VOLUME V SLICE VI Celtes, Konrad to Ceramics (continued 10)

The same movement that was active in France found its exponents in other countries as well. In Italy and the south of France the last quarter of the 19th century witnessed a revival of Italian majolica and of lustre decoration. Prominent in this direction were the productions of Cantegalli of Florence and of the Massiers of Golfe-Juan near Cannes; while in England William de Morgan created an artistic sensation by his tiles and vases decorated with lustres, or with painted colours recalling those of the Persian and Syrian potters of the middle ages. This departure in England was, however, followed up by many manufacturers who were keenly alive to the possibilities of pottery colour, and Mr Bernard Moore, of Longton, Maw & Company of Jackfield, and Minton’s of Stoke-upon-Trent, produced much excellent work, in tiles and vases inspired from the same oriental sources.

Meantime, in America there had been growing up a manufacture of pottery after the approved methods, in Trenton, New Jersey; East Liverpool, Zanesville and Cincinnati (Ohio). To all these centres English workmen had been attracted, and earthenware after the current English styles was manufactured; but, as was the case in Europe, individual efforts were made to produce artistic pottery. The first and best known of these artistic departures was that of the Rookwood Pottery at Cincinnati, and again it was an amateur, Mrs Bellamy Storer, who founded an enterprise which has since produced some very original work. From 1880 to 1889 the work was mainly carried on at the expense of this lady, but since that date the enterprise has been self-supporting, and the Rookwood pottery has become known throughout the world.

The latter half of the 19th century also witnessed the development of new branches of pottery manufacture for sanitary purposes—and it is not too much to say that much of the improved sanitation of modern dwellings and towns has been rendered possible by the special appliances invented by potters for these purposes. In this direction the English potters undoubtedly led the way, and not only have their methods been imitated abroad, but English manufacturers have also established large works in Germany, France and the United States of America. Varieties, too, of hard-fired pottery, comprising earthenwares, stonewares and porcelains, have been invented for use in the chemical and electrical industries. But these belong to the great modern branch of pottery manufacture, not to pottery art. In the same way, the revived attention paid to the various forms of pottery for the interior and exterior of buildings belongs rather to the question of mural decoration than of pottery.

At the beginning of the 20th century we find England and Germany the leading pottery manufacturing countries; Germany excelling in the amount of its output, and England in the fineness and finish of its productions. France, in addition to the National Manufactory at Sèvres, as much as ever divorced from commerce, has its porcelain industry at Limoges and large manufactories of tiles and earthenware in many departments; while there are also a number of artist potters like Lachenal, Dalpayrat, Delaherche and Taxile Doat who make purely artistic pottery in hard-fired stonewares (grès) and porcelain, while the production of decorative stonewares for building purposes has been developed by such firms as Bigot, Boulanger and E. Müller. A great development has also taken place in the production of decorative pottery and tiles in Holland. The famous Delft works, besides producing quantities of painted blue and white earthenware (made in the English and not in the old Dutch fashion), has been experimenting largely in the development of crystalline and opalescent glazes and in lustres, while the Rozenburg factory at the Hague and a factory at Puramerende, near Amsterdam, have made some distinctive but rather bizarre painted pottery and porcelain. The success of the Royal Copenhagen factory has already been mentioned, and this success led to the foundation of Bing & Gröndhal of Copenhagen, who largely follow the styles of decoration initiated at the Royal works. In Sweden there are two important factories at Rörstrand and Gustafsberg. Under the accomplished director of the Rörstrand factory, Mr Robert Almström, a great variety of products have been successfully manufactured, including hard-paste porcelain, English bone china, earthenware, majolica and stoves. Italy, Spain and Belgium have also important modern pottery works.

In the United States of America there are large establishments for the manufacture of earthenware, bone china and tiles, all after the English fashion, while in addition there are a number of experimental kilns at work producing artistic pottery. The Rookwood factory has already been mentioned, but the wares produced at the Grueby factory and by Mrs Robineau and T. Brouwer are also worthy of note. (See “Report on American Art Pottery,” pp. 922-935 of Special Reports of the U.S. Census Office, Manufactures, pt. iii., 1905.)

Technical Pottery Works.—It is only possible to give a selection of the best of the modern standard works dealing with the technical side of pottery production. Brongniart, Traité des arts céramiques (3rd ed., Paris, 1877), with notes and additions by Salvétat; E. Bourry, Traité des industries céramiques (Paris, 1897); Théodore Deck, La Faïence (Paris, 1887); A. Granger, La Céramique industrielle (Paris, 1905); E.S. Auscher, La Céramique cuisant à haute température (Paris, 1899); Technologie de la Céramique (Paris, 1901); Les Industries céramiques (Paris, 1901); Seger, Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1896; Eng. trans., Eastern, Pa., U.S.A., 1902); Langenbeck, The Chemistry of Pottery (Easton, Pa., U.S.A., 1895); William Burton, Porcelain (London, 1906).

(W. B.*)

1 The archaeologist is frequently puzzled as to the place of origin of some example of ancient pottery—was it made in the district where it was found, or had it been imported from some other centre? When we possess a sufficient body of analytical data obtained by the use of one general chemical method, an analysis of a fragment will frequently enable such a question to be answered, where now all is doubt and speculation. But the analytical results published hitherto are often not worth the paper they are printed on for such a purpose, the older methods of silicate analysis being only approximate.

2 It must always be borne in mind that, side by side with the production of artistic wares in all countries, the traditional craft of the village pot-maker continued, and has probably been less interfered with than is generally imagined, except in the British Isles. Any country market-place in Spain, Italy, Greece, France, Germany, or Holland is provided to-day with a simple peasant pottery little removed in its forms, its decorations, or its technical skill from the country work of the middle ages. In England the cheapness of machine-made pottery has largely destroyed such village industries.

