Historic Ornament, Vol. 2 (of 2) / Treatise on decorative art and architectural ornament

Many works from this pottery are in the Kensington Museum, and they seem generally to be the work of one hand, but there is no record of the artist. He painted a certain kind of grotesque, and figures of boys on plates of a wide border. The colours are a light blue on a dark blue ground, the light blue heightened with touches of white, and shaded with a brownish yellow. This style is known as “sopra azzuro” and is very characteristic of the unknown painter’s work (Fig. 33).

A fine tazza in the same museum by the Faentine artist who signs himself as F. R. has the painted subject “the Gathering of the Manna,” after Raphael.

The colours used are strong and rich yellows, blues, greens, orange, and purple tints. This work is much superior to that of another Faentine artist who used the same initials. An oblong panel or plaque in the Kensington Collection, 9-3/4 inches in height by 8 inches in width, has a painting of the Resurrection after a design by Melozzo de Forli, signed with a monogram consisting of T and B. It is a maiolica work of the highest rank, carefully executed yet with perfect freedom of touch—for carefulness of execution in pottery painting very often implies hardness—and pleasing combinations of blues, yellows, greens, and golden browns, with little touches of red. Mr. Fortnum thinks it was painted by the same artist that executed the famous service of maiolica of which seventeen pieces are in the Museo Correr at Venice. The tazza at Fig. 34 is ascribed to the Faenza fabriques. It is as much Gothic as Italian in design, which is the case sometimes in Northern Italian art, and it has been found also that the “istoriati” maiolica of Faenza has more of its subjects from the engravings of German artists’ works, such as Dürer, Martin Schon, and others, than the pottery of any other Italian fabrique. Maiolica has been fabricated at many other places in Italy, such as Diruta, Forli, Rimini, Padua, Ferrara, Genoa, and Venice, but space prevents us here from giving any descriptive notice of them, further than the mention of the Venetian botegas where many important examples came from during the sixteenth century. The Venetian dishes of this time were covered with ingenious and elaborate designs of interlacing ornament, foliage, birds, masks, with tyings of ribbons or drapery (Fig. 35). The colour of the enamelled surface is white slightly tinted with zaffre blue. A low-toned blue colour was employed for the ornament, which was outlined and shaded with a darker blue and heightened with white.

Persian, Damascus, and Rhodian Wares.

The artistic pottery and tiles of Persia, though forming a large variety, may nearly all be brought under the designation of siliceous or glass-glazed wares, the tin glaze being only met with occasionally in some Persian and Damascus examples, where an unusually white surface was required. All the glazed wares of Persia are highly baked, and are mostly of a semi-translucent character.

There is the fine copper, ruby, and brown lustred ware, which has sometimes a white and at others a blue ground. The plate (Fig. 36) is an example of this ware. The design on this ware is in the pure Persian character.

Another kind, and by far the most numerous, are the wares of a coarse porcelain variety, not only made in imitation of Chinese porcelain, but decorated to imitate the Chinese ware, the ornament being sometimes mixed with Arabian forms; the colour a bright blue on a white ground, and the Chinese marks or signatures being copied as well (Figs. 37 and 38).

In the reign of the Persian Shah Abbas the Great (A.D. 1586-1628) the route for travellers and merchants from China to Europe lay across Persia, and many objects of merchandise were imported from China to Persia, including great quantities of Chinese porcelain, many examples of which were purchased in Persia that are now in our museums, as well as specimens in abundance of the imitated Chinese variety.

The beautiful enamelled earthenware tiles were made with and without the metallic lustre in the days of, and anterior to the reign of, Shah Abbas, but since his time the art has declined, and nothing but a coarse and inartistic pottery has been made in recent times. As a rule the excellence of Persian pottery, like wine, is augmented in proportion to its age.

The picturesque wall tile (Fig. 39) was found in the ruins of the palace of Shah Abbas II. (1642-1666), near Ispahan. It has a blue ground with white embossed decorations and black pencillings, and is lustred.

Wall tiles have been in use in Persia from a very early date. Some of them are beautiful in colour, having usually a deep lapis-lazuli blue ground or white. Sometimes the design is complete on one tile, but generally a whole tile has only a portion of the pattern, many tiles being required to make up the complete pattern (Fig. 40). The tiles are made to fit into all kinds of spaces, according to the shape of the wall, and these arrangements have usually a border design.

