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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

Gift of

HENRY ROGERS WINTHROP

YALE 1898

P.L.VLI.

Plate VIII.— ITALY.
Renaissance — Majolica of Urbino— Ewer. Oollection Baron Gustave de Rothsghild.

HISTORY

CERAMIC ART.

A DESCRIPTIVE AND PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY OF

THE POTTERY OF ALL AGES AND ALL NATIONS.

By ALBEET JACQUBMAET.

CONTAINING 200 WOODCUTS BY H. CATENACCI AND JULES JACQUEMART,
12 ENGRAVINGS IN AQUAFORTIS BY JULES JACQUEMART,
AND 1000 MARKS AND MONOGRAMS.

TEANSLATED BY MES. BUEY PALLISEE.

" L'histoire de la ce'ramique, c'est l'histoire de l'humanite' toute entiere."
¦I. Lelewel.

LONDON:
SAMPSON LOW, MAESTON, LOW, AND SEAELB,
CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET.
1873.
All rights reserved.

LONDON :
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,
STAMFORD STKEET AND CHARING CEOSS.

PEEFACE.

In giving M. Jacquemart's learned and comprehensive 'History of
the Ceramic Art ' to the English Eeader, the question arose whether
to make a free or literal translation. Tlie latter has been decided
upon, though at the risk of retaining much of the French idiom.
Any attempt to modify the enthusiasm and nationality of the
Author would take from the spirit of the work. F. P.
Kensington, October 1873.

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

Introduction ..... . . .1
Technology . . . 4
Book L— ANTIQUITY.
Chapter I. — Egypt. — Theogony — Glazed Pottery . . .11
„ II. — Jud^a ... . . . . 19
Book II —EXTREME EAST.
Chapter I. — China — Theogony — Symbols — Government — Manners —
Ancient Pottery — Porcelain .... 22
„ II. — Japan. — Manners — Government — Pottery — Porcelain . 78
III.— Corea . . .105
Book III.— ASIATIC CONTINENT.
Chapter I. —Assyria — Babylon — Asia Minor . . . . . .110
„ II. — Persia. — History — Manners — Pottery — Porcelain . . 118
,, HI. — India — Manners — Pottery — Porcelain 153
Appendix to Book III. — Maghreb — Hispano-Moresque — America . 170

Book IV.— WEST.
Chapter I. — Antiquity — Greek Ceramics — Roman Ceramics .
„ II. — Middle Ages 
„ III. — Renaissance — Italy — France
Appendix. — Stone Ware . ...
Chapter IV.— Modern Times — Faience— Porcelain, soft and hard

194231 241 343 347

LIST OF STEEL ETCHINGS.

I. China : Green Family — Vase, "Lan celle" Form, Historic Subject.
Collection Fleuriot ... . to face 68
IT. China : Porcelain, coloured upon Biscuit. Teapot, with raised
handle. Collection Barbet de Jouy. Teacup in the
form of a Flower. Collection Jacquemart to face 72
III. Japan : Chrysanthemo-p^ionian Family. — Jar, " Potichb," with the
Dog of Fo, and a Carp leaping out of the Water.
Collection Baron Gustave de Rothschild . to face 88
IV. Japan : Artistic Decoration — Saucer with Rich Enamelled
Ground, and Medallion representing the Goddess
Kouanin. Collection Jacquemart . to face 92
V. Asia Minor : Faience — Votive Lamp from a Mosque, XVth.
Century. Collection Scheffer to face 116
VI. Persia: Soft Porcelain — Gaegoulette, decorated with the
Simorg. Collection Jacquemart . to face 128
VII. Italy . Renaissance — Majolica of Urbino — Hunting Bottle with
Historic Subjects. Collection Baronne Salomon de
Rothschild . ... toface 266
VIII. Italy : Renaissance — Majolica of Urbino — Ewer. Collection Baron
Gustave de Rothschild. . . frontispiece
IX. France : Moustiers — Sugar Castor, Blue Decoration. Collection
E. Pascal . . toface 430
X. Spain: Talavera de la Rbyna — Faience — Ewer. Collection Comte
de Liesville . . . to face 530
XI. France: Sevres— Soft Porcelain — Vase, • commemorative of the
Battle of Fontenoy. Collection Le Double toface 550
XII. Saxony: Dresden— Hard Porcelain — Ewer in Relief, with
Figures in Violet Camaieu. Collection Doctor Piogey toface 598

* * Also 200 Woodcuts and upwards of 1000 Marks and Monograms.

HISTORY

OF THE

CERAMIC AET

<**:°

INTEODUCTION.
A philosopher, seeking among the products of human industry the
one which would best enable him to follow, through the course of ages,
the progress of intelligence, and give him the approximate measure of
the artistic tendencies of man, would select incontestably the works of
' the potter.
Clay, from its plastic nature, lends itself to the idea of modelling,
and gives scope alike to the liveliest nights of imagination and the
most persevering efforts of industry. Abundant in its variety, easily
procured, and, consequently, devoid of intrinsic worth, it derives its value
solely from the elegance of form imposed upon it by the potter, or from
the richness of decoration given to it by the artist.
By studying the ceramic works of people yet in their infancy, we
are able to explain the progressive march of the nations of antiquity,
and thus to strengthen the inductions suggested by reasoning by the
study of facts actually in operation. The savage tribes of the present
day make, with the most primitive materials, vases which at first sight
might be mistaken for the first essays of the Greeks, the Etruscans, or
the Incas ; they employ the same processes, invent the same modes of
decoration, confirming that most elementary law of all philosophy, that

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

similar ideas proceed from similar conditions, and develop themselves
more or less rapidly according to given rules.
On the day when man, walking upon the clayey soil, softened by
inundations or rain, first observed that the earth retained the print of
his footsteps, the plastic art was discovered; and when, lighting a fire
to warm his limbs or to cook his food, he remarked that the surface of
the hearth changed its nature and its colour, that the reddened clay
became sonorous, impervious, and hardened in its new shape, the art
was revealed to him of making vessels fit to contain liquids.
Let any one observe the curious waifs of the Age of Stone — that is,
the works of the earliest ages of the world — or the rude attempts of the
savages of Polynesia, or those of the interior of Africa, and it must be
acknowledged that things have everywhere had a common origin, and
that similar experiments have everywhere led to analogous results and
progress. But in these attempts, suggested by necessity, and aided by reflection,
we have the history of industry or manufacture seeking exclusively the
amelioration of the physical conditions of life ; whereas art, in its
highest sense, exerts its empire on the mind, inspiring men with the
idea of expressing their thoughts by outward signs, of manifesting their
faith by raising to the Deity temples embellished with symbolic
figures, of adorning their dwellings, their arms, their vessels with
sculptures fitted to please the eye, and, better still, to elevate the mind
by their moral signification. And it is so entirely this stamp of moral
teaching which inspires veneration for ancient monuments of art,
that those only which bear its impress have been preserved to us, all
ages and nations agreeing in consigning to destruction works of vulvar
fabrication. Among the relics of antiquit)', we hardly. find any pre
served except such as are worthy of surviving their authors, and of
forming the archives of intellectual _ development. In confirmation of
this assertion, let us inquire in what countries progress has been most
rapid— in which has art displayed its greatest triumphs ? Assuredly in
those where spiritualism has quickened the genius of the people.
Impressed with this truth, which we soon shall demonstrate by facts, we '
need no longer be surprised, in comparing the works of the ancient
civilisations, to find the choice of the materials to be in inverse ratio

INTRODUCTION.

with the progress of time ; China, Japan, India, Persia, and Egypt
using stoneware and porcelain long before Greece covered with her
elegant decorations the coarse, porous earth now used only for the
commonest purposes.
We shall not then, in this treatise, be able to follow rigorously what
may be called technical indications, or base our researches upon the
progressive order of materials and processes. In tracing our subject
from the dawn of civilisation to the present time, we will take the baked
earths, whatever they may be, endeavouring rather to lay before our
reader the moral causes and historic influences which have modified the
ideas and styles of the artists, than the scientific improvements to
which may be attributed, in part, the changes introduced in ceramic
manufacture.

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

TECHNOLOGY.
When treating on a special subject, the profound study of which
requires an extensive acquaintance with the sciences of chemistry and
geology, the only means of enlightening without fatiguing the reader,
is to make use of a language so clear and so precise, as to dispense
with endless dissertations and repetitions. This language, which has
long existed in ceramic art, was created by the talented Alexander
Brongniart, as first set forth in his valuable book, published in 1844.
We propose, therefore, adopting the nomenclature of the learned
director of Sevres, giving as briefly as possible the different orders.
of pottery and the varieties of decoration, as referred to in these pages.
Pottery is divided into two great classes. The first, soft paste
(d pate tendre), may be scratched with a knife, is argillaceous, sandy,
and calcareous, and generally fusible at the heat of a porcelain furnace.
The second, haed paste (a pate dure), cannot be scratched with a
knife, and is subdivided into two sections : the first comprises opaque
pottery, argilo-silicious, and infusible; the second, translucent pottery,
argilo-silicious, alkaline, and fusible.
First Class.
Soft Paste (Poteries a pate tendre).
The first order contains the unglazed baked clay without gloss
on its surface (terres cuites a surface mate), plastic, properly so called,
which goes back to the highest antiquity, and of which the use is
again found in infant civilisations. The decoration of this pottery
is by moulds, or by incising the soft paste. It is fired at a very low
temperature, and fused at 40° of Wedgwood's pyrometer,
The second order comprises lustrous pottery (poteries lustrees), with
a thin, silico-alkaline glaze ; that is to say, composed of silex, rendered
fusible by the introduction of an alkali, either potash or soda, and
coloured by a. metallic oxide, introduced originally in its composition, or
which it receives in the paste it covers.

TECHNOLOGY.

In the first case it is thick, as the glaze or enamel of the Egyptians
and that of many Oriental tiles.
In the second, it is so thin that it cannot be detached from the body
of the piece ; this is the lustre of the Greek and Roman pottery.
Lustred pottery fuses at the same degree as the preceding.
The third order comprises the glazed pottery (poteries vernissees) ; of
soft, porous, opaque, and coloured paste, covered with a thick, trans
parent and coloured plumbiferous glaze.
This order comprises a series of interesting specimens, in suc
cession, from Greek antiquity to tlie Renaissance and modern times.
As regards art, it bears a close connection with the following.
The fourth order is composed of enamelled pottery (poteries emaillees),
called common faience (in opposition to fine faience), majolica, faience
with stanniferous .enamel. The paste is composed of potter's clay,
argillaceous marl, and sand ; the clay is washed. This opaque paste,
coloured or whitish, of earthy fracture, is overlaid with a plumbo-
stanniferous, opaque glaze, which constitutes the enamel.
It is twice fired. First, for thirty-six hours in the biscuit oven, at a
temperature which extends from cherry-red to a whitish-red ; and after
wards in enamel, at a temperature a little more elevated : the firing
would be simple were it not for the great difficulty of laying the
enamel on the crude paste.
This enamel, which is of irreproachable whiteness when the
elements which compose it have been well chosen, may be decorated by
two different processes. The painting in the porcelain furnace (au
grand feu), i.e., of a heat equal to 4717° of Fahrenheit, and in the
enamel furnace (a la moufle ov petit feu).
The process, in the first case, is this : when the piece, transformed
by a first firing into biscuit, has been dipped into the liquid enamel, to
which it attaches itself by absorption, it is left to dry ; then upon the
hardened surface the artist traces, in vitrifiable colours, the figures and
ornaments he desires. This painting upon the raw enamel requires
great manual dexterity, for it is almost impossible to retouch upon a
substance easily reduced to powder, which rubbing scales off and water
dilutes. Placed in seggars with tripods, the ware receives its second
firing, which incorporates the painting and the glaze, and gives it a
softness which no other process can impart.
It may be as well to point out, on the other hand, that there is no
difficulty in painting upon a baked glaze with the colours of the
porcelain furnace ; one can paint, efface, return to the work, blend

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

the tints with a brush, scratch out the lights, &c. When the painting
is finished, the piece is returned a third time to the kiln, so that the
enamel, again become fluid, by the action of a heat equal to that which
had fixed it on the vase, gives to the colours the breadth of touch and
richness which characterise the first process.
Muffle or enamel painting owes its creation to another order of
ideas. It is a decoration upon enamel, the excipient which bears it
being entirely lost sight of. Thus they painted upon enamel at Limoges
and elsewhere before it was thought of spreading oxide of tin upon
pottery. In this style of painting a large variety of colours may be
used ; all the metallic oxides which are not decomposed by their com
bination with lead may contribute in forming the pallet of the artist.
Tin and lead enamel, susceptible of softening at a low temperature,
admit of exposure to the grand feu, tints which, for hard porcelain,
would be classed among the colours of demi-grand feu, but the tints
applicable to the muffle are still more numerous and admit of a perfect
finish and faultless modelling.
These are not perhaps the qualities that one would wish to meet
with in earthenware, therefore we ought to say that muffle painting upon
earthenware has had for object the placing European industry in a
condition to compete, as long as possible, against the invasion of Oriental
porcelain ; and when the native fabrics of soft porcelain began to yield
to the affluent the translucent porcelain so ardently sought after, muffle
painting was able to furnish to the many, products bearing at least
the appearance of this porcelain. This is so true, that earthenware thus
painted is often designated under the name of earthenware porcelain.
Second Class.
Haed Paste, Opaqoe Potteey (Poteries a pate dure opaque).
The fifth order, and the first of this class, comprises fine earthen
ware, pipeclay or " cailloutage." Its white paste is composed of plastic
clay, of silica or quartz ground fine, and a little lime ; its crystalline
glaze is plumbiferous. The paste is fired at a temperature of from 25°
to 100° of Wedgwood's pyrometer, and is effected in England in
fifteen hours ; the glaze requires only from 10° to 12° to fuse it. Eine
earthenware is most frequently decorated by the muffle ; the oldest
specimens, those made in Erance in the sixteenth century, are orna
mented by incrustation.
The sixth order is formed by the stonewares (gres eerames); their

TECHNOLOGY.

dense, very hard, sonorous paste is composed of plastic clay combined
with sand, silica, and stoneware cement. The glaze, when it exists, is
saline ; it is a sub-silicate of soda produced on the surface of the piece
by sea-salts volatilised in the kiln. Sometimes it consists of a thin
plumbiferous glaze, containing quartz, felspar, and barytes ; sometimes
it is a glaze produced by the slag of a forge, pumice, volcanic scoria?
or felspar. The firing requires a temperature of from 100° to 120°
of Wedgwood, and extends from four to eight days ; it is simple in
the case of salt glazes, but double when a plumbiferous is applied.
Haed Paste, Teanslucent Potteey (Poteries a pate dure translucide).
The seventh order comprises hard pottery (porcelaine dure). Its
fine paste is composed of two principal elements : the one argillaceous,
infusible, this is kaolin, either alone or associated with plastic clay or
with magnesite ; the other, arid, fusible, is composed of felspar or other
stony minerals, such as silicious sand, lime, gypsum, either taken
separately or combined in various manners. The glaze (couverte)
consists of quartzose felspar, sometimes alone, sometimes combined
with gypsum. The temperature of firing rises to 140° of Wedgwood.
The paste softening at that temperature, the placing it in seggars
(encastage) requires excessive care.
The eighth order is formed of natural soft, or English porcelain
(porcelaine tendre naturelle). The epithet natural is applied to it
because its body is partly composed of argillaceous kaolin, and peg
matite (kaolin caillouteux) ; the other elements are bones yielding
phosphate of lime, plastic clay, calcined silica, and quartzose sand.
The glaze is composed of borax, minium, carbonate of soda, and flint
glass. The firing of the biscuit lasts about fifty hours ; that of the glaze
seventeen or twenty. Soft English porcelain has a great analogy to
fine earthenware ; the biscuits of Wedgwood, qualified as stoneware,
are of soft paste porcelain.
The ninth order comprises artificially soft or Erench porcelain
(porcelaine tendre artificielle). This porcelain is one of the most in
genious of ceramic inventions ; its marly, fine, dense paste, in texture
almost vitreous, hard, and translucent, is completely fusible at a high
temperature ; it is in approaching this temperature it assumes the
eharming translucence which has given it its generic name, although
it has nothing in its elements in common with Chinese porcelain. Its

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

vitreous, transparent, plumbiferous glaze is very hard ; it is a glass
composed of silica, alkali, and lead. It is laid on by dipping (arrosage).
As in fine earthenware, it is first fired in biscuit, but as the paste
sometimes passes into softening, the placing of the pieces iu the seggars
requires the most minute precaution, and some require placing upon
hollow earthen plaques, called renversoirs, which are made to preserve
the form of the pieces, and at the same time to allow the shrinkage
(retraite de la pate) consequent upon firing. This firing requires
seventy-five to a hundred hours ; the glaze only thirty.
' It is to be observed that in giving the characteristics of the seventh,
eighth, and ninth orders, we have said nothing of the decoration which
may be applied to porcelain. This question, in fact, must be treated as a
whole, for under a common name, the three classes contain very different
potteries. There is also a distinction to be made between the colour
of the porcelain and the muffle furnace as regards hard and soft porce
lain : in this last, colours susceptible of supporting the porcelain furnace
would be classed among muffle colours if it were a question of hard
porcelain. Let us first lay down this essential principle: the decorations of
translucent hard pottery are generally placed above the glaze ; they
adhere to it without incorporating themselves ; the only exceptions are
the colours de grand feu, which go either under or in the glaze, and
bear without alteration the temperature of 140° of Wedgwood.
The glaze of the soft pastes being, on the contrary, fusible at a low
temperature, the colours incorporate themselves in it, and assume a
softness and unctuousness which cannot be obtained in pottery of the
seventh order.
We will not speak here of fluxes, vitrifiable substances that are
added to metallic oxides and to metals to cause them to adhere to
the excipients ; these are questions to be studied in special works.
The colours de grand feu for hard porcelain are : cobalt blue,
chrome green, the browns of iron, manganese, and chromate of iron,
yellows obtained by oxyde of titanium, and the black of uranium. One
might add to these colours, but of second temperatures for soft porce
lain, the violets, reds, and browns of manganese, copper, and iron which
decorate some pieces from China.
Enamel colours are fired at a temperature of which the maximum
does not attain the degree of fusion of fine silver (300° to 825° of the
pyrometer) ; they are divided into hard and soft ; the " hard " glaze at a

TECHNOLOGY.

much higher temperature than the " soft/' or colours for painting, and
they can receive other colours, burnished gilding and silvering.
The metals used to enrich porcelain are gold, silver, and platina.
Metallic lustre is a kind of decoration in which the colours, often
iridised, participate a little of the metallic lustre, or in which the
metals, extremely divided and laid on in the manner of colours,
acquire their lustre by the firing, without requiring to be submitted to
the process of burnishing.

EGYPT.

BOOK I.
ANTIQUITY.

CHAPTER I. '
EGYPT.
There is no branch of human knowledge we can treat upon without
first turning our looks towards Egypt. The cradle of all civilisations,
this singular country has the privilege of ruling over ages, as its
monuments overrule all known architecture by their imposing masses,
Nations whose annals go back to the highest antiquity, have they
anvthing to oppose to the wondrous dates inscribed in the chronology of
the Memphian kings ? At the period when first appear the fabulous
heroes, and earliest legislators of the ancient societies of the extreme East,
Egypt, firmly seated upon the basis of her immutable civilisation, already
counts several dynasties, and shows in the arts incontestable master
pieces. It will suffice to recall the statue exhibited at the International
Exhibition of 1867, representing King Schafra, and another, carved
in wood, of Eamenkhepar, an honest public functionary, of meek
and gracious countenance, dating 3850 years, before the Christian
era. This last, however, is the work of the first empire; it is the
manifestation of an art seeking above all the exact imitation of nature,
and mor6 occupied in the form than in the thought. This sensualistic
school continued until the sixth dynasty, then, after an eclipse arising
from causes unknown, the eleventh dynasty inaugurated a new art, of
which the development is easily arrived at, and in which the religious
thought pervades. Unhappily, this thought, at first beneficent, and
which stamps upon the works it inspires that grand and ideal
character to which the sensualistic school cannot attain, ended in

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

rendering art stationary by submitting it to canon law, and thence
forward arrested the march of progress.
It might be thought that the special object of this book has nothing
in common with these high philosophic speculations. We must, on the
contrary, penetrate ourselves with the truths acquired for science by
the luminous researches of our Egyptologists, in order to understand
the singular spectacle offered to us in the accumulated treasures of
the Louvre. Contrary to the usual order of things, it is not among
common potteries of coarse earth, scarcely decorated with lines and
squares in brown tones, that we must seek for the first appearance of
Egyptian ceramics. It is, on the contrary, among lovely pieces tinted
with turquoise blue, or pale green, modelled with the carefulness of a
jewel, and sometimes heightened by a fine enamel work ; of this a
proof is furnished in the objects found in the tomb of Queen Aah-
Hotep, mother of Amasis, and contemporary of the power of Joseph
in Egypt. And redescending from this distant period .to the new empire, one
constantly remarks, in this fine pottery styled Egyptian porcelain,
the expression of religious sentiment and the representation of the most
revered symbols ; these are the divinities of every form, varying from
the size of a jewel to that of a middling-sized statuette. There is
Pasht, the solar goddess, with the head of a lioness; and Ea, the
sun god, with the head of a sparrow-hawk,
creators of the yellow Asiatic and Egyptian races ;
Athor, the Pharaonic Venus, with cow's horns
and ears of the same animal ; Anubis, with
jackal's head (Fig. 1) ; and a thousand others,
forms borrowed of the ape, ram, hippopotamus,
vulture, and ibis, wearing on their heads the
pschent, or Egyptian crown, or surmounted by
the solar disk.
The objects modelled with the greatest care,
and for which the artist would appear to have
reserved all his energy and his personal liberty,
appear to be certain sacred emblems concealed
under a real form ; such are the vulture, symbol
of divine maternity, . the loyal sparrow-hawk,
fruits, flowers ; the nilometer, eye of Horus, &c.
Nothing, in short, is a matter of indifference in this country, where
moral and philosophic thought seek to impose themselves under every

Fig. 1.

