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.

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.

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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.

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.

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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).

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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}

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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.