Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/503

 Industrial Arts. 479 their brilliancy. The yellows and greens have kept their colour fairly well. As to the blues, it will be noticed that not only does the shade vary in the several panels, but also from one brick to another. Of course to a certain extent a similar divergence may have arisen from a more or less moist ground ; but it is probable that the intensity of the blue field, even when quite fresh, was anything but uniform. The master-craft, such as the East has practised it at all times and is still practising it, has always allowed great individual latitude in working out the details of the decoration. The fast and dry lines which prevail in Western workshops, where the colouring pigments are doled out like physic, where fabrication is carried on on a large scale, and moulds are used unceasingly in turning out precisely the same forms, are not binding on the Eastern artisan. He has learnt and followed his craft from infancy ; his hand is left free to make his own composi- tion, and is not restricted to uniformity of hue, as distasteful to him as it would be to his employers. Even supposing he had wished to produce evenness of tone, allowance had to be made for accidents occasioned by the firing, which even now, in spite of the improvements introduced in the manufacture, still prepare many disagreeable surprises to our well-trained ceramists. A few degrees more or less of heat will bring out many a piece from the kiln with a very different colour from that which was expected. Look well, for example, at the fine turquoise blue which the Persian enamellist manufactured in matchless perfection in the reign of the TimGrides. Travellers who had the oppor- tunity of seeing them at Tabrez and elsewhere, tell us that its hue is by no means constant in the several pieces of the same building. This applies in full to the selection of colours. Thus in the Archers' Frieze, robes with yellow grounds alternate with others with white grounds ; but the patterns of both types have much variety. The painter would not be restrained even from the example of his own model, but introduced little variations as he went on and as fancy prompted him, whilst keeping within the same chromatic scale of tones. It is the same with the archers' beards, where a pale greenish blue alternates with a much deeper tone. If the artist took liberties even when he was obliged to keep within certain bounds imposed by the costume and the living form, Digitized by Google