EGYPT.

13

Fig. 2.

form, and to penetrate into every class. When the potter creates the
most simple vase, he takes his model from the lotus, sacred flower
of the Nile, which symbolises the goddess of the north, as the papyrus
plant represents the goddess of the south ; bursary, hemispheric or
bell-shaped,' this vase imitates more or less completely the graceful
outlines of the divine flower; under
its rounded base (for most of the
Egyptian vases are without feet)
we find imitated, either in relief or
graved in the paste, the divisions of
the calyx, and above the fleshy petals,
with their longitudinal ribs; if the
surface is too developed to admit of
this exact and minute copy, two zones
superposed offer reduced figures of
the flowers symmetrically alternating,
the one expanded, the others in bud
(Fig. 2). It is easy to show the im
portant part assigned to a plant found
in all Oriental theogonies. Primitive
religions, pure as they may be in
spirit, cannot fail of affecting a kind of pantheism. Framed to speak
to the uncultivated masses, they symbolise everything in order to
carry back the thought from the outward and manifest form to the
producing cause, the symbol to the thing symbolised.
Such is Egypt as a whole. At the summit of its Pantheon soars an
only God; immortal,, uncreated, invisible, and concealed in the in
accessible depths of His essence, He is the creator of heaven and earth ;
He made all that is made, and nothing has been made without Him.
Yet He has agents who are His own attributes personified, and who
become so many gods under visible forms, inferior divinities, limited in
their parts, although participating in all His characteristic properties.
"Thus," says Jamblicus, "the Egyptian God, when considered as that
secret force which brings all things to light, is called Ammon ; when
he is the intelligent spirit which comprises all intelligence, he is
Emeth ; when it is he who accomplishes everything with art and truth,
he is called Phtha ; and lastly, when he is the good and beneficent god,
they name him Osiris." The lotus, placed in the hand of tbe divinities,
upon their head-dress and their seat, is the homage rendered to the
beneficent effect of the waters and the sun upon the slumbering earth ;

C/5T£!l'.CCl. HPrtCHOLI C.
LOTUS VASE (MUSEUM OF THE
LOUVRE\

14

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

it is the symbolisation of the annual evolution of the seasons, causing
generations to succeed generations, and recalling life where appeared to
be the immobility of death.
A representation not less frequent than that of the lotus is the
scarabseus or sacred ateuchus, attribute of Phtha and the symbol of
creation. One would naturally wonder how an insect which everyone
views with disgust, and of which the vulgar name can scarcely be given,
could have become an object of worship to the priests of 'Memphis. It
is because they discovered in the habits of the scarabseus wonderful
symbolic details. Upon sandy hills they saw it penetrate into animal
excrements, and select a fitting mass, which it kneads into a .ball, after
having deposited in it its egg, and then draws it between its hind
feet until the heat has hardened its surface ; then it hides its ball in the
sand, leaving it to be hatched by the sun ; within it takes place the birth
and transformation of the larva, which, later, a perfect insect, will go
out to accomplish in its turn the work of reproduction. The scarabseus,
therefore, imitates in miniature the work of the creator. The ball con
taining the egg is the earth, animated by the vital germ, and under
going, under the influence of the solar heat, its natural evolution.
There is a connection between the creator and the work produced, and
this connection has sufficed to raise an obscure insect to the rank of
the most eloquent of symbols ; it represents Phtha himself, the creator
of the stars ; he who has developed the fruitful thought of the supreme
god. Under the name of liheper (creator) the scarabmus was given
to the soldiers in exchange for their oath of fidelity, and worn by them
as a finger-ring.
When we find it witli its wings extended (Fig. 3) it is a funereal

SACRED SCARAMJUS.

ornament; and h becomes the symbol of the eternal revival of the sun
which each morning, having overcome darkness and evil, reappears

EGYPT. 15
radiant in the eastern horizon ; thus the soul, purified by the passage
through death, will be reborn to shine for ever in life eternal.
One might suppose the sun itself to have been the object of direct
worship, seeing the winged disk under which rise the two serpents
urceus, royal symbols in Upper and Lower Egypt ; but if this emblem
figures on the thresholds of the temples, on the funereal and votive
monuments, and even upon the vestments of the priests and kings, it is
because it is the attribute of him to whom men address ardent and
poetic prayers in the style of the following : " Glory to thee, Ra, in thy
morning shining ! Tmou, in thy setting ! I adore thy divinity in every
season, under all its divers names. . . . Tlie father of mankind, who
illumines the world with his love; may he grant me to be shining in
heaven, powerful in the world, and to contemplate every day the face
of the sun. Thou illuminest, thou shinest, appearing as the sovereign
of the gods."
Studied in this elevated point of view, all these representations in
silicious earth become interesting. If Thoth, the Mercury of Egypt,
revealer of the sciences, the divine reason which ordains, appears to us
with the head of an ibis, although he has for symbol the cynocephalus,
the ibis itself, destroyer of noxious reptiles, could not rest indifferent to
the inhabitants of a country where venomous serpents multiply so
abundantly. The jackal, the vulture, these agents of the Egyptian
police, who, by causing dead animals to disappear, prevent pestilential
miasmas from pervading the air, ought they to pass unperceived by
those whom they have the providential mission to protect ? Un
doubtedly, the custom of honouring and giving divine worship to
useful beings announces the infancy of the mind. Yet there is some
thing touching in this indirect homage rendered to the foresight of the
Giver of all things. Nor should we forget that the jackal was the
emblem of Anubis, guardian of the tombs ; that the vulture was regarded
among the ancients as female, and to produce spontaneously, which
made her a symbol of maternity ; therefore they represented Souvan, the
mother above all, by a woman with a vulture's head.
The Egyptian terra-cottas all come from the excavations made
among the tombs, and are constantly found with the most precious .works
of glass-making, enamels, and jewels ; it must, therefore, be admitted
that they occupied an important rank in the esteem of the higher
classes of society. The fine pottery of which we most specially speak is
composed of ninety-two per cent, of silica ; its paste is pure, close, dense,
and fitted to preserve the finest reliefs, the most delicate impressions.

i6

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

It is most often covered with a thin glaze, coloured by oxides of copper,
sky blue, or pale green ; sometimes the paste itself is coloured, but
it is more often white. What is the nature of
this pottery ? It is hot a porcelain, for it wants
its translucency. Neither is it an earthenware.
It holds a middle place between porcelain and
stoneware, and resists without fusing the tem
perature of the hard porcelain kiln, the highest of
all. If their general colouring appears at first
uniform, it must be attributed to certain symbolic
rules rather than to the incapacity of ancient
 . . artists, whom Brongniart accuses of inexperience.
I ]}^^t^y^/J One finds, in fact, in the rich series of the Louvre,
pieces with white glaze, heightened with patterns

incruste 1 or painted in black, blue, dark violet,
green, and even red ; the green and the copper
blue blend with cobalt blue, black, brown, violet
of manganese, white and yellow. What proves
besides, with what certainty the potters operated these combinations,
is that we meet with Egyptian porcelains where the diverse tints
Fi„ 5 occupy very confined spaces and contrast
strongly the one with the other; a blue
statuette has the face coloured with
golden yellow ; dark blue bracelets bear
upon their surface hieroglyphics reserved
in sky blue, or vice versa. Sometimes the
as been engraved ; then a bright enamel has

oviform bottle (museum
of the louvre).

CRUCIFORM BOX (MUSEUM
OF THE LOUVRE).

object to be decorated
filled the cavities to a level of the surface or to pass beyond it slightly.
Here, then, is complete science, consummate experience, and precision
of execution. With regard to the form of vases properly so called, they are
essentially refined ; oviform long-necked bottles (Fig. 4) ; graceful
lenticular phials with royal cartouches (Figs. 6 and 7) ; cruciform boxes
ornamented with the lotus (Figs. 5 and 8) ; lamps (Figs. 9 and 10), cups,
and if we are to give credit to the paintings of the tombs, many other
forms, as complicated as they are elegant, would have been made at
certain epochs, and the use of vases would have been as multiplied in
civil as in religious life.
At the present time, we are able to distinguish three ages in the
objects of silicious earth ; remote high antiquity furnishes in general

EGYPT.

17

products barely lustred, resembling a porcelain biscuit, and these covered
with an excessively thin coating; middle antiquity is manifested by objects
less pure in workmanship and covered with a thick glaze that might be
mistaken for enamel ; the era of the Ptolemies is to be recognised by a
Fig. 7.

LENTICULAR PHIALS (MUSEUM OF THE LOUVKE).
very marked Greek influence ; silicious pottery gives place to a coarse,
soft paste, sometimes painted on the bare surface, sometimes covered
with a glaze. This fabrication is continued in the second and third
centuries of the Christian era, under the Eoman domination.

Fig. 8.

Fig. 9.

m

•S^Sttf'v"

CRUCIFORM BOX (MUSEUM
OF THE LOUVRE).

3~CftTENflCCI .~SiL*i
LAMP IN BLUE ENAMELLED EARTHENWARE.

Thus are formed the two branches mothers of European pottery;
the silicious earth, which first spread over the countries of Asia, was
brought back by the Persians and Arabians to Europe as the source of our

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

enamelled earthenwares and of our soft porcelains ; the glazed terra
cotta, soon brought to perfection by the Greeks and Romans, was carried
by their commerce into all the civilised countries, and destined to
enthrone itself for centuries among us, and to survive even the discovery
and the revival of hard paste potteries, more beautiful and of greater
usefulness. Fig. 10.

LAMP IN VIOLET ENAMELLED EARTHENWARE.

THE HOL Y LA ND—J UDAiA . 19

CHAPTER II.
THE HOLY LAND—JUDMA.

The history of Egypt unites itself intimately with that of the Jewish
people, and the reader would not forgive us if we neglected a nation of
whom the sacred books consecrate the memory, now that we have just
occupied ourselves with its persecutors.
A pastoral and nomadic nation, the numerous descendants of Abraham
would more naturally direct their attention to agrarian industries than
to the arts of the imagination. If the Bible did not show it, one would
guess it in reminding oneself that an invasion of shepherds nearly
destroyed Egypt, and repressed for several centuries the impulse of
art and civilisation; these only resumed their progress after the
expulsion of the strangers under the reign of Amasis.
We have not, therefore, to seek if there had been a Hebrew art
before the period of the contact of the Jews with the Egyptians ; it is
after the persecution and deliverance that true civilisation was esta
blished in Judsea.
Called by Joseph to the country of the Pharaohs, the Hebrews were
at first well received, and were able to initiate themselves promptly in
the habits of an advanced civilisation ; but when this powerful minister
died, when his benefits began to disappear from the memory of men,
the new comers were only regarded as invaders; they were reduced to
slavery, and the sacred books show us them making bricks and working
at the construction of the city of Rameses. The Almighty raised them
up an avenger in the person of Moses ; he encouraged their complaints,
defended them against their aggressors, and, having slain an Egyptian,
fled into exile to escape the anger of King Menephtah, son of Rameses II.

c 2

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

At the death of this monarch, and during the troubles which
followed his reign, Moses returned and began an open warfare which
ended by the passage of the Red Sea (b.c. 1491).
The rest is known: the long wandering in the Desert, and the
incessant complaints with which the delivered people assailed their
liberator. But that which one ought to remark is the deep impression
the contact of less than a century with people of a different religion
had left on the hearts of this primitive nation. The pantheistic
semblance of the Egyptian belief was translated by them into the
grossest idolatry. When Moses went up into Sinai to receive the law,
the first precept of which was " Thou shalt have no other gods before
me," he found, on going down from the mountain, a people intoxicated,
dancing round a golden calf that they had set up for idol, in unconscious
remembrance of the honour rendered to the mystic figure of Apis.
Thus one must admit a priori that Hebrew art was one of the branches
of the Egyptian stock modified in this sense, that all figuration must be
avoided which could lend itself to idolatry : " Thou shalt not make unto
thee any graven image."
And yet this proscription of images is rather the act of the legislator
than of the Almighty himself, since the ark was, according to Divine
command, to be guarded by the figures of seraphim, and the censer of
purification was supported by oxen.
A precious fragment, gathered in Judsea and preserved in the
Louvre, proves that the pottery of the Jews was similar to that of the
Egyptians ; the same silicious earth, enamelled in blue, which furnished
amphorae and cups, ribbed phials and lamps. If these evidences are
¦ more rare than anywhere else.it must be attributed to the luxurious
tendencies of the Israelites, who, in every age, sought the precious
metals, gems, jewels, and vases of value. It was with the earrings, and
bracelets of their women and their children that they formed the
golden calf. It was with similar offerings that Moses, at a later period,
found means of setting up the tabernacle, of making the ark, the seven-
branched candlestick, and various utensils for religious use, of which
the making was confided to the talent of Bezaleel and Aholiab, the
artists designated by the Almighty and filled with His wisdom. Not
withstanding the calamities that befell the Jewish nation, a taste for the
precious metals has always been retained. Marangoni relates that when
Cyrus, king of Persia, allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and
rebuild the Temple, he restored to them the vessels of gold and silver
carried away by Nebuchadnezzar, and which, according to Ezra,

THE HOLY LAND—JUDsEA.

amounted to the number of five thousand four hundred, among which
were thirty phials of gold and one thousand of silver, twenty-nine
knives for sacrifice, four hundred and ten silver cups, and one thousand
other vessels.
Although this only relates to things consecrated to religious uses, yet
it is difficult to admit that a people so given to the works of the gold
smith had turned its attention to the humble productions of. the potter's
art. The mission of the potters would rather have been to meet the
daily requirements of the masses, and those works which were not art
have necessarily disappeared in the course of time. Let us therefore
consider ourselves fortunate that some choicer fragments escaped from
the common fate permit us to judge of the material, to recognise the
form and style, and to assimilate with certainty the Egyptian and
Jewish schools.
The words of the Bible, strengthened by the monuments collected in
Judsea by the learned M. de Saulcy, prove that bells, with pomegranates
and grapes, and other subjects borrowed from the vegetable world,
formed the basis of Hebrew ornamentation; they desired to dis
tinguish themselves from the Egyptian nation, and withdrew from
idolatrous symbolism, condemned by hieratic law. Judsea then is the
true cradle of the iconoclastic movement, and the rule adopted by this
shepherd people, transmitted, no doubt, to neighbouring nations, and
rendered still more strict by the creation of Islamism, became later the
basis of Arabian art, and the cause of its exuberant ornament.

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

BOOK II.
EXTEEME EAST.

CHAPTER I.
CHINA.
Section 1. — Theogony — Symbols.
The study of this great empire, lost, as it were, at the end of the world,
has undergone many vicissitudes, and still presents great difficulties.
When Marco Polo's lively and truthful narrative appeared, it excited
great incredulity ; when our missionaries succeeded not only in pene
trating into the heart of the country, but also in gaining the favour of
the sovereign, they sought to enlighten us by their publications ; they
did more, they sent us over the most precious works of art, those
marvellous porcelains, from that time so ardently collected, lacquer
work, and furniture in carved wood, sculptured with heroes and divinities.
Notwithstanding this, the seventeenth century still viewed the Chinese
in a grotesque light, and created with the most ridiculous complacency an
ideal portrait of this people, who have so faithfully painted themselves
in their own works in the possession of every collector.
Now, they will say, we are no longer in darkness, the light of truth
shines on the extreme East ; China is opened — yes, opened by violence.
This country, so proud of its civilisation, has found herself forced to
lower her barriers before our cannon ; but she will not take the less
precautions to avoid moral contact with the barbarians she fears. She
will conceal from us her manners, hide her laws, and confine her relations
to what the treaty exacts, and nothing more.
Thus, what have we learned ? What have we seen ?
Many have gone thither without preparation, without any fixed

CHINA. 23
object, impelled by vulgar curiosity ; most have returned without
information, hastening to present to the public contradictory and
fantastic appreciations, such as might be expected in the absence of all
criterion by which to form a judgment, and each individually modifying
his impressions according to the nature of his education and his tem
perament. Therefore we derive nothing new, nothing sure, as
regards China ; and what we can best do to endeavour to know it, is
to depend upon old writers, the written history of China being the most
ancient in the world.
Certainly we do not go with some authors, who make the period of
Pwan-Koo, the first man, the Chinese Adam, ninety-six millions of
years before the Christian era. Disposer of the universe, this almost
divine being had to divide the heavens from the earth, and find upon
the latter a corner in which to establish himself, disputing it with the
elements. After him came beings with the body of a serpent, the
head of a dragon with a girl's face, and the hoofs of a horse ; dragons with
human faces, &c. It is at the end of these extravagant creatures that
mythologists place the appearance of man such as we know him, and
the accession of Fou-Hi, who, B.C. 346S, traced the Pa-Kwa or eight
diagrams of Fo, gave rules to music, established laws, instituted marriage,
and, in short, laid the basis of social order.
In the year 2698 appeared Hoang-ti, a still more remarkably civilising
prince; under his reign the mariner's compass, the sphere, and the
calendar were invented, as well as ships and navigation ; money replaced
exchange in kind ; a tribunal appointed to write history was instituted
at the same time as the cycle of sixty years appointed to^mark periods ;
" arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy, came to enlighten the world,
and foreigners, affected at the sight of such wonders, rendered homage
to the sovereign of the Empire of the Middle."
Heaven could not fail to reward such great services. The end of
Hoang-ti is thus related in the Chou-King : One day the emperor, sur
rounded by his ministers, was thinking over the things which had been
done, when an immense dragon, descending from the clouds, alighted at
his feet ; the sovereign and those who had assisted him in his labours
seated themselves upon the back of the sacred animal, who flew up
with them into the heavens. Some ambitious courtiers, trying to
associate themselves in this glorious apotheosis, seized the beards of the
dragon ; but these appendages snapped, and precipitated those who
had hun°- on to them. Hoang-ti, touched with pity, bent forward,
and his bow fell. This relic has been carefully preserved, and on

24

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

certain days of the year, the pious repair to the temple to do him
honour. These fables, mingled with historic facts, have one touching side,
they show in the Chinese people a deep intelligence, and a wholesome
appreciation of the services rendered to them by illustrious men.
Destitute of spiritualism, with vague and imperfect notions of the
Divinity, and an idea still more obscure of the soul and of the end of
man, this singular people could not do better than to place in heaven its
first legislators, its great philosophers and its inventors of things really
useful. Loui-tseu, wife of Hoang-ti, taught the ladies about her the
art of rearing the silk-worm, of spinning the cocoons, and weaving the
silk into a tissue fitted for clothing ; in time, this industry became one
of the chief sources of prosperity to the Celestial Empire. The Chou-
King was then written, and it was too late to associate Loui-tseu in the
triumph of her royal spouse, she was therefore classed among the genii,
and is still honoured under the name of the " Spirit of the mulberry trees
and of silkworms."
We have just stated that, like most primitive religions, the Chinese
theogony is confused and difficult to apprehend. It admits, first, of
two principles, the yang and the yn (Fig. 11),
the one active, the other passive. The yang,
creative force, matter in motion, has under its
dependence heaven, and all that is male and
noble. The yn, inert matter, plastic, the female
principle, rules the earth and the inferior animals ;
Ti, the spirit of heaven, Che, the spirit of earth
who presides at all its productions, constitute
then, in fact, two divinities corresponding to the
two principles, and although there is question of
a Chang-ti, a supreme being little defined, we
see in this being only a superior deity in
the celestial hierarchy, and not a sole, omnipotent
creator. The Chinese religion is therefore nothing
but an extravagant pantheism which recognises
and invokes the gods of thunder, rain, wind, and clouds; protecting
spirits of seeds, trees, and flowers ; eight immortals ; three stewards and
five emperors of heaven, independent of the ching or saints, that
is to say, legislators, philosophers, and poets.
Further, this religion divides itself into two very distinct branches,
each founded by an illustrious individuality. Let us first speak of Lao-

Fig. 11.

VASE ORNAMENTED WITH
THE TWO PRINCIPLES AND
THE EIGHT DIAGRAMS.

CHINA.