3 I tre libri dell’ Arte del Vasajo, by Cipriano Piccolpasso of Castel Durante, a.d. 1548.

4 The earliest glazed objects found in Egyptian tombs (once dignified by the name of Egyptian porcelain) are hardly to be called pottery at all, though we have no other name for them. The material is largely sand held together by a little clay and glass.

5 Foreign pottery had been imported into Egypt at least as early as the XIIth Dynasty, e.g. the Cretan polychrome ware of the Middle Minoan period (Kamares style) found at Medinet Ghuraib (“Kahun”) and the Cypriote (?) “punctuated” black ware from the same site, and from Khata’anah (17). The date between the XIIth and XIIIth Dynasties is certain (14), but the Middle Kingdom Egyptians do not seem to have imitated these earlier foreign forms. British Museum, No. 17,046, is, however, probably an instance of an Egyptian idea imitated by the foreign potter (17).

6 Some of these figures appear to have been made with a mixture of sand, clay and coloured glass which produced a real glassy porcelain—the earliest porcelain of which we have any record.

7 On this subject see in particular Mazard, De la connaissance par les anciens des glaçures plombifères, a scientific and valuable monograph (1879); also Rayet and Collignon, Hist. de la céramique grecque, p. 365 (or B.M. Cat. of Roman Pottery, Introduction).

8 For a full description and lists of such kilns see Walters, Ancient Pottery, ii. 443-454.

9 See examples in colour on Plate V.

10 A peculiarity of the Persian and allied blue glazes, of many shades, is that they appear to have been produced not by dissolving the colouring matter in the glaze, but by coating the white ground of the ware with a thin wash of some cobaltiferous substance—probably an earth containing varying proportions of cobalt, manganese and iron—and then melting a thick alkaline glaze over it.

11 See Drury Fortnum, Archaeologia, vol. xlii.

12 Specimens of Turkish and other Eastern wares exist with elaborate English silver mounts of the time of Elizabeth, and these were doubtless included under the name of “Damas Wares.”

13 See Riaño, Spanish Arts, Victoria and Albert Museum Handbook, pp. 149-151; and Sobre la manera de fabricar la antigua loza dorado de Manises (1878).

14 See examples in colour, Plate VI.

15 There is ample documentary evidence to prove how largely the lustred pottery of Spain was imported into Italy from the 12th century onwards; and it is important to note in this connexion that almost all the fine examples of Hispano-Moresque in our modern collections have been obtained from the palaces of ancient Italian families.

16 Piccolpasso, I tre libri dell’ arte del Vasajo, dated 1548. It has been several times translated both into modern Italian and French. The English reader will find an excellent abstract of this interesting MS. in the volumes on Majolica by Drury E. Fortnum.

17 For a full account of the lustre process see Franchet, Comptes rendus for December 1905, and W. Burton, Society of Arts Journal, 2846, vol. lv., 1907.

18 See Magne, Le Palais de Justice de Poitiers (Paris, 1904); also Solon in Burlington Magazine (November 1907).

19 See B. Fillon, Les Faiences d’Oiron (1862).

20 See E. Bonaffe, Les Faiences de Saint-Porchaire (1898).

21 See examples in colour, Plate X.

22 An excellent summary of the remains of English medieval pottery will be found in Hobson’s “Medieval Pottery found in England,” Archaeological Journal, vol. lix.

23 Böttger at Meissen made a similar ware as his prelude to the discovery of white porcelain, but this was after Dwight’s death.

24 For a discussion of the stages through which this was achieved the reader is referred to special works, such as Prof. A.H. Church’s English Earthenware, and W. Burton’s English Earthenware and Stoneware.

25 It is amusing or annoying to find in European museums the wares of Wedgwood, Turner, Adams and one of the Leeds potteries, all lumped together as “Wedgwood,” and yet one can hardly wonder at it, remembering how much has been written of Wedgwood and how little of the other English potters of the 18th century.

26 See examples in colour, Plates VII. and VIII.

27 S.W. Bushell, Chinese Art (Victoria and Albert Museum Handbooks, ii. 5-6).

28 Yao is the Chinese term equivalent of the English “pottery” or “ware.”

29 See Brinkley, Japan and China, ix. 353-365.

30 Solon, The Noble Buccaros (Stoke-upon-Trent, 1896).

31 M. Reinand, Relation des voyages faits par les Arabes et les Persans dans l’Inde el à la Chine dans le IX^e siècle (Paris, 1845).

32 The suggestion has been made that the céladon wares found in Western countries were made by Moslem potters and not by the Chinese, but this theory is not generally accepted. On this point consult Karabacek, “Zur muslimischen Keramik” in Österreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient, vol. x., 1884; A.B. Meyer, “Über die Herkunft gewisser Seladon-Porzellane” under “Über die Marta banis,” ibid. vol. xi., 1885; Hirth, Ancient Porcelain (1888), and Bushell, Oriental Ceramic Art (1899).

33 It is of interest to note that the “Delft” of Holland, also a product of the 17th and early 18th centuries, makes the nearest approach in quality to the blue and white porcelain of the Chinese.

34 See Drake, Sir W., Venetian Ceramics; and Davillier, Baron Ch., Les Origines de la porcelaine en Europe.

35 A perfect tour de force in this inartistic style of work, preserved in the Dresden Museum and formerly attributed to Meissen, has been shown to be the work of Vincennes. See Gaz. des beaux-arts, September 1904.

36 Travels in England and Scotland (Eng. trans.), vol. i. p. 97.