Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/660

Rh 636 POTTERY [PORCELAIN. beginning of the 18th. The word &quot;porcelain&quot; is usually derived from the Italian &quot; porcellana,&quot; a white shell, to the smooth polished surface of which the Chinese wares bear some resemblance. Hence it should be observed that in mediaeval inventories &quot; a cup of porcelain &quot; often means one made of shell or mother-of-pearl. In Italy the finer sorts of majolica were often called &quot;porcellana,&quot; and a plate decorated &quot;alia porcellana &quot; meant one with a special style of painting, and did not refer to its material. During mediaeval times, when real Eastern porcelain is meant, some other word expressing where it came from was frequently added, e.g., in French 1 5th-century inventories &quot;porcelaine de Sinant&quot; is sometimes mentioned. From the 13th to the 15th century Chinese porcelain was very sparingly brought into Europe, and generally occurs among royal possessions or gifts as an object of great value. The name &quot;china,&quot; from the country where porcelain was made, was given to it not later than the 16th century, and perhaps earlier, having been used by the Arabs long before : &quot; china dishes&quot; are mentioned by Shakespeare (Measure for Mea sure, act ii., scene i.) as being things of value. The main reason of the very slight success gained for so many years in the attempts to make porcelain in Europe was the fact that it was regarded as a highly arti ficial substance, something between pottery and glass ; the many beds of kaolinic clays which exist in Europe were never thought of as being the true material of which to make it, or, if used at all, were only employed partially Early and in an accidental way. The earliest attempts at the Venetian production of translucent porcelain which had any practical in success took place at Venice about 1470. 1 An alchemist named Antuonio succeeded in making and firing in a kiln at San Simone, near Venice, &quot;porcelane trasparenti e vaghissime,&quot; described, in a document dated 1470, as being as beautiful in glaze and colour as &quot; the porcelain from barbarous countries.&quot; Difficulties, however, seem to have arisen, and the manufacture was not proceeded with till 1504, when a few sample specimens were made in Venice, and others again in a spasmodic way in 1518 and 1519. No specimens of the early Venetian porce lain are now known, nor any pieces of the porcelain made at Ferrara for Duke Alphonso II. about 1565-67 by Giulio da Urbino, and mentioned with high praise by Vasari. 2 The composition of this earliest European porcelain is not known, but it probably was partly made of the white clay of Vicenza a true kaolinic paste often used by the majolica potters to give whiteness and fine grain to their clay. Medici Medici Porcelain. The earliest manufactory of porcelain porce- o f which known specimens exist is that started in Florence, for Francesco I. de Medici, about the years 1575-80 by Bernardo Buontalenti (see Vasari). Francesco de Medici took the greatest interest in the manufacture, and, as is recorded by Galluzzi (Istoria di Toscana, 1781), moulded some of the vessels with his own hands, as compliment ary presents to other princes. According to Galluzzi, Buontalenti did little more than improve on the method invented a few years earlier by the majolica potters Camillo da Urbino and Orazio Fontana, assisted by a Greek who had learned the secret of true porcelain in China. The discovery of the existing specimens of Medici porcelain is due to Alessandro Foresi, who observed its peculiar texture and, in some cases, slight transparency, and found pieces marked at the back in a way that quite confirmed his theory. 3 These marks are the Medici arms, with its &quot; palle &quot; or balls, inscribed with &quot; F. M. M. E. D. II. &quot; for &quot; Franciscus Medici Magnus Etruriae Dux 1 See Davillier, Les Origines de la Porcelaine en Europe, 1882. 2 Lives of Artists, last section. 3 See Foresi, Sulle Porcellane Hedicee, 1869. lain. II.&quot; Some pieces have a rude representation of the great dome of the Florentine cathedral, and the letter &quot; F. &quot; for &quot;Florentia&quot; (see No. 22). Scarcely forty specimens of the ware are known, which are mostly in the possession of the Rothschilds and Mr Drury Fortnum, in the royal collec tion at Lisbon, and the museums of South Kensington and Sevres. They are all of a en. slightly creamy white, with a beautiful pearly texture, due to the rich glaze and the slight transparency of their paste ; the glaze varies in thickness, and in some instances is slightly Potter s mark. crackled. Nearly all are simply decorated in cobalt blue, under the glaze ; the designs are of various styles, some purely Italian, others Persian or Chinese in character ; a few have one flower painted in the middle of the space in a graceful and almost realistic way. A plate at Lisbon has a figure of St John with his eagle. Their forms are pilgrim-flasks, plates, ewers, and vases of differ ent shapes, some very graceful and original. The earliest dated example is among the five specimens in the Sevres Museum ; it is a square bottle with the arms of Spain painted in blue and a few touches of man ganese purple; the date 1581 is introduced among the ornaments at a corner of the bottle ; it was probably a gift from Francesco I. to the king of Spain. The com position of this porcelain has recently been discovered from a contemporary MS. in the Magliabecchian Library at Florence. The paste consisted of 24 parts of white sand, 16 of a crystalline frit (powdered rock-crystal 10, and soda 8), and Faenza white earth 12 parts. To 12 parts of this mixture 3 of the kaolinic clay of Vicenza were to be added. Probably to secure greater whiteness, the vessels were covered, under the glaze, with a white enamel ; but this addition appears needless. They were then glazed with an ordinary silicious lead glaze. Though the final result has the beauty and some of the special qualities of the Chinese natural porcelain, yet it will be observed that this end was gained in a very difficult and elaborate manner, which must have been very costly. This, no doubt, is the reason why so few pieces were made, and why its manu facture ceased altogether with the death of Francesco de Medici, in 1587. After the Medici ware ceased to be made there is a blank Frenc of nearly a century in the history of European porcelain. P orce In 1664 a patent was granted to Claude Reverend, a citizen of Paris, which gave him the privilege of making &quot; imita tion porcelain, as fine as that from the East Indies.&quot; No known specimens can be attributed with certainty to his workshop, though some pieces which bear mark No. 23 may have come from his hands. In 1673 another patent was conceded to Louis Poterat, who certainly did produce artificial porcelain at Rouen. Some small pieces, salt-cellars and mustard- pots, in the museums of Rouen and Sevres, are attributed to him, and are therefore the earliest undoubted examples of French porcelain. They are of a pearly white colour, with rich glaze, not unlike the Medici porcelain in softness of texture. The ornaments, simple and delicate arabesques, are painted under the glaze in cobalt blue only. Some pieces are signed with No. 24. Saint Cloud was the next place in France where porcelain was produced, the manufactory being carried on by the Chicanneau family, to whom a privilege was granted in 1695. The patent mentions that they had made porcelain since 1693. This early Saint-Cloud porcelain is fine in texture and glaze, and is decorated in many different styles : it is pure white, moulded with slight reliefs copied from the No. 24.