25

tseu, and of the fabulous legends spread about his birth. The father of
the philosopher was only a poor countryman, who remained single until
the age of seventy ; he married at last a woman of forty, who conceived
under the influence of a great falling star ; she remained pregnant
eighty-one years, and the master whom she served, tired of a prodigy so
prejudicial to his interests, expelled her without pity. As she was
wandering in the country she reposed under a plum-tree, and brought
into the .world a son whose hair and eyebrows were white ; the people,
struck with the fact, designated the new-born child by the name of
Lao-tseu, which signifies old man child.
This is the mythic account. In reality our Chinese is quite
another being ; living in the seventeenth century before Christ, when
disorder reigned in China, he took refuge in the simple and retired life
of a learned man. He studied long the works of the sages of antiquity,
and appears even to have gone to India to initiate himself in the
doctrines of Buddha; from the meditations of these abstract theories
issued the celebrated treatise called ' Tao-te-king/ the book of
supreme reason and virtue. In the state of social dissolution in which
the empire then was, such a work may have been of good service, if it
had not been too ideal, and if his precepts
had not led men to ascetic and solitary
contemplation rather than to social re
sponsibility. Hence the book became the basis of
an absurd religion, the followers of which,
called Tao-sse, fell into the most extra
vagant reveries. Magic, the search after
the drink of immortality, introduced
themselves into the practice of the Tao,
and obscured its morals. The deified
author of the book was considered as
anterior to the created world, and to have
contributed towards accomplishing its
destinies. It is as such, that is in the
state of Chang-ti or supreme God, that
pottery most often exhibits him ; some
times he will be represented under the
simple form of Cheou-lao, the God of
longevity (Fig. 12). In every case he appears gentle and smiling, his
venerable head, monstrously high on the upper part, with white hair

Fig. 12.

CHEOU-LAO, THE GOD OF LONGEVITY".

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

and eyebrows; mounted or leaning upon a stag, he will often hold
in his hand the fruit of the fabulous tree, Fan-tao, which blossoms
every three thousand years, and only yields its peaches three thousand
years after. If he is surrounded by mushrooms, ling-tchy, which
give immortality, and wears a yellow robe, he will be recognised
as the supreme disposer of earthly things and the eternal ruler of the
seasons. B.C. 551, that is about half a century after Lao-tseu, Confucius, or
rather Koung-tseu, the real legislator of the empire of the Middle, was
born. Struck, like his predecessor, with the moral disorder of the
masses, he applied himself to making men better by bringing them
back to the observation of ancient customs, by codifying the laws and
reviving the remembrance of the sages of antiquity. His virtues
grouped around him many disciples, his doctrines spread with his
reputation, and he became, notwithstanding his modesty, head of the
Chinese religion. In truth, Koung-tseu shows himself very reserved in
his spiritualism ; he directs the homage of men less to the Divinity itself
than to the manifestation of his power. The renewal of the seasons ;
the return of the sun with its vivifying power in spring ; the fecundation
of the earth ; the harvest ; these are his chief religious festivals. The
others, more frequent, have for object to perpetuate the memory of
virtuous emperors, great philosophers, and other benefactors of hu
manity; penetrated besides with the materialistic tendencies of the
Chinese nation, he seeks to obviate them by placing a respect for family
ties among the first of social duties. He finds at the same time a means
to unite the past and the present, the infinite and the visible world, by
creating this worship of their ancestors, now so firmly rooted in the
masses, and which has been the principal obstacle to the introduction of
Christianity in China, the ecclesiastical authorities having considered it
as a real idolatry.
These then are the two religions, or rather the two religious sects, that
exist in the Celestial Empire ; the first speculative, and lending itself, in
default of a spiritual basis, to all the extravagances of superstition ;
the other purely philosophic, and condemning its followers, through
exaggerated respect for tradition, to leave things as they found them, and
to entertain a horror of progress. There is a third mixed up with it
later, Buddhism, of which the abstract principles, adopted in part by
Lao-tseu, certainly known by Confucius, have acquired a notable
importance in China.
From a mixture of these doctrines arises a singular iconography,

CHINA.

27

difficult to explain, and which has often occasioned the most extra
ordinary assumptions. The figure of Confucius, either sitting or standing
in a tranquil attitude, attired with the cap of the man of letters and
holding either a manuscript roll or the sceptre of good fortune, should
enter into the list of portraits ; he is, like Buddha (Fig. 13), the personi-

Fig. 1.3.

H'.CATF.NACCl^

Fig. 14.

FO, OR BUDDHA,

fication of Indian philosophy. But there are real divinities of which the
character remains undetermined ; such as Kuan-in (Fig. 1 4), a graceful
veiled female with downcast eyes, sometimes sitting and holding- the
sou-chou (rosary), at others, standing, carrying a child and leaning upon
a stag or the sacred bird. Our missionaries first designated her as the
Chinese virgin, but finding her mounted upon a lotus, her breast
imprinted with the sign swastika r^1, which denotes salvation and gives
a religious consecration to everything marked with it, we must re
cognize it as a Buddhic configuration. Kuan-in is one of those
symbolic and hermaphrodite divinities that we identify sometimes with
the sun, sometimes with God, supreme and creator. This is indicated
by the Indian swastika, called by the Chinese " wan-tse" — the ten
thousand things, the creation.
Another god, purely Chinese, for he is the personification of
sensualism, is Pou-tai (Fig. 15) ; corpulent, his chest uncovered, mounted
on or leaning upon the wine-skin which holds his terrestrial goods ; his
face, with half closed eyes, beaming with an eternal laugh. This
mass, rendered more heavy by good living and indifference, the old

28 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

travellers brought over under the name of Pou-sa— "the god." It is that
of contentment, and one must be thoroughly imbued with Chinese notions
to admit it under this denomination. In the Celestial Empire, a
functionary claims so much the more merit as his robust corpulence
the better fills the arm-chair in which he is appointed to sit. Pou-tai
has been considered by some travellers as the god of porcelain.
Fig. 15.

POU-TAI, GOD OF CONTENTMENT.
We might increase the Chinese pantheon by describing the God of
War, with his prominent belly, red and threatening face, his lance with
cutting edge ; the Goddess of the Talents, who lets fall pearls, and a
thousand other secondary divinities who preside over the birth of plants
and the principal phenomena of nature. We shall have occasion to
mention them in the course of the following pages.
Let us approach other symbolic configurations which are closely
united with the Chinese religion. The first men of the Hundred
Families, as history styles the ancient nation, were they eye-witnesses
of the last convulsions of the globe ? will they have seen the monstrous
reptiles, the incredible animals of which Cuvier has restored to us the
image from their fossil remains? One would almost be tempted to
affirm it on examining their dragons. Gigantic saurians with four
members armed with powerful claws, and terminated by a frightful
head, scaly and strongly toothed. They distinguish several ; the Long,
dragon of heaven, a being especially sacred ; the Kau, dragon of the
mountain, and the Li, dragon of the sea. The dictionary of Khan-hy
contains, at the word " Long," the following description : " It is the
largest of reptiles with feet and scales; it can make itself dark or
luminous, subtile and thin, or heavy and thick ; can shorten or lengthen
itself at pleasure. In the spring it rises to the skies, in the autumn it
plunges into the water. There are the scaly dragon, the winged

CHINA. 29

dragon, the horned and the hornless dragons, and the dragon rolled
within itself which has not yet taken its flight into the upper regions."
The Chinese give to several immortals the figure of the dragon ; the
apparition of this supernatural being only takes place, according to the
Chou-King, under extraordinary cicumstances, such as the birth of a
great emperor, the beginning of a reign propitious to men ; then the
dragon flies through the air, frequents the palaces and temples, and
appears to the philosophers.
The Ky-lin is also an animal foretelling good ; its body is covered
with scales, its branched head resembles that of the dragon ; its four
delicate feet are terminated by cloven hoofs resembling those of a stag ;
it is so gentle and benevolent, notwithstanding its formidable aspect,
that it avoids, in its light step, to tread under foot the smallest worm.
The Dog of Fo, or of the Corea, which must not be confounded
with the preceding fabulous being, has his feet armed with claws, a
grinning face with sharp teeth, and a curly mane ; its general aspect
would cause it to be taken for a lion modified by oriental fancy. Old
curiosity hunters called it a chimera. The Dog of Fo is the habitual
defender of the thresholds of temples and of the Buddhic altars ; it is
very often represented.
The Sacred Horse. History relates that at the moment Fou -hi was
seeking to combine the characters proper to express the various forms
of matter and the relation between things physical and intellectual, a
wonderful horse came out of the river, bearing upon his back certain
signs, of which the philosophic legislator formed the eight diagrams
which have preserved his name.
The Fong-hoang, a singular and immortal bird, lives in the highest
regions of the air, and only approaches men to announce to them happy
events and prosperous reigns. It is easily recognised by its caruuculated
head! its neck surrounded by silky feathers, and its tail partaking of
the argus pheasant and the peacock.
A study of these fantastic beings is indispensable in order to
appreciate the decoration of the Chinese vases; thus, in remote
antiquity, the sovereigns had 'adopted as symbol the Fong-hoang, and
caused it to be represented upon things for their use ; later, the dragon
having been substituted, the sacred bird became the emblem of the
empresses. The imperial dragon is armed with five claws ; it is equally the
emblem of the emperor's son and of the princes of the first and second
rank. Princes of the third and fourth rank bear the four-clawed

yr HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
dragon; but those of the fifth, and the mandarins, have for emblem
, a serpent with four claws, called Mang.
Independently of these sacred and fantastic beings, of whom it has
just been question, certain ordinary animals have also a symbolic
value ; we have already mentioned the white stag and the axis deer,
which generally accompany the god of long life"; alone, they express
longevity, as does also the crane ; this last, it it said, prolongs its existence
to extreme limits, and bestows the most touching care on its aged
parents until their death. The mandarin duck passes as being so
attached to its mate that it dies of grief if separated, hence it has
become the type of conjugal fidelity and of a happy union.
The twelve tchy periods of the cycle of sixty years are represented
in China by animals corresponding with the twelve moons; in other
words, they are the signs of the Chinese zodiac. Their names disposed
after the " rumb " are as follows, beginning by the north : November,
the rat ; December, the bullock ; January, the tiger ; February, the
rabbit ; March, the dragon ; April, the serpent ; May, the horse ; June,
the ' hare ; July, the ape ; August, the hen ; September, the dog ;
October, the wild boar.
We might extend this nomenclature by adding the symbolic plants,
but reserve what we have to say on flowers in reference to the decora
tion of vases.
There is another symbolism upon which we have to speak, that of
colours and forms. Nothing in China is left to caprice or fancy ; it is not
at the will of him who builds a house' himself to choose the colour
of the tiles with which it is to be covered, or to paint the walls and the
doors according to his own taste ; proofs of this, swarm in the literature
of the Chinese. We read, in the romance of two literary young girls,
this description of an imperial villa : " From top to bottom, one saw only
green enamelled bricks. .... The walls which formed the inclosure
shone with the lustre of vermilion." A bonze, questioned upon the
name of the possessor of this residence, replies, " You see there a country
house of the emperor. Have you not remarked that the roof of the
building is covered with green enamelled tiles and that the walls of the
inclosure are painted red? WThere is the magistrate, the prince, or
the count who would dare to usurp such a decoration ?"'
The most ancient of the Chinese books have preserved to us the laws
of this symbolism. The primary fundamental colours are five in number
corresponding ^ ith the elements (water, fire, wood, metals, earth,) and
with the cardinal points: ''Red belongs to fire, and corresponds with

CHINA. 31
the south ; black belongs to water, and corresponds with the north ;
green belongs to wood, and corresponds with the east ; white to metal,
and corresponds with the west," says the commentator of Li-Ki. The
rites observed under the three dynasties (Hia, Han, and Cheou, from
B.C. 2205 to 264 of our era) have always been the same, and the people
have unanimously followed them. If anything has undergone modifi
cation, it is only that white and green characterised such and such
dynasty. We find, too, in the Tcheou-li (the rites of the Tcheou, from the
twelfth to the eighth century before the vulgar era), " The work of the
embroideries in colours (hoa-hoei) consists in combining the five colours.
The side of the east is the blue side. The side of the south is the red
side. The side of the west is the white side. The side of the north is
the black side. The side of the sky is the side bluish black. The side
of the earth is the yellow side. Blue combines itself with the white.
Red combines itself with the black. The blackish blue combines itself
with the yellow.
" Earth is represented by the yellow colour ; its special figure is the
square. The sky varies according to seasons.
" Fire is represented by the figure of the circle.
" Water is represented by the figure of the dragon.
" The mountains are represented by a hind.
" The birds, the quadrupeds, the reptiles are represented according
to nature." Singular as they appear, these prmciples find their immediate
application. The Ming dynasty had adopted green for their livery.
The Ta'i-thsing took the colour of the earth, or yellow; the vases where
these colours predominate will then be, in some sort, dated and specialised
as for their use.
With regard to forms, let us bear in mind, things subject to the
male principle (yang), the sun, fire, and all the phenomena of the most
elevated moral order, are represented by that which is circular and oval,
and by unequal divisions. Those wherein the female principle (yn), the
moon, the earth, and things of an inferior, are represented by the square
or rectangle, and by equal divisions. The plan of a vase, the observa
tion of its angles, or the divisions of its decoration, will enlighten us
upon its religious destination and upon the rank of him who is allowed
to make use of it ; for in the social hierarchy certain functionaries are
restricted to the worship of spirits of the second order, while others have
the right of rendering homage to the superior powers ; to the emperor.

32 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

alone belongs the high office of performing certain acts, such as the
sacrifices to Chang-ti, the welcoming of spring, the opening of tillage.
In uniting these curious facts to those furnished by colours and the
symbolic beings, a vase becomes an historic monument easily explained,
and worthy at the same time of the study of the philosopher.
Section 2. — Goveenment — Language.
In a country where religion is reduced to a respect for all that is
ancient and traditional, one is not surprised to find an absolute and
theocratic government. The emperor, a sacred person, Son of Heaven,
as he is called, is head of the spiritual and temporal power, and
delegates a part of his authority to superior agents, united in tribunals
or administrations ; these again transmit it to the governors of provinces,
who direct, in their turn, the civil and religious administration.
Such a system of government would appear to have been created
for the benefit of the aristocracy. Far from it ; in China, the access to
high places is easy, for public competition opens to the learned the
various careers of the public •administration. No one can arrive at being
prefect or governor of a province if he has not passed through the
academic degrees ; only, subject to one common rule, instruction can
and ought to furnish learned men for official posts, but it does not
prepare them for any special service ; so that an academician (han-lin),
puffed up with the success of his poetry, may suddenly be called upon
to take the command of an army. We do not, therefore, wonder that
China, divided by parties, conquered and reconquered by various
dynasties, has finished by yielding to. the law of the stranger, notwith
standing its old civilisation and countless population.
The Empire of the Middle was, besides, condemned to premature
stagnation and to a certain abasement by the nature of its language
and its literature.
According to the most ancient evidence, Fou-Hi invented the art of
writing to replace the" old system of knotted cords; with this object he
traced the eight koua or symbols, which could not long suffice for tho
wants of a progressive society ; thus 2698 years before Christ, Thsang-
hie, minister of the right of Hoang-ti, received an order to develop the
rudimentary invention of Fou-Hi.
The writing of Thsang-hie appears to be the Kou-wen. identified by
some authors with the Kho-teou writing, in the tadpole form ; it was
purely figurative, and was so modified by the caprice of the innovators

CHINA. 33

of these ancient times that, in his book of 'Sentences,' Koung-tseu
complains bitterly of the forgetfulness of the ancient forms.
The Emperor Siouen-Wang, of the Tcheou dynasty (b.c. 826), felt
the necessity of a reform, and charged Tcheou, president of the council
of historians, to determine the characters to be thenceforth adopted ; but
it was not until fifty years later, when Chi-hoang-ti became sole
sovereign in China, that they were able to regulate the use of the Ta-
tchouan of Tcheou ; they wished also to bring it to pern ction by giving
it a fictitious symmetry ; this attempt gave birth to the Siao-tchouan, of
which the use was confined to seals.
A revolution was soon to be accomplished; paper was invented,
replacing leaves of trees and tablets overlaid with varnish, upon which
they wrote with a pointed instrument; the new material required the
use of a fluid ink laid on with the brush ; now this process led by neces
sity to a more cursive style of writing. Tching-mo wrote three thousand
characters, conforming himself to the number and disposition of those
already in use. This elegant writing became the official writing of the
public officers and tribunals, hence its name, Li-chou, or writing of the
public offices.
Under the Emperor Youen-ti (b.c. 48-33), a eunuch of the palace
invented cursive characters which were used for petitions and reports
submitted to the sovereign, which, improved by a celebrated calligrapher,
soon came into general use under the name of Thsao-chou.
But this capricious short-hand, difficult to read on account of its
ligatures and abbreviations, lost favour ; it had caused a great disturb
ance in national education, and they saw the necessity of returning to
the use of exact signs. The Li or office writing, slightly modified and
regulated so as to accommodate itself to the composition of printed books,
was established under the denomination of Kiai-chou ; it is this which is
used in the present time. Its first invention appears to be due to Sse-
tchong, king of Tchang-Kou, who lived under the Tsin (a.d. 265-419).
We will give later, types of these divers characters ; but, before
hand, we should say a few words on the general system of the written
Chinese language, and of the , modifications it has undergone. In the
beginning it was purely figurative, but one understands that under
its ideographic form it could only lend itself to the expression of simple
ideas, naturally very confined. Besides, it was impossible to describe
all the objects of nature, to express proper names, the affections of the
human soul, all its desires, all its thoughts ; it was necessary, therefore,
to find a new element which would render the sounds of spoken

34 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

language. This was clone by phonetics. The principal idea thenceforth
was expressed by a fundamental sign called the key, to which was
added a second group solely indicative of the sound. Yet let us
distinguish between the double characters destined to represent com-
bined ideas, and those of which we have just exposed the principle. In
the first, the bringing together two figures naturally suggests the complex
idea to be expressed; thus, in uniting the images of the sun and the
moon, one forms the character ming, which signifies light, brilliant;
the figure of the tree twice repeated expresses a forest, Un ; a inouth
and a bird signify singing, ming ; the figure of water and that of an eye,
tear.?, to weep.
In the phonetic system the sign li, which alone and figuratively
signifies the ground on which one has established one's dwelling, a
determined space, loses this meaning on joining itself with the generic
image of fishes, the group takes the sound li of the last sign and forms the
name of the fish li, the carp ; the figurative character of the tree, joined
to the sign pe, white, becomes the name of the cypress tree, pe. If the
Chinese had pushed this invention to its last consequences, they would
have arrived at the discovery of the syllabic and even alphabetic
elements, and the progress of their literature would have had no
limits. But, while increasing by phonetic combinations the numbers
at first rather restricted, of their characters, they remained subjected
to tbe natural shackles of all figurative languages.
One word now upon the various dynasties which have governed
China, and upon the manner of qualifying the members of these
dynasties. In the Celestial Empire, a man who passes from private to
public life may modify his name so as to make it more in harmony with
his new functions, or to express the dignities with which he is invested ;
but the sovereign, on ascending the throne, must lose his individuality
in order to let himself be confounded in the great power they call the
dynasty. After his death, and by a judgment analogous to that in
usage among the Egyptians, his actions are weighed, and according to
their merit is created the denomination under which he will take his
rank in the hall of his ancestors. Thus, when the illustrious founder
of the Ming dynasty was still an obscure individual his name was Tchou-
youan-tchang; when he led the troops who soon proclaimed him their
chief, they called him Tchou-kong-tseu ; become master of Kian°--nan,
he took the title of Ou-koue-kong, that is, prince of Ou ; lastly, on his
commemorative tablets, he is designated as the great ancestor of the
brilliant dynasty, Ming-tai-tsou.

CHINA.

35

Now, to take the place of the personal name which he renounces,
and which cannot be pronounced without incurring the pain of death,
the sovereign assigns to the years of his reign a significant epithet which
serves, to designate himself. Ming-tai-tsou, emperor by the strength of
his arms, chose, to express his power, the words Hong-wou, great
warrior ; his successor, who succeeded without contest, and was able
to repose his sword and cause science to flourish, called himself
Kian-wen-ti, the emperor restorer of letters. This is the Nien-hao.
The limits to which this book is confined do not permit of our giving
a general list of the Nien-hao ; we will confine ourselves to mentioning
the names and dates of the various dynasties, adding a complete
chronology of the two last, whose names may be met under porcelain.
The first dynasty, that of the Hia, begins under the eighth cycle,
the year B.C. 2205, with the emperor Yu.
The second, that of Chang, begins B.C. 1785, with the reign of
T chin g- tang.
The third, of the Tcheou, is inaugurated b.c 1183, by Tching-tang.
The fourth, quite ephemeral, that of the Thsin, begins b.c. 255,
under Sian-wang.
The fifth, of the Han, instituted b.c. 202 by Ta'i-tsou-kao-hoang-ti.
The first year of the Christian era, Hia-ping-ti ascends the throne,
and gives to the year of his reign the name of Youan-chi, original,
beginning. In a.d. 220, the empire is divided into three kingdoms (San-koue).
The sixth dynasty, that of the Tcin, begins in 265, with the emperor
Wou-ti. The seventh, of the Pe-Soung, is inaugurated in 420 by another
Wou-ti. The eighth, of the Tsi, begins in 479, with Kao-ti.
The ninth, of the Liang, dates from 502.
The tenth, of the Tchin, begins in 557.
The eleventh, of the Soui, is inaugurated in 581 by Wen-ti.
The twelfth, of the Thang, begins 618, with Kao-tsou.
The thirteenth, called the posterior Ling, arrives in 907. This is
the first of the five little dynasties.
The fourteenth, of the posterior Thang, succeeds in 925.
The fifteenth, of the posterior Tsin, begins in 936.
The sixteenth, of the posterior Han, in 947.
The seventeenth, of the posterior Tcheou, dates from 953, and ter
minates this period of the history.
D 2

36

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

The eighteenth, that of the Soung, begins in 960 and ends in 1279,
after having been in rivalry with two others.
The ninteenth, that of the Kin, reigns in 1125, simultaneously with
the Soung.
The twentieth, of the Yonan, begins in 1260.
The twenty-first, of the Ming, ascends the throne in 1368; the
following is the list of its various nien-hao :

&m

1368, Hong-wou, surnamed Tai'-tsou.