The lustred tiles are of an older date than the Persian fayence fine ware, or imitated Chinese porcelain. The body composition of the tiles resembles that of the old bricks that are found in great quantities in the ruinous mounds of Rhages (Rhé), where also many fragments of tiles have been found, and some remains of potters’ kilns, proving that Rhages must have been the centre of extensive pottery works. Another class of Persian ware has a thin, hard, and nearly translucent paste, which is decorated by having pierced holes filled in with transparent glaze. It is creamy white in colour, and has foliated ornament in blue or brown. This has been called Gombion Ware.

One variety of decoration on a late seventeenth-century Persian bowl is shown at Fig. 41. This is a good example of the late floral ornament.

Damascus ware has generally been classified as Persian, but in many points it is different from the latter. It is better in colour and design. Some examples have a smooth even glaze, and are coloured with a fine quality of cobalt blue, turquoise green, and a dull lilac or purple intermixed with white portions of the design evenly distributed. The ornament is less florid and the fayence is of an older date than the majority of Persian examples. The “Damas” cups or vases have always been highly prized for their beauty, and the wall tiles from Damascus are the most beautiful of all Oriental tiles.

Rhodian or Lindus tiles and pottery have been also classified as Persian, but again this ware is quite distinct from Persian or Damascus wares. Rhodian pottery is coarser than the two former varieties, and the decoration is brighter and more strongly marked. The ornament is of a very conventional character, and in colour it is characterised by having a red opaque pigment used in spots and patches, and sometimes in bands, but always raised or embossed.

The plates shown in Figs. 42 and 43 are examples of Rhodian ware.

The island of Sicily was conquered by the Saracens in A.D. 827, and about the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries potteries of glazed wares had been established by the latter.

Some examples of their work of these periods have decorations of animals, figures, birds, and also mock Saracenic inscriptions like the Siculo-Arabian textiles of the same and later periods (Fig. 44).

Anatolian ware is a later variety that is akin to the Persian wares, but somewhat coarser and of a duller surface. This ware is small in size, and the colouring is usually gay on light grounds. The tiles from Anatolia are less inventive in their ornament and rougher in execution than the Damascus or Rhodian.

The decoration of Turkish tiles and Turkish ornament generally is of the Saracenic kind, but has neither the beauty nor the invention of the other varieties of Persian. There are no plant nor animal forms in the Turkish variety of Saracenic ornament; it is more allied to the Egyptian Saracenic, but lacks the ingenuity of the latter. The colour is harsh and crude. It is seen at its best in the tomb mosque of Soliman the Great at Constantinople (Fig. 45), built in 1544.

The decoration of the palace of the Seraglio and of the “Sultanin Valide” consists of beautiful tiles that were brought from Persia to Constantinople.

French Pottery.

The art of the potter flourished in Gaul before the time of the Romans, but this early pottery was of a coarse kind, used mostly for domestic purposes, and of an unglazed variety (poteries mates). The use of a vitreous glaze was common in France as early as the thirteenth century, and in a grave that had the date of 1120, in the Abbey of Jumièges, two small broken vases were found covered with a yellowish lead glaze. We are informed by an old French chronicler that “On fait des godets à Beauvais.” A godet was a goblet or cup of glazed fayence, with a wide mouth, and often had a cover, and was usually silver-mounted. Beauvais was noted in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries for its glazed pottery.

It has been mentioned before that the Italian artist, Girolamo della Robbia, introduced the famous enamelled earthenware invented by his grand-uncle, Luca della Robbia, into France, when he came by invitation of Francis I. to decorate the exterior of the Château de Madrid, in the Bois de Boulogne, and the Pesaro maiolica painter, Francesco, also settled and worked in France; but apparently little came of these attempts to naturalise Italian pottery on French soil, except that the art must have been spread in some degree by the workmen, and by French artists who would naturally have assisted the Italians, and the traditions left by the latter must have helped considerably to influence the subsequent fabrication of enamelled earthenware.

Oiron Ware.

To take our subject in a chronological order, the wares of Oiron, or “Henri-Deux ware,” as the name they are better known by, must be noticed first.

