Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/802

 778 POTTERY AND PORCELAIN as the history of man. Baking clay and making vessels is one of the first useful arts in the his- tory of all peoples, savage as well as civilized. Clay mingled with sand and wet with water can be moulded into almost any desired shape. Baking expels the water and fuses the sand and clay, and the result is a compact substance. This can be painted with any colors which will not change from heat, and being again baked, the forms will become decorated pot- tery. As this art, known as the ceramic art, affords opportunity for the modeller and the painter, and as it has been practised by all nations in all times, it furnishes the most im- portant illustrations of the taste, education, and comparative civilization of different peoples; and inasmuch as its result, pottery, is among the most indestructible materials known, and as pictures, names, stamps, and records of va- rious kinds are frequently placed upon articles of it, it becomes of the highest importance as a historic art. Still more; as in all nations where civilization has reached a high grade the best artists have often been employed in the decoration of pottery and porcelain, as well as the best modellers in producing forms of beauty, thus uniting the work of painter and sculptor, the art takes high rank among the fine arts. Hence great attention has been paid to it by archaeologists and by* lovers of the beautiful. Vast public and private collections have been made illustrating its history, and very high prices have been paid for rare speci- mens of peculiar historical or artistic quality. With the clay of which pottery is composed, sand, chalk, and other substances may be min- gled, and thus different varieties produced. The color of simple pottery depends on the in- gredients of the clay. Pottery is of two kinds, soft and hard. Soft pottery yields easily to the point of a knife, while hard resists it. Soft pottery melts at a much lower temperature of the furnace than hard. A common building brick is the simplest illustration of soft pot- tery, while a fire brick is the simplest illustra- tion of hard pottery. Soft pottery is usually divided in the study of ceramic art into four classes : 1, unglazed pottery, the result of baking clay without surface varnish or glaze ; 2, lustrous pottery, a name applied to a large class of objects which have a shining surface produced by a thin varnish or coating which reflects light, but which is sometimes perme- able to water ; 3, glazed pottery, which is cov- ered with a thick shining surface produced by the use of lead, or by the union of alkaline substances with lead in the clay ; 4, enamelled pottery, covered with a coating of enamel in which tin is employed (whence the word stan- niferous), and which being baked receives a surface decoration, of different substance from the pottery and more or less thick, which is of vitreous character, resisting acids and not permeable to water. The larger part of all ancient pottery is included in the first three classes. Most modern pottery, including Sara- cen, Italian, French, German, Dutch, and other ware, known as majolica and fayence, is soft pottery enamelled. Fayence is a term derived from Faenza, an Italian city where decorated pottery was largely made in the 16th century, and in its present general use includes all pot- tery enamelled or decorated with color. The French formerly used the word faience as including all pottery and porcelain, but the more modern French usage applies it to pot- tery only. Majolica is a word supposed to be derived from Majorca, where Saracen pottery was made, and is used to signify all fayence of Italian manufacture. Lately the word has been used as almost if not quite synonymous with fayence. The term "ceramic" includes all works in pottery, porcelain, and stone- ware, and is derived from the Greek Ktpa- /*of, signifying potters' clay, earthen vase, &c. Porcelain is a product of clay and sand, like pottery, but the clay is of a class which with the addition of other substances produces a translucent body. Pottery is always opaque, porcelain always translucent. Pottery breaks with a rough fracture, exhibiting the color of the clay; porcelain breaks with a vitreous fracture, white and clean. Porcelain is divided into two classes, soft paste and hard paste. Soft paste porcelain is made of fine clay, mingled in large proportions with silex and other substances. As the proportion of silex is increased the soft paste porcelain approxi- mates more nearly to glass, and the products of some factories have been but little differ- ent from opaque glass. Different pastes have been used by different makers. About 1840 Staffordshire soft paste porcelain was com- posed of Cornish kaolin 31, Cornish china stone 26, flint 2-5, and bones 40-5 per cent. Hard paste, called " true porcelain," depends for its manufacture on the use of a peculiar clay which the Chinese called Icaolin, the name by which it is now known, and which is min- gled with feldspar (called in China petuntse). All Chinese porcelain and much of the Euro- pean is hard paste. Soft paste porcelain can be distinguished from hard paste by its more readily yielding to an iron point, by its oily feeling to the touch, and by the general fact that articles of soft paste are glazed through- out, while articles of hard paste show un- glazed bottoms or bottom rims. A third kind of ware, occupying a place midway between pottery and porcelain, is known as stoneware. It is in fact a very hard pottery, and is com- posed of the same substances, with divers ad- ditions varying in different factories. His tory of Pottery. The oldest pottery kno) is Egyptian. The tembs at Beni Hassan Egypt, which date from about 2000 B. C., con- tain pictures of various Egyptian trades anc* industries, including a pottery, in which aj pears the potter's wheel in use for formii cups. The Egyptians therefore made soft pot tery in forms at this early period. They pos- sessed also an art which belongs to the class