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THE CERAMIC ART.

INTRODUCTION.

Were we, therefore, to attempt to find its origin, we might go back as far as written history could guide us, and then find proofs of its existence in a prehistoric age. It is curious to observe that, as we compare the earliest productions of different countries, we discover a similarity between the crude ideas to which they owe their origin.{20} It is equally remarkable—and the fact is worthy of notice as pointing to the great antiquity of the practice of working in clay—that all nations of whose early religious ideas we have any knowledge ascribe its inception to the gods. Daily habit demonstrated its utility, and gratitude found a cover for ignorance, in bestowing upon the heavenly powers the credit of inspiring man with a knowledge of the capabilities of the plastic clay.

Reason supplies an easy solution of the problem, but one not likely to occur to the unreasoning man of the primitive world. “On the day,” says Jacquemart, “when man, walking upon the clayey soil, softened by inundations or rain, first observed that the earth retained the prints of his footsteps, the plastic art was discovered; and when lighting a fire to warm his limbs or to cook his food, he remarked that the surface of the hearth changed its nature and its color, that the reddened clay became sonorous, impervious, and hardened in its new shape, the art was revealed to him of making vessels fit to contain liquids.” The reason of the nineteenth century conflicts strangely with old-world opinions of what was due to beneficent deity. Of this we can easily find abundant illustration. Let us take, as examples, China, Japan, Egypt, and Greece. We will find that each reverts to the misty boundary between legend and history, or to the earlier age when the gods had not deserted the world—the horizon of mortal vision or fancy, where heaven seems to touch earth. It is said that nearly two thousand seven hundred years before the Christian era the potter’s art was discovered in China by Kouen-ou. This was during the reign of the enlightened Emperor Hoang-ti. Of him it is recorded that after many labors for the good of his subjects, the amelioration of their condition, and the extension of their knowledge, he was translated to the upper sphere on the back of a huge and whiskered dragon.

The Japanese follow a precisely similar course. Having no real knowledge, they call imagination to their aid, and solve an historical problem by the creation of a legend. Turning back to a period long before history begins, they affect to find the inventor of pottery in Oosei-tsumi, a legendary being who lived in the age of Oanamuchi-no-mikoto, and conferred upon him the title of “Kami,” distinctive of deity.{21}

The Egyptians, more reverently, gave the art directly to the gods. Having a pantheon, they merely singled out that one of its occupants to whom the honor should be ascribed. As Osiris is their Bacchus, and Thoth their Mercury, so to the director Num, the first creature, they ascribe the art of moulding clay. Like the Hebrew Jehovah, he first made the heavens and earth, the firmament, the sun, and the moon, and, from the fact of his having made the rivers and mountains, would appear also to have evolved order out of the Egyptian chaos. Lastly, he made man. Turning the clay of the Nile upon his wheel, he fashioned the last and greatest of created things, and having “breathed into his nostrils the breath of life,” made man the cornerstone of the fabric of creation. Inspiration and monotheism apart, it would almost appear that the Jewish law-giver found in the hated “house of bondage” a foundation for his cosmogony.