Until a recent date the origin of this was only guessed at, but the late M. Benjamin Fillon by his researches has cleared up the mystery. It appears now that the invention of this scarce and unique ware was due to Hélène de Hangest, Dame de Boissy, the widow lady of Gouffier, who was formerly governor to Francis I. This lady established the pottery in 1564 in the Château of Oiron, near Thouars; and, being gifted with strong artistic tastes, conducted the work with great success, assisted by two skilful collaborateurs, François Charpentier and Jehan Bernart. The former was the modeller, and the latter—Bernart—was her librarian, and the artist who designed and adapted the stamped ornament which is so characteristic of this ware. This ornament is copied from the bookbindings of the period, and seems to have been stamped in colour on the Oiron ware with tools similar to those used in the bookbinding craft. The vase or tazza (Fig. 46) is a fine example of this ware of the earlier period, showing the stamped decoration. The ornament is identical with the peculiar Italo-Saracenic style of the Grolier and contemporary bookbindings.

The decoration is of a dark brown colour, sometimes heightened with pink, on an ivory-coloured ground.

Another and later class of this ware has modelled decorations in high relief. The colouring and technical skill generally was also improved, as may be seen in the profusion of small figures, masks, and festoons that were added to the candlesticks and vases after the earlier period, but these additions were not always improvements in the general design. The colouring is also of a greater variety: ochre, green and blue, and sometimes gold, was added in small quantities.

The celebrated candlestick (Fig. 47) is one of the best examples in which modelled ornament is a feature. It is now in the Kensington Museum, where there are various fine specimens of Oiron ware.

This candlestick shows the Italian Renaissance influence very strongly, and probably owes much to the art of Cellini, as seen in his metal-work designs. The ewer and tazza betray also his influence (Fig. 48).

The saltcellar (Fig. 49) is a restrained piece of architectural design and is altogether a very fine piece of work.

It is said by some that there are eighty pieces of this ware in existence, and others that there are only fifty-three genuine pieces. The early examples bear the emblems of Francis I., and the later ones those of Henry II. and Diana of Poitiers. The paste used in this ware is a white pipeclay, and is covered with a thin glaze.

Palissy Ware.

Bernard Palissy was one of the most remarkable men who practised the art of the potter in France or in any other country. He was born about the year 1510, but his birthplace is not exactly known. He worked in his younger days and up to the period of his middle age at surveying, glass-making, portrait painting, and was also well skilled in natural sciences, but was not brought up to the trade of a potter.

It was in the year 1542, at Saintes, that in order to increase his slender means he took to the making of earthenware. In writing his life he says: “It is now more than five-and-twenty years that a cup was shown to me of fashioned and enamelled clay, and of such beauty, that from that day I began to struggle with my own thoughts, and hence, heedless of my having no knowledge of the different kinds of argillaceous earth, I tried to discover the art of making enamel, like a man groping in the dark.”

So he struggled on for fifteen years, with starvation and death often at his door, until at last he mastered his art, and produced ultimately, as he says, “those vessels of intermixed colours, after the manner of jasper.”

The particular jasper enamel invented by Palissy is a deep rich glaze of a green and brownish variegated character. He made many “rustic pieces” as dishes, plates, and plaques, on which he admirably arranged reptiles, fishes, frogs, shells, insects of various kinds, fruits, leaves, acorns, &c., modelled in relief and covered with the jasper glaze.

Most of these dishes were elliptical in shape and had broad rims (Fig. 50).

He decorated a “grotto” with his famous pottery at the Château of Ecouen for his patron the Constable de Montmorency, and similar grottoes at the Tuileries, and at Reux, in Normandy, for Catherine de’ Medici. Palissy made other forms of pottery besides his rustic pieces, such as ewers, bottles, hunting flasks, and dishes, ornamented with figures and other work. It is likely that the figure work was executed by his sons or relatives, Nicholas and Mathurin Palissy, who worked for Catherine de’ Medici on the Tuileries grotto. Many of the Palissy wares are similar in design to the étains and pewter works of Briot and of other artists, as Prieur, Rosso, Gauthier, and Primaticcio. Openwork baskets and dishes and other modelled works were covered with the jasper glaze. Of the invention of the latter Palissy does not seem to have communicated the secret to his successors, for after his death the jasper glaze was imitated, but without much success, as appears evident from some specimens that are now in existence which were made from his moulds.