*«

1399, Kian-wen,

,, Choui-ty.

*iL^

1405, Yong-lo,

., Tching-tsou.

%m

1425, Hong-hy,

„ Jin-tsoung.

fit

1426, Siouen-te,

„ Siouan-tsong.

-%I

1436, Tching-tong,

„ Ying-tsong.

£%

1450, King-tai,

„ King-ti.

m *

1457, Thien-chun,

„ Ying-tsong.

KPi

1465, Tching-hoa,

„ Tchun-ti.

Wl

1488, Hong-tchi,

„ Siao-tsong.

mn

1506, Tching-te,

„ Wou-tsong.

*as

1522, Kia-thsing,

„ Chi-tsong.

i if

1567, Long-king,

„ Mou-tsong.

M T%

1575, Wan-li,

„ Chin-tsong.

m^

1620, Tai'-tchang,

„ Kouang-tsong.

&R

1621, Thien-ki,

Tchy-ti.

mg

1628, Tsoung-tching

,, Hoai-tsong.

ft&

1614, Hong-kouang,

„ Fou-wang.

^s

1646, Long- won,

„ Thang-wang.

nm

1646, Chao-wou.

jg%

1647 Yongli,

,, Kouei-wans:.

CHINA.

37

the same.
Chi-tsou.
Ching-tsou. Chi-tsong.
Kao-tsong. Jin-tsong.

Twenty-second dynasty of the Tai-Thsing :
/ffi J^ 1616, Thien-ming, surnamed Ta'i-tsou.
flS^. 1627> Thien-tsong, „ Tai-tsong.
f^^jf: 1636, Tsoung-te,
$& 'SB. 1644' Chun-tcni'
&£0 1662, Khang-hy,
pp ^fe 1725, Yong-tching, „
Jfejgt 1736> Kien-long,
Eg. 52 1796, Kia-king,
^Vg 1821, Tao-kouang.
JS J^ 1851, Hien-fong.
The last emperor was reigning when the French troops took Pekin
and the English burnt the palace of Youen-ming-yuen, the Versailles
of China. To make use of these chronologies we must see through the prin
ciple. Chinese writing is generally traced in vertical columns, succeeding
each other from right to left; when the phrase has to be expressed
in a horizontal line, the characters must be read from right to left, as
in this inscription drawn up in Siao-tchouan:
81 li in IliS
Long Kien Thsing Tal.
Tai thsing kien long nien tchy, which must be explained in an inverse
sense : Tchy, made ; nien, during the period ; kien long nien-hao, from
1736-1795 ; Tai-thsing, of the very pure dynasty, or of
the dynasty of the Tai-thsing. But it is rare that
dynastic inscriptions take this form ; more often, they are
arranged in two columns of three characters, or in three
columns of two ; thus, ta ming-Tching hoa-nien tchy, reads :
Nien tchy, made during the period of the Tching-hoa, of
the great dynasty of the Ming. Tai-thsing kien long nien
tchy translates as it is said above. It is useless to add that when the

38 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Nien-hao is arranged lengthways, that is to say, in two lines of three
characters, the name of the year becomes divided, the first sign ending
the line on the right, and the second beginning that of the left.
When the dynastic inscription has to be reduced to four characters, it
is composed solely of the Nien-hao, properly so called, and of the formula
Nien-tchy ; in other terms, in the two preceding examples one would
obtain the form in four characters by suppressing the first column
reserved for giving the name of the dynasty. This method is without
inconvenience for the Ming and the Thsing, since there is no similar
name repeated either in one or the other.
This legend is often to be met with : Ta-ming nien-tchy ;
^ /V the name of a period extending from 457 to 464, under the
.SlL, RH Pe-soung; it is therefore false; or perhaps we should see in
it an inscription of the Ming which the writer would have
involuntarily contracted by omitting the name of the year.
We have given above the inscription of Kien-long in Siaotchouan ;
it is the legend which has put us in the way of reading the seals, until
then unexplained in France,:; and difficult to decipher even for the
Chinese who are not paleographists. In contracting this legend by
groups of two characters we have succeeded in recognising

IfUl^flfl this seal, which is very common on works of art. Now, as
^ ll 111 dating from tlie ei8'nteeiltb- century the greater part of the
Nien-hao are thus expressed, we have sought to determine its
form, and we have arrived at framing this list of the Mongolian sovereigns
in chronological order :

Young-tching, 1725 to 1735.
Kien-long (see above), 1736 to 1795.
Kia-king, 1796 to 1820.

7?(g Tao-kouang, 1821 to 1850.
BJAJ fr^ Hien-fong, 1851 to
52

CHINA. 3g
To fulfil the promise previously made of giving an example of the
different kinds of Chinese writing, it remains to us
to represent some types of the Ta-tchouan. It is
very common to meet on vases the two votive
inscriptions fou, happiness, and cheou, longevity.
This last word is very variable in its form, and
further on (Fig. 16) will be seen a vase covered with its various ancient
or regular forms.
Here is an inscription still more important, which
we find on vases adjudged in recompense of services
rendered to the state : Jou-y pao tsun — precious honorary
vase given in remembrance (of public services).
Section 3. — Manneks — Use of the Vases.
China offers this peculiarity, that the vases have their share in public
and private ceremonies, special names derived from their use, and deter
minate forms according to their official part ; it is therefore important
to throw a rapid glance upon this picture of manners, where the inquirer
may find some information.
The monuments for public worship are the Than, large altars in
the open air ; the Miao, large temples, and the Thse, small temples.
It is there the functionaries perform, on certain days, the ceremonies for
which the officer of the aromatic plants, yo, mixes these with the wine of
libation, and that the Tchang jin prepares the vases I, Loui and Yeou.
But every Chinese has at his own house a place reserved for private
worship, where one often sees the figure of Fo, that of Kuan-in, of
Tsao-chin, the spirit of the hearth, or of Chin-nong, that ancient king
who taught men to cook their food. What one never fails to see there
are the tablets of their ancestors.
The altar, upon which the holy things are laid, is a table more or
less elongated, generally set before a religious picture, and furnished
thus : tings or vases for burning perfumes ; vases that accompany
them, containing a small shovel and little bronze sticks for stirring
the fire ; cups or vases to contain the consecrated wine, other cups, tsio,
of particular form, for libations ; candlesticks and jars (potiches), or
those trumpet-shaped vases we call beakers (cornets) filled with flowers.
Nor is the number of the vases arbitrary ; the emperor uses nine, the
nobles seven, the ministers of state five, and the learned three. It is
well known that formerly the material of the cups was graduated ; those

40 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

of the emperor were of gold, of the ministers copper, and of the learned
of brass. Since greater liberty has been established, and its artistic
merit has raised porcelain to a level with the richest metals, we have
seen circular tings with three feet, in crackle, in China white, or in
porcelain of the " Green family," which must have been used therefore
by the dignitaries who render homage to the higher powers.
J^J ^^ We may cite, for example, simple bowls or shallow cups
t^ -g. 0f which the pretensions to rival the metal perfume-
^- , .^ burners is shown by an inscription traced under the foot:
*y Hi Tina of rare and extraordinary precious stone — Ting chi
tchin khi chi pao.
Here the hyperbole is evident, and causes little surprise in a people
who seek to deceive even their gods by offering them rolls of gilt
paper instead of real money.
We have no doubt that the teapots decorated with the figure of
immortals, bowls representing the worship rendered to the stars San-
hong, pieces in which the Fong-hoang and the Ky-lin are surrounded by
clouds and thunder, are destined to replace upon the altar the different
vases mentioned above.
Nor is porcelain of less importance in every-day life ; in China,
politeness, respect for rank and age, are the first virtues of the well-edu
cated man ; then hospitality is practised with a care, one might almost say
minuteness, of which we can form no idea in our active and busy life ;
every man of the world is expected to have a reception-room, the walls
of which are either decorated with rolls, inscribed with sentences or
covered with good paintings ; the furniture consists solely of etageres,
laden with vases of flowers and dishes of fragrant fruits ; it is good
taste to choose the style of decoration so as to flatter the guest and
harmonise with his functions and the acts of his life. If it is a warrior,
the paintings and vases will show him the Chinese wars, or the great
generals of ancient times, battles, reviews, tournaments, all those bold
compositions that the famille verte treat in its finest specimens.
Is it a learned man, a poet? he will see everywhere the figures of
Koung-tseu, that of Pan-hoei-pan, a woman celebrated as a writer and
historian, or the singular image of Li-tai-pi, a drunken rhymer classed
in the rank of demi-gods, and who, according to fable, was raised up to
heaven upon a monstrous fish.
Another not less important part vases are called upon to fill is that of
being given as offerings and also as rewards. From the highest antiquity
there has existed in China a kind of official journal, for the purpose of

CHINA.

4i

recording the memory of eminent services rendered to the country. Tse,
properly signifying book-writing, is become the name of the public acts
granting this honourable mention. When a functionary had several times
deserved it, the sovereign awarded him a vase Tsun, or honorific, inscribed
with the dedicatory inscription ; it was a title to all kinds of immunities.
This ancient mode of reward has remained only in a modified form ;
to the simple vase of precious metal has succeeded presents more sub
stantially useful, such as a town or country house, but always accompa
nied by vases or services of exceptional quality, and adorned with the
expression " honourable." Thus we possess a specimen, upon which we
read, " Persons raised to honours and fortune on account of their merit
and of services rendered (to the State). The year Kia-chin, under the
present dynasty, Sie-tchu-chin established himself in a country house
given by the emperor." Persons thus rewarded were authorised to
cause this inscription to be transcribed upon all the objects for their use ;
it became an earnest of inviolability ; and we see, by the Chinese code,
that even justice required an authority from the emperor to pass, even in
the interests of society, the threshold protected by this honourable
formula. Undoubtedly less interesting are the vases Jou-y (wishes of good
fortune), yet still very curious, which
the Chinese present to each other
at the new year, at birthdays, or
when an official nominator appoints
a man to a public post or confers
on him promotion in rank. One of
the most precious examples of this
last employment of the Jou-y is ex
hibited in a blue vase, inscribed with
these words : Tchoang-youen-ki-ti.
This title, obtained by competition,
is the highest that can be given ; it
opens the door of the academy of the
Han-lin, and secures a distinguished
rank in the state.
Wishes for happiness and long
life are frequently expressed upon
porcelain. Sometimes it is a single
character borrowed from the regular
writing or the Ta-tchouan ; besides, it is by the repetition of the word

/. CATENACCI CHAR12T
VASE WITH SIGNS OF LONGEVITY.

42 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

in all its forms, ancient and modern, simple or ornamented, as in the
Nankin charming vase (Fig. 16), in which the handles themselves are
formed of the word cheou or thsao.
We possess a bowl in which the same word is written in regular
characters in peaches, themselves the emblems of lon-
lU (¥1 yd "^ gevity, alternately yellow and red. A more significant
few %D_5 formula is this: Cheou-pi-nan-chan — fou-jou-tong-hai,
ffl " Long life compared with that of the mountain of the
South, happiness great as the sea of the East." But the

— ISsZ li i
", ^ most common of the Jou-y is that composed of four
^0 j=3 characters : Fou-kouei-tchang-tcliun, which signifies
" Fortune, dignity, and an eternal spring."
Let us arrange in the same class the inscriptions which are in praise
of the object itself, as these :
VvE Tchoui ouan, " A precious thing to offer." Then we ought
jf = to add the following legends :
Xr Q-l Khi tchin jou ou, " Extraordinary like the five thiugs "
q^J^ (precious).

tt, IE,

Yu ya kin hoa, " Splendid like the gold of the House of

§& f^ Jade."

J^TSt P° h°u tchin ouan, " Curious object for the connoisseur of
antiques." Here perhaps is direct allusion to the subject
which represented a scene copied from some ancient kouan
khi become celebrated.

*/x.3

li eb( Fou kouey Ida khi, " Beautiful vase (for the use of) the
£S £§• rich and noble."
era ^
fe 3L "lu ^mn9 ^ia khi, " Beautiful vase of the Hall of Jade."

fla

The Academy is designated as " the Hall of Jade ;" it may
tHu 3=. uot be impossible that it refers to a piece destined to be
offered to a han-lin (academician), or to decorate the
assembly-room of the learned in the palace of the Academy.
In fact, we often find inscriptions indicative of the place
a vase is to occupy ; the words, tchou fou, palace, are of the

m

number; as to the following legends, they are doubtless of similar

CHINA. .,
4j

value; but only a dignitary knowing the temples and the different
apartments of the imperial residence could determine their precise
value. 3=» sP Tse thse thang tchy, " Made for the Hall of the Violet
Wk%l\ Thorn."
SL 1^EB Fou youen thang tchy, « Made for the Hall of the Source

%_m

of Happiness."

Ai^

Ep y\. ITwera tchang thang tchy, " Made for the Hall of the Abun-
^lj pi dance of Heaven."
jg_ py if% «/w if/iam^ tchy, '¦ Made for the Hall of extraordinary
^^ Jade."
It may not be useless to say that in the eyes of the Chinese, jade is
the superlative of all stones. Confucius made it the emblem of virtue,
and compared it to the wise man. One would not, therefore, wonder if
the potters should have sought to imitate this stone in some of their
productions, and that its name should have been given to their finest
porcelains. Many are marked with the character of Yu only, others
^ . . . J> .
bear y)K> Ouan yu, precious object of jade; _ Tchin ouan, precious
object of curiosity ; -^ Tchin yu, precious object of jade ; or even
~K Art -^a* yu> Pas^e °f jade.
Certain legends have a direct signification which restricts the use of
the vase to whom it is specially offered ; upon ... ^^
a cup at Sevres, we read " Remembrance of Ing- pj JE2. J\ "* K
chin-youei," and upon another more intimate still, jE~£^ M? *w / 1
" I am the friend of Yu-Tchouen." -X*. ^E
The inquirer often remains undecided upon the real meaning of the
inscriptions ; we possess one which runs thus : Gheng-yeou-
ya-tsi, "Distinguished meeting of holy friends." Must we i^-Iil
see in this the meeting of friends called to use the objects 3^ ~WU
inscribed with this legend ? Are we to think the holy
friends are the persons ranged symmetrically in the compartments of
a floral ornamentation ? In this last case, we should have under

44 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
our eyes an indicative inscription, such as one sometimes meets with.
The Salle collection contained one thus conceived: "The three counts
wishing to point out tbe sun with their finger wait until the clouds
disperse." We have found another expressed in two verses : " In the
Yao-Kong hall are heard harmonious sounds of music ; below the
pavilion Tchong-ye they address magic invocations to the spirits of
the clouds and of the night ;" and the subject represented is a group of
musicians and men performing religious ceremonies at the gate of a
palace or of a temple.
. u-^jr-f Let us leave these poetic regions, to find in the celestial
^O'lCf empire advertisements under as bold forms as we now find
-§G ^v among ourselves. We read inside a bowl in our collection:
Njt t3^ Pei-tching-tien kien-ki-tsao ; that is to say, " In the shop of
*"— ' ' ^ Pei-tching (they sell this) made by Kien-Ki."
In modern times, the fashion of placing inscriptions under the
feet of vases is tending to disappear, except in the imitations of old
products ; but exterior legends have been substituted. In the eighteenth
century nothing was more frequent than the figures of the heroes of
Sankoue-tchy, having beside them their names and a sketch of their most
brilliant actions.
Later, and when the emperor Kien-long had composed his celebrated
ode upon tea, the verses were ranged in close columns upon the sides of
the cups and other recipients destined to contain the beneficent infusion.
We give the translation of the piece in a foot-note.*
* " The colour of tbe flower rnei is not brilliant, but it is graceful. Perfume and
cleanliness are the distinguishing properties of the Fo-cheou. The fruit of the pine is
aromatic and of an attractive smell ; nothing exceeds these three to please the sight, the
smell, and the taste. At the same time put upon a moderate fire a three-legged vase of
which the colour and the form indicate it3 long services ; fill it with clean water of melted
snow ; heat the water to the degree necessary to blanch the fish or redden the crab ; pour it
in a cup made of the earth of Yue ; upon the tender leaves of a choice tree leave it in repose
until the vapours which first rise in abundance form thick clouds ; then gradually disperse
until there is only a light fog upon the surface ; then quaff without precipitation this
delicious liquor ; it is to work effectually to dismiss the five subjects of anxiety which
generally come to assail us. One may taste, one may feel, but one is never able to express
the sweet tranquillity imparted by a beverage so prepared. Withdrawn for a while from
the tumult of affairs, I find myself alone in my tent, in a state to enjoy alone my liberty.
With one hand I take a Fo-cheou, which I put away or bring near at will, with the other
I hold the cup, above which still arise light vapours. Agreeably shaded, I taste at
intervals some draughts of the liquor it contains. I cast from time to time my looks upon
the mei-hoa ; I give a light soar to my imagination, and my thoughts turn without effort
towards the sages of antiquity. I figure to myself the famous Ou-tsiouan feeding me with
the fruit which bears the pine he was enjoying in peace in the bosom of his austere
frugality ; I put some of the fruit in my mouth, and find it delicious. Soon I think I see
the virtuous Lin-fou fashion with his own hands the branches of the tree -mei-hoa. It is
thus, said I within myself, that he gave some repose to his mind, already fatigued by

CHINA.

45

Section 4. — Ancient Pottery.
In China, pottery remounts to the highest antiquity. It is under the
Emperor Hoang-ti (b.c. 2698 to 2599) that Kouen-ou discovered the
first ceramic secrets. The sovereign, appreciating the value of so
useful an invention, appointed a superintendent to watch over its
development. To what kind of clay belonged the vases of Kouen-ou ? towards what
period did the Chinese make true porcelain ? The actual state of
science does not admit of an answer to these questions. The only book
on the subject published in the Celestial Empire, and translated by M.
Stanislas Julien, does not inspire confidence. The author, as much a
stranger as his interpreter to the first elements of ceramics, confounds
under the same name stoneware, porcelain, and even copper enamel, so
that no theory can be based upon his statements. For a moment one
was led to believe in the antiquity of kaolinic pottery, travellers having

Fig. 17.

Fig. 18.

Fig. 19.

CHINESE BOTTLES SAID TO BE FOUND IN THE TIIEBAN TOMBS.
brought from Egypt little bottles, sold by the Arabs as having been
found in the Egyptian tombs ; these bottles, slightly flattened, of a pale

profound meditation upon the most interesting objects. I pass from Lin-fou to Tehao-tcheou
or to Yu-tchouan. I see the first, surrounded by a number of little vases in which are all
kinds of tea, take now of one, now of another, and thus vary his drink. I see the second
drink with profound indifference the most exquisite tea, and scarcely distinguish it from the
vilest beverage. Their taste is not mine — how could I wish to imitate them ?
" But I hear them sounding the watch. Night increases its coolness ; already the moon's
rays penetrate through the slits of my tent and strike with their lustre the few objects of
furniture which decorate it. I find myself without anxiety and without fatigue ; my stomach
is at ease, and I can without fear give myself up to repose. It is thus, according to my
little capacity, that I have made these verses at the young spring of the tenth moon of the
year piug-yn (1746) of my reign."— Kten-long.

