomes hard to conceive how otherwise, in equally intelligible language, a great historical event could have been commemorated in the everlasting record supplied by clay. They are records, and not mere ornaments. They mirror the first century of America’s life as a nation. They tell all or nearly all that history can tell of the passage from the struggle of 1776 to the prosperity of 1876.

The story of their formation is interesting, that of one applying to both. The body was modelled by M. Renard, chief modeller at SÈvres. He worked incessantly on the inside for thirty-four hours without resting more than a few minutes at a time, in order that his work might be finished before the clay lost any of its plasticity by the evaporation of the moisture. When this operation was completed the body was allowed to dry for fifteen days. A kiln was then built round it, its great size—the vases are twelve feet high, and the largest ever made in Europe—rendering removal impossible. It was fired for eight days at a low temperature, and then for three days at a high degree of heat, and the result of the stupendous work was in every way successful. The furnace required eight days to cool. If anything more is needed to enable us to estimate the immense labor involved in such a work, it may be summed up in this, that these vases demanded thirteen months’ work of some of the ablest artists and potters of France.{295}

It is difficult to criticise them apart from the sentiment they embody, and which invests them with a never-fading interest. It was, however, a touch of genius to get away from immediate usage to a style of ornamentation with which the artists of Magna GrÆcia and Apulia embellished their vases. It is the style best suited to their enormous size. The enamel is applied only to the ornamentation, the body, busts, and statuettes being all left unglazed and showing the natural color of the clay. Every detail is made expressive, while the strictest simplicity is retained. The size of the work forbade minute ornamentation of a symbolical character, and there is thus a harmony between the entire work and the details. The colors are brilliant, and the general effect, though sombre, is imposing and fine. They will be viewed hereafter with increasing interest, as marking the revival of an old complimentary usage under particularly gratifying conditions; and the grandeur and beauty of the art they represent is not likely to be forgotten in the contemplation of the sentiment they express.

We turn to the tile-piece in which, upon nearly a thousand tiles, M. Bracquemond presents his allegory of Human Progress, with a mingled feeling of dislike and attraction. It also stands in the Smithsonian Institute. The repellent influence is first experienced, and arises, probably, from an apparent absurdity of design and the peculiar coloring. A figure of gigantic size occupies the centre, trampling fire underfoot, and having a greenish bronze statuette in the right hand and a vase in the other. On the left are the chimneys and smoke of a factory, and on the opposite side is a railway train. A flash of lightning strikes in from the right, and above the central figure is the recumbent form of a woman partially enveloped in cloud. The picture, as we have said, is allegorical, and represents the genius of man utilizing the waters of the rebellious stream and storm, the fires of the volcano and lightning, and making them subservient to progress. As it is more closely studied, its true place in art is better understood, and we ultimately accept the piece as an indication of the possibilities of M. Bracquemond’s art. We feel that another stage has been passed on the way toward the perfect union of the potter’s and painter’s skill, and toward the picture “permanent as the Pyramids” of which Ruskin writes.

Many of the other tile-pieces, panels, and plaques (Fig. 239) from{296} Limoges and Auteuil are more absolutely excellent. On a circular plaque appears a draped female head, in which the flesh tint, clear and ruddy, is simply wonderful. The delicacy which it lacks is found on two panels, perfect rural pictures, with single female figures. These pieces illustrate the fineness of landscape effect and the nicety of touch to which the artist in possession of Haviland’s palette can attain. The trees stand out well against the sky, its blue slightly shaded with cloudy gray; and if we turn from these to the figure-drawing, the arrangement of the drapery, even the finish of the embroidery, we feel that we are in presence of an art of the decorative and artistic capacity of which we are only catching the first glimpses.

enlarge-image
Fig. 239—Haviland Faience. (H. Havemeyer Coll.)
Fig. 239—Haviland Faience. (H. Havemeyer Coll.)

If we pass now to the vases of this ware, we are struck by the originality of their shapes, the freedom of their designs, and the remarkable depth and beauty of their coloring. There is nowhere visible{297} any symptom of the nervous feeling after a doubtful result characteristic of an artist without confidence in himself and his process. Everything indicates strength, assurance, and power; and if there is weakness anywhere, it is evidently the result of a boldness which is over-hasty or too careless of finish and detail. We find no precedent for the decoration. It is as far removed as possible from all that is associated with China or Japan, from the majolica of Italy, Spain, or Berlin, from the stone-ware of England, or the faience of Sweden. The forms of the vases are of boundless variety, and suggest originality by their very multiplicity. One would carry us back to the pottery of ancient Gaul before it had felt the heavy hand of Rome. Another recalls the Anglo-Saxon vases of England. A third would lead us, in searching for a precedent, to the clumsy, rotund urns of ancient Germany. These would all be equally fanciful, no doubt; and in that suspicion one is confirmed by the exquisite forms of a small pichet, a quaint card-receiver, and a vase rising to its slightly out-turned lip as gracefully as the cup of a flower.

enlarge-image
Fig. 242.—Luna Vase. Haviland Faience. (Mrs. William H. Dannat Coll.)
Fig. 242.—Luna Vase. Haviland Faience. (Mrs. William H. Dannat Coll.)

We may take a few examples in order to illustrate the decoration. It consists of painting on the surface, of carved figures in unglazed relief, and of forms glazed and attached to the surface. Of{298} the first of these the choice is wide. On some appear hunting dogs full of life and action and in many attitudes. On another is a Cupid with full-drawn bow, rosy and chubby, and evidently bent upon dealing a fatal wound. On a third is a nymph and satyr (Fig. 241). 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. 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. He leaves her room to take flight, and the vase he has decorated with a simple flower becomes a poem suggesting far more than it tells.

Of the vases showing unglazed carvings in bas-relief there is a single pair, sufficient for illustration. On one is represented Phoebus, the golden-haired god of day, and on the other the triform goddess Luna. Phoebus stands with bow drawn full to the shoulder, just as we picture him in Homer. It will be remembered that when Lyrnessus was taken by the Greeks and the spoils divided, Chryseis, the wife of the king of the captured place, and daughter of Chryses, one of the priests of Apollo, fell to the share of Agamemnon. Her father sought her restoration from the “king of men,” and on his request being refused, asked aid from the god he served. We here have Apollo in the attitude of returning an answer to his suppliant priest.

On the companion vase (Fig. 242) is the figure of the goddess of night, Luna, Diana, or Hecate, in her character of Luna, with the crescent under her feet, and throwing back a mantle from her graceful{300} form. In both vases the beauty of the conception is skilfully carried out in the execution. The figures are admirably modelled, and, being of a light paste and left unglazed, stand out in bold relief against the ground. The daring of the latter innovation is amply justified by the result.

enlarge-image
Fig. 243.—Faience Vase. (Mrs. Colonel T. Scott Coll.)
Fig. 243.—Faience Vase. (Mrs. Colonel T. Scott Coll.)

Of the third class of vases with glazed ornaments applied to the body there are many fine specimens. One of the most charming (Fig. 243) is wreathed by flower sprays twined naturally and gracefully{301} round the body. The flower is in full bloom, and its large leaves are spread out above it and below. For handles there are snakes turning in their changeless coil round the flower stem. On another the handles consist of butterflies beautifully moulded and colored, and placed as though they might have been transformed into clay as they alighted on the vase. Another, of small size and quaintly rotund form, has a mass of leaves and flowers in relief clustering round the body. A pitcher with a soft gray ground is lightly overrun with an ivy branch, which twines itself round the neck and handle as naturally as the plant creeps up and winds itself round the stem of a tree.

Can anything be more simple than the suggestions to which these creations are due? Do we need to be reminded of the fable which explains how Callimachus was inspired to produce the Corinthian capital? We are told that he was walking in the country, and as he travelled he came to the grave of a child, upon which, in a basket, some relative—its mother, probably—had placed the customary offering of food. To keep off the birds and small animals, a tile had been laid upon the basket. In course of time an acanthus appeared; and as it grew, its stalk was pressed back by the tile and turned round spirally under its edge. Nothing more was needed. Callimachus found in the little basket on the flower-grown grave a suggestion for the order of architecture which has never been surpassed to this day. 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; and on the spot from which it glided when disturbed a snake displays its spiral convolutions.

Where but in nature shall we see anything suggestive of such decoration? We do not find it in Japan, for the symbolical and semi-imaginative, semi-realistic style of the extreme East has nothing in common with this naturalism. As little do we find it among the{302} brilliant colors and fantastic forms of Persia. If we come nearer home, to Italy, even to the French centres we have already visited, there is nothing in their classical scenes and floral wreaths and bouquets to prepare us to find in Limoges their orderly successor. In a word, the style is original. There is no crowding of tints for the sake of their rich beauty. A single flower lying on a ground of one prevailing tone is sufficient ornamentation for a vase; or a handful of flowers may be scattered upon the surface in tumbled profusion, or woven into a wreath. Haviland has entered upon a hitherto undiscovered path, and let us pray that he may never be tempted to try the porcelain decoration which threatened to ruin faience, nor to give us anything more meretricious than the beauty of a garden flower or of the many other admirably conceived forms which he has endowed with life.

The best pieces have been chosen for commendation and to illustrate the highest results to be expected from the new process. It is unquestionable, however, that there are many pieces of this faience which could be disposed of without seeking words for the expression of enthusiastic praise. This gives those desiring specimens every opportunity for the exercise of a judicious discrimination. In some pieces the simultaneous melting of the color and glaze has resulted in a haziness of outline and confusion of colors by no means characteristic of the better examples. On others with figure decoration the drawing has been completely destroyed, and the figure left in obscurity. These inferior pieces are useful, however, for showing how careful must be the work which produces the bold effects securing our admiration.

When Haviland took up the process discovered by MM. Chaplet, Laurin, and Lafond, at Bourg-la-Reine, he secured the services of two{303} of these artists. The third, M. Laurin, carried out the process at the place of its discovery. Many of this artist’s works come to us bearing his mark and the name of the factory, Bourg-la-Reine, in full. Like that of Haviland, his work is occasionally irregular; but, as a rule, it is entitled to very high commendation. The flower decoration is extremely beautiful, and when laid upon a soft ground, such as the gray, which Laurin produces to perfection, is entitled to nearly all the praise bestowed upon the corresponding works from Haviland’s factory. The Bourg-la-Reine faience is chiefly painted on the flat, and the leading decoration consists of flower and figure painting. We meet with many well-selected subjects and much strong and realistic treatment. On one vase appear an eagle and a serpent on an excellent ground of gray and blue, the former of which is also employed with fine effect in a variety of flower pieces.

A very common mistake is made regarding this faience. It is often confounded with that of Haviland, although the differences between the two fabrics are obvious. In the first place, the marks can be consulted. That of Limoges{304} is stamped “H. & Co.”—or, Haviland & Co.—with or without the place of manufacture. The artist’s mark also is generally attached. The Bourg-la-Reine is marked either with the name “Laurin” or “B.-la-R.,” or with both. In the second place, the alkaline glaze of the Haviland faience gives the paintings, especially of flowers, a life-like appearance peculiar to itself. It is a mistake to suppose that the processes of decoration are identical in every particular. In one respect only they are alike. In both, the colors are laid upon the unbaked clay. In the mixing of the colors and in the glaze they are distinct. Laurin’s decoration is harder in outline than the Limoges, and never possesses the mingled softness and strength which constitute the great charm of the latter.

Of the early history of Bourg-la-Reine little of general interest is known. It appears that Jullien and Jacques of Mennecy founded a workshop there about the year 1773. Jullien died in 1774, and was succeeded by his son, who resigned his share in the business to Jacques. When Jacques died, in 1799, his son, C. S. Jacques, continued the fabrication. At a later period fine white faience was made. It is upon Laurin alone that, in this country, the reputation of the place depends.

enlarge-image
Fig. 249.—Deck Vase. (Gilman Collamore.)
Fig. 249.—Deck Vase. (Gilman Collamore.)

The name of Deck, of Paris, brings before us much that is beautiful in the recent ceramics of France. For a long time, in fact, his name was supposed to represent nearly all that was excellent in the color and decoration of European pottery. Having enriched his palette with a wealth of colors which made him the envy of his cotemporaries, he turned his attention to reviving Oriental styles in hues rivalling those of the East. He was first attracted to Persia, and with marvellous skill applied his rich enamel colors to the reproduction of the faience of that country. In other cases he is manifestly inspired by Japanese{305} art. His technical skill enables him to reach widely varied effects, and since to this are added truthful drawing and a fine taste in the assortment of tints, we can easily understand his eminence in the art. Specimens of his best work are comparatively rare in this country. The faience vase from the Corcoran Art Gallery (Fig. 247) is characteristic, and is an excellent example of M. Deck’s coloring. The ground is a soft yellow or buff, and the plumage of the pheasant is brilliant and rich. The blue tints are especially fine, and the glaze, which is judged to be alkaline, gives the coloring that peculiar softness which is found in the greatest perfection on pate tendre. There is considerable doubt as to the body used by Deck. It varies very much in different pieces, approaching in some cases the hardness and compactness of porcelain. Of this character is the bottle, Fig. 248. The ground color of this specimen is a clear blue, and in it the white blossoms appear in thick clusters. A vase and plaque, with a somewhat similar, but possibly even a finer body, are shown at page 325 (Figs. 280 and 281). That given here (Fig. 249), singular alike in form and color, has a{306} ground of undecided shades of brown and yellow. Deck’s violet is soft and rich, approaching at times the velvety violet of China.

The other names most familiar to Americans are those of Colinot, Parville, Longwy, Creil, Sarreguemines, and Montereau. Their products illustrate the taste for Oriental styles which sprung up a few years ago, and to the gratification of which much of the ingenuity of French makers has been devoted. Colinot, of Paris, has employed with great skill colored enamels in the imitation of Japanese work. On one cylindrical vase (Fig. 250) he has laid in strong relief, upon a dark-buff ground, flowers and leaves exactly after the models supplied by Satsuma and Kioto. On other specimens the decoration is outlined upon a white ground, and filled in with enamel colors. The method is productive of a clear hardness of outline, but the results are seldom unpleasing and often very attractive. Colinot has succeeded in obtaining several excellent colors. The vase (Fig. 251) is a rich purple, on which the flowers are laid in white and green. The treatment is similar to that of Deck, but the ground is less brilliant and clear. Colinot also acquired considerable reputation by his faience with colored stanniferous enamel. We give an example (Fig. 252) of his treatment of large pieces. The ground is a pale blue, and the medallions are admirably painted. The color is subdued throughout.

{307}The Creil workshop was established some time during the eighteenth century, probably about 1780, by a number of English potters. Its earliest works appear to have consisted chiefly of services of a semi-porcelaneous paste. The Worcester method of transfer-printing and then painting the design in colors was adopted, and successfully handled. The founders transferred the establishment to Le Boeuf, Milliet & Co. and De St. Criq & Co. Porcelain was made until 1860, after which the production was restricted to English faience. The paste cannot, however, be distinctly qualified, as it varies from the original semi-porcelain to cream-colored ware. The latter has a wide reputation, both for its quality and its decoration under the glaze.