In how many instances did the Greeks lay the honors due to some forgotten mortal at the feet of a god or a semi-divine hero? To them Inachus, who about 1800 B.C. founded the kingdom of Argos, was not the leader of a band of adventurous emigrants from Egypt, but a child of the sea over which he came, a son of Oceanus and Tethys. It was only when Gelanor, the last of the race of Inachus, was deposed by Danaus, that we find a Greek recognition of the early connection of that country with Egypt. Danaus was the son of Belus, and brother of Ægyptus, jointly with whom he occupied the throne of Egypt. Quarrelling with his brother, Danaus set sail, and, arriving at Argos, rose to the throne by the means above indicated. These statements are only of value to our present purpose as showing the close connection between Greece and Egypt, and pointing to the conclusion that Egypt dropped the germs of that art which Greece cultivated to such perfection that it won the admiration of the world. If we turn to the origin of pottery accepted by the Greeks themselves, we are confused by the liveliness of their teeming imagination. The exercise of fancy takes the place of an undeveloped historical sense. When Jupiter wished to punish the rash impiety of Prometheus by giving him a wife, Vulcan made Pandora, the first of mortal women, out of clay. Prometheus is one of the strangest figures in Greek mythology. He laughed at the whole Pantheon, cheated the great Jove himself, and was yet a benefactor of mankind, after he had created{22} the species; for to him also is ascribed the creation from clay of the first man and woman. Thus the gods and heroes were potters, and the art was practised by them before mortal life began. To two Corinthians, one Athenian, and one Cretan, the invention of the plastic art has been attributed; but, passing these by, let us turn, for philological reasons, to the legend of Keramos. The story of the adventures of Theseus is pretty well known. By the help of Ariadne, he killed the Minotaur of Crete, and escaped from the Labyrinth, and, having subsequently abandoned his fair assistant on the island of Naxos, she is said by some to have hanged herself in despair. Others, however, assert—and to their tale we must listen—that in the arms of Bacchus she found solace for her sorrows. Their son Keramos was the patron of potters, and to his name we owe our word “keramic” or “ceramic.” When the Argives pointed out the tomb of Ariadne, her ashes were deposited in an urn in one of their temples, so that by means of the art attributed to the son, the mother’s remains were preserved.

It is thus made clear that the practice of making vessels of clay had no origin to which we can now turn back. The art was born in the “twilight of the gods,” whose productions are now used in illustrating the pages of history. Even in these wild fancies there is a germ of truth. The first attempts at moulding in clay had a common origin in the necessities of man, and the promptings of nature to supply them. The material was on all hands ready for use; and why should the men of antiquity be held to differ from the children of after-ages, or those of our own time? To one the suggestion may have come from one source, to another it may have come from another; and unless we choose to bind ourselves to the narrative of the building of the great Tower of Babel, and the dispersal of races, we may be led to think that its origin may have been manifold, as its rudest attempts have certainly been discovered in places wide apart.

On the sea-shore the child builds its house and mill, giving by the help of water a certain consistency to the inadhesive sand. On the roadside, or by the pond’s rim, it shapes the oozy mud into the forms suggested to childhood’s imitative instinct. One of the earliest and most beautiful of the legends relating to the youth of Christ has reference to this very matter. He was engaged with his playmates in{23} making earthen birds. His efforts were clumsy and his art rude, and his companions jeered him, until the birds he had made became living things, and flew away. Let us by all means concede this to have been an impossible miracle, based upon an idle legend. Yet it proves that either in the early days of Galilee, or in those of the inventor of the tale, the habits of children differed in no degree from those of to-day. A kind of instinct would almost appear to lead them to model and imitate in clay; and putting primitive man upon the level of childhood, there is no reason for believing that the plastic art had not several independent origins.

The manner in which pottery illustrates history brings us to one of the most interesting features of the study (Fig. 1). While the connoisseur is deep in the history of the art itself, the student prefers to view it in its relation to that of mankind. It suggests difficulties, confirms deductions, and offers hints for the solution of the problems of history. The memory of extinct nations is perpetuated by the clay records which have survived their submergence in the tide of time. In these we may read, as in a book, of the gods they worshipped, of their daily life, of their death and burial. Historians now, in fact, consult the relics of the potter’s art with as much confidence and readiness as they would turn to the pages of an old-world chronicle. Migrations, intercourse, and conquest have all been{24} recorded in clay. One might in that way define with the utmost exactness the line bounding the vast empire of Rome. The bricks or tiles, placed over the graves of the soldiers or found in their camps, show the stations of the legions and the extent of conquest. Wherever