46 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

green ground, scattered with little points in relief resembling chicken's
skin, have two medallions, the one decorated with a plant, the celosia or
cockscomb (Fig. 18), or iris, the others bearing cursive characters, traced
in black (Figs. 17 and 19). M. Eosellini, at first incredulous, declared
he had been witness to the discovery of one of these Chinese bottles in
a tomb of the eighteenth or twentieth dynasty, opened for the first
time ; these porcelains would consequently have been more than 3,600
years old. Hence great excitement ; the museums of France and
England opened their cases to receive these pretended antiquities; but,
as the learned are naturally sceptical, they sought for, and soon
ascertained, the truth.
First, M. Prisse, on pressing the Arabs at Cairo specially employed
in the traffic of curiosities, made them admit that they had never found
any porcelain among the ruins, and that the greater number of the
bottles sold to travellers came from Qous, Geft, and Qosseyr, emporiums
of Indian commerce in the Red Sea. Mr. Medhurst, interpreter to the
English government at Hong Kong, went further. Having remarked
that the inscriptions on the little vases had nothmg in common with
the form of the primitive characters of the celestial empire, he
endeavoured to establish the date of these literary fragments. He first
found out, distorted as they were, the legends reproduced
only five different passages: the first runs, " The moon
shines in the midst of the pines," which is the third line
of a sonnet of Wang- Wei, who flourished a.d. 702 to 745.
The second, often repeated and here figured, reads, " Only
in the middle of- this mountain," part of a stanza com
posed by Kie-taou, who lived also under the Tang, from
851 to 857. The third, completely distorted, may yet
be recognised as taken from a stanza of Chaou- Young, a poet who lived
under the Tsoung, from 1068 to 1085 ; the stanza translates thus :
" The moon, was passing to the zenith and the zephyrs coming across
the lake, both caused a sweet feeling
of tranquillity which few, I think, can
conceive." The fourth, most frequent
of all, reads, " The flowers which open
have brought a new year," part of the
third line of a sonnet of Wei-ying-wou,
a poet who lived to a great age under
the Tang, that is to say, from 702 to
795. It is addressed to a distant friend, and he thus expresses the

CHINA. 47
melancholy produced by their separation : " Last year, in the season
of flowers, I met thee and went with thee, my brother, and now the
flowers which open have brought anew year. This life and its business
are uncertain ; I must penetrate the future, the sorrows of spring weigh
upon my heart. I seek my solitary couch, my existence is tortured bv
illness ; I yearn once more to see my native country. The fifth and last
fragment, " The flower of the almond-tree opens on every side by
thousands," appears also to belong to the poetry of the Tang dynasty.
It is, therefore, clearly shown that, far from being ancient, these
little specimens of Chinese art cannot be referred even to the period
when the verses they recite were published ; at the earliest, one would
assign their fabrication to the first year of the Ming dynasty. Such is
the "opinion of Mr. Medhurst, in concurrence with that of the learned of
the Celestial Empire ; this eminent Chinese scholar adds that his
researches to establish the date of the invention of porcelain have had
but an incomplete result ; the most ancient mention that he has found
is in a poem published under Wan-ti, of the Han dynasty (b.c. 175 to
151), and that relates to the green porcelain. Later, Pan-yo, a writer
of the Tsin dynasty (260 to 268 of our era), speaks of " porcelain cups
decorated with different colours, into which wine is poured."
Let us consider the first mentioned. It is incontestable that the
earliest specimens known of Chinese pottery are not precisely porcelain ;
of a dense paste, extremely hard, deeply coloured in brown, they are
wanting in translucency, the special characteristic of porcelain, and they
moreover receive an enamel more or less opaque to conceal the colour of
the paste ; it is the coating called " celadon ;" its colour varies from
reddish grey to sea green, more or less deep. The poetry of the reign
of Wan-ti refers, therefore, to a celadon.
The usual decoration of these products is very simple; if it is
reddish-grey celadon, tinted in part by the influence of the subjacent
clay, it is most often set off by a net-work of small cracks at regular
distances ; this is crackle. How came tlie Orientals to consider as an
embellishment to their vases what among us is ranked among the
greatest faults in pottery ? Crackle is, in fact, the degradation of a baked
earth of which the heart or paste is more sensible to the changes of
temperature than the outer coating. In common earthenware, this
accident is frequent ; the light porous paste being very expansive, the
glaze does not expand equally, and separates in fragments the more
multiplied as its resistance is the greater.
Hard porcelain, from the homogeneous nature of its paste and its

48 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
glaze, is perfectly secure from this double action ; and to obtain the
crackle, it is necessary to modify the glaze in order to render it more or
less dilatable and to destroy the harmonious shrinking of the paste
(retraite de la pate) naturally existing between them ; and the problem
has been reduced to such precision, that the potter produces at will a
crackle of large, middling size, and small figures. This last is called
by the French authors " truit6," as resembling the scales of a trout.
To' make the crackle with success, the piece, on being taken out of
the furnace, must be exposed to the action of cold or plunged into
water, which causes deep fissures ; these are filled in with black, red, or
any other colour. The most ancient pieces, generally of a middling-sized
black crackle, receive often an accessory decoration consisting of zones
of sealed ornaments, executed in a brown ferruginous paste. The* ap
pendages of these usually consist of masks in low relief, lions' heads
holding movable rings, modelled with the same paste.
The large crackle, filled in either with black or red, is made
generally upon a coating (enduit) much whiter than ordinary crackle.
But there exists a process by means of which several kinds of crackle
may be obtained upon the same piece ; by an artificial heating suddenly
stopped, the vase is scattered over with splits so fine that they can
only be coloured by infiltration. It is thus that the purple and
chamois, or coffee-coloured crackles' are produced. This last is some
times combined with a large black crackle.
In the intermediate periods between antiquity and the fifteenth
century, crackling has been applied upon a yellow golden brown glaze,
called in Chinese, tse-kin-yeou, that is, burnished golden glaze or
dead leaf (feuille morte). The science of ceramists has gone so far as
to trace upon these grounds reserves of white enamel heightened with
inscriptions or with blue figures, which resist the crackling process.
Later, vases have even been made with successive bands of coloured glaze
(yellow or blue), and of crackle and white glaze decorated with cobalt.
The small crackle (truite) has most often been applied upon small
pieces of bright enamel, as the camellia-leaf green ; these pieces remain
generally devoid of accessory ornaments, but their forms are elegant
and refined. The long-thsiouen is a special kind of truite crackle
upon celadon. It derives its name from a locality where, under the
Song, various porcelain was made, but which, since the Ming, has
been reserved for vases of a deep olive green with fine crackles not
filled in. The finest specimen we know belongs to M. Pargues.
Let us return to the green porcelain of Wan-ti, that is to say, celadon

CHINA. 49

strictly so called. Its colour is rather dull, therefore it is most often
decorated in relief with the meander ornament, groups of flowers, and
geometric combinations resembling a tesselated pavement. They also
incise borders, arabesques, and knots, which, filled in with the sombre
glaze, take a powerful tone and come out strongly upon the ground. This
is the flowered celadon. There is also a crackle celadon, which must
not be confounded with the grey crackle, the ground being generally
of a much fuller green than that of the flowered celadon or tchoui.
Towards the beginning of the Ming, pieces were decorated with
crackle ; the polychrome decoration upon celadon does not appear to
go further back than the last emperors of the same dynasty.
As we gradually approach modern times, the crackles and the
celadons lose their sombre aspect, owing to the transformation of the
paste, which becomes whiter. There is also a celadon more generally
known under the name of " starch blue " (bleu empois). Of this, we shall
speak more fully when we come to the Japanese products.
Among the choice fabrications, that is of the porcelain furnace, is
one very interesting, described in the curious letter of the Pere.
d'Entrecolles, dated the 25th January, 1772. This missionary was
specially attached to the districts of King-te-tchin, where the porcelain
manufactures were situated; and his correspondence has singularly
contributed to enlighten Europe upon Chinese ceramics. " They have
brought me," he writes, " one of those pieces of porcelain they call
yao-pien, or transmutation. This transmutation is made in the kiln, and
is caused by either a deficiency or excess of heat, or by other causes not
easy to divine. This piece, which has not succeeded, says the workman,
and which is the effect of pure chance, is not the less beautiful nor the
less esteemed. The workman had intended to make vases of red
' souffle,' a hundred pieces were entirely lost ; that of which I am speak
ing issued from the furnace resembling a piece of agate."
The worthy father had he been deceived by false information ? The
manufacture of the yao-pien, had it been neglected, and then taken
up agaiD in the eighteenth century ? What is certain is, that we find
vases with the flashed glaze (eouverte flamlee is the commercial name
in France of the yao-pien) of very ancient date and of practised,
not accidental, execution (Fig. 20).
As to the cause of the transmutation, modern science knows it so well
that it can produce any of these effects in the laboratory. Metals change
their form and aspect according to their combination with oxygen.
Thus, to confine ourselves to the subject in question, oxydulated copper
e

5o

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

furnishes to vitrifiable painting a fine red, which, thrown in a body upon
the vases, forms the tint called " haricot " (a kind of fawn colour) ; with
an equal quantity more of oxygen it becomes protoxide, and produces a
beautiful green, capable of being transformed into sky blue, when the
oxygenation is carried still further. Now these combinations may be
effected suddenly in the furnace, by means of bold manipulation.
When a clear fire, placed in a strong current, draws a considerable
Fig. 20.

CATENhCCL ,l"-"- HORCHOLLH
VASE OF FLASHED PORCELAIN, REPRESENTING A GROUP OF LING-TCHY.
column of air, all the oxygen is not consumed, and a part of it combines
with the metals in fusion. If, on the other hand, thick smoke is introduced
into the furnace, of which the carbonaceous mass, greedy of oxvgen,
absorbs everywhere this gas, necessary for its combustion, the oxides will
be destroyed and the metal completely restored. Placed at a given
moment in these various conditions by the rapid and simultaneous

CHINA. 51

introduction of currents of air and sooty vapours, the haricot glaze
assumes a most picturesque appearance ; the w hole surface of the piece
becomes diapered with veined and streaked colorations, changing and
capricious as the flame of spirits ; the red oxydulate, passing by violet into
pale blue and to the green protoxide, evaporates itself even completely
upon certain projections, which become white, and thus furnishes happy
accidental combinations.
In crackles the Chinese are so sure of their practice, that they
make their pairs of vases in one piece where the red pervades, and of
another with blue ground seme with red and lilac splashes ; they also
make figures with flesh tints and green and blue draperies, or teapots,
in the form of a peach, the base of a bluish tint, the body violet, and
the top bright red (Fig. 21). Fi<;. 21.

TEA-POT IN VIOLET ENAMEL WITH THE PEACH OF LONGEVITY/.
To the most ancient Chinese ceramists must also be attributed the
invention of the enamel turquoise blue and violet glazes of demi-grand
feu. These glazes, a kind of celadon, are not laid upon the raw paste,
simply dried, but upon biscuit pieces which have received their first
firing. Their fusion takes place at a much lower temperature than
that of the paste.
Turquoise blue, derived from copper, has the advantage of pre
serving its purity of tint in artificial light ; it is soft and delicate even in
the more ancient vases, which are of a slightly blackish paste, and almost
always crackled (truite') with marvellous regularity. Sometimes it is
relieved by patterns graved with the point and filled in with colouring
matter. There are several varieties, splashed, clouded, jaspered, or
flaming ; these last have often metallic spots of aventurine, which
produce the most pleasing effect.
The violet obtained from oxide of manganese is pure and brilliant
i; 2

52 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
in the heartsease tint ; in the colour called " aubergine," it is washy
and less rich, in the violet tint of the stone called " mei," it is as velvet
like as the heartsease, and approaches the finest Persian lapis-lazuli blue.
The two colours, blue and violet, are often associated upon vases,
chimerse, statuettes, or groups of animals and birds. The delicacy of
these enamels has caused them to be much in fashion. In 1782, a single
" magot " (as they termed these figures in the last century) in turquoise
blue, sold for three hundred and forty louis ; and about the same period
a cat in old violet, forming part of the effects of Madame de Mazarin,
was bid up to one thousand eight hundred livres. We ourselves have seen
a vase, formed of a violet carp, with its little ones in turquoise blue play
ing round it, obtain at public auction the price of three thousand francs
(120Z). The Chinese have evidently sought from the first to make ceramic
pastes and vitrifiable coatings rival gems and the most brilliant pro
ductions of nature; vases dispute in brilliancy the brightest agates;
others are shaded like tortoiseshell, and imitate its transparency.
Certain cups of soft clouded blue, shaded with purplish red, recall a sky
veiled towards sunset with clouds lighted up by the last rays of the sun.
When we meet with these rare pieces we can understand the
enthusiasm of the Chinese for their old products, for which they often give
extravagant prices; and we can also understand, in the absence of the old
pieces, that they should pay dearly for clever imitations. It is the
universal taste that has kept up emulation among the potters of the
Celestial Empire, and which has been the cause at times not very remote
of the invention of some exceptional fabrications as charming as they
are ingenious. Among others let us cite the souffle decoration. We
style it decoration, to avoid all confusion with the enamels which are
applied by insufflation, as certain copper reds in which the little drops and
flames remain visible. The souffle decoration is laid upon a greyish
blue enamel entirely opaque ; this, according to the description of
Pere d'Entrecolles, is how it is obtained. The colour, made of the
proper consistency, is placed in a tube, one end of which is covered
with a very close gauze ; by blowing through the other end, little drops
filled with air are precipitated upon the enamel. These burst when
coming in contact with the sides of the piece, and reduce themselves
into little contiguous circles, forming a network like the finest lace.
Sometimes the souffle colour is blue, more often of a carmine red
which, at first sight, gives to the piece the appearance of a violet-like
enamel. This decoration often fails, the little drops do not burst, but

CHINA. 53

form, on the contrary, into little veins, which run half melted into the
starch blue glaze. Hence results a peculiar decoration, very agreeable
to the eye, jasper— not less sought after than souffle itself.
It is no doubt by means of insufflation that a " seme " of silver points
upon a warm brown enamel is produced ; one would fancy it a lacquer
powdered with gold and silver.
Should the souffles be classed among the most ancient productions
of the Chinese art? We incline to the affirmative as regards the
silver souffle, but the blue and red lace-like decorations, at least the
specimens we are acquainted with, belong to the last century ; we have
even met with vases of this description. dated from 1725 to 1755.
Section 5. — Porcelain — Blue Decoration.
We have just passed in review those ambiguous objects which answer
but imperfectly to the description of real porcelain. Let us now
approach the white translucent pottery, of which the oldest specimens
have been decorated in blue, afterwards in polychrome colours.
It has been said that in the Celestial Empire porcelain had been
raised, from the most ancient epochs, to the rank of public monuments ;
and the Tower of Nankin, destroyed during the formidable insurrection
of the Tae-pings, has been adduced as an example. Let us re-establish
the trMth on this point. This tower is a work of comparatively little
antiquity. It was built in the reign of the Emperor Young-lo (1403
to 1424), in place of an ancient tower, of which we have no record to
show whether it was similarly decorated.
Pere Lecomte thus describes the Porcelain Tower of Nankin : " There
is outside the town, and not within, as some have stated, a temple
which the Chinese call the Temple of Gratitude. Light is only admitted
through its doors ; of which there are three to the east, extremely wide,
by which we enter the famous tower of which I am about to speak, and
which forms part of the temple. This tower is in the form of an
octagon, about forty feet wide, so that each side is at an angle of 15°.
It is surrounded without by a wall of the same form, fifteen feet
listant, and having at a low elevation a roof of glazed tiles, which
appears to spring from the body of the tower and forms a gallery
underneath. The tower has nine storeys, each of which is ornamented
with a cornice projecting three feet from the spring of the windows,
and distinguished by similar roofs to that of the gallery, except that
they project much less, being unsupported by a second wall. Indeed

54 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

they diminish in size and become narrower as the tower increases in
height. Tlie wall, upon the ground floor, is at least twelve feet thick,
and more than eight and a half feet high. It is incrusted with
porcelain, placed edgeways. The rain and dust have diminished
its beauty, yet sufficient remains to show that it is of true por
celain, although coarse, and the bricks, during the three hundred
years this tower has lasted, have not preserved their brilliancy.
The staircase that has been made inside is small and inconvenient,
because the steps are extremely high ; each storey is formed of large
beams laid across, which support a floor, and form a room, of which the
sides are enriched with paintings. The walls of the upper storeys are
pierced with an infinite number of little niches, filled with idols
in bas-relief, which makes a kind of very neat inlaying. All the
work is gilded, and appears to be of marble or sculptured stone; but I
think that it is only of brick, moulded and placed edgeways, for the
Chinese have a marvellous dexterity in impressing all kinds of ornaments
upon their bricks, of which the earth is extremely fine and well milled,
and more fit than ours to take the form of the mould. The first stage
is the highest, but the others are of the same height, a hundred and
fifty-eight feet. If you add to these the height of the mason-work,
that of the ninth storey, which has no steps, and the crown, the tower
will be found to be more than two hundred feet above the ground floor.
The top of the building is not one of the least beauties of this tower ;
it is a thick mast, which springs from the floor of the eighth storey, and
rises above thirty feet outside. It appears to be enclosed in a laro-e
spiral iron band of the same height, and distant several feet from the
tree, so that it forms in the air a kind of cone of pierced open work
upon the point of which is placed a gilded globe of extraordinary size.
This is what the Chinese call the Porcelain Tower. Whatever it may
be, it is certainly the most skilfully designed, most solid, and most
magnificent work in the East. From the top of the tower the whole town
is to be seen, and the great hill of the observatory, a league distant."
. We give an engraving of the monument (Fig. 22) after the Chinese
figure, distributed to the visitors, in exchange for their alms, by the
Buddhist priests serving in the Temple of Gratitude. The overlaying of
the tower, which is entirely white, is composed of porcelain bricks
enamelled on the exterior face. The surroundings of the openings were
of porcelain, glazed with yellow or green, and ornamented iu relief with
figures of dragons.
Like other monuments of the same style constructed in China since

CHINA.

55

the beginning of our era, that is, since the introduction of Buddhism,
the Tower of Nankin symbolises the superposed spheres of the heavens ;
it is not, therefore, astonishing that the divinities are banished to the
highest storey. When first built light iron chains, descending from
the top of the tower, upon the eight projecting angles, supported
seventy-two brass bells ; eighty other bells ornamented the angles ot
Fig. 22.

PORCELAIN TOWER OF NANKIN.

the roofs of each storey, and outside these nine storeys hung a hundred
and twenty-eight lamps ; twelve other porcelain lamps decorated the
centre of the pavilion on the ground floor. Measured exactly, the
tower was ascertained to be 90 ft. at the base, and 263 ft.

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

high. The Emperor Khang-hy visited it in 1664, and caused it to be
repaired. In a country where solid constructions are rare, where marble and
stone appear as an exception, it is not surprising to see -pottery enrich
with its lustre the towers, porticoes, and those fantastic pavilions which
resemble rather theatric decorations than public monuments raised in
honour of the powers terrestrial and divine. More frequently, however,
stoneware and porcelain, unite with architecture under the form of
enamelled tiles of lively colours, of hollow bricks of geometric forms,
which permit of being adjusted into pilasters, balustrades, or galleries,
or of painted plaques for inside wall decoration.
But the true province of porcelain is to furnish the chief furniture
of the interior, and especially the services for table use, which are very
complicated in a country where hospitality is exercised with such mag
nificence, and where each visitor is at the same time a guest.
Porcelain, notwithstanding its whiteness and the beauty of its glaze,
is seldom left without decoration ; where an extensive surface remains
colourless, it is because it is figured with designs in relief under the
glaze, which are considered sufficient to enrich it.
One kind alone is out of this rule, the Chinese white ; a peculiar
pottery, of which the nature is not. yet well defined, and which its
great translucency and its facility of uniting itself with the colours
of demi-grand feu, such as turquoise blue, appear to assimilate to
soft porcelain. The pieces of Chinese white generally consist of
small cups ornamented with reliefs, statuettes, sacred animals, birds, etc.,
and appear to have been specially reserved for religious service and
for rich interiors. Care must be taken not to confound the Chinese
white with porcelain not yet decorated.
The most ancient and most esteemed decoration in the Celestial
Empire is the blue cama'ieu. It is laid upon the crude paste simply dried
after the work of the lathe; the glaze is then applied, the piece
fired, and thenceforth the painting becomes unassailable. In remote
times cobalt was not of irreproachable purity; its greater or less
brightness may therefore help to fix the approximate date when the Nien-
hao, or name of the year,, does not permit of determining the exact
epoch of its production.
To pro re how highly these blue porcelains were esteemed, it is
sufficient to remember they were called kouan-ki (vases of magistrates).
They were specially made at King-te-tchin, in the province of Feouliang,
a dependency of the department of Jao-tcheou. This fabric, founded

CHINA. 57

under the Song (a.d. 1004-1007), has always had the privilege of
furnishing services for the use of the emperor. These are the terms in
which Pere d'Entrecolles speaks of it in 1717. " King-te-tchin only
requires enclosed walls to deserve the name of a city, and to rank
among the largest and most populous in China. These places named
" tchin," which are in small number, but which are much frequented and
of great trade, are not enclosed, as towns usually are, perhaps that they
may be extended and enlarged at will, perhaps that there may be the
greater facility in embarking and disembarking their merchandise.
The population of King-te-tchin consists of 18,000 families. There are
large traders, whose habitations cover a vast space, and employ a pro
digious number of workmen ; therefore it is commonly stated to contain
above a million of souls. It stretches for above a league along the edge
of a fine river. It is not a heap of houses, as might be expected ; the
streets are laid out with regularity ; they intersect each other at certain
distances, all the ground is taken, and the houses are too closely crowded
and the streets too narrow. In traversing the town one might fancy
oneself in the midst of a fair ; on all sides one hears the cries of the
porters endeavouring to make a passage. The expense is much greater
at King-te-tchin than at Jao-tcheou, because all provisions are brought
from elsewhere, even the wood requisite for the furnaces. Yet, notwith
standing the dearness of provisions, King-te-tchin is the asylum of a
number of poor families, who cannot maintain themselves in the adjacent
towns. Employment is to be found here for the young and the feeble,
even the blind and the lame gain a livelihood by grinding colours. In
ancient times, says the history of Feou-liang, there were three hundred
furnaces, now there are quite three thousand. It is not surprising that
fires are of frequent occurrence, and on this account the genius of fire
has many temples here ; but the worship and honours rendered to him
do not diminish the number of conflagrations. A little time since, there
were eight hundred houses burnt. They will soon be rebuilt, to judge
by the multitude of carpenters and masons at work. The profit derived
from letting shops makes the Chinese very active in repairing these
losses. King-te-tchin is situated upon a large plain surrounded by high
mountains. That which is on the east, and against which it is built
forms, on the exterior, a kind of semicircle ; the mountains on the side
give rise to two rivers, which unite ; one is small, the other very large,
and forms a fine port of nearly a league in a vast basin, where it soon
loses much of its rapidity. In this vast space may often be seen two or
three rows of boats following one another. Such is the aspect it presents