The Montereau establishment was, like that of Creil, founded by Englishmen. Letters patent were granted on March 15th, 1775, to Clark, Shaw & Co., to make English faience and queen’s-ware. The firm started under very favorable auspices, receiving an annual allowance of 1200 francs for ten years, probably for the purpose of naturalizing the industry. Its wares helped to overturn the manufacture of French faience, and were imitated at several places, including Toulouse and Sarreguemines. In 1790 there were two establishments at Montereau. As at Creil, M. De St. Criq, in 1810, acquired the right of protection, and in 1829 assigned it to Leboeuf & Thebaut.

At Longwy the manufacture of faience was begun about forty years ago, when M. Huart de Northcomb was proprietor of a workshop. Its name is now found upon many excellent specimens of faience with colored stanniferous enamel. In the bottle and tray (Fig. 253) a rich effect is produced by the employment of two shades of blue in the scaly ground. The oval medallions and other ornamentation are yellow, with leaves and flowers in green and pink. It is one of the best examples we have seen from this factory, which is one of the largest of its kind in France. The pitcher (Fig.{308} 254) has a ground of undecided very pale yellow, and the leaves, flowers, and birds are variously colored. Our third specimen, an oval plaque (Fig. 255), has, in its design and the brilliancy of its coloring, a decidedly Oriental appearance. In the other examples the ground is broken up by a crackle more or less open and irregular; but in the plaque the white enamel is veined with fine and regular darkly colored cracks, which bring the ground to a soft and pleasing gray. The flowers are red and pink, and the foliage green, turning at times to blue. The bird is brightly plumaged with blue and other colors. In this as in the other pieces, the ground alone is crackled, and the decoration has the appearance of being graved in the enamel and then filled in with the requisite colors.

enlarge-image
Fig. 253—Longwy Faience. (Gilman Collamore.)
Fig. 253—Longwy Faience. (Gilman Collamore.)

Parville, of Paris, makes enamelled faience of the same general description; and the vase chosen to represent it (Fig. 256) deserves attention both for the peculiarity of its form and for the illustration it gives of{309} a French modification of the Persian style of decorating. The ground is a dull and sombre shade of dark-blue, upon which the ornamentation is laid in light-blue, white, red, and two shades of yellow.

Gien faience, like those of Creil and Montereau, belongs to the class of ware with a colorless plumbiferous glaze, and its decoration is often remarkable both in design and color. In the vase with which we represent this faience (Fig. 257) the design is outlined on the biscuit, and the colors are then applied. The earlier products of Gien are said to be imitations of the styles of Marseilles. A more artistic faience, resembling the Gien, is made by M. Elysse at Blois, in the old Italian styles of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The Sarreguemines factory was founded in 1770, by Paul Utzchneider, and is now carried on under the firm of Utzchneider & Co. It turns out both faience and porcelain. Figures and groups in porcelain biscuit and artificial porcelain are made. The factory is also known by a fine white stone-ware. In the fine faience of Sarreguemines, certain works may be found which are, in many respects, the most extraordinary of the present time. Imitations of jasper, marble, granite, and porphyry, are produced of the most beautiful description, and other pieces resemble the jasper-ware of Wedgwood, with white decoration on a blue ground. The vase (Fig. 258) can hardly be described in words. Among the varied contents of Mr. Collamore’s collection, it is perfectly{310} unique. The ground is a deep and brilliant black, upon which the decoration is laid in white, gold, and blue, dotted with drops of jewel-like enamels. The handles are blue and gold. The design can be distinctly followed in the engraving, but even a colored plate could hardly do justice to the enamels, or give an idea of the general effect.

Niederviller has made faience in the Strasburg style since at least the beginning of the eighteenth century, and about 1760 was producing pieces with delicate flower paintings. It was then under the patronage of Baron de BeyerlÉ, and afterward of Count Custine, under whose proprietorship the porcelain style was farther developed. A curious specimen is given by Jacquemart, in which the ground of the plate is painted to imitate wood, and in the centre is a reservation simulating a sheet of white paper with a landscape in pink. In 1768 the Baron de BeyerlÉ was making a good quality of porcelain from German material. Under Count Custine, FranÇois Lanfrey was engaged as manager. Charles Sauvage, or Lemire, made small figures and groups in biscuit, and CyfflÉ also executed some of his works at Niederviller.

The name of this artist, Paul Louis CyfflÉ, is, however, more intimately associated with Luneville. The faience workshop of Luneville was founded about 1729, by Jacques Chambrette. In 1778 it was acquired by Keller & GuÉrin. The styles of Nevers and Strasburg were both successfully followed. It was here that CyfflÉ made his statuettes of fine “terre de Lorraine.”

In the same district are the factories{311} of Nancy and St. Clement. The former produced faience in 1774, and a peculiar kind of biscuit which takes its name from the place. The factory was founded by Nicolas Lelong. Very little is known of the St. Clement works, though they are said to have been in operation in 1750. In 1835 they were under the directorship of M. Aubry. Both Luneville and St. Clement have been more recently known by their stanniferous faience.

St. Amand holds an important position in the history of French art. It is one of the places, including Lille, Dunkirk, Valenciennes, and the other faience-producing towns of Flanders, which enabled France to domesticate, in a measure, the manufacture of ware resembling that of Delft. The paste of these faiences is identical with that used in the great Dutch establishment, with which they very soon came into competition. The history of St. Amand extends from 1740 down to the Revolution. It was founded by Pierre Joseph Fauquez, was continued by his son, Pierre FranÇois Joseph, until 1773, and by his grandson, Jean Baptiste Joseph, until the Revolution. The earlier style of decoration is based upon that of Rouen; the second is after that of Strasburg. One of the distinguishing features of this faience is the use of white enamel in relief upon the glaze, which is faintly tinged with blue.

Having already touched upon a few of the leading names of modern Paris, there yet remains to be said something of its previous history. The relics discovered within the city belong to every period, from the Roman downward; and it may therefore be said that the metropolitan potters have been as busy, comparatively speaking, in the past as they are to-day. Faience was made from the beginning of the seventeenth century, and RÉverend was, in 1664, making imitations of Delft, “thin, with a white enamel, with clear polychrome colors, often excessively pure.” This is M. Jacquemart’s description. Notwithstanding the privilege accorded to RÉverend, many other workshops appear to have made faience throughout the whole of the eighteenth century, and it is generally impossible to tell them from the wares of Rouen and elsewhere, which they imitated.

Artistic faience was made at Sceaux for about forty-five years previous to 1795, by Chapelle and Glot successively. Gros-Caillou, St. Denis, Vincennes, St. Cloud, and SÈvres were all more or less engaged{312} in the manufacture of faience. We find Pierre Antoine Hannong, from Strasburg, at Vincennes in 1767, but he met with little success.

There are many other places at which faience was made, some, like Nantes, Bordeaux, and Orleans, of importance, and others of which little is known besides their names. A list of them would add nothing to our real knowledge of French art, which has been chiefly influenced by the styles of which we have most fully treated. To the accounts of them has been added all that could be learned regarding Limoges, Creil, Sarreguemines, and a few Parisian and other workshops especially interesting to the collectors of the present day.

PORCELAIN.

We have already seen that the discovery of artificial porcelain preceded that of natural, or kaolinic, porcelain. In treating of the faience of Rouen, we quoted, from the letters patent granted to Louis Poterat on the 31st of October, 1673, a passage to show that he meditated the production of porcelain similar to the Chinese. A privilege was also granted to Claude RÉverend, of Paris, in 1664, which bears that he possessed the secret of making a “counterfeit porcelain, as fine and finer than that which comes from the East Indies.” All that RÉverend achieved was a very fine faience; and Poterat, having met with success as a maker of faience, probably renounced the prosecution of the search for porcelain, although he may be said to have arrived at or very near success. The first French artificial, or soft, porcelain known to commerce was that made by the Chicanneau family at St. Cloud in 1695 (Fig. 259). It is first noticed by Martin Lister, a traveller, in 1698. Henry Trou, having married the widow of Pierre Chicanneau, became head of the manufactory of St. Cloud; and a family quarrel having taken place, Marie{313} Moreau, widow of one of the Chicanneaus, established herself in Paris. The earliest marks of St. Cloud porcelain are the sun and the letters S. C. and T., the former dating from 1702 to 1715, the latter from 1715 to 1730. The sun was the device of Louis XIV., and the letters afterward used were the initials of St. Cloud and Trou. The paste was close and white, and the glaze uneven. The decoration soon became varied in character, some pieces, with birds and flowers in relief, resembling the Chinese, and others of French patterns in blue, with arabesques or lace borders.

enlarge-image
Fig. 260.—Vincennes Porcelain Cooler. (Duke de Martina Coll.)
Fig. 260.—Vincennes Porcelain Cooler. (Duke de Martina Coll.)

The attempts of Poterat and RÉverend, and the more perfect success of Chicanneau, indicate the prevalence of the desire to solve the mystery of Chinese porcelain. Experiments were being conducted almost everywhere, and the success of the potters of St. Cloud gave a new zest to the search. A manufactory was founded at Lille in 1711; at Paris, by the offshoot of the St. Cloud family, in 1722; and at Chantilly in 1725, where the porcelain of Corea was taken as a model. Ten years later Barbin was established at Mennecy, and in 1739 the philosopher RÉaumur, led away by the universal search, arrived at a devitrified glass, which went under the name of “RÉaumur’s porcelain,” though in no sense deserving such a name. With 1740 we reach the establishment of the royal manufactory at Vincennes (Fig. 260).

Two brothers named Dubois, formerly of St. Cloud, offered to sell their secret to the Intendant of Finance, and were given the necessary means to carry on the production at Vincennes. These men did not{314} fulfil their promise, and were succeeded by one of their workmen, named Gravant. The celebrated Madame de Pompadour used her influence with the king to induce him to favor an enterprise the success of which would make France independent of Saxony. The result was that the manufacture quickly rose to eminence. Chemists, artists, and goldsmiths were engaged in designing and decorating. Flowers were modelled and painted in a style so closely resembling the natural that the king is said, upon one occasion, to have mistaken the artificial for the real. In 1753, the position of manager was given to Eloi Brichard. Louis XV. took a third of the capital upon himself, and the name of “The Royal Porcelain Manufactory of France” was conferred upon the establishment. The workshops at Vincennes became too small, and in 1756 a removal was made to a new building erected specially for the purpose at SÈvres.

enlarge-image
Fig. 263.—Jewelled SÈvres. (H. C. Gibson Coll.)
Fig. 263.—Jewelled SÈvres. (H. C. Gibson Coll.)

The imitations which had annoyed Adam, the director who preceded Brichard, continued under the administration of the latter. The king then took the entire establishment into his own hands, and appointed M. Boileau director. Such was an eighteenth century toy of royalty. The king, accompanied by the Pompadour, paid regular visits to SÈvres, which was well worthy of being a royal possession. Everything that art could suggest in the form of gardens and groves had been done to embellish it. Even a private chase was provided for the artists, where, in hunting the boar and stag, they relieved the labors of the studio. Never, possibly, were artists so favored by patronage and place, and the productions of SÈvres were worthy of the sunshine in which it{315} basked. Its flowers and vases admit of no classification. Figures were also made in biscuit (see Fig. 226). Chemists vied with each other in the invention of colors, and the bleu de roi, Hellot’s turquoise blue (1752), the Pompadour pink (1757), violet, greens, yellow, and iron-red followed each other in rapid succession, and were employed with dazzling effect. Special mention need only be made of the jewelled porcelain (Figs. 262 and 263) on a bleu de roi ground. The successive directors after Boileau were: Parent, 1773-1779; Regnier, 1779-1793; Commissioners, with Chanou and afterward Salmon, Ettlinger, and Meyer, jointly as inspectors, down to 1800; Brongniart, 1800-1847; and then MM. Ebelman, Regnault, and Robert in succession. The specimen{316} here given (Fig. 264) is one of a pair dated 1772 and 1781 respectively, which formerly belonged to Louis XVI. On his request they were sold by Governor Morris, in order to raise money, and were bought by Dr. Hosack, of New York. The scene in the medallion represents Louis XVI. in his cabinet, and the nurse bringing in the newly born Dauphin.

Meantime the paste was still artificial, and the researches for a natural, or hard, porcelain were not relaxed. In 1769 the discovery of kaolin and petuntse at St. Yrieix, near Limoges, led to the introduction of hard paste into SÈvres. In 1804 M. Brongniart decided to abandon the manufacture of artificial porcelain, and soon afterward regretted having taken such a step. In 1847 M. Ebelman, Brongniart’s pupil and successor, decided to revive the pate tendre, and for four years made use of a body which had been prepared by Brongniart forty-five years previously. The clay, instead of being thrown away, as Brongniart thought, had been stored throughout the long period of its neglect, and both saved the new director any trouble in experimenting, and supplied a standard for the future. The production of soft paste has been continued, but the quantity is inconsiderable. Mr. Walters, of Baltimore, has in his collection a valuable pate tendre vase dated 1860.

To give in detail the events which led to the introduction of natural porcelain into the royal factory, we must turn back to the year 1721, when Wackenfeld was attempting to utilize at Strasburg the knowledge he had brought from Germany. Hannong was engaged{317} in the same enterprise; and his son, Paul Antoine, after endeavoring in vain to carry on the production in competition with the artificial porcelain of the royal factory, and engaging in fruitless negotiations with Director Boileau, at last retired to Frankenthal. His son afterward took the Strasburg works in hand, but failed. All this porcelain was made from imported material. That of Paul Antoine resembles in decoration the works of Meissen, and his son followed both the Saxon and SÈvres styles.

In 1758 an event happened of the first importance to the making of a true French natural porcelain. This was the discovery by the Count de Brancas Lauraguais of an inferior quality of kaolin near AlenÇon. The specimens of the ware in which it was used show a coarse body, and decoration after the Chinese and Japanese types. Shortly afterward GÉrault, or to give his name in full, Charles Claude GÉrault Daranbert, the proprietor of a faience establishment at Orleans, engaged in the manufacture of porcelain. A privilege had been granted to the Orleans workshop, in 1755, to make a white faience, and the making of porcelain appears to have begun about 1764, on the acquisition by GÉrault of a kaolin mine at St. Yrieix-la-Perche. In 1765 Guettard, chemist in the establishment of the Duke of Orleans at Bagnolet, came upon the kaolin deposit at AlenÇon originally discovered by the Count Lauraguais. Within a few years, also, Robert was making porcelain at Marseilles.

The next events of importance are Madame Darnet’s discovery of kaolin at St. Yrieix, and Macquer’s experiments with it at SÈvres. As at{318} Strasburg, the mistake was made at SÈvres of mixing the kaolin and petuntse in the wrong proportions, and the result of the excess of felspar was a very translucent glassy body. The first pieces and those of artificial paste were so nearly alike that, to distinguish the former, they were marked with the well known double L and crown. They may also be known by the color being laid upon the glaze. In the soft paste the colors appear to be sunk in the glaze. When Brongniart, in 1804, stopped the production of pate tendre, the works of the royal factory began to assume the forms and to be decorated in the styles with which the world has been familiar for the last seventy years. “The largest pieces,” says Jacquemart, “were undertaken, and sculpture and painting united to enrich gigantic vases. Plaques of forty-six by thirty-six inches were given to distinguished artists, who reproduced in unalterable colors the frescoes of Raffaelle, the masterpieces of Vandyke, Titian, and of the modern school.” Of modern SÈvres we give one example (Fig. 268), to which some interest attaches as belonging to a service presented by the French Government to Miss M. F. Curtis, distributor of funds sent from Boston for the relief of sufferers by the war with Germany in 1870-1871.

enlarge-image
Fig. 268.—SÈvres Porcelain Tea-Set. (Curtis Coll., Boston Museum of Fine Arts.)
Fig. 268.—SÈvres Porcelain Tea-Set. (Curtis Coll., Boston Museum of Fine Arts.)

