Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume XIII.djvu/807

 POTTERY AND PORCELAIN 783 but no great progress was made for many years. The English delft was so like the more ordinary class of Dutch that it cannot always be distinguished from it. The first great ad- vance made in England was by Josiah Wedg- wood, who revolutionized the art in all Eu- rope. The Wedgwood family were potters at Burslem in Staffordshire. Josiah was born in 1730, became a potter at Stoke-upon- Trent, returned to Burslem in 1759, and bought a small pottery, enlarged his works, intro- duced from time to time great improvements in the art, erected a vast pottery at a point near Burslem which he called Etruria, whith- er he removed his works, and until his death continued his contributions to the practical and artistic improvement of pottery. He introduced new and beautiful styles of dec- oration on the old wares. In 1762 he made a new kind of pottery called cream ware or Queen's ware, composed of white clay and flint with a pure glass glaze. In 1766 he invented the black basalt ware. In 1773 he introduced a new paste, in which he pro- duced articles ornamented with cameo work, portraits, reliefs, &c. ; and this material he improved until it became his celebrated jas- per ware. Wedgwood was imitated and cop- ied throughout Europe. He employed good artists to make designs and moulds for his works, among whom Flaxman was conspicu- ous; he borrowed antique gems in immense number for facsimile reproduction, and his taste and skill were exercised in supplying thousands of varieties of artistic productions. The art advanced rapidly in England, and numerous potteries became famous. One im- mediate result of Wedgwood's discoveries in another. The most important mod- ern addition to these pastes is one the inven- tion of which is claimed by two great houses, Minton and Copeland, known as Parian bis- cuit. A mere enumeration of the various Eng- lish potteries and their products would require more space than can be given to this article. The natives of Peru, Central America, and Mexico made pottery in remote times, of coarse fabric, decorated with reliefs or additions of rude objects. They also made images of deities. Some of the ancient American work is of re- markable artistic ability. The Mexican, Cen- . 9. Wedgwood Cameo. was the introduction of new pastes, called stonewares, which occupy a position between pottery and porcelain, and for which Eng- lish potteries have become especially known. The hard paste- porcelain of China having been imported into Europe in the 17th cen- tury, and the art of making it discovered in the 18th, potters sought to imitate it in earth- enwares, and succeeded. The division of por- celain into two classes, soft and hard paste, becomes in examining English wares imprac- ticable, since the pastes are but different class- es of pottery, running up from soft pottery to hard porcelain in one direction and to opaque FIG. 10. Peruvian Funeral Vase. tral American, and Peruvian are of the same general description. The European settlers have not practised the art to any great extent. Bricks, tiles, and coarse earthenware have been and are produced in great quantities, and ordi- nary household earthenware has been made. Josiah Wedgwood, in a letter written in 1765, speaks of a pottery as then projected in South Carolina, but nothing further is known of it. Butter jars, jugs, and coarse gray wares with salt glaze, were made at Stonington, Nor- walk, and Norwich, Conn., and probably in other parts of the country, in the last century. No artistic attempts are known until about 1846, when a factory at Bennington, Vt., pro- duced figurines, vases, &c., in soft pottery, with brown and tortoise-shell enamelled sur- face. Porcelain. The Chinese had made pot- tery from a period of unknown antiquity. The invention of hard paste porcelain was but the discovery of a new paste which would pro- duce a translucent pottery, and this was found by uniting a peculiar clay, called Icaolin, with powdered feldspar, called petuntse. The ear- liest mention of porcelain in Chinese litera- ture indicates the date of this discovery in the 2d century B. C. No specimens of the ware of that time are known. Our knowledge of Chinese porcelain from- actual inspection be- gins with the llth or 12th century, at which time they made articles in a pure white paste, with rich enamel, the decorations consisting of raised work, or more frequently of delicate pat terns of fern and other leaves produced by tJ use of a paste of a slightly more opaque white. Contemporary with these, or very shortly aJ