Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 16.djvu/384

* POTTERY. 324 POTTERY. pit with the commonest fuel; sometimes smaller draw ijieces are used, ostensibly in a ceremonial way (for to the primitive potter the entire proc- ess of manufacture is ceremonial rather than merely industrial), yet in such manner as to test the progress of the Ijuriiing. HiSTOBY. The rough red dishes and pots made by peoples of prehistoric time and by tribes of low civilization all over the world are usually of a substance similar to common flower pots even when they are prettily modeled as to form and painted with circles and lines. Sim- ilar wares, but much more delicately de- signed, have been found in great al)undance on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean, in Greece, Crete, and Cypi'us, as well as on the mainland of Asia. Every explorer in these regions is likely to discover such pieces by the thousand, the sizes of them varying from lamps and toys weighing an ounce or two up to huge vases intended evidently for the storage of grain, oil, wine, etc., which may sometimes contain a hundred gallons. The form is nearly always simple and apjn'opriate and the curves are grace- ful and prettily combined. The decoration most commonly applied is in black, in bands drawn around the piece, evidently by the process of re- volving it while the brusli is held steady; but also by means of circles and other curves, parallel lines, checkers, and the like, and the repetition of the f.ylfot, swastika, and trisul characters. The red wares of the Kaffirs of South Africa or of the Indians on the Amazon do not dift'er essen- tially from the Levantine pieces above descrilied, which we generally call Greek or Graeco-Phieni- cian: hut they are never as fine either in shape or applied decoration. The black pottery of the ancient Etrurians is also inferior in locality to the pieces of the Eastern ilediterranean ; and the very similar black vessels found in the tombs of ancient Peru are still more grotesque in form, having but seldom any refined beauty. A step in the development of decorative pottery is taken when for circles and lines are substi- tuted figures of some significance. This step was taken at an unknown early period in Egypt and at least as early as B.C. 2000 in the Asiatic islands bordering upon the Jlediterranean. Greek pieces which may be thought to be of the seventh and eighth centuries B.C. are painted with deer, bulls, and beasts of prey, the rude drawings show- ing accurate observation. A still further ad- vance is in the painting of the surface with black, while the pattern is left in the original red clay, this process involving a verj' careful working of the black pigment nj) to a previously- drawn out- line. In the ruined temples of Cyprus, statues of life size, and even of heroic or colossal size, made of a hard baked pottery, ^^■ere found, much shat- tered, but of a certain Asiatic dignity of design. Rough and trifling studies of the human figure or of beasts and birds are found in great abundance; and the probability is that this making of fgures in representation of living creatures was only checked by the uneven shrinking in the furnace of the not skillfully prepared clay. The utmost refinement of manipulation is necessary in the making of statues and the like. The most important later development of the pottery of the jlediterranean nations was in the Greek painted vases which attracted so much at- tention in the eighteenth century under the name of 'Etruscan' vases, this name being given chielly because of the finding of these pieces in Tuscany at an early date. It is quite possible to distin- guish the real Etruscan-made pieces from those made by the Greeks of the mother country or by those settled in Sicily and South Italy. These Greek vases are generally classified nearly as the earlier and less artistic pieces have been described above, namely, those decorated with black figures on yellow and unglazed pottery, or with black figures on red, or with red figures on black, these two last named divisions being marked also by a certain lustre or glossiness of surface; then a much more elaliorate development of these two processes, the vases being adorned bv both these decorative processes and also by one or two other colors, such as a kind of purple or lilac, and, not uncommonly, gilding; and finally, vases whose bodies are covered with a white pigment or gesso-like mass upon which the painting has been done in red, black, and other colors, but which are very perishable as to their decoration, the white and the colors upon it flaking ofl' very easily. It is generally accepted as the finest of all epochs, that in which the figures are in red on a lustrous black background made by painting everything except the actual figures and their accompani- ments and attributes. These wares are found signed and their date can be ascertained with some accuracy, being fixed as of the fourth or third century u.c. It is evident that such wares are not decorative in the sense in which a Chinese porcelain vase is decorative. The presence of two or three such in a room does not afl'ect its general aspect very much. The colors are not glowing nor vivid and the jiiece does not seize the attention ; but the beauty of. these vases, drinking-cups, and phials is in their subtlety of form and in the suggestion given by their jiainted figures of extreme skill possessed by the draughtsman, as if he were of a race of artists doing such work as this on cheap clay bowls with only a small part of his strength. As, however, these paintings are the only ones that have come down to us from Grecian an- tiquity, they are imjiortant in an historical sense apart from their individual charm. Under the Romans a nearly red ware was made, called Saniian, from its resemblance to an earlier pottery made, or found, in the island of Samos. This Roman ware is of a fine smooth clay and its decorations are usually in relief: vine leaves and bunches of grapes, medallions, scrolls, ivy- leaf patterns of Greek form, and architectural ornaments like the egg-and-dart moldings. This ware is found all over the Emjiire and was evi- dently in very general use; but there is a doubt about the places of its manufacture ; nor has the clav been found anywhere in modern times in great abundance. Dr. Birch says, however, that traces of potteries have been found in man.v parts of Gaul, that is to say, in modern France, and along the Rhine, and that the sites of such pot- teries are numerous in Auvergne, as also in Spain, It is possible, of course, that the beds of clay were nearly exhausted before the complete disap- pearance of Roman civilization. In modern times, even if these are counted as beginning with the fall of classical civilization, there has been very little pottery of artistic in- terest which is not accurately to be classed un- der one of the terms referred to above. The most marked exception is that coarse ware adorned. by slip (see Slip), which is especially identified