{319}

To give an idea of the value of the SÈvres porcelain, it may be mentioned that Napoleon, following an example set by Louis XV., sent to the King of Etruria a vase worth about sixty thousand dollars. Tea-sets worth $1000, vases at $1500 and $5000, are mentioned as being in the royal collection in England.

There are several specimens of SÈvres porcelain, formerly preserved at Arlington House, and now in the Patent Office at Washington, to which a historical interest attaches. There are, firstly, some pieces of the “Cincinnati China” (Fig. 269) presented to George Washington by the French officers who fought in the continental army. They are white, with deep-blue bands of leaves and scroll-work, and have on the bottoms or sides the figure of Fame holding in her left hand the Order of the Cincinnati. There are, secondly, several remnants of the set presented at the same time, and by the same gentlemen, to Mrs. Washington (Fig. 270). The rim of each piece is surrounded by a chain of thirteen links, in each of which is the name of one of the original States. In the centre of each plate and saucer, and on the side of each of the other pieces, is the monogram of Martha Washington, surrounded by a green wreath of laurel and olive leaves. A golden{320} aureole surrounds the wreath, beneath which is a ribbon scroll with the motto, Decus et tutamen ab illo. The colors are at once delicate and brilliant, and the painting admirable.

Manufactories rapidly sprung up in other French towns—at Niederviller, where German kaolin was used; at several places in Paris; at Bordeaux, Clignancourt, Lille, Valenciennes, Vincennes, Limoges, and elsewhere. Fauquez made porcelain at Valenciennes in 1785, and the works were taken by Lamoninary in 1787. Hannong was employed at Vincennes in 1786, and marked his pieces with two pipes crossed, with or without the letter H. The industry was afterward protected by the Duke of Chartres, when the monogram L. P. was adopted as the mark.

The porcelain of Limoges is probably better known in this country than any other, through the enterprise of the makers, whose works in faience have already arrested our attention. The proximity of Limoges to St. Yrieix would alone lead us to view it as an important centre. After the discovery of kaolin, the brothers Grellet, MassiÉ, and Fourniera established a porcelain workshop in 1773. The mark C. D. occurs on many remarkable works. In 1784 the manufactory was absorbed by SÈvres, Gabriel Grellet acting as director.{321} The paste was then very pure and white, but deteriorated; and Alluaud succeeded Grellet in 1788. Another change was made in 1793, and the works were again carried on as a private enterprise in the hands of MM. Joubert and Cancate. In 1794 the convent at Limoges was converted into a manufactory, and another rose in 1798, in the hands of the elder Alluaud, who was succeeded by his son. Though highly commendable in purity of glaze and compactness and whiteness of paste, his porcelain was inferior in decoration. The next we hear of Limoges is through David Haviland, of New York, who went from this country to Limoges upward of forty years ago. His firm worked steadily in the manufacture of porcelain, chiefly of a domestic character, before they conjoined it with that of faience.

At the present time Haviland & Co. make a domestic ware of exceptional purity and of great{322} beauty of design. One set is modelled after and decorated with the water-lily, and others are of equal simplicity and beauty. The rule in these and in more strictly ornamental pieces is, to follow a chaste and refined style, marked by a limited use of color. The rule we laid down for the decoration of porcelain—that it should never be loaded with colors less beautiful than its own glaze—is here more closely followed than anywhere else occurring to us. Here, for example, is a set of plates painted with different scenes, such as a snow-storm, morning, night, before a shower, during a shower, and other similar subjects. The details are not wrought in with obtrusive precision. Something is left to imagination, and the effect of every view is perfect. They are painted by M. Bracquemond.

We nowhere find a better successor to the “egg-shell” of China than in the delicate, pure, and fragile specimens of thin porcelain from Limoges. This is an exceptional fabric, but there is elsewhere to be seen enough to substantiate the excellence of French porcelain for domestic use, in point of both beauty and strength. We have seen certain small coffee-cups so finely wrought, exquisitely modelled, and chastely colored, that when not in use they might serve as ornaments. The point to which painting on porcelain has been brought is further illustrated by a series of dessert{323} plates ornamented with different kinds of fruit—grapes, peaches, and other varieties. The supreme delicacy with which the requisite tints are here applied is admirable. On others are different kinds of seaweed and other marine objects, in which the artist has caught the natural hues with wonderful precision. The porcelain vases are, as a rule, small in size. No attempt, so far as we are aware, has been made to follow the gigantic works of SÈvres, Meissen, and Berlin, and we do not regret the fact. The works with which we are presented show great skill in the colors obtained, and the shapes are simple and sometimes severe. The domestic porcelain of Limoges deserves careful study for the sake of the refined taste which it invariably reflects.

enlarge-image
Fig. 277.—Dinner-set in Limoges Pate Tendre.
Fig. 277.—Dinner-set in Limoges Pate Tendre.

The most highly artistic pieces are in pate tendre, or artificial paste. Considering the difficulty of manipulating the body and its liability to sink in the furnace, many of the old SÈvres pieces must be regarded as marvels of workmanship. We look with a similar interest upon the examples coming to us from Limoges. It has the honor of having produced the only complete dinner-set ever made of this ware (Fig. 277). Its beauty is parallel with its value, which we hardly dare estimate. Beautifully modelled and plumaged birds form the dish handles, and a simple accessory decoration on the body reveals to perfection the peculiar appearance presented by pate tendre of having the colors sunk in the soft and creamy glaze.

Haviland & Co. have attained an exceptional success in colors. A complete toilet-set of pate tendre is turquoise blue of great richness and transparent depth. The modelling corresponds with an{324} achievement in color which has been the despair of ceramic artists for centuries. Deck is the only French maker who, before the Havilands, approached the old turquoise of China. The art has long been lost in the East. Deck’s pieces, however, are apt to craze or crack in irregular breaks, and this was thought to be unavoidable until Haviland made crackle closely resembling in color the rare old Chinese. Of the same material are two recumbent Psyches (Fig. 278), one in blue, the other in pink. In no more poetic form do we remember to have met the winged nymph who turned against Cupid the darts with which he was wont to afflict humanity. A set of three graceful vases (Fig. 279) with reticulated necks, and each supported on a tripod of goats’ feet, is painted in blue, gold, and pink. The forms are graceful and the coloring refined. The paintings of Poitevin and Du Liege on these and other pieces are characterized by the most exquisite delicacy. M. Pallandre, the Parisian flower-painter, has also lent to the porcelain of Haviland & Co. the beauty conferred by his dexterous brush.

enlarge-image
Fig. 278.—Psyche, in Blue Pate Tendre.
Fig. 278.—Psyche, in Blue Pate Tendre.

{325}

An excellent domestic ware, also made at Limoges, is largely imported by the manufacturers, Charles Field Haviland & Co., of New York. The greater portion of it is undecorated; but lately the makers have been turning their attention to decoration, and artistic work of considerable merit now comes from their establishment.

Before leaving France, the names of Deck, Solon, and Regnault may be allowed to stay our progress. The Messrs. Deck, of Paris, have, as we have seen, made a special study of color, and were the first, or among the first, to revive Oriental decoration. Their Persian ware, or imitation of the old art of Persia, is characterized by much of the beauty of the original. Their blue, as we have seen, is especially commendable, and enabled them to compete with the enterprising imitators of England, the Mintons, who have for several years been in possession of a blue very little inferior to the turquoise. It is to be regretted that Deck was not represented at the Centennial Exhibition, where, by the richness of his palette, he would have had an opportunity of extending his reputation in America.

M. Regnault, who succeeded M. Ebelman in the directorate of{326} SÈvres, was the inventor, while at the SÈvres manufactory, of pate changeante. The ware appears, during the day, like gray cÉladon, and at night, under artificial light, changes to a beautiful pink, whence its name.

The name of M. Solon recalls at once the peculiar style of decoration called “Pate-sur-pate,” or paste upon paste. The process has been long known in China, and was first attempted in Europe by M. Ebelman at SÈvres about thirty years ago. The experiments were successful, and some very fine works were issued. The process was taken to England from SÈvres by M. Solon, who was engaged a few years ago by the Messrs. Minton (Fig. 282). In Mr. A. B. Daniells’s collection at the Centennial Exhibition, some examples of pate-sur-pate by M. Solon attracted general attention. There were two pairs of vases of a pure Greek shape, with a body of a rich bronze or chocolate color. On this, in white relief, were figures symbolizing Fire and Water, and a group of the Graces accompanied by Cupid in a race. The forms were exquisitely drawn, and were half revealed by the semi-transparent drapery. More usual grounds are a dark green and a grayish tint, either of which has a soft effect. A second specimen is given at Fig. 352.

This method of treatment consists in applying to the surface to be decorated white liquid porcelain as a pigment. The application is repeated until the necessary relief is obtained, when the figures are finished by carving or scraping. Repeated firings are necessary before glazing, and the decoration, which is opaque while wet, becomes more or less transparent, according to the thickness of the pigment. The process is one of the nicest and most difficult in the entire range of ceramic art, as a mistake once made cannot be remedied, and the glaze has a tendency to destroy the fine outlines of the figures.{327}

CHAPTER VI.
GERMANY AND CENTRAL EUROPE.

THE early pottery of Germany and Central Europe dates from the Stone Age down to the Roman incursion, when the types change, and the evidences of more perfect mechanical appliances become apparent. The Lake Dwellers, who built their huts on piles in the lakes of Switzerland, have commemorated themselves by hand-wrought vessels, to the embellishment of which a decoration of the rudest kind was brought. Remains have been found throughout Germany, of which some are hand-made, while others are evidently thrown upon the wheel. These are both pre-Roman and contemporaneous with the Roman occupation. The paste varies from a friable clay to a hard, ringing stone-ware. Vases of a great variety of shape have been found along with cups, plates, saucers, and jars. Some of the vases are divided, like boxes, into compartments. The ornaments are paintings, mouldings, and incised lines. The painting consists of parallel lines of red, yellow, and black. Some of the smaller pieces were apparently used as toys. Others, of a sepulchral character, are thought to resemble the huts of the lacustrine dwellers. One found at Achersleben has a tall, conical cover, like a high-thatched roof, and the orifice in front is covered with a plate having a ring in the centre, through which a pin being passed fastened it on the outside. The orifice was in this way closed after the ashes of the dead had been introduced (Fig. 283). These and similar remains have been found in various parts of Germany, and have given rise to many superstitious stories among the peasantry. By some they are said to be the natural{328} produce of the soil. Others ascribe them to the all-powerful fairies. Others consider them possessed of wonderful preservative properties. As to the art they represent, we are convinced here, as we are in a parallel manner, though more forcibly amidst the remains belonging to ancient Gaul, that the Romans were not the first to inspire the Teutonic population with a desire for the expression of artistic ideas. We find both an awakening sensitiveness to the graces of form, and a growing appreciation of the possible beauty of surface decoration.

enlarge-image
Fig. 283.—Ancient German Hut-shaped Vases.
Fig. 283.—Ancient German Hut-shaped Vases.

With the Romans we find pottery both made on the spots where they settled and imported from the seats of the ceramic industry in Italy. These display the usual Roman characteristics, and need not be here considered. Crossing the Dark Ages, we find, in the thirteenth century, Germany in possession of processes for the presence of which—so far removed from their accepted centres and from the regular routes by which they travelled—it might be hard to account if it were absolutely necessary to travel by the regular route. We have seen this already in the case of early France. We see it again in Germany. Possibly the Romans may have taught their barbarian subjects something about glazing. Possibly some wanderer to Palestine and the East or to the Saracenic settlements in the South of Europe, or some stranger from these “foreign parts,” may have initiated the German potters in the higher secrets of the art.{329}

In any event, Germany was making enamelled faience at least two centuries before Luca della Robbia had perfected his process in Italy. A potter of Schelestadt, in Alsace, is said by the Germans to have discovered tin enamel. Even his name is now forgotten, although his death is said to have occurred in 1283. At Leipsic is a glazed frieze, dated 1207, and at Breslau, in 1230, architectural reliefs of great excellence were produced. Two hundred years later, in 1441, Veit Hirschvogel was using stanniferous enamel. At Strehla, in 1565, the potters were so well skilled in the working of terra-cotta, that they had made a pulpit of that material. One is almost led by these facts to question if Germany did not lead both Italy and France, and to regret that the history of German ceramics has not been more fully opened up to us. One danger let us guard against, for the sake of securing the intelligent understanding of Germany, incompatible with either partiality or prejudice. We need not confound conservative tastes with a “very slow march of ideas.” One rather loves to find an artist so impressed with what is good in his own art, that he is in no haste to leave it in order to catch the first whiff of foreign inspiration. Ideas evidently circulated at a tolerably high rate of speed in a country where the enamelled friezes and monumental bas-reliefs of Leipsic and Breslau existed in the beginning of the thirteenth century.

To Leipsic, therefore, Germany is indebted for its first enamelled ware. The friezes above mentioned consisted of tiles with alto-relievo heads of Christ and the Apostles. The enamel is dark green. What occurs to us at once is that no art ever began with such works, and that in them we have the successful results of long experiment.

Breslau is made famous by a large work of the same century, representing Henry IV. of Silesia, who died in 1290. The monarch lies stretched upon a tomb surrounded by twenty-one bas-reliefs.

The Hirschvogels of Nuremberg have thrown a lustre upon their birthplace by their faience decorated with enamelled reliefs. The founder of the family, Veit Hirschvogel, was born in 1441, and died in 1525; and one of his sons, Augustine, has left some very artistic works in the prevailing style of ornamentation, with medallions and decorations in relief. One vase has green dragon handles (Fig. 284); and the fact that this style existed in Nuremberg at the time when Palissy was travelling in Germany, has led to the supposition that he{330} may have acquired the rudiments of his art under Hirschvogel. The same city was deservedly celebrated for its tiles ornamented with bas-reliefs, generally of the deep green distinctive of the greater proportion of German pottery. The style was at a later period carried to a greater extent, as we find upon different vessels several animal forms in high relief, and even the vessels themselves modelled after the animals of the country.

At Villingen, in the Black Forest, Hans Kraut, who died in 1590, carried the same branch of art to great perfection, his tiles and bas-reliefs marking him as a successful and talented disciple of the school of Nuremberg.

HÖchst and Marburg were both important seats of the industry, and at the former we find a vase having its neck ornamented with white reliefs, like the cameos of Wedgwood. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the industry was established in many places throughout Germany, and styles of western and southern origin make their appearance. The faience of Anspach, Bavaria, follows the style of Rouen, and at Nuremberg, in the eighteenth century, the early Faentine style is making itself felt. The Bavarian towns of GÖggingen and Baireuth both produced pieces of great beauty and refinement. On some from the former appear bouquets, birds, and arabesques, and one from the latter is ornamented—with what delicacy of effect may be imagined—with a figure and medallion surrounded by blue arabesques laid upon the white enamel. Before the middle of the eighteenth century Nuremberg had instituted its modern style, blue arabesque borders on a bluish glaze surrounding centre-pieces of fruit, etc.