in England, Scotland, France, Germany, Jerusalem, or elsewhere, there have been found tiles or bricks stamped with the number of the legion or its distinctive appellation. The tragic end of Quintilius Varus is known to all readers of Roman history. A Roman proconsul of high birth, and enriched by the governorship of Syria, he was appointed to the command of the army confronting the hordes of Germany. Surprised by the German chief Hermann, or Arminius, his army was almost annihilated, and he, in despair, after the fashion of his time, sought death by his own hand. The Emperor Augustus wailed for months, “Varus, give me back my legions,” the legions which were lying on the field, at the farthest point to which the armies of Rome had penetrated, and also the farthest in that direction, at which any specimens of Roman pottery have been found. From the funereal urns of the Greeks we are enabled to tell how far they pursued their conquests in any direction. Other nations left, in the lands to which their arms were carried, similar mementos of their presence, which, on being exhumed, after lying for centuries covered thickly over by the dust time is continually spreading over the past, are transferred to the page of history.

A very forcible example of the historical value of earthen-ware is found almost at our very door. Irving relates, in his “Life of Washington,” that, not long after his birth, his father removed to Stafford County, near Fredericksburg. The house stood on a knoll overlooking the Rappahannock. This was the home of George’s youth. The meadow between the house and the river was his play-ground. But this home, like that in which he was born, has disappeared; the site is only to be traced by fragments of bricks, china, and earthen-ware. Another example may be taken from a paragraph which appeared in the daily papers very recently, in which it was stated that two amphoræ—the name given to the Greek two-handled, oval-bodied vases{25} (Fig. 2) with pointed base, which have been found wherever Greek commerce extended—containing fifty thousand coins of the Emperor Gallienus and his immediate successors, had been discovered at Verona. Nearly all were as fresh as when coming from the mint. Gallienus assumed the purple A.D. 260, and reigned for eight years before he was assassinated at Milan. For over fifteen hundred years, therefore, these vases preserved their numismatic treasures.

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Fig. 2.—Greek and Phœnician (on right) Amphoræ. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)
Fig. 2.—Greek and Phœnician (on right) Amphoræ. (Cesnola Coll., N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)

Still another instance may be mentioned in which the close connection between history and its handmaid, pottery, is illustrated. Some time ago certain travellers in Egypt purchased a number of small jars (Fig. 3) of a kaolinic composition, which they were told had been taken from the tombs. They were evidently, from the style of decoration and the characters they bore, of Chinese manufacture; and the first conclusion was, that, as evidence was not wanting to show that one of them had been taken from a very old tomb on its being first opened, they were possessed of a highly venerable antiquity. Subsequent investigations, however, showed that they had been obtained from certain ports on the Red Sea, and were to be ascribed to a comparatively recent date. The discovery subtracted about two thousand five hundred years from their age. But how came these Chinese vases to find their way to the commercial cities of the Red{26} Sea? Before navigators had learned that the great highway between Europe and the East was round the South of Africa, intercourse was maintained either by the overland route or through the Persian Gulf. This accounts for the abundance of Chinese porcelain found in Persia. Some of the specimens may have been left on the western side of the Gulf, and have thence found their way across Arabia to the shores of the Red Sea, whence they were obtained by the fraudulent venders of Lower Egypt.

In this way the intercourse of nations may frequently be explained by the help of pottery. Not only, be it observed, may it be taken as an indicator of the movements or extension of the nations themselves, but of the manner and extent of their intercourse with the rest of the world.

As an exponent of the customs of antiquity, its aid is of the highest value. We learn, for instance, that among the Greeks the usual custom was to mix wine in one vessel, cool it in another, draw it from the latter into jugs, and from them fill and replenish the beakers or cups of guests. We can see anywhere to-day tiny tea-sets for the amusement of children. The Greeks had something closely akin to them. Vases were given to children, as toys are given now. Some of those discovered are so limited in their dimensions that they could not have been used for any other purpose, and on others are depicted the games in which children engaged. Of all the uses to which an earthen jar could be put, certainly the most singular was that discovered by Diogenes, when he chose one for his habitation (Fig. 4).{27} That such was the case there is strong reason for believing. This statement is one which may disconcert popular belief, and break off the association between the philosopher and a “tub;” but the authorities in favor of his home being a huge jar are tolerably decisive. A tub, moreover, scarcely seems to meet the requirements of the occasion, whereas it is easy to imagine a pithos satisfying the limited demands of Diogenes in the way of house-keeping. Nor was the whim of the philosopher without parallel. It is said that during the Peloponnesian war the Athenians lived in similar vessels. The pithos occupied by Diogenes was cracked and patched; and these vessels, when unfit for other use, were, long after his day, used as dwellings by the poor.