Palissy was nearly all his life engaged in lecturing on scientific and other subjects, and in the work of proselytism for the Reformed Church of which he was a member, being in prison more than once on account of his religious ideas, and eventually died in the Bastille Prison in poverty in 1590 at the age of eighty.

As efforts of decorative design the encrusted wares of Palissy cannot be placed in a high rank of decorative art, but the art of France would be considerably poorer without the genius of Palissy, an artist of whom any nation might be justly proud.

We have mentioned before that some maiolica artists and workmen came from Italy in the sixteenth century to Nevers and Lyons and there set up potteries. One of these artists, named Scipio Gambin, worked at Nevers, under the patronage of the Duc de Nivernais.

The maiolica productions at Nevers were in imitation of the Urbino, Castel-Durante, and Faenza wares, but the colours were inferior, probably owing to the poorer glaze used by the French potters. The subjects of the decoration were at first similar to the “istoriati” decoration of the Urbino ware, and were compositions from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” (Fig. 51) or from the Bible. Later on the potters of Nevers imitated the shapes of Oriental pottery with French decorations (Fig. 52).

In 1608 two Italians—the brothers Conrade—came from Genoa to Nevers, and were probably the successors of Gambin: the ware made by them was decorated with a mixture of Chinese and Italian ornament, and the colouring was blue, manganese, brown, and white.

In 1632 a Frenchman named Pierre Custode and his sons established a pottery at the sign of “The Ostrich” at Nevers. To them is ascribed the beautiful Persian blue-coloured pottery decorated with naturalistic flowers and birds in solid white with yellow heightenings, the shape and decoration being Chinese in character. The blue glaze peculiar to Nevers pottery of this period is very fine, and has been imitated by French and foreign potters, but without success.

The great importation of Chinese porcelain into Europe in the seventeenth century and at the beginning of the eighteenth had a strong influence on the art of the Nevers pottery, and many pieces exist on which Chinese designs almost pure were copied in a blue Camaïen (monochrome), or in a harmonious mixture of blue and purple-black manganese, the latter colour being a mixture of the blue with manganese. In the eighteenth century the style of design was debased and very much degraded, and the pottery became coarse and heavy.

Rouen Ware.—A much better class of pottery both in manufacture and design is the famous Rouen ware, made in the town of that name in Normandy. In the year 1644 Edme Poterat obtained a licence to make and sell fayence in the province of Normandy.

This monopoly did not last long, for we find that in 1673 his son, Louis Poterat, obtained another licence, and from that time a new development takes place in the ornament that is so characteristic of Rouen ware. The greater part of this ornament is composed of a scallop form of setting out, with alternating compositions of ornamental flowers, called lambrequins, and baskets of ornamental flowers that repeat at intervals around the border of plates or trays; light pendentives and wreaths of artificial flowers are painted in a lighter tone, and occur between the richer lambrequins (Fig. 54). Richly ornamented coats-of-arms, or baskets of flowers and cornucopias, occupy the centres (Fig. 55). The beautiful plate in the Kensington Museum (Fig. 56) is unique in Rouen ware in having amorini, or cupids, in the centre. All of the foregoing examples are painted in blue of different shades on the white enamel, or sometimes on yellow ochre grounds. Indian red colour and a warm reddish yellow is sometimes also used. The ornament is pseudo-Chinese, and is a Norman development of Oriental forms with some Italian influences which are reminiscences of the decoration brought by the Conrade brothers from Genoa to Nevers.

Some of the Rouen ware is decorated with a ray formation on which the ornament is painted on a light or dark ground. This is known as the style rayonnant. The drawing of these patterns is always very careful and correct, the latter often being copies of the printed decoration of the books of that period. Later on the decoration became of a freer type, with bouquets of artificial flowers, and in the eighteenth century the Rocaille or Rococo element began to creep in, and the Rouen ware developed from the camaïen blue style of decoration to a polychrome style.

The Chinese element in design became everywhere in the ascendant, not only in late Rouen ware, but in the pottery of every country in Europe, and remains more or less in the work of to-day. Some of the late Rouen ware is not so bizarre in its decoration as many other French and European styles of the same period. Fig. 57 shows the Chinese influence, but is in better taste than the majority of contemporary designs.