SWITZERLAND.

In Switzerland we know ZÜrich, Schaffhausen, Winterthur, and one or two other places. Of these, Winterthur is probably the more{331} ancient, pieces occurring dated 1678 and 1689. The styles are akin to the Italian—deep-bordered dishes with regularly arranged groups of fruit or flowers, or blue arabesques running round the margin. Escutcheons or fortified castles form the centre decoration. Precision and stiff, scrupulous care characterize the drawing.

BELGIUM.

Belgium, in at least two of the seats of its ceramic wares, has been closely allied with France. From Antwerp, the great centre of Belgian art, issued majolica of Italian styles in blue and yellow, violet and green, and another quality after the Oriental porcelain patterns. Toward the middle of the seventeenth century, if not earlier, Antwerp was in close relations with France. Tournay was of French origin in so far as its faience is concerned, and it was not until its workshop passed into the hands of Peterynck, of Lille, that it rose to eminence. The pieces attributed to it show a compound of Rouennais, Flemish, and Chinese decoration. Brussels had carried the art in 1761 to such a height, that its faience was said to be preferable to that of Delft and Rouen, with which it is possible it may sometimes be confounded by collectors. At Tervueren, near the capital, some pieces still in existence were made which are decorated with wreaths and bouquets and armorial bearings executed in colors of moderate purity.

HOLLAND.

For our present purpose, all Holland may be said to be comprised in the single town of Delft. Its works date from 1310, and may be divided into two eras, that preceding the making of “porcelain,” and that during and after the fabrication miscalled by that name. The Delft faience is thin and hard, and was decorated with landscapes and scenes by the best painters of the time. It was made into{332} tiles, large plaques, baskets, vases, statuettes, and many other forms. Toward the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, when the Dutch were laying the foundation of their trade with Japan, the fine quality of faience, which has never been equalled by any other country, began to be produced. We find this imitation of Oriental porcelain officially recognized in 1614, and for a hundred and fifty years it was currently referred to as porcelain. In reality it was a fine faience, modelled and decorated after the peculiar forms and patterns with which their trade with Japan had made the Dutch almost exclusively familiar. The paste, which consisted chiefly of the clay of Bruyelle, near Tournay, was skilfully mixed with sand and carefully manipulated. The sand made it hard, and gave it a capacity for being wrought into thin pieces suitable for table services. The bluish enamel was perfectly smooth and even; and the decoration, chiefly in blue and iron-red, after the Oriental designs, imparted to it much of the appearance of Japanese porcelain.

It is not to be wondered at that, as the processes were perfected, the reputation of Delft increased, and its commerce grew in proportion, and that no symptoms of decay manifest themselves until toward the end of the seventeenth century. The genius of both potters and painters ran riot among curious forms and decorations. One author mentions dinner services with dish covers resembling in form and{333} color the birds to be served in them; a spice cupboard resembling a Chinese Mandarin, and other curiosities. Another strange form was that of a violin, one of which is painted in blue camaÏeu, with figures engaged in a dance, and musicians.

STONE-WARE.

This ware, distinguished, as we have seen, by its vitrified fracture, although long known in the East, does not appear in Europe until between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. When it was first made in France has not been ascertained with sufficient exactness, and to Germany the credit of instituting the fabrication has generally been accorded. We find it throughout the provinces on the Rhine at a very early period, and it probably passed down the Rhine to Holland and thence to England.

The name of the beautiful and unfortunate Jacqueline of Bavaria, Countess of Hainault and Holland, is connected with the making of stone-ware by a very curious tradition. Jacqueline was the daughter of William IV., Count of Hainault and Holland, at whose request she married John, Duke of Brabant. This was the beginning of her troubles. A jealous and disappointed suitor, John of Bavaria, Bishop of Liege, marched against Holland, and having compelled the countess to nominate him as her successor, bribed her husband to transfer to him the management of her estates for a term of years. The countess, having good reason to be disgusted with men in general, and with her husband and quondam suitor in particular, fled to England after appealing in vain to Rome for a divorce. In England her beauty captivated the Duke of Gloucester, who espoused her cause as a preliminary to espousing herself. The duke marched against her husband of Brabant, who, assisted by his cousin of Burgundy, defeated the invader. Gloucester deserted Jacqueline, fled to England, and took a less involved bride. The countess in the mean time was imprisoned; but she escaped, and on the death, in 1425, of the prelate of Liege, resumed her rightful position. Then she was relieved by death of her husband,{334} and was again involved in war by the Duke of Burgundy, whom she was forced to declare her heir. A second marriage into which she entered so enraged Philip—who, by-the-way, is known in history as, par excellence, “The Good”—that he arrested her husband, and would have executed him, had not Jacqueline handed over her coveted property to “The Good,” and in 1433 retired to the privacy of the Castle of Teylingen. Three years afterward she died, at the age of thirty-six.

From what we can make out, the countess was twice an occupant of Teylingen, once in 1424, on escaping from imprisonment at Ghent, and the second time, as above mentioned, in 1433. On both these occasions she appears to have occupied herself with the superintendence of the stone-ware works, and even with fashioning the vessels with her own dainty hands. After they were made, we are told—although it is altogether incredible—that the flagons were thrown into the Rhine, either as mementos of her imprisonment, or “that they might in after-ages be deemed works of antiquity.” Providing for posterity in that peculiar manner does not commend itself to one’s reason, as in any way in keeping with the career of the Countess Jacqueline. There was a custom in Paris for patriotic citizens to assemble in the gardens adjoining the Seine, and there to relieve themselves by toasting and singing and flinging the empty flasks into{335} the river. These have been found, with the legend “Vive le Roi!” inscribed on them, after the fashion of the Moyenage potters. The Germans had a similar manner of keeping the toast from future impurity by throwing away the vessels in which it was drunk. Probably in this way the “Vrouw Jacoba’s Kannetjes” found their way into the Rhine and the moat of Teylingen. It is easy to imagine the potters toasting their lovely co-worker and superintendent, and, in the excess of their admiration and loyalty, tossing away the flagons, that they might never be drained to a less worthy toast. The story is attractive enough, and it is almost a pity that the pots which have been found are not of a high artistic rank. None of them is ornamented.

enlarge-image
Fig. 289.—Fine German Stone-ware. Fig. 290.—Fine German Stone-ware.
Fig. 289.—Fine German Stone-ware. Fig. 290.—Fine German Stone-ware.

To the “common stone-ware” belong the pots called Graybeards (Fig. 287), from the bearded heads moulded on the necks. Many of these, though well formed, are rudely ornamented, and are of a very coarse composition (Fig. 288). The finer ware, which was made after the beginning of the sixteenth century, is divisible into two classes, the older belonging exclusively to the sixteenth century, and of a gray{336} white or pale yellow, the other of a bluish and gray tint, made down to the present time. This is the ware commonly called GrÈs de Flandre, although, so far as we know, Flanders never produced any, and the ware so designated is a purely German fabrication. The canettes, or tall cups, of a nearly cylindrical shape, sloping slightly inward toward the top, and belonging to the first class of yellowish white stone-ware, are of very elegant form, and are beautifully ornamented with reliefs, made from moulds of wood and admirably executed. The subjects are sometimes scriptural, sometimes heraldic.

To the second class of blue and gray stone-ware with salt glaze belong some of the best specimens of the art (Figs. 289 and 290). They date from 1500 to 1620, after which came the decline. The Bavarian town of Creussen made a peculiar stone-ware ornamented with colored reliefs. Of this we have samples in the “Apostle” mugs, so called from the reliefs surrounding them, and in a series of jugs with hunting scenes. These belong to the seventeenth century.

The BÖttcher stone-ware will be noticed under porcelain, to the invention of which in Germany it was the first step.

PORCELAIN.

It will always be the distinguishing honor of Germany that the Saxon BÖttger, or BÖttcher, was the discoverer, for Europe, of a true kaolinic natural porcelain. The circumstances have already been detailed (see p. 52). While BÖttcher was prosecuting his experiments in 1708, he had the furnace filled with trial pieces, which were fired for several days before a piece was withdrawn. A teapot was at length taken out and thrown into cold water. It was not porcelain, however, but a red stone-ware, very hard, and with a metallic ring when struck. It was called “red porcelain,” probably to suit the wishes of the experimenter and of his royal patron. A teapot of this ware has been sold in England for sixteen pounds sterling. A very good example of it is now in the possession of Mr. Davis Collamore,{337} of New York (Fig. 291), who was fortunate enough to pick it up in one of his European tours in quest of rare “bits.” It is undecorated, and shows admirably the rusty red color of BÖttcher’s experimental stone-ware. Others of his early essays are almost black in color and are painted in relief. Several pieces are in the Metropolitan Museum.

Whenever the kaolin of Aue was discovered, BÖttcher, on his first attempt, succeeded in making natural porcelain. Though Meissen, where a workshop was erected without delay after the discovery, was kept like a prison or fortress, and every precaution observed to insure secrecy, although every man connected with the works was under oath to keep silence in regard to anything he might see or discover, the precautions were all in vain. The knowledge oozed out, and in a very few years Meissen had several rivals. White ware was made down to 1718. The Nankin blue was the first colored ware imitated, and after 1718 other colors were introduced. BÖttcher died in 1719, and was succeeded in the directorate by Horoldt (Fig. 293), who carried out several great improvements, and mingled the previous exclusively Oriental designs with some of a more purely European character. Heavy gilt borders surrounded figures, flowers, or the royal arms. In 1731, while the king himself was director, Kandler,{338} a sculptor, introduced, as an ornamentation for vases, flower wreaths in relief, and afterward attempted figures with great success. From 1725 to 1745 Lindenir, or Linderer, was painting the beautiful insects and birds which were his specialty. Then came, also during Kandler’s time, the exquisite paintings by European artists which brought the Chinese style effectually to a close. The brightest days of Meissen’s history were those from 1731 to 1756, before Frederick the Great robbed it, for the enrichment of Berlin, of men, moulds, models, and clay. Peace came too late to restore Meissen to its pre-eminence, as it now had rivals both at home and abroad in France and England.

The successive directors after Horoldt were the king, Augustus II., from 1731 to 1733; Count BrÜhl from 1733; the count’s widow from 1763; the king, Augustus III., from 1778; Count Marcolini from 1796 to 1814; Bengrath Oppal from 1814 to 1833. The factory was, for the second time, plundered in 1759, and although it subsequently attained to a high position, it never reached its former prosperity. A marked change in style is noticeable during the last quarter of the eighteenth century. The forms and ornaments both assume more of a classical character. This style, borrowed most likely from France, was adopted by Marcolini, and entirely superseded its predecessors. The manufacture was now in its decline. Meissen had lost its prestige, and gradually sank in importance. From about fifty years ago the decoration became coarse and the works no longer paid expenses, and at the present time Dresden ware is a decidedly inferior fabrication. According to Jacquemart, the manufactory is busy counterfeiting its own old productions and its old marks. In comparing Dresden with its former self, its present position relative to other factories must not be lost sight of. It still gives{339} to commerce many works which are valuable either for their historical associations or for their intrinsic merit. The candelabrum here given (Fig. 297) represents a style of work once very much in vogue at Dresden. It was Kandler who, while superintending the modelling department under Augustus II., between 1731 and 1733, introduced the beautifully fashioned flowers in relief, of which some idea may be formed from our specimen. Another, and a very curious work, is still reproduced, and specimens can occasionally be picked up in this country. Reference is made to the figures “Count BrÜhl’s Tailor” and “his Wife.” The originals of these pieces were made by Kandler in 1760, under the count’s directorate. With all his profligacy, Count BrÜhl was a good deal of a wit, and having been repeatedly requested by his tailor to accord him permission to look through the manufactory, at length consented. The tailor presented himself at the works in due time, and was there, to give him an appetite for farther exploration, presented with the two figures referred to. In one he saw himself astride of a he-goat, brandishing his professional shears and carrying the other appurtenances of his business on his back, while the goat carries his “goose” in its mouth. The other figure was that of his wife, with a baby in her arms, sitting upon a she-goat. The discomfited tailor saw no more of the porcelain manufactory. The many elegant forms and styles of Dresden are too numerous to be detailed. They embrace vases, candlesticks,{340} snuff-boxes, butterflies, flowers, clock-cases, and animal figures. The miniature paintings on some of the smaller pieces are exquisitely finished and wonderfully tinted.

The annals of the last century contain many curious stories of runaway workmen selling their secrets, and of the steps taken to keep down opposition and to acquire a knowledge of the manufacture by any means that offered. A runaway from Meissen led to the establishment at Vienna of a factory in 1720. After twenty years it rose to considerable eminence, although in both paste and glaze it is inferior to Dresden. Its raised gold decorations have brought it in modern times a certain celebrity. It came to an end during the directorate of Alexander Lowe, who was appointed in 1856. Some excellent specimens are in the collections of Mr. Walters, of Baltimore, and Mr. Gibson, of Philadelphia. From Vienna the secret spread to HÖchst, whither it was conveyed by a workman named Ringler. Ringler was in the habit of carrying with him written notes regarding the manufacture. His fellow-workmen at HÖchst made him drunk, copied his notes, and offered the secret thus obtained for sale at other centres. One of these runaways founded the workshop of FÜrstenburg. A few of the FÜrstenburg workmen attempted to establish a manufactory at Neuhaus, but, on discovery, were sent out of Brunswick. Another FÜrstenburger,{341} a flower painter, tried to start the industry at HÖxter, whither he had fled, but failed, and was followed in the endeavor by one of the defrauders of poor Ringler. This man’s name was Becker, and he succeeded in HÖxter, after fruitlessly hawking his secret through Belgium, Holland, and France. He was bought up by the offer of a pension, and his competition was thus brought to an end. When Ringler awoke to a full realization of the consequences of his folly at HÖchst, he went to Frankenthal, Bavaria, where the factory founded by Hannong, of Strasburg, made porcelain in 1755. This existed down to 1800. In the mean time, however, Ringler had left, as we find him first at Neudeck-Nymphenburg, in Bavaria, and then, in 1758, founding a factory at Ludwigsburg, WÜrtemberg, which was worked until 1821. The porcelain made here was of excellent quality, and the figure pieces were admirably modelled. After this we hear no more of Ringler. In this way the industry spread over the whole of Central Europe—to Anspach, Baireuth, Baden, to Hesse-Cassel, Darmstadt, and Thuringia, each new workshop becoming the centre for a number of offshoots.

Berlin obtained a knowledge of porcelain by the purchase of one of the copies of the indiscreet Ringler’s notes, and the industry was founded in 1750. Let us bear in mind how Frederick carried off workmen, artists, tools, and material from Meissen, and it is not difficult to understand the rise of Berlin. The works were taken by the Crown in 1763,{342} and were very soon yielding a handsome income. Berlin has been compared with Dresden in its best days, and its works are certainly of a high order. The Berlin rose-color is peculiar to the royal factory. At the Centennial Exhibition the KÖniglich Preussische Porzellan-manufactur of Berlin was almost the sole representative of the porcelain industry of Germany. The majority of the pieces were of an ornamental character, large vases and plaques. A mere list of them will show in what the workmen are now busying themselves. There were a Victoria vase with a picture of Aurora, after Guido Reni; Germania vase with pictures of Germania cultivating the arts and sciences, and Prussia the shield and protectress of the empire, after Von Heyden; Crater vase with “Triumphal Procession of King Wine,” after SchrÖdter; Crater vase with picture of Helios, after Schinkel; vases in Neogrec style with paintings after Bendemann; Victoria vase with “Music,” after KlÖber; Urbino vases, amphora vases, and several sets in the Persian, Chinese, and Japanese styles. All these pieces were of large size, the largest about six feet in height. Besides these there were candelabra, pictures on china enamel, table services, busts, and some beautiful specimens in biscuit. The collection probably represented very fairly the extent of the art practised at Berlin, and the best work of the Germany of to-day. In every case there were to be found great richness and admirable handling of colors, but it requires time to become accustomed to the German styles of drawing. Many of the figures painted on the surface, even those showing the utmost delicacy of tint, were hardly entitled to be described as graceful. Others were absolutely clumsy.