Vases were presented as prizes (Fig. 5) to the victors in the athletic games; and it is from these and other kinds deposited in sepulchres, that we derive the greater part of our knowledge of Greek ceramic art. Not only were they used—at least after the earliest days of Greece—to hold the ashes of the dead, but were evidently employed as tokens of respect or affection. Thus, the vases the deceased had most admired or used in life were placed in the tomb, along with others containing the remains of the funeral feast, and those employed in the last rites. The amphora was devoted to all kinds of domestic uses. The rhyton was a drinking-cup (Fig. 6). There were special vessels for oil and unguents; and the different kinds of wine-jars and drinking-cups present an almost endless variety of shapes, and, especially the latter, a most wonderful beauty of form. Of these, the kylix affords a good example{28} (Fig. 7). In this way we see that, from childhood to the grave, the customs of the Greeks are illustrated by their pottery. We pass by, in the mean time, with a mere reference the numberless mythic themes decipherable in the decoration of their vases.

We meet with a precisely similar state of things among the Chinese. We can only study the pottery of that people after familiarizing ourselves with their religion. How otherwise can we understand the quaint figures and designs which meet us at every turn—the God of Longevity, Pou-tai the God of Contentment, their manifold dragons, the Kylin, the Dog of Fo, or the Fong-hoang? Colors and shapes, as well as animals, are employed as symbols. As the crane symbolized long life, so were certain colors and forms distinctive of social rank. Let us take a vase and study it closely, observe its proportions and decoration, and these will guide us to its purpose and to the rank of the individual making use of it. Vases and images tell of both the public and private worship of the Chinese, and of the manner in which it was conducted. The excess to which the Chinese carry the duties of hospitality and courtesy has been frequently commented on. It would be hard to imagine anything showing better the refinements of which etiquette is capable, than their manner of decorating their reception-rooms, so that they may be filled with the mildest incense of flattery to the expected guest. Should he be a soldier, vases stand{29} on all sides, decorated with the warlike scenes best suited to his professional taste. Should he be a poet, war is changed to literature, and vases are chosen which recall the great names of the profession. After a manner similar to that in vogue among the Greeks, pottery and porcelain were used by the Chinese as media for the conveyance of compliments and good wishes, and as special marks of honor. They were conferred on the officer by his sovereign, and passed between friends at the customary times of rejoicing.

We approach Egypt, in this connection, with a certain amount of awe. We examine its early pottery with a sensation similar to that with which we view a mummy. It comprises relics of a civilization of so hoary an antiquity, that to study them is like peering into the secrets of the grave. It is, in fact, from the tombs that the treasures have been exhumed which enable us to trace Egyptian ceramic art. They tell of customs followed long before the Persian Cambyses

Some of the specimens date from the Third Dynasty, about four thousand years ago. There is now in existence a porcelain box bearing one of the names of Amasis II., the king whom Cambyses overthrew six hundred years before our era began. The earliest relics may be said to have been coeval with the invention of a written language.

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Fig. 7.—Kylix, with Gorgon and Eyes.
Fig. 7.—Kylix, with Gorgon and Eyes.

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A very curious custom may be allowed to arrest our attention for a moment. In the tombs previous to the sixth century B.C., have been found cones (Fig. 8), having inscriptions on their base. From these we learn the occupants’ names and office, whether scribes, priests, or nobles. They served, in short, all the purposes of the inscriptions on the tombs of our day, or of labels for establishing the identity of the dead. Terra-cotta figures have also been found in some graves, bearing, like the cones, the name and title of the deceased. In the same connection may be mentioned the peculiar, and to us revolting, usage of devoting vases to holding the viscera of the embalmed body.