As a style decays the colour as a rule becomes more gaudy, which applies to Rouen ware as to other varieties of fayence. The “Cornucopia pattern” belongs to the decadence period: this is full of unrestrained liberty both in form and colour. It ought to be mentioned that Louis Poterat, of Rouen, first discovered the secret of making the Chinese soft porcelain (pâte tendre) in France. Several pieces of this Rouen porcelain are preserved in the Museums at Sèvres and at Limoges.

The Rouen School of Decoration has influenced modern pottery designers in France, Germany, Holland, and England, more than any other school; but unfortunately they all copied its later defects with greater zeal than in taking lessons from its earlier excellencies.

Rouen ware was imitated in the Sinceny pottery, but this pottery was made by some workmen who had formerly belonged to Rouen, and established themselves at Sinceny in 1713, and copied the Rouen ware so closely that the copies have often been mistaken for the latter ware.

At Paris, St. Cloud, Quimper, and Lille, imitations of Rouen ware have been attempted with success. The St. Cloud pottery is of a slatey blue colour. The pottery of Lille is a close imitation of Rouen ware, as the plate (Fig. 58) clearly shows.

Moustiers, in the south of France, was an important centre for enamelled pottery works, where a style of decoration was used that was a mixture of the Italian Urbino and the School of Rouen, the borders of the plates having the Rouen lambrequins, and the centres having figure subjects and landscapes, or, as in the later work, grotesques and ornament after the French artists, Callot and Berain.

The colour was in shades of a deep blue (Fig. 59).

Pierre Clérissy (1728) was the name of the first artist and also of his nephew, who continued the works after him in Moustiers.

Polychrome decoration became common at a later date, when some Moustiers workmen, who had been to the Alcora potteries in Spain, introduced the Spanish style of colouring, then in great fashion, which consisted of bright orange yellow, light green, and blue outlines. The later Moustiers ware is decorated with festoons and ovals with figures or busts painted in them.

Marseilles fayence is of a delicate and pure enamel, and is painted with flowers, shell fish, and insects, &c., which as a rule are thrown on or disposed in an irregular sort of way. Much of the decoration was Chinese or Rouen imitations, and little landscapes painted in red camaïen; gold was sometimes used in the stalks of the flowers.

Strasburg pottery, though classed as French, owed a good deal of its process of manufacture and general character to German methods of manipulation and decorative processes, as German potters were mostly employed in the works.

The great difference was in the mode of decoration, the latter being applied on the fired surface of the enamel in the Strasburg wares; whereas in the wares of the other French potteries that have just been considered the decoration was applied to the unbaked and consequently absorbent ground. The latter was the more artistic method, and the former, or German method, allowed a wider range of the artist’s palette, and admitted of greater delicacy of execution, but was more harsh in effect, and did not incorporate the colours with the enamel in a way that an absorbent ground or unbaked enamel would do.

The name of Charles Hannong is connected with an early pottery of Strasburg, which was mostly a manufactory of earthenware stoves. This pottery was founded in 1709. In 1721 Hannong and a German porcelain worker, who was taken into partnership by the former, began to make porcelain, but after a short existence under the sons of Hannong this pottery was closed.

Statuettes, clocks, dinner and dessert services were made in Strasburg glazed earthenware, with modelled and painted decoration. The colouring and decoration was of the prevalent Rococo, bright and clear; flowers of all kinds, and Chinese pictures, were imitated mostly on white grounds (Fig. 60).

French Porcelain.

The desire to imitate the porcelain ware of China led to the discovery of the soft paste (pâte tendre). The names “porcelaine de France” and “Sèvres porcelain” have also been given to it. As previously mentioned, it was made at Rouen in 1690, at St. Cloud in 1698, and at Lille in 1711, but in all these cases in a small and tentative way.

The composition of the paste in the French soft porcelain is described by MM. Gasnault and Garnier in their handbook of “French Pottery” as follows: “The paste was composed of the sand of Fontainebleau, saltpetre, sea salt, soda (soude d’Alicante), alum, gypsum, or parings of alabaster; all these elements were mixed together and placed in an oven in a layer of considerable thickness, where, after being baked for at least fifty hours, they formed a perfectly white frit, or vitrefied paste. The frit was mixed with Argenteuil marl in the proportion of nine pounds of frit to three pounds of marl, &c.”