{343}

The vase from Mr. August Belmont’s collection (Fig. 299) is in both form and color a good example of the art workmanship of Berlin. The ground color is a soft and beautiful shade of green; and the handles, base, neck, and frame of the medallion are in gold. The portrait in the latter is that of the Queen of Prussia, the mother of William, the present Emperor of Germany, and is said to be a very correct likeness.

HOLLAND.

The first natural porcelain factory in Holland was founded in 1764, at Weesp, near the capital. It was closed in 1771. In the following year the business was recommenced at Loosdrecht, near Utrecht, and was carried on there, and after 1782 at Amstel, with moderate success until the beginning of the present century. Several other establishments, notably one in 1778 at the Hague, rose, and in a few years fell. The entire history of porcelain in the country may be comprised in twenty-five years, from 1760 to 1785.

In Belgium there was, in 1791, a factory of natural paste at Brussels.

SWITZERLAND.

Switzerland owed its first workshop at ZÜrich to one of Ringler’s workmen from HÖchst. It was carried on for five years, until 1768, and the productions are after the German style. Imitations of the French style of SÈvres came for a time from Nyon, where a Frenchman established a workshop.{344}

CHAPTER VII.
RUSSIA, DENMARK, AND SCANDINAVIA.

THE prehistoric pottery of the Scandinavians is, in its general character, allied to the Teutonic. It is curious to find Brongniart describing methods of shaping vessels by hand and burning them in a hole, with hay for fuel, as being still practised in Scandinavia, which it is quite probable have been transmitted from generation to generation for untold centuries. A dark-gray, calcareous, coarse paste and herring-bone decoration are met with in the vessels of the Stone Age. Others apparently of the same age were thrown on the wheel. The hut-shaped urn also occurs, and rare specimens are surmounted by a cover.

From these ancient times we may descend at once to the eighteenth century. In 1700 Peter the Great established some Delft potters at St. Petersburg, and a private workshop is mentioned as existing at Revel, but little is known of either. Peter the Great was also desirous of founding the porcelain industry within his dominions, but does not appear to have made any farther progress than bringing together a collection of Chinese porcelain with Russian decoration. In 1756 Elizabeth established a workshop near the capital, and some years later it was enlarged by Catherine II. About sixty years ago a{345} number of SÈvres artists were imported, and from that time down to the present a very superior natural porcelain has been made. In 1756 an establishment, also for making natural porcelain, was founded near Moscow. The royal works made no contribution to the Centennial Exhibition, but some porcelain was exhibited of fine translucent paste and most extravagant price. Single cups and saucers, of fine body, but not characterized either by remarkable elegance of shape or beauty of decoration, were offered for $20. Some small plaques of majolica were also exhibited, of careful workmanship and tasteful ornamentation. The St. Petersburg porcelain made at the royal works is so high in price that it is said to be bought only for the Court. The Russian faience (Fig. 300) of the present time is decorated in styles altogether peculiar. It illustrates the ardent desire manifested for some years past throughout Russia to rear a distinctively Muscovite school of art. Natural porcelain has been made at Korzec, in Poland, since 1723.

The first Swedish faience factory was established{346} at Rorstrand in 1727, and is still running; and in 1750 a second enterprise was set on foot at Marieberg, also in the neighborhood of Stockholm. The earlier Rorstrand wares resemble those of Delft. The decorations are in some cases delicate and well designed. More lately Sweden has produced a great variety of very beautiful faience. At the Centennial Exhibition we had an opportunity of making acquaintance with the Stockholm potters through works not less surprising than artistic. The imitations of Palissy’s Rustiques figulines may be passed over. The most interesting pieces were of what was called “black northern faience,” the paste of which is a skilfully manipulated fine dark-brown clay. Many of the tea-sets and vases might easily have been mistaken for porcelain. A peculiar and very effective ornamentation consisted of blue, gilt, red, and white floral designs, the white enamel having a charming pearly appearance, and the blue studs resembling turquoises. One of the best specimens of this faience was a fireplace (Fig. 301) elaborately decorated with pale-blue and green, of delicate shades mingled with gilt. In both design and color this work was of itself sufficient to establish the character of Swedish ceramic art. It was accompanied by a pair of gigantic candelabra (Fig. 302) of a similar style. A quaintly formed vase was surrounded by medallions illustrative of the life of the old Vikings, from the time when the boy played with his father’s sword to that when the war-worn hero was laid in his grave. The design was excellent in conception and execution.

It is not improbable that the Swedish works may be involved in some such confusion as that which surrounded the early wares of Delft. Thus we find, in 1729, Rorstrand invested with the monopoly of making porcelain of delft, i. e., faience. In 1735 the privilege included{347} fayence fine et pate dure, and in 1759 Dr. Ehrenrich was privileged to make porcelain and faience at Marieberg. Some of the Marieberg wares are in excellent taste, showing exquisitely modelled flowers and fruit in relief. It is singular that when, in 1780, the stock at Marieberg was sold off, some of it was disposed of in London under the name of delft. The works at Rorstrand closed in 1788. A kind of faience having a resemblance to the Swedish is manufactured near Christiania, in Norway (Fig. 303). It is made into table services, and the decoration partakes largely of the classical character so widely prevalent in the North.

enlarge-image
Fig. 303.—Norwegian Faience, Schwarzenhorn. (W. B. Dickerman Coll.)
Fig. 303.—Norwegian Faience, Schwarzenhorn. (W. B. Dickerman Coll.)

Denmark was first known by the productions of Kiel, of which the thin paste is carefully prepared, and the paintings are highly commendable. The Greek imitations by Madame Ipsen, of Copenhagen, have been an agreeable surprise to Americans. Greek vases are imitated at this establishment with equal fidelity and beauty. The world appears never to tire of these forms, and the amateurs of America are to-day busily engaged in attempting to follow the potters of Denmark, England, Brazil, and we know not of what other countries. The widow Ipsen’s works are certainly well executed; and standing among them at the Centennial Exhibition, it was hard to realize that{348} one was under the flag of Denmark. There were many there which we might have addressed, with Keats:

Both form and ornamentation were as purely Greek as those of any pottery unearthed by the antiquary. The biga, quadriga, scenes from the Iliad and mythology, appear just as they do on the works of the master potters of antiquity.

What has been said of the Ipsen factory might be applied with equal truth to the terra-cotta works of Wendrich & Sons, also of Copenhagen. Greek vessels of every description, and illustrating both ancient Greek and modern Danish styles of decoration, bear their name, and can be fully studied in such a collection as that of Mr. T. Schmidt, at the Danish Consulate, New York. The Danish imitators, in rivalling each other, have left most, if not all, of their competitors far behind, and the fact leads us to consider at greater length the circumstances which led a people apparently so distantly removed from the Greeks in genius, to follow them in this particular branch of art.

First among these was the weighty influence everywhere felt of the greatest of Danish artists, the sculptor Thorvaldsen. In him we have an instance of a single man turning, in a measure, the current of thought of an entire people. The titles of his works show the subjects which touch his artistic sympathy. Instead of the Scandinavian Odin, Thor, Baldur, Sigurd, Freia, Brunhild, or Gudrun, we have Apollo, Mercury, Venus, Hebe, Ganymede, and the heroes of the Iliad. Thorvaldsen was fascinated by the classic art of Greece, and it obliterated{349} from his memory the mythology and legends of the North. While he gave us Hebe, it was reserved for his pupil and successor, Bissen, to give us the more truly national Valkyrie.

A second reason may have been the possession of a fine pale-buff clay admirably adapted for imitating the antiques of Greece. “In texture,” says Boutell, “it is so fine that it is capable of producing bas-relief medallions not larger than cameo gems, in which the figures have the sharpness of the gems themselves, with a surface of exquisite and silk-like softness.” On the one hand was the material, on the other the Thorvaldsen museum presenting “the noblest models for using it with the happiest effect.” The way to antiquity having thus been opened up, the Danish potters widened the range of their art, and found in Etruria and Egypt abundant models for imitation. Our classification must be of the most general character. Forms are reproduced with the most perfect fidelity, and the natural color of the buff clay changes through tints of warm brown and red to black, according to the original. The ornamentation is exceedingly varied. On some of the vases are subjects, taken from the pottery of Greece, painted in red upon a black ground, or in black upon buff, as we find them in Greece. These comprise the first class, and are in the strictest sense reproductions of the antique. In others, while the accessory decoration is Greek, the subjects are taken from the sculptures or bas-reliefs of Thorvaldsen or Flaxman. The “Triumph of Neptune” of the latter, and the many works of the former, being purely classical{350} in conception and feeling, are in perfect harmony with the motive animating the artists of Denmark. There is a third class, in which the leading designs are essentially modern, and no strict rule is followed in accessory decoration. Thus, an amphora after the Greek, in form and accessories, has a central design taken from Thorvaldsen’s bas-relief “Autumn.” Egyptian amphorÆ and other black-glazed vases are painted with naturally tinted bouquets of flowers, and thus in form and ground-color alone suggest the antique. At times the several styles are mingled. The colors most extensively used are red of several shades, gold, blue, white, buff, and black.

Leaving the southern antique, the Danish potters have also reproduced the prehistoric vessels of their native land in several simple and elegant forms. The originals were found in the tombs of the ancient Danes, and supply their descendants with an opportunity of perpetuating an art essentially Norse. The national side of Danish art is also seen in many of the terra-cotta statuettes and medallions. We pass over the copies of Thorvaldsen’s classical sculptures in order to reach the comical figures, full of humor, character, and feeling, of the elfish Nisser of the old Norsemen. The statuettes of these elves, and many quaint little figures of peasants, fishermen, and the like, are very attractive, both intrinsically and as reflections of Danish old-time superstition and Danish life. One of the Nisser appears upon the top of a flower-stand, and we meet with them again in the paintings upon porcelain.

A warm, satisfying quietude and an elevation of tone pervade these works in terra-cotta, which, added to their artistic merits, commend them to the student of household decoration, and insure a welcome from all who can appreciate their mingled softness and chaste dignity.{351}

Taking Danish porcelain as a whole, it is both of good quality and tastefully decorated. The paste is pure, fine in texture, and carefully worked. In thin pieces, which approach very nearly the egg-shell of the East, the body is extremely translucent, and the glaze is smooth, hard, and even. This quality comes in fluted services, decorated under the glaze with delicate patterns, generally floral, in blue camaÏeu. In thicker pieces greater strength is gained without any sacrifice of quality. Styles of decoration more peculiarly European occur in great variety, and illustrate the Danish artist’s capacity for handling the richer colors of the porcelain painter’s palette. Flowers, birds, insects, and landscapes are seen in medallions edged with gold; and cupids or Nisser, as grotesque as those in terra-cotta, are represented in every conceivable attitude. The flower pieces are drawn with feeling, and the coloring follows that of nature as closely as the medium will allow. In the figure pieces the attitudes are, as a rule, expressive, and suggestive of life and motion. Many of Thorvaldsen’s works, and some of those of Bissen and Jerichau, have been reproduced in biscuit statuettes and bas-relief medallions. While lacking the warmth of terra-cotta, the porcelain biscuit is sharp in outline and soft in color.

Porcelain was made at Copenhagen (Fig. 308) in 1760, where a Frenchman named Fournier established a workshop. In 1772 another establishment was founded, or that of Fournier was revived, by the Minister of Justice, Muller, assisted by a fugitive from FÜrstenburg, named Von Lang. In 1775 it was taken into the hands of the Government, and is now called the Royal Porcelain Works. Many ornamental pieces and works in biscuit are issued of different decrees of merit.{352}

CHAPTER VIII.
GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

THE ceramic history of the British Isles is invested with a peculiar interest by reason of its nearly perfect continuity from the early Celtic works to the Romano-British wares, the early Saxon, the Norman mediÆval imitations of Saracenic tiling, the lead-glazed wares of the sixteenth century, the stone-ware of the same period, the pottery of Staffordshire and Wedgwood, the first appearance of English porcelain, and so on, downward, to the works of Minton, Doulton, and others at the present time. In no other country do we find material for an equally lucid illustration of the regular advance of the art from the primitive and rude to the elaborate, beautiful, and skilful. England supplies us with a wonderful and in every way admirable picture of the efficacy of persistent skilled endeavor in contending with technical difficulty.

From the old tumuli, or barrows, have been exhumed urns in which were held the cinerary remains of the dead (Fig. 309). The differences existing among them are such, in regard to both composition, shape, and ornament, that they evidently belong to different periods and to different branches or tribes of the early British population. They have been found all over England, from the Channel{353} Islands to Northumberland. They are sun-dried and hand-made, and have wide orifices, often expanding gradually from a comparatively narrow base to the lip. They are pale in color, either yellow or gray, and the ornamentation consists of zigzags, frets, and studs.

In Scotland the general character of the remains is the same as that of the English. The appearance of a number of them suggests, however, the use of the wheel. They have been exhumed in every part of Scotland, from the Tweed to the Orkney Islands.

enlarge-image
Fig. 309.—Group of Ancient British Vases.
Fig. 309.—Group of Ancient British Vases.

The Irish urns are somewhat in advance of those found in England and Scotland. The red paste shows that considerable care was bestowed upon its preparation, and the entire body is very often covered with ornaments of lines and zigzags. As in the case of the English and Scotch, we are indebted for the preservation of these relics of the Irish Celts to a usage which our researches have shown to be almost universal, that of employing urns in connection with the interment of the dead. Cremation was not resorted to in every instance. The Celts put the ashes in the urns, or covered them by{354} inverting the urns over the spot where the ashes were laid, or placed their sepulchral vases round the unburnt remains.

In the first century before Christ the tide of Roman conquest passed the white cliffs of Albion, and a new element was introduced into its ceramics. There, as elsewhere, the Romans made and imported the ware, of which examples have been brought to light all over the old Roman Empire, from England to Jerusalem. The extent to which the manufacture was carried in England may be estimated from one fact stated by Dr. Birch, that the Roman potteries have been traced for twenty miles along the gravel banks of the Nen, in Northamptonshire. Caistor, in the same county, is an exceptionally interesting locality, as both early Celtic wares and the remains of a Roman kiln have been found there. Under the Romans it must have been an important seat of the manufacture, as its productions have been unearthed at several places on the Continent—in France and the Low Countries. The Caistor ware is very often ornamented with unusual skill and taste by means of reliefs. The Roman Samian ware is found in many sections of England, whither it was probably imported. Some of the specimens belonging to the latter part of the Roman period, and to be classed as Anglo-Roman, are of a thin black paste, carefully wrought and totally devoid of ornament. After the arrival of the Saxons the pottery was more closely allied to the Teutonic found in Germany (Fig. 314).

enlarge-image
Fig. 313.—Romano-British Upchurch Ware.
Fig. 313.—Romano-British Upchurch Ware.