The multitudinous domestic uses of jars cannot here be enumerated. We know that they were devoted to purposes which would now be considered somewhat at variance with the legitimate object of the manufacture of earthen-ware. We might almost say that all the receptacles designed in modern times for domestic convenience, such as baskets, boxes, and tin utensils, have their counterparts among the earthen fabrics of the Egyptians. Nor must we stop there if we observe the many other purposes of ornament and religion to which their ceramic wares were devoted. The Egyptians had an idea that the physical wants of the deceased did not come to an end with life, and they accordingly placed in the tombs jars with meat and drink for consumption after death. Of these jars, many had unquestionably been previously employed in the household. From such and other sources we learn that earthen pots were employed in cooking, as those of metal are with us, that certain vessels were used for holding water; others for the juice of the grape, for butcher-meat or poultry, for cosmetics, and, stranger than any, for holding the flax while it was being spun. Manuscripts, or papyri, have also been discovered in them; so that it may easily be seen how important a part pottery played in the every-day life of the Egyptians.

If we turn to their glazed ware, or porcelain, as it has been called,{31} we find it much more extensively applied to decorative purposes. The unglazed was almost exclusively restricted to articles of a domestic kind. The glazed ware was employed in tiling, and inlaying coffins and boxes, and in the making of various vases and cups. Balls, presumably for the amusement of children, and other toys sometimes also made of pottery (Fig. 9), ear-rings, the pieces for a game akin to draughts (Fig. 10) or checkers, amulets, beads, necklaces, small figures of the gods (perforated), emblematic animals, finger-rings, and sepulchral figures, have all been found of this material. The extent to which such discoveries illustrate the customs of the Egyptians need not be enlarged upon.

Having thus brought forward China, Greece, and Egypt as instances, it is hardly necessary to pursue this line of inquiry further. It may be said, in the broadest language, that every nation of whose ceramic productions we have any specimens, have in them reflected their religion and customs, and thus furnished most important aids to the construction of their national history.

Literature has been enriched by figures drawn from the ceramic art. Some of the most effective similes of Biblical writers are thus derived. It is under the type of a potter that Jeremiah represents God as showing his absolute power over the Israelites: “Behold as the clay is in the potter’s hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house of Israel.” In a similar manner, St. Paul typifies the divine control over man. “Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor and another unto dishonor?” It is this absolute “power over the clay” which led men to use it for the conveyance of their first conceptions of the beautiful. The pottery of all countries shows how religion stimulated art, by furnishing it with themes, and infusing into it a spiritual signification which all could understand. The pottery of the Greeks shows best how art may embellish religion and history, and perpetuate{32} the legends belonging to neither. To the above may be added the very effective simile employed by Plato in characterizing Socrates: “The outside of the vase is scrawled over with odd shapes and writing, but within are precious liquors and healing medicines, and rare mixtures of far-gathered herbs and flowers.”

And thus, by a short step, we reach the art represented in pottery. It supplies, beyond all question, the best means of observing the growth of intelligence and the expansion of artistic ideas. The very qualities of clay which led to its being used in the gratification of awakening necessities, led also to its being adopted for the expression of the first inspirations of art. When the Assyrian potter first ornamented the brick he had moulded (Fig. 11), the mechanical pursuit was elevated to the sphere of art. The same course was followed among all nations. When the discovery was reached, that clay could be made serviceable for building or for household vessels, decoration sooner or later suggested itself. Either forms were varied and became in themselves ornamental, or a superficial decoration was resorted to. The useful led to the beautiful, and their combination, as seen on the dinner-tables of our day, is the natural result of a universal process by which nations have advanced from rude and unskilful ignorance to art. The aboriginal American potter decorated his coarse vase with a few scratches made with a stick; his modern successor moulds his porcelain into graceful forms, and brings to its ornamentation a palette of bright colors, a trained hand, and a cultivated taste. The one is a relic of barbarism, the other a work of civilization, and both are the fruits of a combination to which all nations have been irresistibly led, viz., the useful with the beautiful. This course has been universally followed, and may, for that reason, be called natural. Man in every part of the world has given vent to his instinctive longing for that which, to him, represents beauty in the embellishment of objects in daily use. It is by the consideration of such facts that we learn to appreciate fully the bearing of pottery upon art and history. Upon this point Dr. Birch says: “By the application of painting to vases, the Greeks made them something more than mere articles of commercial{33} value or daily use. They have become a reflection of the paintings of the Greek schools, and an inexhaustible source for illustrating the mythology, manners, customs, and literature of Greece. Unfortunately, very few are ornamented with historical subjects, yet history receives occasional illustration from them; and the representations of the burning of Crœsus, the orgies of Anacreon, the wealth of Arcesilaus, the tributes of Darius, and the meeting of Alcæus and Sappho, lead us to hope that future discoveries may offer additional examples.”