The glaze is described as consisting of “the sand of Fontainebleau, litharge, salts of soda, Bougival silex or gun-flint, and potash.” All these were ground and melted together, and afterwards the vitreous mass was re-ground in water and thus formed the glaze.

The soft paste is much superior for artistic works owing to the glaze incorporating with the colours in a perfect manner, rendering them equally brilliant with the enamel, but this is not the case with the hard or natural kaolin, as the glaze on this does not blend completely with the colours of the decoration. The soft paste porcelain is, however, too porous for articles of domestic use, and can be tested by its being easily scratched by a knife.

The Marquis Orry de Fulvey made an attempt to establish the soft paste porcelain works at Vincennes in 1741, but this was not a success. It was established again under new conditions in 1745, and after many experiments some important vases were made decorated with flowers in relief. The manufactory was reorganized again and removed to Sèvres, near Paris, in the year 1756. The products of the Sèvres works at this time were the fine vases with the bleu de roi, or bleu de Sèvres, and the lovely rose Pompadour colours, and numerous fancy articles, as heads of canes, buttons, snuff-boxes, needle-cases, also table services, &c. Many artists were employed to paint the flower and figure decorations; the latter were painted after the designs of Boucher, Vanloo, and others.

The soft paste porcelain was made from about 1700 to 1770. Some of the finest soft paste Sèvres porcelain may be seen in the Jones Collection at South Kensington, of which there are nearly sixty examples. The vase (Fig. 61) has a dark blue ground. The clock of Sèvres porcelain (Fig. 62) is a beautiful and unique example that was made especially for Marie Antoinette. The clock is mounted in ormoulu by Gouthière, and is in his best style of work.

The egg-shaped vase (Fig. 63) has a blue ground and is decorated with subject of Cupid and Psyche.

The artists Falconet, Clodion, La Rue, and Bachelier modelled and designed many of the statuettes, plaques, and vases for the Sèvres manufactory.

Cabinets and tables of the Louis Seize period were often inlaid with painted plaques of Sèvres ware, and have ormoulu mountings. This kind of furniture is exceedingly refined in design and workmanship, and reflects in a high degree the Pompadour and Du Barry period of French taste.

In 1768 beds of kaolin clay were found in France at St. Yrieix, near Limoges. Maquer, a chemist attached to the Sèvres factory, in 1769 submitted for the king’s (Louis XVI.) inspection at the Château of Versailles sixty pieces of the new hard porcelain made from this native clay.

During the time of the French Revolution the manufactory was in a critical state of existence, but was still kept in a working state. In the year 1800 Alexandre Brongniart was appointed director, a post he held for forty-seven years—and after his appointment the manufacture of soft porcelain ceased.

In his time the manufactory was in a state of great prosperity, and the science he brought to bear on the manufacturing processes was of immense importance. Vases over seven feet in height were produced, and the pieces which were made were ornamented with trophies and battle scenes that glorified the events in the reign of Napoleon I.

In the reign of Louis Philippe the artists Fragonard, Chenavard, Clerget, and Julienne introduced a new style of Renaissance decoration and design, but this was of a heavy and overloaded order that was not exactly suited to the character of porcelain.

About the middle of the present century Louis Robert, the chief painter at Sèvres, introduced the novelty of coloured pastes, which was to develop later into the pâte-sur-pâte process, so successfully practised by the talented M. Solon, who has executed so much of this beautiful work for Minton’s in England. The process of Louis Robert consisted in the use of porcelain paste coloured with oxides. A barbotine or slip was made of this composition and paintings were executed with it in slight relief, the white paste being used chiefly on a coloured ground, the modelling or light and shade being regulated according to the thickness of the semi-transparent material employed. When finished this kind of work has a cameo-like effect.

German Pottery.

German stoneware was manufactured at an early date, and in the countries bordering upon the Rhine the industry must have been in an active state in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, judging from the plentiful examples of the different varieties of the ware formerly known as “Grès Flamands” or “Grès de Flandres,” but now classified under their proper German origins. In the sixteenth century this ware was carried in great quantities from Raeren, from Frechen and Sieburg, near Cologne, and from Greuzhausen, near Coblentz, down the Rhine to Leyden and the Low Countries.