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

on entering by one of the gorges in the port. Volumes of flame and
smoke, pouring forth from different places, make one remark the depth
and the outlines of King-te-tchin. At night, one fancies a large town
on fire, or an immense furnace with several vent-holes. Perhaps this
enclosure of mountains forms a situation fitted for porcelain works. It
is surprising that a place so populous and containing such wealth, where
myriads of boats swarm during the day, and not closed by walls,
should be governed by only one mandarin, without the occurrence of
any disorder. In truth, King-te-tchin is only one league from Feou-
liang, and eighteen from Jao-tcheou ; but it must be admitted its police
is admirable. Each street has a chief, appointed by the mandarin, and
if it is a little long it has several. Each chief has ten subalterns, each
of whom is responsible for ten houses. Their business is to maintain
order, to hasten at the first tumult, put it down, and give notice of it to
the mandarin, under pain of the bastinado, which here is most liberally
administered. Often after the chief of the quarter has given warning
of the outbreak, and shown that he had done his utmost to put it down,
it is with difficulty he escapes chastisement, as they are always disposed
to impute the fault to him. Each street has its barricades, which
are closed at night. The principal streets have several. A man of
of the district watches each barricade, and would not dare to open it
unless on certain signals. Besides this, the round of the watch is
frequently made by the mandarin of the district, and from time to time
by the mandarins of Feou-liang. Moreover, strangers are rarely
allowed to sleep at King-te-tchin. They must either pass the night in
their boats or lodge with persons of their acquaintance, who are made
answerable for their conduct. This police maintains everything in
order, and establishes an entire security in a place of which the riches
would awaken the cupidity of an infinity of robbers."
It is still the more curious to recall this picture of the great centre
of ceramic industry, since King-te-tchin is now a heap of ruins. The
Tae-pings sacked the town, destroyed the manufactories, and as far as
depended upon them, the porcelain industry.
King-te-tchin, it is true, is not the only place which produces Chinese
translucent potteries. Without speaking of the ancient fabrics of which
the products have not reached us, there are some which have continued
their works in modern times, such, for example, as in Chantong, Tseou-
tsien, and I-tsien, founded under the Ming; in Ho-nan, Yu-tcheou
dating from the Song, and who made still, under the Ming,
porcelain, either white or ornamented with flowers; Hoai-king-fou,

CHINA. -9
Chen-tcheou, I-yang, and Teng-fong, creations of the Ming ; in Chen-si
and of the same period, Ping-liang-fou ; in Tche-kiang, Tchou-tcheou-
fou, where the Mings transferred first the fabrication of the vases of
Long-thsiouen to carry it back afterwards to King-te-tchin ; in Kiang-si,
Thai-p'ing, a fabric founded in the time of the Ming by Kin-tchi-kao ;
lastly in Fokien, Te-hoa, dating also from the Ming, that is, from the
epoch when true porcelain arrived at its highest state of perfection. In
fact, notwithstanding the indications of special works, we know no
" kouan-ki " porcelain which could be referred to an earlier period than
1368 ; the vases of Hong-wou (1368 to 1398), those of Yong-lo (1403 to
1424), are generally coarse in design and imperfectly made. Under the
reign of Siouen-te (1426 to 1435) the paste and the decoration become
remarkable, and, a singular thing, many of the pieces borrow the forms
and style of Persian pottery. In 1465, Chinese art is at its height ;
the Tching-koa period, which extends to 1487, will offer us the purest
forms and most elegant subjects.
Only (and it is here that the sagacity of the true amateur should
exercise itself) the date inscribed under the foot of a piece should be
carefully examined. First the choice of the material, the relative ex
cellence of design, the " science " of inscriptions, as say the Chinese books,
ought to enable the collector to recognise every piece issued from the
imperial fabric. One can understand that the other establishments
have not a staff either sufficiently numerous or sufficiently select to
insure equal perfection in their works. On the other side, the Chinese
are the cleverest forgers, and if they seek to speculate on the taste of
their countrymen for works of antiquity, by a stronger reason they will
not deprive themselves of the advantage of selling to foreigners the
most odious counterfeits. They must be examined closely, and the eye
be formed to recognise the indefinable but real kind of patina which
age imparts to porcelain as well as to medals.
Some imitators have been true artists, such as a certain Tcheou-
tan-tsouen, who was skilled in the reproduction of ancient vases, as the
following anecdote related of him in the ' King-te-tchin t'aolou,' and
translated by M. Stanislas Julien, testifies :
" One day he embarked on board a merchant boat of Kin-tchong
and went up the river Kiang. As he passed by Pi-hing he paid a visit
to Thang, who held the office of Thai-chang (president of the sacrifices),
and asked him leave to examine at his leisure an ancient tripod of
Ting porcelain one of the ornaments of his collection. With
his hand he took the exact measure, then made an impression of

60 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
the veins with a paper he had concealed in his sleeve, and proceeded
immediately to King-te-tchin. Six months later he made a second
visit to Thang, and drawing a tripod out of his pocket, he said, ' Your
Excellency possesses an incense burner of the white porcelain of Ting ;
here is one like it, I possess also.' Thang was filled with surprise. He
compared it with the one he so preciously preserved, and did not find a
hair of difference. He applied to it the foot and cover of his own, and
they fitted it with admirable precision. Thang then asked him where- he
got this remarkable piece. 'Some time ago,' replied Tcheou, 'having
asked leave of you to examine your tripod at leisure, I took all its
dimensions with my hand. I assure you it is an imitation of yours. I
have no wish to impose upon you.' " The counterfeit tripod was sold at
a high price, and the amateurs of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries
(Tcheou lived from 1567 to about 1619) did not hesitate to give a
thousand ounces "of silver (300Z.) to procure works of this famous
potter. These prices protect us from the importation of the false porcelains of
Tcheou ; those which commerce delivers to us in large quantities are
easily recognised. They are less sonorous than the old, the enamel
more vitreous, the decoration less precise, and, we repeat, the inscrip
tions are incorrect and often illegible.
But leaving these general subjects, let us speak more particularly
of the decoration of the blue porcelain. Those with subjects and figures
are always carefully treated, and by skilful hands ; the Green family
alone can, in this respect, rival the kouan-ki. We will not describe
the subjects, borrowed frequently from history or from the San-koue-tchy ;
we will confine ourselves to instancing a bowl in our collection, of
which the simple rendering recalls certain of our works of the Middle
Ages. It is a cup of "the learned;" at the bottom is seen the author,
seated under a fir tree, in deep meditation ; his sse placed near him permits
him to modulate the songs he may have composed. On the exterior we
see the scholar, with his elbows on the table, surrounded by his literary
treasures. He reflects, and from his forehead, which he leans on his
hand, issues a stroke which unrolls into a vast phylactery, upon which
the painter has traced various scenes of the drama to which his genius
is giving birth.
In the matter of richness of ornamentation, the blues rival any
polychrome paintings; one might even say that all the families are
represented in the cobalt decoration. Nothing is more beautiful than the
elegant slim vases of the form called " lancelle" (seen in Plate I.), covered

CHINA. 6 1

with rich mantlings (lambrequins), and of which the open parts are filled
in with perfume vases, honorary stones, and symbolic objects, of which
the possession is reserved to the great dignitaries ; these are what in
commerce were formerly designated as " model decoration."
There are certain blues of which we do not know the meaning, and
which have, in the eyes of the Chinese, a special merit ; such as a saucer,
in our possession; which bears the representation of a horseman in full
galop, and who is urging on his horse, striking him with a Tartar whip.
Underneath is written, " Curious object for the lovers of antiques."
The estimation in which blue is held has led the Chinese to use it as
a ground. One of the richest is the blue of the porcelain furnace of a deep
and velvet-like tint, simply relieved by inscriptions, arabesques, flowers,
and sometimes landscapes in gold. Another ground highly esteemed is
that of " bleu fouette," less deep than the .preceding ; it appears as if it
were granulated and seme with little bubbles, which has led some
persons to suppose it to be the bleu souffle of Pere d'Entrecolles. The
bleu fouette rarely covers whole pieces ; it leaves reserves, which are
decorated either in blue designs done in lines or in copper red under the
glaze, or in various- colours, particularly those of the Green, family.
One particular and very rare variety is a soft clouded blue, recall
ing the tint of a spring sky ; it is what is called " blue of the sky after
rain." If we are to believe Chinese history, this blue was invented at
a very remote period. In 954, a potter having petitioned Chi-tsong to
order a model, the emperor replied, " For the future, let the porcelain
for the use of the palace be of the blue as the heavens appear after
rain." The potter obeyed, and to consecrate the words of the sovereign,
he inscribed them under the foot of his vases. We find
them on one in our possession, on which we read, " Yu- s\ [W\
kouo-thien-tsing." Would this imply that the vase goes back ^. )S3.
to 954 ? Certainly not ; for when, in excavations, any fragments '^~/
of the Chi-tsong porcelain is found, it is bought by the great, who
suspend it to their necklace ; but our vase is certainly one of the
kouan-ki, fabricated at King-te-tchin, to preserve the remembrance
of ancient productions. Its high origin is demonstrated by its perfection
and by the figure of the imperial dragon, graved with the point upon
the soft blue, and then covered over with the glaze.
We will say nothing here of the blues mixed in the glaze and laid
upon pieces graved or in relief. These are true celadons, and have
been described elsewhere ; but let us mention certain cobalt tints spread
by the wheel, by means of a kind of plug (tampon), upon a porcelain

62

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

graved in lines which gives it the appearance of a celadon, decorated
blue upon blue ; so we have given it the name of " celadonoide."
The term kouan-ki applied to some blue porcelain vases, is
not only justified by the exquisite elegance of the greater number of
them, but they also bear signs which specialise the employment of
almost all of the pieces, and which preclude their being used by the
first comer. These signs, often mixed in the general
decoration, more frequently traced under the foot
of the vases as a mark, are the following. The
koue'i, a stone whose form has changed since
ancient times, and which the sovereign gives to
functionaries as a sign of their dignity ; it has to be held at any audience
with majesty, to show the respect of the magistrate for supreme
authority. Nobles alone have a right to this
sign. The sonorous stone is suspended over
the doors of all magistrates called to administer
justice ; it is sufficient to strike upon this stone to have the prsetorium
opened; a judge only can thus mark the
vases for his use. The pearl, emblem of talent,
will appear on porcelain destined to the poet
or to the man of letters, who has distinguished
himself in public competition. The " precious things," or " treasures
of writing," that is, paper, brush, ink,
pumice-stone, are still emblems of the
learned. The sacred axe, figured in the
chou-king, designates warriors.
Some other marks, though pretty
common, do not appear to be explained ; such is a leaf surrounded
with ribbons, like the other sacred signs. Would it be the
leaf of the celebrated ou-tong, celebrated by the poets?
The same leaf is to be seen at the feet of certain divinities,
or serving as the support of a ky-lin. Such again is the
ling-tchy, emblem of immortality, very common under vases, and which
can only be expressed as a wish for endless longevity.
The blues require to be carefully studied. Besides the importance
there may be in distinguishing those produced at King-te-tchin from
provincial imitation, we must also distinguish the blues of India, Persia,
and certain Oriental countries, of which the translucent pottery resembles
more or less the Chinese type. Among these there is a numerous
description, interesting and well determined, which, first sent to Europe,

CHINA.

63

have served as models to' our faience makers, especially, to those of
Nevers. The most frequent specimens of this porcelain are bottles
in the Persian style, with annular openings crowning a spheroidal knot,
the enamel, bluish, is very even and carefully laid upon a generally fine
paste. The pieces with figures have Chinese subjects, but with person
ages of a particular type, recalling the Tartar race ; the ornaments are

yAh

SINO-PERSIAN DECORATION.

characteristic ; groups of symmetrical leaves forming a palmette, and
floral rosettes crowned with points, the borders in slanting gadroons,
or indented, are repeated profusely; they alternate with a scroll
of a kind of hybrid, Sino-Persian style (Fig. 23). Easily recognised at
first sight, these porcelains, finer than those of Persia, are rarely marked

64 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
underneath. When we have met with any signs, they formed a kind of
inscription resembling the Chinese Nien-hao, or more still, the legends
on the little bottles of the Theban tombs (Figs. 17 and 19). Submitted
to Orientalists, these inscriptions have been pronounced to be illegible

being simply counterfeits of the capricious form of the T'sao-chou
characters (p. 33). These marks would indicate some centre foreign
to the Celestial Empire, but under the influence of its art.
Section 6. — Polychrome Porcelain.
Before describing the different systems of polychrome decoration in
China, it is indispensable to say a word upon the manner of painting
the vases. " One workman," says Pere d'Entrecolles, " has the sole office
of forming the first coloured circle we see round the edges of porcelain ;
another traces the flowers, which a third colours ; this artist paints the
water and the mountains, that, the birds and other animals." One
would hardly have expected in a country so foreign from pur manners
to have found the system of division of labour in practice. But there,
as here, with such methods all individuality disappears. There are no
longer painters, not even a school of painters ; it is, as it were, a series
¦ of generations working after a stereotyped hereditary pattern ; the
workshop in its most material form, and its products little better than
a pricked tracing, disfigured more or less according to the hands in
which it has fallen. It results from this fact, that in the study of
Chinese vases they may be classed into families, according to their
decorations, and distinct descriptions given applicable to the universal
character of the pieces in each family. The more or less perfection in
the manipulation of a piece implies likewise its origin ; King-te-tchin,
the great centre, possessing naturally artists superior to those of the
provincial workshops. A. — Ghrysanthemo-Peeonian Family.
It is characterised, as the name we have given it implies, by the

CHINA. 65

predominance of chrysanthemums and peonies which invade the ground,
overcharge the reserved medallions, and even appear in relief in the
appendages of the vases. A particular coloration, simple and grand,
brings out the ornamental effect of these decorative elements. A
greyish or blackish blue, an iron red more or less bright, and a soft,
dead gold, balance each other in nearly equal masses ; in some cases,
copper green and black unite to the fundamental tints and constitute
the class which may be called " Eich Pseonian." It was the more
necessary to create a name for this family, inasmuch as it contains
the products of China and Japan, confounded by empiricism under the
false denomination of Japan porcelain.
In the composition of Chrysanthemo-Pseonian decoration, Oriental
fancy is shown under aspects as varied as they are ingenious; car
touches and regular medallions scientifically arranged in regular dis
tances upon arabesque grounds, hanging draperies raising their folds,
fluted like the pipes of an organ, to disclose a seme of blue scrolls under
the glaze ; irregular bands crossing each other, half concealed, as if
the painter had thrown the scraps of his portfolio by chance on the
body of the vase; borders richly embroidered with flowers and gold,
mosaics of patient detail, imbrications, Vitruvian scrolls, Greek borders,
every style and every combination are to be found upon this porcelain.
The largest reserves are generally filled with bouquets, either de
tached or issuing out of a vase, and composed of peonies and chrys
anthemums, accompanied sometimes by blades of grass, branches of
the peach or plum, and a kind of double-flowered pink ; at other
times, we see landscapes with buildings, lakes, mountains, and rocks
crowned with large trees. Among these various paintings, or in
secondary cartouches of round, oval, or polygonal forms, or affecting
the outline of a tree or fruit, we see the dragon, fong-hoang, kylin,
horses, cranes, quails, or the animals of the cycle. The sacred monsters
indicate that the vase belongs to a temple ; the signs of the zodiac
specialising the monthly ceremony in which it has to appear.
All the natural figures are also traced without pretence of imitation ;
the flowers and animated beings are recognisable, but it is evident the
artist has sought the general effect, neglecting purposely all graphic
perfection, as useless in objects to be viewed at a distance.
The Chrysanthemo-Paeonian porcelain is the customary pottery, the
common furniture of the Chinese. We see it round their houses, in
their gardens, containing cut flowers, or filled with earth like our
wooden boxes,' holding either firs and bamboos of some feet in height

66 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
or rare plants prized by collectors. Within the house it is the same
thing. Elegant beakers are crowned with spikes of nelumbo or the
Mou-tan peony, large-bodied jars (potiches) with covers resembling the
roofs of the temples, contain their stores of tea, the drink of all classes
of society ; dishes disposed upon " etageres " are filled with fragrant fruits
placed there to perfume the apartments, especially that called "the
hand of Fo " (a kind of cedrat, generally styled the Chinese hand plant),
of which the top divides and turns back like so many fingers.
It is also the Chrysanthemo-Pteonian family which principally supplies
porcelain for the service of the table, which has nothing in common with
ours. The food is placed on dishes (what we call plates) or in basins, and
each guest receives the modest portion assigned to him in saucers, which
there play the part of plates, and in little hemispheric bowls. The number
of the dishes makes up for the smallness of the portions. Boiling tea and
"samchou," a kind of corn-brandy, also hot, are served in small cups, which
are either with or without handles, and are sometimes covered with the
top called " presentoir." We do not pretend that the table is exclusively
covered with Peonian porcelain; there are, indeed, circumstances
under which others are substituted, but it is the usual kind, and if we
see on it ensigns of nobility or emblems of dignity, it is in accordance
with custom, which requires that every object should show the rank of
the individual to whom it belongs. B. — Green Family.
Its name requires no explanation, being based upon an ostensible
and striking fact. All the pieces of this family are resplendent with a
copper-green colour, which absorbs every other.
We have seen that green, one of the five primordial colours,
corresponds to the element of wood and to the East, and has
been adopted as livery by the Ming dynasty, masters of China from
1368-1615. One is therefore led to suppose that in causing a sig
nificant colour to predominate to this extent in a series of vases as
numerous as they are homogeneous, the artists have been influenced
either by religious or political motives. An examination of the
decoration confirms this supposition ; almost all the scenes represented
have a hieratic or historic character, and one may even distinguish
compositions emanating from the sect of the Tao-sse from those adopted
by the literati.
The most frequent of these sacred subjects represents the theory
of the eight immortals. Sometimes each one is isolated, placed upon

CHINA. 67

a cloud, leaf, or symbolic animal, and has consequently only its
individual value; frequently they are all united upon a celestial
mountain, the Li-chan, perhaps, and render homage to a superior being,
tranquilly seated upon a crane, which soars in the empyrean. By this
attribute, as well as by his physiognomy, it is easy to recognise this
supreme deity as Cheou-lao ; we are therefore in the presence of a com
position of the school of Tao, which identifies the philosopher with
Chang-ti (page 25). This sect, cultivating magic and the occult
sciences, will more often show us heaven than earth ; its pictures will
offer us nimbed persons, surrounded by flashing flames, concurring in
supernatural acts ; if they fight, the elements will furnish the arms,
Fig. 24.

TSIO CUP FOR LIBATIONS (GREEN FAMILY).
and, as in the Homeric recitals, the conquered will fall swallowed up
under a heap of clouds, carried away by tumultuous waves, or crushed
under thunderbolts. When the painter leaves the upper regions and
occupies himself with things of earth, and borrows from ancient
history some episode worthy of example for after ages, he loves still to
make the celestial intervention to be felt; the gods appear in the
clouds ready to rule events, and to turn the balance of fate in favour
of their elect.
The literati kept by Confucius within the path of philosophy, will
be, on the other hand, reserved in their figurations. Without dis
cussing the nature or office of the divinity, they confine themselves to
rendering him homage according to ancient rites ; respect for tradition
takes with them the place of faith, and if they have occasion to show
forth the celestial intervention in human events, they express it by
the apparition of dragons, of the kylin or the fong-hoang, conformably
to the doctrine of the holy books. Their subjects of predilection will
p 2

63

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Fig. 25

therefore be taken from the history of the ancient emperors or that
of illustrious men (Fig. 25) ; to them belong the greater part of the
" cups of the literati " (coupes des grands lettres).
One of the most fertile sources of subjects for Chinese painting, is
the San-koue-tchy ; the book which bears this title is in fact one of
the most attractive one can read. It
relates the history of the three king
doms when China, divided by the in
terests of a crowd of feudatory princes,
sought to recover tranquillity under
the sceptre of a single sovereign.
These contests have necessarily given
occasion to a host of heroic actions;
and have afforded openings to all
endowed with merit and courage to
bring themselves forward and arrive
at distinction. It is not then astonish
ing that the scenes of the San-koue-
tchy, the representation of the great
men of this distant epoch, extending
from a.d. 220 to 618, should be well
received by dignitaries and in the
palace.
The greater number of plants, apart from certain rustic decorations,
in which rocks are covered with pinks, china-asters, and slender grasses,
round which butterflies are sporting, have also their symbolic value.
Thus the nelumbo, a plant essentially Buddhist, displays itself com
placently upon the body of the vases; its leaves spread their broad
umbels upon a wave indicated by lines at exact distances ; its flowers
more or less advanced, bending their half-opened cups or their rosettes
of fleshy petals upon delicate stalks, of which the spongy texture is
expressed by a finely dotted outline. If we could doubt of the
importance of this representation, certain large vases would make us
understand it. We see there boats filled with young women, their
sleeves turned up to the shoulders, about to plunge their arms into
the water, not only to gather the flowers, but to pick up the stalks
already laden with the ripe fruit ; through an archway opening to the
palace the boats return, and upon an upper terrace, the emperor and
his family, surrounded by dignitaries, are about to make a traditional
repast (Plate I), composed only of the almonds of the nelumbo,

\'ASE WITH HISTORIC SUBJECT (GREEN*
FAMILY).