This passage leads directly to the consideration of the permanency of ceramic works as compared with those of other branches of art. The “reflections of the paintings of the Greek schools” have come down to us in all the beauty they possessed on first leaving the artist’s hand. We may allow Mr. Ruskin to state the reverse case, and draw the conclusion. “It is surely,” he says, “a severe lesson to us in this matter, that the best works of Turner could not be shown for six months without being destroyed—and that his most ambitious ones, for the most part, perished before they could be shown. I will break through my law of reticence, however, so far as to tell you that I have hope of one day interesting you greatly (with the help of the Florentine masters) in the study of the arts of moulding and painting porcelain; and to induce some of you to use your future power of patronage in encouraging the various branches of this art, and turning the attention of the workmen of Italy from the vulgar tricks of minute and perishable mosaic to the exquisite subtleties of form and color possible in the perfectly ductile, afterward unalterable clay. And one of the ultimate results of such craftsmanship might be the production of pictures as brilliant as painted glass—as delicate as the most subtle water-colors, and more permanent than the Pyramids.” Both these writers thus refer to permanency as a feature of the potter’s art, which lends it a special importance. Whatever form the art may have assumed, it is, when applied to pottery, practically imperishable. By his allusion to the effect of time and exposure upon the paintings of Turner, Mr. Ruskin invests the results he contemplates with a certain kind of grandeur. He has in view the culminating point of ceramic art, the apex to which the works of the artists of all time lead up step by step. What process he would adopt, or what forms of the art he would discard, we need not now inquire. It will be sufficient to take our stand{34} at the point indicated—the perfection of form and decoration—and observe how the artists of the past have approached it, and to mark the ideas by which they have been influenced.

The ceramic is the union of two branches of art, the architectural and the graphic. It combines form and proportion with drawing and color. It is unnecessary here to define art in the abstract; but there are certain general principles which may help us to estimate the works of the ceramic artists of all countries. Of these, the first is thus stated by Ruskin: “The entire vitality of art depends upon its being either full of truth or full of use; and however pleasant, wonderful, or impressive it may be in itself, it must yet be of an inferior kind, and tend to deeper inferiority, unless it has clearly one of these main objects—either to state a true thing, or to adorn a serviceable one. It must never exist alone—never for itself.... Every good piece of art ... involves skill, and the formation of an actually beautiful thing by it.” The “statement of a true thing” referred to in the passage quoted is Similitude, one of the philosopher-critic’s essentials in the graphic arts. In the architectural arts, including pottery, he demands Skill, Beauty, and Use; in the graphic arts, Skill, Beauty, and Likeness. If, however, we keep in mind what Dr. Birch says of the vases of Greece being a reflection of the Greek school of painting, and also Mr. Ruskin’s desideratum of pictures upon exquisitely moulded porcelain, we shall see that the essentials of the ceramic art, as a special branch, comprise those of both the architectural and graphic divisions—Skill, Beauty, Use, and Similitude. In one respect, therefore, it may be said to be the highest of all the arts.