The brown stoneware of Raeren—which formerly belonged to the ancient Duchy of Limbourg—was especially in great request in Flanders. This brown ware was of a spherical or cylindrical shape, divided by a central broad band, with decorations of figure subjects, shields, masks, arms, &c.; the neck is also decorated with shields and bosses, and the foot with rings and guilloche ornament. Some good specimens of blue stoneware—called the “blue of Leipzig”—were also made at Raeren.

At Frechen, near Cologne, the celebrated “Greybeards” or “Bellarmines” were first made, that were imported and imitated so much in England during the reign of James I. (see Fig. 73). They were decorated with the head of an old man with a long beard, and sometimes also with armorial bearings or figure subjects.

The Sieburg stoneware was a cream-coloured ware, richly decorated in relief, and chiefly consisted of long narrow drinking tankards with metal covers, called “Pokals.”

At Greuzhausen and at Höhr were manufactured small jugs called “cruches,” also saltcellars, inkstands, and braziers were made in grey stoneware decorated in parts with the rich “blue of Leipzig” and with various relief ornaments.

In the end of the seventeenth century and beginning of the eighteenth at Creussen, in Bavaria, tankards or drinking mugs were made of a round shape with covers, and decorated with figures of the Apostles in relief, and coloured in bright crude colours that look like oil painting: they are known as “Apostel Kruges,” or Apostle mugs.

At Nuremberg, tiles, pipes, and stoves were manufactured in glazed brown or green stoneware, and at the same place a celebrated potter named Augustin Hirschvogel made different kinds of ware in tin-glazed enamel, who with his family preserved for a long time the secret in Germany of this particular glaze.

Delft, a town in Holland, was renowned in the seventeenth century for its extensive manufacture of the fayence known as “Delft.” The potteries of Delft were established in the early years of the century, and towards the end upwards of thirty potteries were in full working order. The genuine delft ware is of a fine hard paste, has a beautiful and clear smooth enamel, and is decorated with almost every kind of subject, chiefly in a blue camaïen.

Attempts at polychrome decoration are very rare, but a red colour has been often used. The style of design and shapes were generally imitations of Chinese, Japanese, and Dresden wares (Fig. 64). Almost every class and shape of the usual pottery objects were manufactured, and some plates and vases were of very great dimensions.

German Porcelain.

The Portuguese introduced China porcelain into Europe, and for a long time the potters sought to imitate it, but without much success, until the true kaolin was discovered by Böttger, about 1709. At Aue, Schneeberg, and in the year 1715, a pottery for the manufacture of hard porcelain was established at Meissen, by Augustus II., Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, with Böttger as director.

This porcelain, after it had been brought to a considerable degree of perfection, turned out a great success in its similarity to the Chinese composition of body, but in spite of all precautions to keep the making and the nature of the clay secret, the knowledge leaked out, and in a short time after we find that hard porcelain was made in many parts of Germany and Austria.

Like most of the wares made at other potteries at this period, the Dresden porcelain was at first an imitation of Chinese in shape and decoration. Almost every kind of articles were made at Dresden, such as candelabra, statuettes, modelled flowers, vases, services, &c., on which were painted with great delicacy, flowers, landscapes, and figures on grounds of different rich colours (Figs. 66 and 67).

English Pottery.

Ancient British pottery has been found in the barrows and burial mounds in the form of incense cups, drinking and food vessels, and cinerary urns. These have all been made of clays that were found usually on the spot, and are either sun-dried or imperfectly burnt.

The drinking vessels were tall and cylindrical in form, and the incense cups were wider in the centre than at either end. The urns and food vessels have a similarity of shape, being globular, with or without a neck. The decoration is of the simplest description, such as chevrons, or zigzags, and straight-lined patterns produced by scratching with a stick, or the impressions of a rope tied around the vessel while the clay was soft.

The Romans made pottery in Britain from native clay, and also imported much of the Samian ware. The Roman wares of British manufacture are known as Castor, Upchurch, and New Forest wares; they are generally of very good shapes, and are decorated with slips, dots, bosses, and indentations, and are unglazed or slightly glazed (Fig. 68).