The urns are black, hand-made, and stamped with a variety of{355} decorative designs. The shapes are heavy, and the appliances for firing were apparently of a rude kind. Of the Anglo-Saxon period few relics have been discovered, and little is in consequence known. One fragment of the eleventh century, or possibly earlier, is described by Mr. Marryat as “of a yellow color, coarsely made and unglazed.” It seems probable that the disturbances attendant upon the Norman invasion in 1066 distracted the popular attention from the plastic art, as the next evidences of its pursuit belong chiefly to the thirteenth century. These are the tiles employed in paving the ecclesiastical edifices of the day. In the greater number the patterns are inlaid, or filled in with white paste, and the whole then glazed yellow. To this class belong the thirteenth century tiles from Chertsey Abbey, in Surrey, and those of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries from Malmesbury Abbey and Malvern. Those from Chertsey are peculiarly elaborate. One has a scene representing a king and a female harper, surrounded by a circular border, the whole forming the inside of a square richly ornamented in the corners and on the sides. The Malvern tiles are also very elaborately decorated with designs of an apparently heraldic character. Another style of tile decoration, followed from the thirteenth to the eighteenth century, consisted of mouldings in relief. The glaze is green or brown.{356}

enlarge-image
Fig. 315.—Anglo-Norman Vases.
Fig. 315.—Anglo-Norman Vases.

In others the patterns are incised, but not filled in. A very good example of this style is to be seen in Crauden’s chapel at Ely. The fourth style of decoration was upon the pate-sur-pate principle—a white paste being employed as a pigment upon the body of the tile, after which the piece was glazed. The introduction of tiling for pavements and walls was evidently in a great measure due to English intercourse with Spain and the East. Toward the close of the eleventh century, while England had not yet recovered from the first shock of the Norman invasion, Peter the Hermit was carrying from land to land the anti-Saracenic Gospel of the Sword, which led to the First Crusade. Fifty years later, in 1147, the Second Crusade was organized, while England was still groaning under the oppression of her rulers. In the first quarter of the twelfth century the Saxon chronicler says: “God sees the wretched people most unjustly{357} oppressed: first they are despoiled of their possessions, then butchered.” Under Stephen, “Men said openly that Christ and his saints were asleep.” Clearly this was no time either for joining in crusades or cultivating art. When, in 1189, the Third Crusade was arranged, Richard the Lion-hearted was one of the three sovereigns who joined in the ineffectual enterprise. With his followers may have been brought back the incentives to art cultivation which make their effects apparent in the next century. The government was, in the mean time, taking the form which it assumed before the end of the thirteenth century, and which it has retained ever since. Political and art history here run exactly parallel. Given disorder and despairing apathy, and art is unknown. But let order take the place of chaos, and constitutional rule that of despotism, and the discarded arts again blossom into flower. Eastern influences manifested themselves in England almost contemporaneously with the revival of the ceramic art. On one specimen from Ely, a scriptural subject—Eve offering the apple to Adam, while a human-headed serpent coils itself round the tree—is surrounded by several designs of clearly Saracenic or Moorish inspiration.

For at least four centuries tiles formed the staple production of the potters of England. The annals indicate a popular indifference to the domestic use of earthen-ware, which contrasts strongly with more southern preferences. In the reign of Edward I. a chance cargo from Spain, containing some plates and other household table-wares, reached England, but failed to affect the national use of wooden trenchers, leathern jugs, and metal. Lead-glazed pottery was, however, made as early as the fourteenth century, though{358} not to a great extent. The specimens which have been preserved are generally coarse in texture, and are covered with green or yellow glaze. A ewer of the thirteenth or fourteenth century is rudely designed to represent a mounted knight. Other examples of the same period are jugs, of which some are inartistically formed, while others are not devoid of a certain gracefulness of shape. Costrels, or costrils (elongated bottles which answered the purpose of the modern flask), occur of a red paste with red and white glaze. A candlestick with white studs for ornaments has been found of the same red color.

As we pass to the later works of English potters, we become conscious of the difficulty of following our usual plan of dividing them into pottery, stone-ware with vitrified fracture, and porcelain. The treatment of the name of Wedgwood alone would make such an arrangement undesirable, as tending to break the continuity of our narrative. Stone-ware and earthen-ware will therefore be considered together.

The making of both enamelled pottery and stone-ware appears to have been an imported industry. Dutch potters are said to have settled at both Lambeth and Fulham in the seventeenth century, and to have there originated the manufacture of what was called “Delft,” after the name of the seat of the industry in Holland. White wine-pots of this ware date from about the middle of the seventeenth century. Plates, oval and round dishes, mugs and cups, of the same ware appear in various collections, some with figures in relief, others with paintings in brown, blue, yellow, and green, and others with medallions or mottoes. They generally date from between 1650 and 1690. Delft was also made in Liverpool and in Staffordshire.

The first mention of stone-ware occurs in 1581, in the petition of a certain William Simpson, for “full power and onlie licence to provyde, transport, and bring into this realm, drinking stone pottes” made at Cologne and transported into England by a dealer living in Aix-la-Chapelle. As a reason why his prayer should be granted, Simpson stated that he would, “as much as in him lieth, drawe the making of such like pottes into some decayed town within this realm, whereby many hundred poore men may be sett a work.” Whether he found some decayed town suitable for the carrying out of his philanthropic intent does not appear; but in 1588 a Delft potter was{359} carrying on his business at Sandwich. Lambeth, Fulham, and the Staffordshire potteries appear among the later producers of stone-ware.

The leading English centres are the Staffordshire Potteries, including Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, the Fentons, and other towns comprising Stoke-upon-Trent, Lambeth, Fulham, Liverpool, Leeds, Lowestoft, Bristol, Yarmouth, and Nottingham. Of these the place of honor must be accorded to Staffordshire. It has been associated with the ceramic art ever since the Roman invasion; and the name of a family in the district (Tellwright) is adduced as a proof that under the Saxons the advantages of the locality for the making of pottery were fully recognized. The name is a corruption of tile-wright, or potter. Many interesting facts relating to English pottery in general, and to that of Staffordshire in particular, are brought together by Mr. Marryat, whose able work deserves the study of all desirous of following the gradual development of the art in England. Early specimens of Staffordshire ware are the butter-pots of the period, and the tall vessels (Fig. 320) called “Tygs.” About 1650, Thomas and Ralph Toft and Thomas Sans were making round dishes with some pretensions to an ornamental character. The year 1680 was made memorable by the discovery of salt glaze. The story goes{360} that a servant of Mr. Joseph Yates, occupant of Stanley Farm, near Palmer’s Pottery, Bagnall, was boiling salt in water preparatory to using it in curing pork. An earthen pot was used as a pan, and the servant having left it for a time, the water boiled over, and would also appear to have all boiled away, since the pan became red hot. When it cooled it was found to be covered with what was afterward known as salt glaze. The hint was quickly taken by the potters in the neighborhood, and the process soon became common. The Burslem makers adopted it in 1690, and called the salt-glazed ware “Crouch-ware.” Five years earlier, Mr. Thomas Miles was making stone-ware at Shelton, and the district production from about that time increased very rapidly.

At Bradwell, in 1690, the Elers brothers, from Nuremberg, who had crossed with the Prince of Orange, set up one of the first establishments worked upon a regular mercantile basis. It had been for some time the object of both native and Dutch potters to imitate the red ware of China, and the Elers were the first to reach approximate success. Having discovered a bed of red clay, they set about working it in conjunction with gray stone-ware, with which they produced very fine reliefs (Fig. 321). Notwithstanding the strictest watchfulness, and the employment of semi-idiotic workmen, their secret was stolen by one Astbury,{361} who for several years feigned idiocy in order to be allowed to work in their place, and in that way secure possession of their methods. The competition then became so great in their neighborhood that in twenty years they closed their establishment. Their reliefs were remarkably sharp in outline, and the paste was of fine quality.

It is curious to find that to another accident the Staffordshire potters were indebted for the discovery of the value of calcined flint mixed in the paste. A son of the above named Astbury was riding through Dunstable in 1720, when he noticed symptoms of disorder in his horse’s eyes. The hostler at the inn where he stopped undertook to cure the animal by burning some flint and blowing the powder thus produced into the horse’s eyes. Astbury saw the dust, and it at once occurred to him that it might be useful in his business. From calcined flint, sand, and pipe-clay colored by means of oxides, were made the wares called “Agate” and “Tortoise-shell.” Then followed the adoption of plaster of Paris moulds and a more general resort to mouldings in bas-relief.

We now approach the era made illustrious by the name of Mr. Josiah Wedgwood (Fig. 322), the greatest of English potters, of whom it has been said, in the most unqualified terms: “With him the ceramic art received its highest development in ancient or modern times; for while greater beauty of decoration in painting characterized other wares, he produced the noblest artistic results of the moulding{362} in clay.” However much others may be led by individual preference to qualify this encomium, there is no doubt that Wedgwood ranks among the highest names known in the history of English ceramic art. Born at Burslem, in Staffordshire, in 1730, of a family which had been engaged in the making of pottery for many years, Josiah enjoyed in early life none of the educational advantages which might have developed in him the promise of his future brilliant career. It is highly probable that his schooling did not carry him farther than reading and writing, and at the age of eleven we find him engaged as a thrower in his brother’s workshop. Then came sickness in the worst of all its forms, smallpox, which left him so lame that amputation of one leg became necessary, and ended his career at the wheel. It is possible that, in current phraseology, this misfortune may have been a blessing in disguise. He at once turned his attention to the production of ornamental pottery and the imitation of precious stones, mixing variously compounded clays with oxides, and otherwise experimenting.

The idea must have got abroad that he had talent, as, at the age of twenty-two, we find him in partnership with a Mr. Harrison, and then, in 1754, with Mr. Thomas Wheildon, of Fenton. This gentleman lacked his partner’s enterprise, and in 1759 Wedgwood was in business for himself, at Burslem, at first in a small way, then in a larger, and again in a still larger manufactory. In the last he made{363} the ware called “Queen’s-ware”—a cream-colored fabric of very delicate color, composed of white clay mixed with flint, and brilliantly glazed. It derived its name from a specimen service having been accepted by Queen Charlotte. His fortune was now practically guaranteed, and his career an assured success. Court patronage made him the fashion in England, and we also find him engaged in an export business. Prosperity did not rob him of any of his early enterprise, but rather acted upon him as an incentive to farther and greater exertion. He continued studying, investigating, and experimenting, and with the assistance of his partner, Mr. Bentley, pushed his business in all directions. Several kinds of earthen-ware and stone-ware were produced by him (Fig. 326), and after effecting various improvements upon his table ware, he turned his attention to those imitations of the antique, and of cameos, intaglios, and seals, with which his name is indissolubly associated. With these are to be classed his fifty copies of the Barberini, or Portland vase (Fig. 327). The original is glass in two strata—dark blue and opaque white—and is an example of Roman work of the second or third century. It was bought by the Duke of Portland for £1029.{364}

These works admit of no classification. Some are earthen-ware, others stone-ware, and others are of such a composition that they may be most correctly classed with porcelain. The name “Basaltes” was given to a series of imitations of Egyptian styles in black biscuit, with reliefs in white and red (Figs. 324 and 325). More charming than these is the jasper or onyx ware from the blue or soft green ground of which the white busts (Fig. 328), figures, and flowers stand out in the most exquisite relief. The biscuit is a porcelaneous stone-ware, colored all through by means of oxides. Wedgwood made in all more than two thousand copies of antique gems.

In 1771 Wedgwood removed from Burslem to Etruria, a village which he erected in proximity to his works, and for the accommodation of his workmen. There he also built for himself a handsome residence, which he occupied until his death, in 1795, in the sixty-fifth year of his age. His decorated cream-colored ware had, in the mean time, become known all over Europe, in India, and in this country. In 1775 he made a service for the Empress Catherine II. of Russia, undervalued at fifteen thousand dollars. We close our brief sketch of his remarkable career by noting that the success of the Etruria of his foundation was based upon commerce, and not upon royal patronage; that his humblest works are marked by a thoroughness and fitness parallel with the artistic qualities of his higher pieces; and that excellence of workmanship was in all cases his primary aim. One of his contemporaries and successors was Mr. Enoch Wood, who established a workshop at Burslem in 1770, and was succeeded by Messrs. Caldwell & Wood.{365}

The later products of the Wedgwood factory are hardly less varied than those of its founder’s lifetime. The jasper-ware is still produced, and although some of the pieces lack the exquisite finish of the original, others show little, if any, inferiority. The plate of blue jasper, with white decoration, given in the illustration (Fig. 330), is a remarkably fine example of recent work. The Wedgwood majolica is, both in regard to color and the modelling of the ornaments and figures, unsurpassed by any similar ware of the present time. Of this the vase (Fig. 331) is an excellent illustration. The body is a clear deep blue.

In our time the Staffordshire Potteries maintain their old repute. One well-known name is that of Minton. It occurs in three firms, all located in the Potteries: Minton & Co.; Minton, Hollins & Co., of Stoke-upon-Trent; and Mr. Robert Minton Taylor, of Fenton. The establishment of Minton & Co. was founded while Wedgwood was still alive, by Mr. Thomas Minton, in 1791. The founder of the firm had been successively an employÉ of Mr. Thomas Turner, of Caughley, and of Spode, before, in 1788, he went to Stoke, and there bought land and built a house and factory. In 1790 he took Spode’s manager, Mr. Joseph Paulson, into partnership, and in 1793 assumed a second partner, Mr. Pownall. The latter retired in 1800, and Paulson died in 1809, after which, for a number of{366} years, Thomas Minton carried on the works alone. Previous to 1798 the factory made nothing but earthen-ware, the greater portion of which was decorated in blue and white, after the type supplied by the porcelain of Nankin.

enlarge-image
Fig. 330.—Modern Wedgwood Jasper. (Tiffany & Co.)
Fig. 330.—Modern Wedgwood Jasper. (Tiffany & Co.)

In 1817 Herbert Minton, a younger son of Thomas, was taken in as partner by his father, and although he practically retired from the business between 1823 and 1836, he succeeded to it in the latter year on the death of the founder. He went into partnership first with Mr. John Boyle, who subsequently joined the Wedgwoods, and secondly with Michael Daintry Hollins. At the time of his death, in 1858, he had two partners, Hollins and Colin Minton Campbell. At that time fifteen hands were employed in the factory. Herbert had directed his attention to the wide range of works which have since given the name of Minton a world-wide reputation. These were earthen-ware, artificial porcelain, natural porcelain, parian, encaustic tiles, azulejos, mosaics, Della Robbia ware, Palissy ware, and majolica. The Mintons divide with Copeland the honor of first making parian. Both firms exhibited it at the London Exhibition of 1851, and the jury to which{367} the question of priority was referred could not decide between them. To continue the history of the firm, Colin Minton Campbell dissolved his partnership with Hollins in 1868, and now carries on the business in connection with his cousins, Thomas, William, and Herbert Minton, the great-grandsons of the founder.