Particular attention is called to our extensive stock of
INDIA SHAWLS,
the largest and most attractive ever offered by us.

Plate I.- CHINA
Green Family— Vase, " Lancelle " Form, Historic Subject Collection Fleuriot.

F? Lienardlmp

CHINA. 6g
and which serves to recall annually to the hundred families, as well
as to the greatest persons of the empire, the frugal life of their
ancestors. The colours used for these representations are, besides the copper-
green, pure iron-red ; violet derived from manganese ; blue under the
glaze, always fine, and varying from sky tints to lapis lazuli; gold,
brilliant and solid ; brownish yellow, and enamelled straw-yellow, black
in light touches, rarely laid on thickly. All these stand out upon an
enamel without gloss, and evenly spread upon the pure white paste.
The whole effect is sober, and at the same time charming.
We have just pointed out the sparing use of black in the green
decoration ; yet there are vases where this colour pervades and spreads
in the porcelain furnace into lustrous bold grounds; upon this rich
enamel rise the delicate stalks of the plum-tree, with its young
leaves and numerous white flowers, the nelumbo and the u-lan.
Let us finish with a species of porcelain now much sought after, and
which old works cite as one of the most common, the ouan-lou-hoang. This
name of itself is a description ; the porcelain which bears it is marbled
with violet, green and yellow, upon a white ground. Some pieces are
entirely covered with the marbled ground; others have reserves
decorated in blue, sometimes relieved with red touches, laid on without
firing. G. — Rose Family.
It is also to its general aspect that the Rose family owes its name.
It has for decorating basis a carmine red lowered to pale rose, and
obtained from gold, what is called in Europe, purple of Cassius.
Always combined with an abundant vehicle, this colour forms a
relief upon the glaze ; the same character is to be seen in the greater
number of the soft tints which accompany it ; Bose porcelain is there
fore pre-eminently "enamelled porcelain," and this character has
obtained for it in commerce the special denomination of "Chinese
porcelain," although elsewhere, and in Japan especially, enamels in relief
have also been painted.
As regards fabrication, the Eose family is composed of perfectly
formed pieces, white, and often so thin that the Chinese have given
them the name of " porcelain without embryo," and here they are called
" egg-shell." The decorating materials are all those which Oriental
ceramic arts have at their disposal ; the painters have exhausted on it
all the resources of their pallets, and have often combined them

70 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
successfully. The Rose family would then appear to furnish the
Chinese with their vases of predilection; but it is not so, for the
greatest number of the pieces are of fanciful design, which shows
their use was entirely decorative. A border of rich pattern, with
arabesque pendents and compartments variously coloured, surrounds a
bouquet of flowers, or a broad terrace upon which quails, geese, or
horses singularly coloured, are running. When figures appear, they
are generally of a domestic character: young women walking with
their children, or reclining under flowering trees; young girls balancing
themselves on a swing; ladies in an interior exchanging nosegays of
flowers, while inhaling the delicious perfume of the nelumbos placed
in the vases around them. Sometimes one sees an attendant ascend
the steps of a pavilion built over a pond, laden with her perfumed
burden, which she carries to the ladies in the interior, who "are ar
ranging the flowers in beakers, or disposing them upon the tables and
flower-stands : it is the preparation for the Festival of the Nelumbo, cele
brated with no less pomp in the Chinese gynaeconitis (women's
apartments) than is that of the tulips in the harems of the Mussulman.
Sometimes scenes are taken from the drama; one of the best known
examples is that representing a girl crouching frightened in a corner
of her garden, while her lover scales the wall, having first taken the
precaution of throwing his shoes before him. It is an episode in
the ' Si-siang-ki,' or ' History of the Pavilion of the West,' a lyric drama
composed by Wang-chi-fou about a.d. 1110.
Large pieces contain complicated subjects; vast palaces where
the sovereign, surrounded by his court, presides at solemn receptions,
tournaments, or reviews; women on horseback, chasing each other at full
tilt and shaking their lances with floating pennons. Should we recognise
there that king of the northern provinces who, towards the year 300
of our era, amused himself in inspecting the evolutions of a regiment
of " ladies, with slender waists, composing his body guard, mounted
upon light coursers, with elegant dresses to show off their beautiful
figures?" Sacred subjects there are so rare, they must be looked
upon as exceptions, and they have nothing, except the colour, to dis
tinguish them from the Green family.
What is the origin of the Rose family? Does it issue from the
accidental discovery of the red of Cassius ? Is it contemporary with
other porcelains ? Does it come from a particular centre ? We think its
creation is to be attributed to the wish of imitating the admirable
porcelain of Japan, which, even in the seventeenth century, was

CHINA. T i
according to the testimony of the missionaries, still carried to China, as
presents or to ornament sumptuous interiors. But it must have come
out of workshops which produced certain Green pieces.
One undeniable fact is established : that, under the period Hong-
tchi (a.d. 1488-1506), the Chinese Rose family has furnished cups
of the most admirable paste and representing, in the greatest per
fection, birds, flowers, and insects. The numerous cups of the literati
often lined with red gold, which approach the same execution,
must be of the neighbouring period, probably of the sixteenth
century. This pushes back the Green pieces of archaic style
to the first half of the fifteenth century. Let us add as a last
remark, that the porcelain sent by the missionaries and made under
their eyes had nothing in common even with the less ancient pieces of
the Rose family. Section 7. — Exceptional Potteky.
We have passed in review the ancient celadon pottery and its different
varieties, and the blue and polychrome porcelain. It now remains for us
to mention certain kinds remarkable for their workmanship, decoration,
or material (Plate IL).
Biscuit is not unknown to the Chinese. If they do not bake figures
entirely without glaze, they sometimes apply the biscuit as appendages
upon vases decorated in blue, which produces a very original effect.
There exist sets (garnitures) of vases (composed of three, five, or seven
pieces) called " reticulated," of which the outer side is entirely cut out in
geometric patterns, honeycomb, circles intercrossed and superposed to
a second vase of similar, or of simply cylindrical form, of a blue pattern.
The appearance of these pieces is singular ; one does not at first
understand that -they have a solidity proportioned to their size. The
reticulated envelope has also been applied to tea-services ; the exterior
net-work of the cups admits of holding them in the hand, notwithstanding
the heat of the liquid they contain. There exist false reticulated, upon
which the open side is simply figured in relief. These, like the true,
are generally of the Chrysanthemo-Pseonian or Rose family.
One of the most remarkable decorations is that of open cells in the
glaze. Symmetric ornaments, scrolls or flowers have been pierced in
the paste, the unctuous glaze filling the interstices forms a translucent
pattern visible in the direct light, and of a rare elegance, when seen in
transparency. This mode of decoration is called in China " grains-
of-rice work."

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

The potters of the Chinese empire seem to delight in an incessant
struggle against difficulties : they make vases of which the middle of
the body is cut out by a solution of continuity, or separation of the
parts, into an arabesque outline ; the two parts are separated without
being able to move over each other (Fig. 26), and one asks how potters

Fi?. 26.

articulated vase of flowered celadon.

were able to fire the pieces without uniting them. At other times, a
movable piece, like a ring revolving between the neck and the body
of the vase, slides by friction, without any perceptible play or con
trivance, which appears still more inexplicable. When one sees such
feats of dexterity, one can with difficulty understand this passage of
Pere d'Entrecolles : " The porcelain sent to Europe is always made after
new models, often whimsical, and difficult to execute. The mandarins,
who know wdiat is the genius of the Europeans as regards invention,
have often begged me to have some new and curious designs sent from
Europe, in order to present something singular to the emperor. On
the other hand, the Christians entreated me not to furnish such models,
for the mandarins are not always so ready to give in as our merchants
when the workmen say that a work is impracticable, and there are often
many bastinadoes inflicted before the mandarin gives up a drawing from
which he promised himself great advantage."
Among the porcelains of exceptional decoration one of the most
remarkable is that where blue is associated with copper-red. This red
laid upon biscuit produces the beautiful enamel called " red haricot,"

Plate II.— CHINA.
Porcelain, coloured upon Biscuit. Teapot, with raised handle. Collection Barbet de
Jouv. Teacup in the form of a Flower. Collection Jacquemart.

\V\ C\ S\ it.

F?Lienfl2,d,Irrffi.

CHINA.

73

but employed in decoration it yields tints, varying from pure red to
violet grey, of the most charming effect. We have seen copper red
fouette in partial grounds, granulated and clouded, surround reserves
with figures traced in blue.
A kind which long remained uncertain is that which the Chinese call
porcelain of third quality. Brongniart, misled by the grey tone and gra
nulated aspect of the paste, classed it among the stonewares; yet it serves
to make pieces of very fine execution and particularly statuettes of cele
brated persons or divinities which hold a high place upon the etageres.
The paste is very lustrous, and appears to lend itself to all the finer details
of modelling. Generally the pieces are glazed with coloured enamels,
of which yellow and green predominate ; certain services, sweetmeat
boxes in symmetric compartments, have a green ground resembling the
waves of the sea, the sole ornamentations consisting of honorific signs
accompanied by clouds and thunder; some of the pieces, destined no
doubt for high dignitaries, have the underneath white, that is, with the
ordinary felspathic glaze.
Nevertheless stoneware is known in China. Common pieces of a
yellowish red, with reliefs obtained by sigillation, have a little the aspect
of our stonewares ; but the kind particularly esteemed is that of fine
paste, dense, close, generally of a red brown, known under the name of
boccaro or bucaro — a term borrowed from the Portuguese language.
The best clay for the fabrication of these potteries is found, they say, at
Wou-sse-hien, in the Kiang-nan. But it is certain there is a great
difference in the choice to be made of these bucaros, and that all of
equal artistic merit are not sought after in the same degree. There are
vases of a grey earth bordering upon yellow, and scattered with
little laminae of mica almost imperceptible, of which the value is
inestimable ; they have, it is said, a musky odour, which communicates
a particular flavour to tea. We have seen a teapot of this kind without
any ornamentation, but with a legend in Li characters, indicating with
what respect the piece should be treated and what precautions should be
taken to prepare the beverage it was made to contain.
Another earth, almost yellow, pricked with red points, serves
particularly for model decoration, groups of fruits, and specially of the
peaches of longevity.
With respect to the red and brown bucaros, services of them are
made in relief of excessive delicacy, and even pieces of a pretty large
size, such as pi-tongs, in the form of trunks of trees, bullocks, emblems
of agriculture, sacred birds or animals, to which is attached a little tube

74 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
in which is stuck the siang or sweet scented stick or pastille
used to perfume interiors. Cups are often graved with legends
allusive to the pleasure of intoxication thus : '' May the last folds of
thine heart be as satisfied as in a parterre of flowers," announces
sufficiently the satisfaction of a half inebriated ; another, " Beyond
this what more to seek for?" expresses better perhaps the supreme
passion of an Epicurean.
Essentially apt to take complicated forms and delicate impressions,
this kind of stoneware often presents itself under unforeseen aspects.
We meet with teapots resembling a two-wheeled car or a mill with
wheels which turn by the sole force of the steam of the boiling tea ;
puzzle jugs inundate him who does not know the secret ; some fill from
above, some from underneath, others from the handle. It would appear
as if the artists had sought to compensate byr curious details for the
monotonous aspect of an earth of so gloomy a colour.
But what do we say ? Are the Chinese ever at a loss to give
brightness to materials in which it is deficient ? If the bucaro is dull, it
is relieved by the most brilliant enamels ; upon the brown description
we have seen lively arabesque borders, brilliant dragons twisting
themselves ; the aspect of this half-relief recalls the severity of the old
bronzes enriched with cloisonne enamel. The most lovely effect is when
the stoneware is entirely overlaid. with vitrifiable colours. This kind,
imitated from painted enamels, is less ancient than the first.
By a diabolical invention the Orientals have sought to find in the
ecstatic intoxication of opium a compensation for the miseries and
weariness of daily life. This practice tantalises them and gives them up
powerless to their enemies of every kind ; it decimates their population
but it satisfies the passion, and in spite of reason the evil increases every
day. Now, to practise their poisoning, the Chinese have found two
methods : either they draw in directly the smoke of the narcotic resin 
this is individual intoxication, egotistic; or they smoke it in the
atmosphere of a special room ; this is collective poisoning. The in
strument is a charming little ceramic piece, worthy of a better use its
paste extremely fine, white, friable, resembling our pipe-clay, is covered
over with bright enamels, forming a ground from which flowers and
arabesques are detached ; all this is perfectly glazed, firm in tone and
executed with that minute carefulness and consummate taste which
characterise art in this country. The form of the recipient contributes
to its elegance ; it is a turbinated spheroid, of which the top, pierced

CHINA.

75

with a hole, receives the grain of opium ; the vase, prolonged by a short
cylinder not enamelled, inserts itself into the drawing tube, which is
either of bamboo, ivory, or even of jade. The extreme richness of the
Celestial Empire in ceramic substances can alone make us understand
how this earth and its charming enamels should be condemned to so
narrow a use as that of an opium pipe. In the hands of our artists
the same elements would be applied to works of luxury.
It was long thought that the Chinese, proud of their porcelain, had
despised common pottery, either glazed or enamelled, but this is not
the case ; their language even has the word tou-ki to express earthen
utensils. Only they appear to have used it in the inverse of our
selves : their preserve pots, the recipients in which the condiments and
samples of food travel, are of porcelain and stoneware. The fragile
earth seems reserved for ornamental vases. Thus we have seen jars
and bottles of the finest green ornamented with dragons and the
fong-hoang ; a beautiful bottle in the museum at Limoges is of
the same green with yellow spots, and its decoration in relief is
completed by medallions in pastillage sealed with figures of twisted
dragons. Our sketch of Chinese pottery would be incomplete if we were not to
allude to the singular fables to which porcelain gave birth at the period
of its appearance in Europe.
Here is what Guido Pancirolli or Pancirollus wrote in Latin, and
which Pierre de la Noue translated in 1617 : " Past centuries have not seen
porcelains, which are merely a certain mass composed of plaster, eggs,
scales of marine locusts and other similar kinds, which mass being well
united and worked together, is secretly hidden underground by the father
of a family, who informs his children alone of it, and it remains there
eighty years without seeing daylight, after which his heirs, drawing it
out and finding it suitably adapted for some kind of work, make out of it
those precious transparent vases, so beautiful to the sight in form and
colour that architects find nothing in them to improve upon. Their virtues
are admirable, inasmuch as if one puts poison into one of these vessels it
breaks immediately. He who once buries this material never recovers
it, but leaves it to his children, descendants, or heirs, as a rich treasure, on
account of the profits they derive from it ; and it is of far higher price than
gold, inasmuch as one rarely finds any of the true material, and much that
is sold is unreal."
These ridiculous beliefs astonish one on the part of a man so learned
as Pancirolli; but what proves how durable and easy to take root

76 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

in the masses is the excitement produced by an unknown substance
imported from afar, is that in 1716, a century after the publication of
Pere de la Noue, burlesque verses, taken from the ' Embarras de la foire
de Beaucaire,' express the same ideas.*
It is hardly necessary to observe that porcelain is, on the contrary,
by reason of its impermeability the material employed specially in
chemical laboratories to contain and heat concentrated acids, t
We finish with an extract from the letter of Pere d'Entrecolles.
One may see how travellers ought to distrust information lightly taken.
He writes thus:
"Each profession in China has its particular idol ; it is not therefore
astonishing there should be a god of porcelain. They say that formerly
an emperor required some porcelain to be made after a model he gave.
It was represented to him the thing was impossible, but all remon
strances served only to excite more and more his desire. The emperors
of China are, during their lives, the most redoubted divinities of China,
and believe that nothing can oppose their wishes. The officers charged
by the demi-god to overlook and push on the works used rigour towards
the workmen. These wretches spent their money, gave themselves much
trouble, and only received blows. One of them in despair, threw
himself into the furnace and was consumed immediately. The porcelain
* " Allons a cette porcelaine ;
Sa beaute' m'invito et m'entraiiie.
Elle vient du monde nouveau.
L'on ne peut rien voir de plus lean.
Qu'elle a d'attrait et qu'elle est fine !
Elle est native de la Chine.
I. a terre avait au moins cent aus
Qui fit des vases si galants.
Pourquoi faut-il qu'ils soient fragiles
Comme la vertu duns les villes ?
De tels bijoux, en verite,
S ils avaient la solidite
De Tor, de l'argent et du cuivre,
Jusques chez eux se feraient suivre ;
Car, outre leur attrait divin,
Ils ne souffrent point le venin.
Ils font connaitre le mystere
Des bouillons de la Brinvilliere,
Et semblent s'ouvrir de douleur,
Du crime de l'empoisonneur."
+ Furetiere, at the word ' Pourcelaine ' in his Glossary, repeats this other singularity :
" Francois Gauche, in his ' Voyage to Madagascar,' mentions a service of porcelain and an
earthen hocal taken near the tomb of Mahomet, which has this property, that when one
throws water into it and exposes it to the sun, it refreshes instead of heating." Here is an
error in the name ; the pretended porcelain is the permeable and cooling earth of which
alcarazas are made.

CHINA. 77

which was baking came out, it is said, perfectly beautiful, and to the
taste of the emperor, who required no more. Since that time the
unfortunate workman passed for a hero, and subsequently became the
idol which presides over the works of porcelain."
Thanks to the progress of Sinology, we can now demonstrate the
error of the over credulous missionary. He whom he has taken for the
god of porcelain is not a victim immolated at the caprice of a prince,
but simply Pou-ta'i, god of contentment, of whom we have spoken at
page 28. Why is his image frequent in the midst of the workshops
of King-te-chin — a human ant-hill agitated by incessant toil ? It is
that we are thus constituted : ardent wishes impel us towards that we
cannot attain. What would Pou-tai' have to do among the rich Chinese ?
They have nothing more to ask of him.

78 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

CHAPTER II.
JAPAN.
Section 1. — Manners — Government.
Let us admit that in point of art, Japan no longer exists. This
mysterious country, of which Marco Polo had revealed the existence, in
the research of which the navigators of the sixteenth century were so
engaged, this country, of an Eastern sun more brilliant than a dream of
the Arabian Nights, what is it now ? — One of the numerous stations of
maritime commerce, a counterpart of our Western countries. Its ports,
blackened by the smoke of steamers, will no longer open their quiet
retreats to junks laden with bamboo. Their forts, bristling with
cannon, armour-plated and menacing, will no longer offer the graceful
adornment of its fete days and its picturesque hangings, relieved by the
armorial bearings of the prince commandant which on great occasions
concealed its military front.
The streets of the open towns swarm, and they always will, with
European uniforms. We shall see on their squares French instructors
teaching the drill to recruits armed with chassepots, which will be
curiously examined by the Japanese, in narrow paletot, straight and
inconvenient trousers, giving his arm to his wife dressed in
Parisian fashions. No more parasols of varnished paper, no more
sandals, no more that shelter of lacquer and plaited bamboo which so
effectually protects the shaven head from the rays of a burning sun.
And all this under the pretext of progress !
Let us repeat then, without bitterness, Japan exists no longer. It
modifies its tastes to conform them with ours; it already sends us,
in the place of the charming works which represented their own

JAPAN. 79
special genius, odious imitations of our colourless fabrications. Such is
the fatal and inevitable result of our contact with the Oriental nations.
The less intelligent defend themselves against the ascendency which
the organisation of power and the advancement of science give us over
them. They contend and are conquered. The others admire our laws,
our social constitution, they study our books, but they go too far in
their enthusiasm, and give themselves up without knowing how to
preserve what they possess in themselves of original genius and marvellous
taste. Let us hastily gather a few notions upon Japan. It is now history ;
for the organisation which has so long kept this brave country inde
pendent of other nations has already partly disappeared.
The Japanese government has nothing analogous in any other. One
can hardly call it despotic, inasmuch as the sovereign himself, bent
under the yoke of the law, is the first slave of the empire. As to
liberty, it does not exist at Niphon under any form, not even in private
and individual relations; a perpetual espionage, a reciprocal mis
trust, hold the functionaries of every order in the strict observance of
duty ; the law, or rather, invariable tradition, weighs over every class of
society ; in a word, despotism exists in Japan without a despot.
The Mikado, an ecclesiastical emperor, successor and representative
of the gods, is the proprietor and sovereign of the empire ; in him are
united the spiritual and temporal power. Crushed under the weight of
his high dignity and of the respect he owes to himself, he is in some
sort condemned to an automatic existence, regulated by fastidious
ceremonial. His palace is a golden prison from which luxury cannot
banish ennui.
The Siagoun, Kaubo, or Tycoon, was the lieutenant of the Mikado,
or, properly, general-in-chief ; but he had found means to render himself
relatively independent, and to become the civil and executive emperor.
Subjected to the rigours of a punctilious etiquette, he was rendered
powerless by a council of state, the true governing power. The Siagoun
resided at Yeddo, but he had every year to go to Miyako, to render
homage to the supreme sovereign, and explain to him his conduct.
Now through a court revolution, this second power is destroyed, and
heaven knows if Japan will stop in the road to reform — thanks to
European intermeddling.
Below these authorities of the first order come the vassal princes of
the empire. Absolute, hereditary sovereigns of their respective fiefs, they
would appear to enjoy entire independence ; but two secretaries of the