The rule thus laid down can be easily applied, and is capable of various modifications to suit the special object upon which it is brought to bear. Thus, a work of art may represent Skill alone. Add, to equal Skill, the second essential, Beauty, and the work will rank higher in art. Invest an object for Use with both Skill and Beauty, and it is raised still higher. If to these Similitude be added, the work will be estimated according to the degree in which it possesses the four essentials. It is obvious, however, that in the works of the ceramic artist, it is neither always possible nor desirable to aim at bringing the four essentials together; and this fact will receive ample illustration from what follows. The rule has been modified{35} by every nation according to its views of art and beauty. It is better to recognize the good in all, than to accept one standard and exclude all others. Catholicity of sympathy and breadth of appreciation are as necessary to the collector’s enjoyment as to the student-artist’s benefit. Should the one raise an inflexible standard by which to measure his admiration, or the other allow only one carefully defined style to kindle his emulation, both will shut out the greater part of the world of art. Every work of art is an expression of feeling, and, to appreciate it, it is necessary to make as near an approach as possible to understanding the sentiment it embodies. The form of expression varies with different nations and with different men; and to catch all the fine and elusive shades of feeling surrounding the art of different times and peoples, the cultivation of a keen and sensitive perception of beauty is better than voluntary slavery under a despotic and arbitrary rule. Art is the universal language in which humanity has couched its ideas of beauty. The form of expression varies, but the impulse is everywhere fundamentally the same. We have endeavored to put in words rather the common aim of all, than a rule by which to measure individual endeavor. It does not follow that all efforts are equal. Some have approached the common object by one route, and others by another, and some have approached it nearer than others; but in no case can one be singled out as the only correct course, to the condemnation of all others. The true artist will combine the best features of all achievements, and so win a place nearer the goal than his predecessors. If we find one artist excelling in form, and another in color, he who combines excellence of form with beauty of color will surpass both. The narrowness of schools and the vagaries of fashion have been a burden upon art; and the less we allow ourselves to be enthralled by either, the greater will be our enjoyment of artistic work. The more rigid our rule, the more precarious is its existence. The standard of yesterday is to-day looked upon with a feeling akin to contempt. Methods, models, ideals change; and the wise man is he who can see the merits and shortcomings, the beauties and defects, of all.

We have said that different nations have shown in different ways their sense of the aims and possibilities of ceramic art. The works of the Greeks indicate an absorbing admiration of elegance of form{36} and figure-drawing. Their vases mark the second step in the progress of decoration. Firstly came linear ornamentation, and then light and line, of which all the Greek vases are examples. If, then, the Greeks in their best days had only reached the second step in decoration, to what must we ascribe the wonderful influence of their art? Certainly it is not in the subjects they chose to illustrate that its charm consists.

Taking our stand in ancient Greece, we may glance along the whole line by which the art has progressed toward an approximate perfection, and at the same time see in what the Greeks were pre-eminent, and in what they were deficient. “To Greece,” says one writer, “was intrusted the cultivation of the reason and the taste. Her gift to mankind has been science and art.” Her highest idea was beauty. She left behind her canons of taste, beyond which, in their special application, we have not advanced, and have little hope of advancing. We are not, therefore, surprised when a writer on pottery reminds us that “to every eye familiar with works of art of the higher order, the cleverest imitations of nature, and the most elegant conceits of floral ornaments, whether exhibited in the efforts of Oriental or European potters, appear coarse and vulgar when contrasted with the chaste simplicity of the Greek forms.” If we would appreciate the full truth of this, we have only to make comparisons in any sufficiently extensive collection. The Greeks took the articles of daily use, and made them representatives of their ideas of beauty in both form and ornamentation. In this they followed the examples set them ages before. In accomplishment only they were alone. While, therefore, we study some as mere examples of skill, or curiosities of design, we study the Greek forms as embodying our highest ideal of beauty.

Let us now examine that in which they were deficient, and see how others have tried to remedy it.