The firm now ranks with the first of English manufacturers. Their enterprise has traversed a field as wide as that into which Wedgwood entered, and their success has been very great. In the pursuit of the commercial they have not neglected the artistic. It is said of Wedgwood that he copied and imitated everything worth imitating. Minton & Co. have followed a similar course, though in a different direction. Twenty-five years ago we find them attempting to make natural porcelain, but the enterprise was abandoned. When the taste for Oriental styles revived, they were among the first to succeed in gratifying the public whim. In doing so they produced specimens of color highly praiseworthy, and of a beauty vividly recalling that of the Oriental originals. Their Persian ware and pate changeante have both excited the admiration of connoisseurs. The Mintons have also been successful in reproducing with wonderful fidelity the cloisonnÉ enamel of China and Japan, using a porcelain base. Here, as in the Persian ware, their turquoise blue is very effective, and the decoration in enamels reflects faithfully the tone of Oriental ornament. Leaving the East, Minton & Co. have been no less fortunate in imitating the Italian Grafitto ware of the fifteenth century, and the famous inlaid Henri Deux ware of France. Several specimens of the latter were exhibited by Messrs. A. B. Daniell & Son at the Centennial Exhibition, and included a teapot, a pitcher, and a pair of candlesticks, all of pale yellow{368} body inlaid with red. Examples are in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and in the collections of Mr. Walters and Mr. W. L. Andrews. A mere reference must suffice for their majolica (Fig. 334), which is rather an independent product than an imitation of the majolica of Italy. It is peculiar both in composition and in the colors employed in its decoration, and is fired at a very high temperature. Mr. Herbert Minton was the first to copy the azulejos of Spain. The above are only a few of the achievements which might be adduced to show how Minton & Co. have boldly essayed to duplicate the choicest products of ceramic art. One is forcibly reminded by them of the Chinese workman’s delight in contending with technical difficulty for the mere sake of surmounting it. Among their artists are Mr. Solon, W. S. Stevens, Charles Toft, H. Darling, J. Leese, M. Mussill, Kirby, Mellor Slater, F. Fuller, and H. Protat.

The firm of Minton, Hollins & Co., of Stoke-upon-Trent, was founded by Michael Daintry Hollins, on the dissolution of his partnership with Colin Minton Campbell in 1868. He built extensive works, and began to make majolica and encaustic tiles, slabs, panels, and other similar wares. The firm now produces an almost endless variety of tiles. At the Centennial Exhibition this firm was represented by some pieces of great brilliancy of color and very careful drawing. In one scene two finely plumaged wading-birds appeared among the water-lilies in a brook. The soft gray of the feathers tipped with bright blue, and the green of the reeds and other plants, were thrown out well by the dark-brown background. On some smaller pieces birds of tropically gay plumage were painted upon a sombre chocolate ground. On others were flowers and butterflies upon a pale ground. The style of treatment is purely Oriental. Drawing and color are{369} paramount. The ground is merely intended for contrast with, or the heightening of, the superimposed decoration. Some beautiful heads of dogs, lions, and asses were marvellous examples of animal portraiture, and illustrated the capacity of tiling for the reception of that style of decoration. In them was seen the work of an artist who fully understood that, given the requisite mastery of color, a tile may be employed as a more lasting substitute for canvas. It is also worth noting that whenever tiles are used for covering a large surface, and each one is treated as a unit, the result is an artistic blunder. The eye wearies with monotonous repetition, and no minuteness of finish in the single tile can relieve the bewildering effect of the mass. Minton, Hollins & Co. have been fortunate in designing fire-places of tiling, with side paintings of birds and flowers, and larger scenes above the mantel, of a character in keeping with their place in a household.

enlarge-image
Fig. 333.—Minton Plaque, by Mussill. (Tiffany & Co.)
Fig. 333.—Minton Plaque, by Mussill. (Tiffany & Co.)

{370}

From the Trent we pass to Lambeth, near London. It was here that in 1640 the Dutch makers of stone-ware and delft settled. At one time there were twenty different establishments, but on the rise of Staffordshire their number decreased under the weight of competition. Some of the early Lambeth ware is very skilfully painted, the tiles with a blue ground being especially commendable. At the present time Lambeth is best known by its Doulton ware and Lambeth faience. The Doulton or Lambeth pottery was founded by Mr. John Doulton, who was born at Lambeth in 1793. He served an apprenticeship with White of Fulham, and in 1815 associated Mr. John Watts with himself in establishing the present pottery. Mr. Watts died in 1858, and Mr. Doulton in 1873, and the business is now in the hands of Messrs. Henry and James D. Doulton, sons of the founder. In 1870 they first issued an artistic ware, and in 1872 turned out the first specimen of what they have called “Lambeth faience.” The “Doulton ware” may, without detracting from the originality of much of the decoration, be described as a revival in both composition and style of the German stone-ware, miscalled GrÈs de Flandre. Like other stone-wares the body is highly silicious, close in texture, and very brittle. The necessary firing takes several days to accomplish, and the glaze is made by throwing salt into the kiln, according to the process discovered, as we have seen, in Staffordshire, and long practised at Lambeth. The body-tints are the result of washing the pieces in a preparation of oxides, varied according to the shade desired. The ornamentation is fourfold. It consists either of incrustations, indented{371} designs, incised figures or scenes, or colors. These methods are occasionally combined. The Lambeth faience is a finer ware, and is decorated under the glaze with paintings of flowers, landscapes, portraits, and figures. The Messrs. Doultons’ artists are all taken from the ranks of pupils in the Lambeth School of Art. Among them are Miss Hannah B. Barlow, a very skilful animal painter, Mr. Arthur Barlow, Mr. Frank A. Butler, Mrs. Sparkes, and Mr. George Tinworth.

A great deal of the Doulton ware very closely resembles the GrÈs de Flandre in its decoration, but even to these specimens is to be accorded the originality resulting from a modified development of the fundamental style. A larger experience may lead to something more perfectly original. The present tendency appears to be toward an excess of ornament, in some instances not a single square inch being left uncovered. Studs and bosses are affixed in bands, are led over the surface in floriated designs, and give the arched handles a peculiar serrated appearance. A very ingenious design consists of incised broad leaves overlapping each other, and becoming more sharply pointed and elongated as they rise up the neck to the lip. Studs are then laid in vertical bands from top to bottom, the lines converging as the leaves become smaller. In many cases, however, the reliefs destroy the outline, and mar the beauty of{372} a host of otherwise admirable shapes. In the matter of form, the Messrs. Doulton, in fact, leave little to be desired. Many of their vases display a pure, classical gracefulness, and others are possessed of a quaintness and novelty almost equally attractive. Canettes, goblets, and small covered jars decorated with plain or ornamental bands, and dotted with flower-like studs, are to be classed among the best examples of the more characteristic or distinctive style of Lambeth decoration.

The plaques and tiles of Lambeth faience deserve separate notice. Some of the smaller pieces illustrate the capacity of the ware for portraiture. The drawing is invariably careful, and the coloring is applied with both taste and delicacy. The colors will probably be improved in time, and become more decided without losing anything in softness. The pieces we have seen inspire us with this hope, and that here again experience may lead to greater excellence. A large tile-piece, by Mrs. Sparkes, representing the departure of the Pilgrim Fathers, and painted upon two hundred and fifty-two tiles of Lambeth faience, was exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition. The lady-artist is deserving of all praise for her composition and drawing. The perspective was very well managed, and the figures were brought out in strong relief against a sky glowing with the rays of the setting sun.

The Messrs. Doulton have achieved some wonderful results in the combination of terra-cotta with their stone-ware. At the Centennial Exhibition they had a brown terra-cotta fireplace and mirror-frame, with tiled panels and hearth and terra-cotta fender. In another mantel-piece, of oak, a set of tiles in the panels showed admirably designed and executed illustrations of scenes and characters from Shakspeare. In these and other similar works a great deal of taste and ingenuity was shown in the combination of material. A magnificent example{373} of the union of terra-cotta with Doulton ware is now in the Smithsonian Institute at Washington (Fig. 340). It is a pulpit of red and light buff terra-cotta with ornaments of blue stone-ware. The balusters on the stairs leading up to the pulpit are Doulton ware ornamented with bands of terra-cotta. Under the base of the balustrade, and round the pulpit under the panels in front and on the sides, are bands of Doulton ware. A similar band surrounds the alcoves or panels. The latter are by Mr. George Tinworth, of London, and illustrate scenes in the life of Christ, from the offering in the Temple of “a pair of turtle-doves or two young pigeons” to the ascension. Of this artist’s execution, also, are the panels in a baptismal font which accompanies the pulpit. These and other similar works are so deeply sunk that they have the appearance of groups of figures separately modelled and placed in the recess rather than of mouldings in relief. They are in every way admirable. The expression and attitudes of some of the faces and figures are marvellously life-like and forcible.

Fulham owes the beginnings of its pottery to the Dutch. In 1684 Mr. John Dwight was making stone-ware, earthen-ware, statues, and porcelain. The latter was very soon discontinued. The production of other wares was carried on by descendants of the founder.

The history of Bristol pottery is said to go back to the commencement of the thirteenth century, but its first piece with a date is five hundred years later. It is delft-ware, and is dated 1703. A German, named Wrede, or Reed, is said to have made stone-ware about the same period. Otherwise Bristol is unimportant in so far as earthen-ware is concerned.{374}

Leeds is one of the towns which, toward the close of the last century, were adopted as fields for a pottery enterprise. It did an extensive trade with the Continent in a cream-colored ware.

enlarge-image
Fig. 340.—Terra-cotta Pulpit. (Smithsonian Institute.)
Fig. 340.—Terra-cotta Pulpit. (Smithsonian Institute.)

Liverpool begins its history, in 1716, with the manufacture of delft. The first event of any importance is the invention by Mr. John Sadler, in 1753, of a method of printing upon earthen-ware. Wedgwood was in the habit of sending Queen’s-ware to Sadler to be printed. In 1752 Mr. Richard Chaffers set up an earthen-ware establishment, but soon turned his attention to porcelain, which he succeeded in making after discovering the necessary material in Devonshire. On his death the enterprise came to an end. The next name of distinction is that of Pennington, who, about 1760, made delft bowls and vases, some of which were painted by an artist named Robinson. Pennington ultimately returned to Worcester. In 1794{375} the “Herculaneum Pottery” was opened at Birkenhead, and was worked until 1841.

Mr. Herolin Luson made an ineffectual attempt to establish a pottery at Lowestoft in 1756. His failure is to be attributed to the infidelity of his workmen, who were induced by the London manufacturers to spoil the ware. Notwithstanding the opposition which led competitors to resort to similarly unworthy devices, Walker, Brown, Aldred, and Rickman founded a workshop within a year of Luson’s failure, and by taking the necessary precautions against treachery, placed it upon a permanent basis. It made ware of every grade. The Lowestoft earthen-ware was usually decorated with blue, and occasionally with red. The early porcelain was painted in the same colors, and the later pieces were ornamented with flowers. The latter are artistically drawn and colored, and equal the best work found on English porcelain. Plain Chinese ware was imported and decorated at Lowestoft; but the production ceased about the year 1830.

It is questionable if ware of any kind was ever made at Yarmouth, although it is certain that a decorating establishment and kiln existed there probably about 1752. It is more than possible that this workshop was in part supplied with Lowestoft biscuit.

Nottingham manufactured pottery from about 1650, and the business was continued for at least a century. The precise period at which it came to an end is not known.

The Shropshire factories were offshoots of those of Staffordshire. The Brosely establishment was founded by Mr. Richard Thursfield, of Stoke, in 1713, and passed from his family into the hands of the Roses of Colebrookdale{376} about 1799. A black stone-ware decorated with gilt or with reliefs was the chief product.

Mr. Francis Place, of the Manor-house, York, made fine pottery or stone-ware in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The well-known “Rockingham ware” took its name from a brown pottery made upon the estate of the Marquis of Rockingham, at Swinton, in Yorkshire. The production originated in 1757, and the enterprise was subsequently carried on by Mr. William Malpass (1765); Mr. Thomas Bingley (1778); Messrs. John and William Bramfield (1807-1842), when the works stopped. The brown teapots of this factory were at one time very fashionable in England. Of these and other works each had its specialty of decoration or composition, but to detail them in full would only complicate a sketch in which it is intended to give merely salient points, on a comprehensive plan.

PORCELAIN.

It may be as well to premise that the porcelain now made in England all belongs to the soft, or, according to our classification, the artificial class. Its composition has already been described. The leading seats of the industry are Bow, Chelsea, Derby, Plymouth, Bristol, Worcester, and a few workshops in the midland counties and Wales.

With the possible exceptions of Lowestoft and Bristol, Plymouth stands alone as the only place in England at which a manufactory of hard, or natural, porcelain ever existed (Fig. 343). This distinction is due to the enterprise of William Cookworthy, who was born near Plymouth, in 1705. Cookworthy was a chemist and druggist, and was led into his porcelain venture by the discovery of kaolin and petuntse near Helstone, in 1755. Five years later his manufactory was running at Coxside, but meeting with no adequate commercial support, he sold his patents, in 1772, to Richard Champion, of Bristol. The production then ceased. Cookworthy’s first attempts were not encouraging,{377} but perseverance brought a certain measure of success, and his later works are of fine quality. He procured a SÈvres painter, and also employed Bone, the enameller and artist, and by their help turned out many valuable services and pieces richly ornamented after the prevailing Oriental styles, with birds, flowers, and insects.

Before Cookworthy embarked in his porcelain enterprise at Plymouth, artificial porcelain was made at Stratford-le-Bow and Chelsea. The beginnings of the industry at neither place have ever been satisfactorily freed from obscurity, and it is not known to which the priority belongs. Thomas Frye, an Essex artist, superintended the works at Bow for some time, and is said to have been the first who succeeded in making English porcelain. He died in 1762. Probably the Bow and Chelsea works both started about twenty years before that date. It is certain that both stopped after less than fifty years existence. The porcelain made at Stratford-le-Bow, and designated “Bow china,” is of coarse paste, and is often found decorated with a bee either painted or embossed (Fig. 344). The painting of flowers and scenes is not of a high order, but the reliefs are frequently effective and well executed. The Bow artists also made figure groups.

The decoration of early Chelsea porcelain closely followed the Chinese, which it was intended to rival. The business there did not attain{378} to any eminence, nor did the art rise to a noticeable height, until the works were patronized by the Court of George II and supported by the Duke of Cumberland. Between 1750 and 1765, Chelsea porcelain most closely approached its great Continental rivals (Fig. 345). After 1750 the manufacture could hardly be called an English enterprise, since material and workmen were both imported from Germany. The management also was in the hands of a foreigner named Spremont. The articles produced included all the forms of SÈvres and Dresden, table services, candlesticks, figures, vases, and the numberless designs among which the inventive ingenuity of Continental artists was exercised. In 1784 the works stopped. The Chelsea paste was extremely soft, and the glaze was vitreous and liable to crack. The colors were superb, and included some of the choicest found on SÈvres porcelain, besides at least one other, a claret color, peculiar to Chelsea. Very high prices have been obtained for this porcelain at auctions, more than a thousand dollars having been given for a pair of vases. In design, workmanship, color, and decoration, there are pieces of Chelsea porcelain unexcelled by any other establishment, either English or foreign.

Mr. Duesbury, who purchased the Chelsea works in 1769 and finally transferred them to Derby, had been making porcelain in the latter place since 1750.{379} He had also bought and transferred the Bow works, and carried on a most extensive business, taking the place in public estimation of the two establishments he had consolidated. The elder Duesbury died about the year 1788, and the subsequent proprietorship is not very clear. He appears, however, to have been succeeded by his son, who died in 1798, and the works then fell to the third Duesbury, who carried them on in conjunction with Michael Kean until they were acquired by Robert Bloor in 1815. Bloor kept them until he died in 1849, and then Locker & Co. held them until 1859, when they were assumed by Stephenson & Hancock, of which firm Mr. Hancock, the surviving partner, came into sole possession in 1866. The ware was called Chelsea-Derby from 1769 to 1773, when it received the name of Crown-Derby, a crown having been added to the mark after a visit of the king and queen. The Derby paste was very fine and translucent, and in the production of biscuit figures it was unrivalled. The best of the old Derby colors was a beautiful bright blue.

enlarge-image
Fig. 348.—Old Worcester Porcelain. (Robert Hoe, Jun., Coll.)
Fig. 348.—Old Worcester Porcelain. (Robert Hoe, Jun., Coll.)

The Worcester works were founded in 1751, by a company headed{380} by Dr. Wall. To this gentleman has been ascribed the invention of printing on porcelain, which we have already found in use on pottery in Liverpool in 1753. The matter is involved in doubt, as the process was in vogue at Battersea about the same period, and it is improbable that it was simultaneously invented at three different establishments so far apart. However this may be, Dr. Wall availed himself of the invention, and handled it with great skill and precision. Steatite obtained from Cornwall was first used by the company in 1770, and in 1783 the Messrs. Flight bought up the original establishment, which had found competitors in the Chamberlains, who had commenced business as decorators in 1786. In 1788 the works were visited by King George III., who became a patron of Flight, and were afterward called the Royal Worcester Porcelain Works. One of the Flights died in 1791, and a partnership was formed by the survivor with Martin Barr in 1793. The concern was carried on under the firm of Flight & Barr until 1807, when it became Barr, Flight & Barr, Jun., and in 1829 another change was made to Flight, Barr & Barr. It retained that form until 1840, when an amalgamation was effected with the Chamberlains. In 1862 a joint-stock company was formed, under which Mr. R. W. Binns, the author of a history of Worcester potting, acted as superintendent of the artistic department. It is estimated that at present upward of four hundred workmen are employed in the Worcester establishment, which is made all the more interesting by reason of its being one of the few survivors of the old{381} English works. Every effort is made to bring the porcelain to perfection, and the body and decoration are both very fine. The Worcester paste does not appear at first to have equalled that of some other English centres, but its yellowish tinge made it very well suited for the brilliant color demanded by the Oriental styles of decoration. The process of transfer printing is said to have been perfected by Josiah Holdship, who was assisted by his brother Richard in engraving the plates. Robert Hancock was also an engraver in the factory. Some rare specimens of transfer printing are found painted with colors and gold, by which means good imitations of Dresden were made. This success led to the adoption of the Dresden mark, a practice to which the Worcester manufacturers seem to have been too much addicted, as the marks of several of the leading workshops are found upon their wares. At the present time the Worcester factory is turning out a great deal of excellent work. The table ware, of which an example is given (Fig. 351), is generally tastefully and often brilliantly decorated. The colors in the specimen given are yellow, red, blue, green, and gold, very judiciously combined, and have a warm and rich effect. The portrait plaque (Fig. 349) is by A. Handley, and is executed in flat colors. The flesh-tint is especially soft and refined. It is a highly satisfactory example of its class.

enlarge-image
Fig. 351.—Worcester Porcelain. (D. Collamore.)
Fig. 351.—Worcester Porcelain. (D. Collamore.)

A work widely differing from either of the above is the basket vase (Fig. 350), with rustic handles and feet, and decorated with leafy branches in relief. The only color used is a pale shade of blue,{382} which deepens in the interstices of the wicker-work. These examples have been chosen not for any exceptional qualities, but for the purpose of illustrating the average products of a factory which ranks among the first in England.

The Mintons, although devoting themselves chiefly to stone-ware and earthen-ware, made porcelain at an early period of their history. This occurred in 1798, when a semi-translucent porcelain of inferior quality was made. The production ceased in 1811, and was taken up subsequently by Herbert Minton. Their pate-sur-pate has been noticed under France, but we here give a superb specimen of their decoration in that style by Mr. Solon (Fig. 352).

Another famous firm working at Stoke-upon-Trent is that of the Copelands. It was founded in 1780 by the first Josiah Spode, who established himself in the works which had been occupied by Banks & Turner. He appears to have been chiefly engaged in the manufacture of blue printed willow-ware, and imitations of the more famous works of Wedgwood, especially his cream and jasper wares. He died in 1797, and his son and namesake carried on the business, and first turned his attention to porcelain about the beginning of the present century. The body he used was of great purity, and the ware was chiefly decorated with gold and flowers after the fashion of his day. In this venture he was very successful, and devoted every energy to pushing his enterprise. In 1805 he achieved another triumph by what he described as “a sort of fine ware, called opaque porcelain,” which was extensively consumed on the Continent, to the great detriment of the makers of French faience. In 1806 the honor was{383} conferred upon him of being appointed potter to the Prince of Wales, and in 1827 he died, after amassing a large fortune. The firm consisted for some time of Josiah Spode, William Spode, and William Copeland, and in 1833 the concern was bought by a son of the latter, William Taylor Copeland. He was joined by Mr. Garrett in 1843, and the firm consisted of Copeland and Garrett until 1847, when Mr. Copeland again became sole proprietor, and continued so until 1867, when he was joined by his sons. The works are now carried on under the firm of Copeland & Sons, and have attained to great dimensions, covering about twelve acres of ground, and giving employment to about nine hundred operatives.

Mr. Abraham, art director of the Copeland works, has furnished much of the above information, and of that which follows regarding the wares of both Spode and Copeland. According to Mr. Abraham, one of Spode’s most celebrated wares was the stone china already referred to, an opaque or nearly opaque compact body of a blue-gray tint resembling Oriental china. It was fired at a much higher temperature than earthen-ware, and in reproducing it at the present time it is fired in the porcelain kiln. It was decorated by Spode in various ways, the qualities most highly prized being the “old Japans” and oven blues of different shades. Spode’s stone china and ivory bodies are exceptionally well adapted for treatment in which oven blue is employed.

This stone china has never been entirely out of use, but for a long time it did not receive the attention it deserved, and has only been recently revived. When receiving least attention its manufacture was restricted to matching sets, the possessors of which were so{384} sensible of its high qualities as a table ware, that they were desirous of making up deficiencies in their services whenever practicable. The name of Copeland is now well known wherever commerce has carried the ceramic wares of England. Some of the most artistically designed and finely decorated pieces found in the collections of the present time are from this workshop. The Copelands have rivalled the most prominent houses of England, we might say of Europe, both in the many-sidedness of their enterprise and in its results. The best artists and modellers are employed, and the products may be compared with any in Europe. What may be considered a specialty of the Copelands is the employment of royal blue upon porcelain, both in arbitrary designs and in landscape and figure painting. They have it so perfectly under control that the most delicate tints and the greatest depths of which the color is capable are produced at will, without the overflowing of the color on the one hand, or on the other the harshness and poverty of tone so common in works decorated in this blue.

A great deal of the Copeland jewelled ware is exceedingly beautiful. We have chosen one specimen as being exceptional, both in its design and decoration (Fig. 353), and it would certainly be difficult to lavish upon it too much praise. The base is gilt, the body is of two shades of blue, and the gracefully expanding neck pale brown dotted with brown of a darker{385} tint. The handles consist of golden butterflies resplendent with jewels. The effect is rich, but harmonious and charming, and the piece may be regarded as one of the most favorable illustrations of what the English artists of our time can accomplish.

In approaching the Copeland parian (Figs. 354 and 355), we find ourselves among some of the finest works in that material yet given to the world. An enumeration of the artists regularly or specially engaged in this department would include many of the highest names in the profession. This branch of art has developed rapidly, partly on account of the rivalry between manufacturers, but chiefly by reason of the welcome everywhere extended to the works issued. Among the subjects chosen by the Copelands, many, possibly the greater number, are ideals—such personifications as those of Music and Poetry. It could not be expected that all these would be of equal merit, and fault may occasionally be found with attitudes and proportions; but they are, as a whole, admirably executed.

Yet another branch of art in which the Copelands have been eminently successful is represented by the perforated or reticulated ware of which the Chinese supply the types. The potting difficulties and risk in making this double surface ware are greater or less according to the intricacy and delicacy of the perforations. In the cup and saucer here given (Fig. 356) the manipulation and firing were exceptionally delicate and hazardous, far more so than in{386} the case of the honey-comb perforation. Held up to the light, the inner surface appears to be as thin as egg-shell; and it seems a perfect marvel that, when the heat has softened the body, the upper surface does not sink down upon that below. Where plugs can be used to keep them apart, or where the perforated surface is strongly arched, or where the article can be placed upright, the danger is manifestly less than in such a piece as the saucer, with its pointed leaf-work bending downward rather than arching. It is also necessarily placed flat in the kiln. Many pieces of the same kind have been made by the Copelands.

We have already seen that Cookworthy sold his patent to Mr. R. Champion, of Bristol. It appears, however, that he retained an interest in it after Champion started his manufactory in that city until the year 1773, when he relinquished his right on payment of a royalty. The Bristol workshop was founded a few years previously, but no natural porcelain was put upon the market until that date. The fact that Champion was, in 1776, making artificial porcelain indicates that he very soon found his hard porcelain venture would not be remunerative. He was, according to one authority, associated with a company of Bristol gentlemen in his enterprise, and it appears to be certain that when he applied for the extension of his patent he did not stand alone. In 1781 or 1782 he resigned his right to a company of Staffordshire potters, and was appointed Paymaster of the Forces, under his friend Mr. Edmund Burke. He died in 1787, at Camden, South Carolina. The Bristol china is chiefly valuable by reason of its rarity. The decoration is after Continental and Chinese styles, and the paste is inferior.

The company which purchased Champion’s patent continued to make natural paste until 1810, first at Tunstall and afterward at Shelton. It was called “New Hall china.” Artificial porcelain was made until 1825.

When, in 1807, the Bramelds acquired the Swinton works, they conjoined the manufacture of Rockingham and fine pottery with porcelain of excellent quality. They endeavored to make a ware of the finest sort in both body and decoration, but fell into financial difficulties in 1826, and, although assisted by Earl Fitzwilliam, finally succumbed, as we have already seen, in 1842.{387}

Caughley is the earliest and most important of the Shropshire porcelains. The workshop would be deserving of remembrance were it only for one reason—that it was here Mr. Thomas Turner originated, in 1780, the willow pattern. The manufacture of porcelain at Caughley was inaugurated soon after the middle of the eighteenth century. Turner took the management about 1780, although he had been interested in the works for some years previously. He effected great improvements, introduced printing, raised the quality of the ware, and engaged the most skilful decorators. He also made white ware for other decorating establishments, especially those of Worcester. The Caughley works were, in 1799, amalgamated with those of Colebrookdale.

A factory was founded at Nantgarrow in 1813, by Walker & Beely, or Billingsley, and was carried on, in conjunction with Mr. W. Young, until 1828, when it was bought by Mr. John Rose, of Colebrookdale.

The “Cambrian Pottery” of Swansea was founded in 1750, and began to make “opaque china” in 1790, and from 1814 to 1819 was making porcelain. Young and Billingsley, the Nantgarrow artists, both appear to have been employed at Swansea, by Mr. Dillwyn, who had bought the works in 1802. In 1820 they passed into the possession of Mr. Rose, of Colebrookdale.

At this place, or Coalport, as it is alternatively called, the Caughley, Nantgarrow, and Swansea factories were thus consolidated in the hands of Mr. John Rose, a pupil of Turner of Caughley, and a man of great enterprise. He took with him the best artists of the works successively absorbed, and it is here that we again meet Walker and Billingsley as superintendents. The present proprietor is Mr. W. F. Rose. The Messrs. Daniell, of London, are among the leading supporters of the factory, and have incited Mr. Rose to some of his most successful experiments in color. Of these the Dubarry rose, one of the most famous and beautiful colors of SÈvres, is probably the most important.

Billingsley worked first at Derby, then successively at Pinxton, Mansfield, Worcester, Nantgarrow, Swansea, and Coalport. He died at the last mentioned place in 1828.

The Pinxton factory here mentioned was established in 1795, by Mr. John Coke, who transferred it to Billingsley, from whom it passed to Mr. Cutts. It was closed in 1812.{388}

Brief mention has already been made of Tunstall and Shelton. The latter place is less known in America, in connection with the working of the Champion patent, than by the names of Ridgway and Brown, Westhead, Moore & Co. (Fig. 357). Job Ridgway was a Shelton potter in the latter part of the last century, and was, in 1814, succeeded by his sons John and William, who were followed by the above firm. The porcelain of both firms is well known in this country. With Shelton, although there are or have been many other factories in England, we close our sketch of that country.

A peculiar ware from Belleek, Lough Erne, Fermanagh County, Ireland, has made its appearance in America within the past ten years, and has been received with considerable favor both here and in Canada. It is carefully and artistically wrought into ornamental pieces and services. Its chief peculiarity is an iridescent glaze of a silvery, lustrous appearance. In the specimen (Fig. 358) the pedestal is unglazed, and its dead white contrasts admirably with the lustrous flowers, base, and top. The ware is obtained from a combination of clays found in the neighborhood from which it takes its name. It is a true porcelain and very translucent, and in thin lustred pieces rivals the egg-shell of the far East. It is equally beautiful in biscuit or glazed.{389}

Several original designs appear among the table services of this ware, which are rendered very attractive by the peculiar glaze. Exceedingly beautiful imitations of shells (Fig. 359) are made of Belleek ware, a purpose for which it is especially suited by reason of the similarity the glazed surface presents to the inside pearly lining of a shell (Fig. 360). A ware somewhat similar in appearance is made in England and France, where an artificial metallic glaze is employed to produce the madreperla lustre.

enlarge-image
Fig. 360.—Belleek Porcelain. (Tiffany & Co.)
Fig. 360.—Belleek Porcelain. (Tiffany & Co.)

The ceramics of England are of special interest to the American reader. In many of our old homes are to be found samples of English pottery and porcelain brought to this country long before Revolutionary{390} times. Many of them are, like heirlooms, passed on from generation to generation, the remnants being all the more highly prized as they become fewer in number. A great deal of the earthen-ware and porcelain used here within the last century has come from the centres of which we have been treating. To the student of the art, also, England has an interest all its own. The workmen of England have, from the earliest times, shown that moral as well as mental capacity for coping with mechanical and scientific difficulties which marks the typical English character. Wedgwood was a remarkable instance of a man who, with materials usually considered of inferior quality for artistic embellishment, steadily aimed at producing works which should be, and actually were, the best of their kind. So it is with the Mintons and Doultons of our day. They surround themselves with the best artists they can find, and have taught England, which was still disposed to reserve its warmest admiration for works executed in the long-coveted and only recently possessed porcelain, to forget the medium in the art it conveys.{391}

enlarge-image
Fig. 361.—Tile-piece, by F. T. Vance.
Fig. 361.—Tile-piece, by F. T. Vance.