There are branches of the art which the Greeks either did not study, or studied without success. They give little evidence of having been able to appreciate color or to understand its uses. They, as Ruskin says, painted anything anyhow—gods black, horses red, lips and cheeks white. They attained to a certain unsurpassable elegance of shape, and the beautiful outlines of their human-figure ornamentation{37} can at times hardly be sufficiently admired; but their coloring was purely conventional, and its application but little understood. Its changes may be noticed with some curiosity. At first the favorite ground was a pale cream-color, which, later, turned to a redder tint, and human took the place of animal forms. The vases in what is called the “old style,” show black figures and ornamentation in monochrome, with the exception of female faces, which are white, and eyes red. The effects of perspective are only occasionally tried. White was used for the hair and beard of old men. Coming down next to the highest art of Greece, the ground is black, the figures red, and the ornamentation white. Specimens belonging to this period show advance chiefly in the drawing and expression. We remark further, that, besides the use of conventional colors, the Greeks did not care to copy nature too closely, and thus in two distinct ways showed their indifference or inability to introduce into their art the element of likeness. When Jacquemart says that “no natural object, be it plant, bird, or animal, is rendered in its real form, or in its intimate details,” he gives expression to a fact which shows the distinction between Greek ceramic art and that in which a nearer approach is made to similitude by the use of correct drawing and color.

The Orientals went to the opposite extreme. They delighted in bright and gorgeous decoration to an extent that, but for their many intensely realistic works, would lead to the belief that the production of certain effects in color was the highest object of their artists. Their strength lies in their coloring. Nowhere else can the same skill be found in the harmonizing of shades usually deemed discordant, and nowhere else have colors the same brilliancy and depth (Fig. 12). The Japanese and Chinese, in particular, appear to have thoroughly grasped the true place of color in the{38} decoration of curving surfaces, from which the brilliant glaze reflects the light. The artists of Sèvres, anticipating in a manner Ruskin’s idea, embellished their vases with compositions similar to those on canvas. They made the mistake of thinking that the artist’s work is independent of the surface on which it appears, whereas perspective is altered and sometimes destroyed by the curvature of a vase and the brilliancy of the enamel. The artists of the Orient, on the other hand, either restrict themselves to subjects which can be treated upon a judiciously limited part of the surface, or throw aside compositions entirely, and trust to floral designs, isolated figures, repetitious decoration without unity of design, or to beauty of colors alone. Everything contributed to exalt their estimation of color for its own sake, and to it we accordingly find that they devote the regard entertained by the Greeks for form. Any ulterior use of color, as for picture-painting on the flat surface of porcelain plaques, does not appear to have occupied their attention to any very great extent. It is in isolated figures and flowers that we can best study the marvellous delicacy of the Chinese or Japanese brush, and the fidelity with which the suggestions of nature are followed. There is little absolute imitation. Color is paramount, and its beauty obscures the incongruities of Oriental art.

The Persians, like the Greeks, mingled the natural with the conventional. Their vases and tiles (Fig. 13) are ornamented with floral designs, in which, while some of the flowers can be distinguished, others are altered beyond recognition. Among the Mussulman Persians the enamels reached the highest point of gorgeous brilliancy: glowing red as a ground-color, dishes with bottoms covered with rich arabesques—everything set in tints of the most pronounced and striking kind. Their decorations are many-hued as the rainbow; and if at times they lack its softly melting shades, they appear at others as if{39} suspended in the clear and liquid glaze, as soft as the tints of early spring. White figures on a blue or yellow ground, or vice versa, are distinctive of much of the ornamentation of Persia. The mosque at Sultaneah (Fig. 14) is described as having its walls entirely “cased with enamelled tiles of deep blue, with yellow and white scrolls and devices.” The patterns are arabesque, occasionally mingled with animal and floral forms. The finest specimens of Persian tiling at the Museum at Sèvres are in blue and white, the latter forming the ground.

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Fig. 14.—Mosque at Sultaneah. Cased, inside and out, with enamelled tiles.
Fig. 14.—Mosque at Sultaneah. Cased, inside and out, with enamelled tiles.