80 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
council, residing, one in the principaUty itself the other at Yeddo,
administer in their names, watch them, in order to prohibit any enter
prise against the central power and to prevent their personal influence
from taking too great an increase. This perpetual restraint, the
enormous sacrifices which it entails on each prince, the being obliged
to keep an army, to reside six months in the capital, and to go
there with an official train — all this quickly disgusts reasonable
men with the mere phantom of power, and consequently, to escape
ruin, they often resort to abdication and enter into the quiet of private
life. Enlightened and intelligent, the aristocracy have generally a decided
taste for the arts, and encourage the production of fine works, keeping at
their own expense extensive workshops where are produced those silks
of marvellous designs, the priceless vases and precious lacquer-work,
objects of the well-deserved admiration of European connoisseurs.
This fact is not surprising when we take into consideration the
analogy existing between the feudal organisation of Japan and that of
most European societies in the Middle Ages. These analogies are so
striking that certain travellers have sought to render by the titles of
prince, duke, marquess, earl and knight, the different degrees of
the aristocratic hierarchy, and have assimilated to our heraldic arms the
figures which, under the name of mon, mark the objects for the use of
great families.
The Mikado has two arms : the first, the kiri-mon — of which the name
signifies the arms in leaves and flowers of the kiri (Paullownia imperialis)
— is more particularly the official ensign, the
mark of power. It is stamped upon the
coins, and upon everything for the imperial
use, and it is even impressed upon the bread
or cakes served in the official repasts given
to the Dutch ambassadors. The second, the guik-mon, arms of the
flower of the chrysanthemum, is that of the family who since the year
667 B.C. have occupied the throne of Japan, and descend, they say, from
Ten-sio-dai'-sin, the Sun god.
The Siogoun recently deposed, belonged to the house of
Minamoto, whose arms are composed of three mallow-leaves,
called amoi-no-gomon.
We cannot describe the insignia of the other great
Japanese families ; the task would be too long and not
of immediate bearing. Few of the porcelains brought to Europe have

JAPAN. 81
arms; it is not the same with lacquer-work and other objects which are
ostensibly used in travelling.
By a natural consequence of the organisation of which we speak
society is divided into eight classes, which it is not uninteresting to
recognise by certain details of costume ; in fact, there are parts of
clothing which are formally prohibited to the lower classes, and these are
precisely those we should consider as indispensable to all. Let us give
place to Kcempfer, and leave to him the describing of the toilet of the
members of the court or dairi. " They wear wide, long breeches, and
above, a long robe of an extreme width and peculiar lorm, principally
about the shoulders, with a sweeping train extending far behind them.
They cover the head with a black cap or hat, without stiffness, the form
of which is one of the marks of honour by which is to be distinguished
the rank of a lord or what office he fills at court." Titsing adds, " The
emperor or mikado changes every day his vestments, for which very
thick precious stuffs are used. Two of these tissues are purple, with
white flowers ; the third, quite white, is woven in flowers. The stuffs
with straight stripes are called fate-sima, and those woven with vine-
branches and flowers have the name of fate-wakou." The costumes of
the middle and lower classes are composed of a certain number of long,
wide robes worn one over the other, and differing only from the upper
classes by the quality and colour of the material. The robes are confined
round the waist by a girdle. The sleeves are of enormous size ; the part
hanging below the arm is closed below to form a supplementary pocket,
the girdle serving to contain objects of value. Brighter colours and
borders of gold and embroidery alone distinguish the women's vestments
from those of the men. The sash is very wide, going twice round the
body and knotted in a rosette with two long ends. The young girls
wear this bow behind the back, the married women in front.
The men shave the forehead and the whole of the skull, with the
exception of a circular piece extending from one temple to another behind
the head, a kind of demi-tonsure, of which the hair is carefully turned up
and pomatumed, forming a tuft on the top of the occiput. The women
generally roll their hair like a turban ; the girls and servants arrange it
on both sides of the head like wings, or knot it with peculiar taste.
The most coquettish, turn up their head-dress with a comb or long pins
of tortoiseshell, gold, or silver.
Princes, nobles, priests, and the military are the only classes who
have the privilege to arm themselves with two swords, and to wear the
hakama or wide-plaited trousers. G

82 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

The fifth class, which comprises subaltern employes and physicians
have the right of wearing the trousers and the sword.
Departing from the sixth class, composed of dealers and wholesale
merchants, the sumptuary laws prohibit trousers ; and it is only by dint
of humiliating proceedings that the merchants can obtain sometimes the
right of wearing the sword.
Singularly, it is among the last classes we have to seek the artists,
although employed, and highly esteemed by tne great. Tanners, and
other people called to work at skins, are despised, and treated as
pariahs. But now the necessity of providing the new troops with boots,
and of confining their waists with buffalo belts, has caused the masses
to dismiss their ancient prejudices. Who can foretell to what necessity
may soon raise the shoemakers ?
By a rapid ascent, let us turn from these last artisans to the gods.
Japan like China has an obscure national religion, the Sinsyou.
We know little of it, as may be supposed, since the law prohibits,
under the most severe penalties, giving to strangers or selling books or
maps which would reveal the secret of the manners of the country.
According to the cosmogony of the Sinsyou, a supreme, self-created
being came out of the first chaos to establish his throne in the highest
heaven ; too great to give himself up to cares which might disturb his
immovable tranquillity, he left to the creator gods to sketch out the
organisation of the universe. Seven celestial deities came afterwards,
and the last, Iza-na-gimo-mikoto, finding a leisure moment, created the
earth, the ten thousand things, and confided the entire government of
it to his favourite child, the god or goddess Sun, Ten-sio-dai-sin. This
doctrine of the Sinsyou, mixed with a host of rites, introduced by the
Buddhists, gives a complicated pantheon, of which, in the absence of
books which treat of it, we are unable to give an exact explanation ;
but some drawings which have occasionally reached Europe either
accidentally or surreptitiously, show us how interesting it would be to
obtain more complete information on this point.
As regards porcelain, this vacancy is the less to be regretted, as the
subjects which decorate it are rarely either of a religious or historic
character. They almost all represent scenes taken from the private
life of the high society in China. We will soon explain whence this
proceeds. Japan appears, with a few exceptions, to have adopted the same
symbolic animals as China. Thus the dragon, special emblem of the
emperor, is not less twisted nor less frightful than those described at

JAPAN. 83
page 28 ; but here it has only three claws, and often its right claw holds
a pearl. The Ky-lin and Dog of Fo have no special characteristics. The last,
of common occurrence, surmounts almost all the large vases. As to the
Foang-hoang, called Foo, it is distinguished by the perfection of its
form, and the supreme elegance of its plumage, decorated with the
richest and most harmonious tints.
A bird, often figured alone, sometimes with its mate, and called the
Imperial Bird, is remarkable for its noble gait and proud look ; of the
rapacious family, it would appear more to resemble the falcon than the
eagle. In porcelain, as in lacquer-work, it is always found accompanied
by emblems of nobility. Lastly, there is a sacred tortoise, easily to
be recognised by the long flexible appendage which surrounds its lower
extremities. Kcempfer qualifies it as a tail, but after studying the finer
specimens of lacquer-work and porcelain we soon see it is a kind of
fiery aureola, independent of the carapace, and analogous to the flames
surrounding the head and members of the dragon, which the same
author calls " soft horns." Section 2. — Ancient Pottery.
The excessive reserve of the Japanese, as regards strangers, impels
the natives themselves to commit to paper only such matters as may be
disclosed without danger; thus a memoir published upon porcelain
contains this deceptive indication : " The painting and decoration of vases
is a secret that it is not permitted to reveal."
Nevertheless, thanks to the laborious researches of Orientalists, and
particularly of Dr. Hoffman, of Leyden, we know this. In the spring of
the year B.C. 27 a Corean vessel landed in the province of Halima. The
chief of the expedition, pretending he was the son of the king of Sin-ra,
settled in the province of Omi, upon the great island of Nippon, where
the men of his suite established a corporation of porcelain potters.
Towards the same period, there lived in the province of Idsoumi, also in
Nippon, an athlete named Nomino-Soukoune, who made, in earthenware
and porcelain, vases, and more especially human figures, to substitute
for the slaves it was the custom to bury with their masters. Nomino-
Soukoune received, as reward, authorisation to take for family name
Fazi, in Corean Patzi (manufacturer artist).
Let us pause a moment. At the beginning of our era, that is to
say, even before it was a question in China of translucent pottery, here
are two centres erected in Japan, the one by the Coreans, the other by
G 2

84 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
a native, who at the same time made earthenware, if the word in the
text is to be so rendered.
Under the reign of the Mikado Teu-tsi (a.d. 662-672) a Buddhist
monk, named Gyoguy, of Corean ancestry, vulgarised among the
inhabitants of the province of Idsoumi the secret of making translucent
pottery; the village where he had settled himself was called To-ki-
moura— village for making porcelain.
Under Sei-wa (a.d. 859-876) the number of workshops considerably
increased ; even in 859 two provinces, Kavatsi and Idsoumi, disputed a
mountain for baking porcelain and cutting down fire-wood.
In the Syoun-tok period (a.d. 1211-1221) a workman named Kato-
siro-ouye-mon, began to make little vases to serve as tea-boxes, but, from
the want of a better process, he placed them in a kiln upon their orifice,
which appeared worn and carelessly made. They designated them by
the appellation of koutsi-fakata (pieces with worn orifice). Desirous of
instructing himself, Katosiro, accompanied by the Buddhist monk
Fo-gen, went to China, from 1211-12, and returned in possession of all
the secrets of the ceramic art.
In more modern times, it is upon the island of Kiou-siou, and par
ticularly in the district of Matsura, near the hamlet of Ouresino, that
the finest porcelain has been produced.
These historic facts, confined as they are, have their importance.
The ceramic art appears to have been imported into Japan by the
Coreans, and improved under the Youen, by means of Chinese teaching.
We must, therefore, not seek any original character in the potteries of
Nippon; they will not precisely have a sign of nationality, but a
relative perfection, index of Japanese individualism, apt to modify into
good all the works which have been taught them.
If induction did not lead to this conclusion, we find it formally
announced in a book of the seventeenth century, the ' Voyage de Pierre
rle Goyer and Jacob de Keyser.' '' It is," they Say, "the antiquity and
the skill of the masters who make these (pots of porcelain) which
give them their value ; and as the touchstone, among our goldsmiths,
makes known the value of gold and silver, so for these pots they have
master jurors, who judge what they are worth, according to their
antiquity, the workmanship, the cost, or the reputation of the workman ;
and it is often at a very high price, so that the king of Sungo, some
time since, bought one of these pots for 14,000 ducats ; and a Christian
Japanese, in the town of Sacai', paid for another, which was in three
pieces, 1,400 ducats."

JAPAN. 85
There is, then, an abyss between the works of China and those of
Japan ; on one side, it is an industrial production, upon which a number
of hands have left the trace of their work; on the other, it is an
individual creation, marked with the stamp of an appreciable talent.
The high price paid by the rich to procure vases of exceptional
quality has given birth to a curious fact, related by Kcempfer.
" The Japanese," he says, " preserve the crop of common tea in large
earthen jars, with narrow orifice ; the superior qualities, reserved for
the use of the emperor and the princes, are kept in murrhine or
porcelain vases, and, above all, if they could be procured, in those
precious little vases, renowned for their antiquity, they call maats-ubo
(real pots). These vessels are supposed not only to preserve, but to
improve the quality of the tea, which increases in value in proportion
to the time it has been kept. The ficki-tsid, even reduced to dust,
preserves its aroma for several months ; exposed to the air, it resumes
all its flavour. Therefore great people seek at every price these sorts
of vases, which hold the first rank among the costly utensils invented
by luxury for the use of tea. Their celebrity induces me to relate a
legend which has not been mentioned elsewhere. The maats-ubo have
been made of an earth of the greatest fineness, at Mauri-ga-sima, that
is, the island of Mauri, which, it is related, has been entirely destroyed and
submerged by the gods, on account of the dissolute manners of its in
habitants. Now no vestiges of it remain except a few rocks, visible at low
water. This island was near Teyovaan or Formosa ; the place is designated
in the charts by asterisks and dots, which indicate a bottom strewn with
sand-banks and rocks. This is what the Chinese relate : Mauri-ga-sima
was in ancient times a fertile country, which produced, among other
riches, a clay admirably fitted for making murrhine vases, which they
call now ' porcelain.' From that its inhabitants acquired immense riches
and boundless dissoluteness. Their vices and contempt for religion
irritated the gods to such a point that they resolved, by an irrevocable
decree, to drown Mauri-ga-sima. A dream, sent from heaven, revealed
the terrible sentence to Peirum, chief of the island, a religious man of
spotless life. The gods warned him to flee upon ships when he saw the
faces of two idols placed at the entrance of the temple redden with
shame. . . The king immediately published the danger which threatened
the island and the punishment with which it was to be visited, but his
notice of the impending evil was only treated by his subjects with con
tempt for what they called his credulity. Shortly after, a buffoon, jesting
at the warning of Peirum, approached during the night the two idols,

86 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
and without any one noticing him, smeared their faces with red.
Apprised of this sudden change, which he attributed to a miracle, not to
sacrilege, the king fled with his people, and rowed to Foktsju, a province
of South China. After his departure the buffoon, his accomplices,
and the scoffers whom this precipitation did not alarm, were
swallowed up with the island, its potters, and its magnificent murrhine
vases. The Chinese of the south celebrate this prodigy by a festival. . .
As to the lost vases, they seek them at the bottom of the sea at low
water, upon the rocks to which they are attached ; they draw them out
with care not to break them, covered with a crust of shells which dis
figure them, and which the workmen immediately remove, leaving a small
piece to attest their origin. These vases are transparent, of the greatest
thinness, of a white colour tinged with green. They have mostly the
form of a capsule, or of a little barrel, with a narrow short neck, as if
they had from their origin been intended to hold tea. They are
brought to Japan, at rare intervals, by the merchants of the province of
Foktsju, who buy them of the divers. The most common are sold for
twenty taels, and some kinds from one to two hundred taels ; but those
which attain this value no one dares buy ; they are destined for the
emperor, who has, they say, received from his ancestors and predecessors
a collection of inestimable value, now preserved among his treasures.
Evidently, we cannot hope to see the maats-ubo, or the celebrated
pieces mentioned by Pierre de Goyer and Jacob de Keyser; but
a suggestion arises from these simple indications. To what porcelain
can be assigned a value approaching those mentioned above ? Is it to
the decorated vases, a little barbaric, painted in blue, red, and gold,
which commerce persists in calling Japanese porcelain ? Certainly not.
We must then admit that there were at Nippon two fabrications of
the same kind, but very different : the one common, and so approaching
that of China as to be distinguished with difficulty; the other fine, of
admirable paste and charming decoration. It is, therefore, necessary to
study them separately, and well define their characteristics.
Section 3. — Polychrome Porcelain.
A. — Ghrysanthemo-P seonian Family.
All the pieces incontestably Japanese belonging to this kind have a
thick paste, a greyish surface, the enamel of which is apt to " craze "; the
description already given of the Chrysanthemo-Chinese will, in its
whole, apply to this; we have only here to seek the different character-

JAPAN. 87
istics resulting from nationality. There is first one class of products
of whose origin there can be no doubt ; these are the civil statuettes of
men and women, always clothed in the Japanese costume, and made
perhaps in remembrance of the ancient little figures, Nomino-Soukoune,
already mentioned (page 83) ; though now they do not represent slaves,
but persons belonging to the upper classes, as indicated by their ample
costume, composed of choice materials, the decoration of which consists
in flowers, and emblems belonging to princes and nobles ; we have even
met with the insignia of tlie guik-mon or chrysanthemum, and of the
Mri-mon or flowering branches of the imperial tree.
In the porcelain for general use, jars, beakers, dishes, plates, etc.,
the significant characters are as follows : presence of the kiri or dai'rian
tree ; of the imperial three-clawed dragon ; of a bird of prey of noble
aspect; of partial grounds of chequers filled in with conventional
flowers; rosettes of four-notched petals, flowers indicative of imperial
property ; the guik-mon in relief forming a principal subject or scattered
over the decoration ; and the presence of the sacred tortoise. An almost
certain indication of origin results from the union upon the same piece of
all the emblems of longevity, viz., the pine, bamboo, crane, and tortoise.
Jars (potiches) with flat covers, surmounted by the statuette of a woman,
and surrounded by butterflies in relief, are also Japanese. Among tlie
figurative pieces, are some which imitate the broken trunk of an old
pine tree, others a carp upright on its tail ; the same carp standing, in
the act of ascending a waterfall (Plate III.), is often painted upon large
rich Pasonian Japan vases; we easily distinguish it from the Chinese
carp, as it is represented with fewer contortions.
The emperors of Japan, like those of China, give a special name to
the year3 of their reign ; it is the nen-go (nien-hao of the Chinese) ; we
have only seen one piece so dated, a dish painted with a
branch of peach blossom, surrounded by four little subjects j=jf JIL
in relief under the glaze ; on the reverse is written " Eul-soui-
yang-ing," second year of the yang-ing period ; this second
year corresi sliding with 1653.
This is not the only inscription found upon Chrysanthemo-PEeoniau
porcelain. One of common occurrence is the wish for " fortune, ho
nours, and eternal spring." This is ancient, anterior sometimes to the
nen-go above. Another, which is rather modern, and that we find
not only upon the Paeonian pieces, but on the delicate cups of Fisen, is
Thsang tchun ting san-pao tchy, or tsao— (Made by San-pao in the
pavilion which encloses the spring). This legend is incomprehensible,

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

neither indicating a workshop nor the name of the artist. The immense
number of objects inscribed with these six characters precludes the
idea that they could have been produced in one workshop by one man.
A variety of the Pseonian class has been brought to us since the
Universal Exhibition ; thickish vases, generally very delicately deco
rated in iron red and gold. They come from Yego, Niskide, &c.
We repeat, the Chrysanthenio-Pseonian vases of Japan are scarcely
equal in quality to those of the Chinese, therefore it is not of this species
that Pierre de Goyer and Kcempfer speak ; nor can one recognise them
in this passage of Pere Duhalde : " The Chinese load their vessels on
their return from Japan' with porcelains which are very beautiful, but
not of the same usefulness as those of China, because they bear with
difficulty the heat of boiling water." The missionaries of Pekin say the
same in their memoirs : " They do not here prize their (Japanese)
porcelain. . . . Besides, if we except the provinces of Fou-mai', Tche-
kiang, and Kiang-nan, which trade with the Japanese and Pekin, where
they send some as offerings to the emperor and as gifts to the grandees,
the porcelains of Japan are very rare. Independent of their dearness,
there is that in their form and painting which is not to our taste."
Let us then seek elsewhere for the true Japan porcelain.
B. — Rose Family.
To make ourselves better understood, we propose to class all the fine
porcelain of Japan under this denomination, an arrangement in which
we are justified, inasmuch as all these porcelains have received decora
tions enamelled in relief, and there are many in which the gold red
shines with a purity unknown in China. But we shall establish very
marked divisions, beginning with those inimitable pieces, essentially
national, which resemble the descriptions given by the old travellers.
(a) Vitreous Porcelain.
Its paste has been made with such pure materials, the enamel so
completely homogeneous, that one can hardly detect in the pieces the
superposition of two distant substances. The colour and translucence are
like those of jade reduced very thin. It is only since M. Siebold brought
back admirable specimens of this porcelain and the materials used in
its fabrication that we could account for the Japanese saying, " There
are human bones in the composition of porcelain." Truly, it requires

Plate III.— JAPAN.
Chrysanthemo-pffionian Family. — Jar, " Potiche," with the Dog of Fo, and a Carp leaping
out of the Water. Collection Baron Gustave de Rothschild.

(ff^ffi^%«

•

-

F ? IjienardJmp ,

JAPAN. 89
severe labour to bring a hard, tenacious, compact stone to the state
of an impalpable powder, and then to convert it into the creamy
state, fit for the lathe and for moulding, which constitutes vitreous
porcelain. The pieces answering most to the description of the maats-ubo are
the little cups, very open, standing upon a rather high stem in form of
a truncated cone, and which are used to drink saki, a kind of rice brandy,
served boiling hot. The decoration is very sparing, and of great neatness
of execution, almost always consisting of enamels in relief, and often of
white or blue beads, almost hemispheric. Graminse, birds simply
outlined in red or gold, or a woman seated, painted in light enamels, are
the principal subjects. In the borders are enamels in high relief.
Allied to the saki cups is a product no less remarkable, and perhaps
still more ancient: little bell-shaped cups, without saucers, as thin as paper
and of the finest white. The exterior, which is not seen on the lacquer
presentoir, is never decorated ; inside the cup is a line of gold, some touches
of blue enamel, or of gold, shadew out the outline of a mountain and of
a vast horizon, of the sun, clouds, and birds flying in a line. In this
simple sketch we recognise Fousi-yama, the sacred mountain of the
Japanese, an ancient formidable volcano, though the remembrance of
its last eruption is lost in the night of fabulous epochs. Other cups,
ornamented only in burnished gold, represent the fong-hoang in the
clouds, or the crane with outstretched wings.
These rare specimens lead by gradations in size and development of
decoration to enamelled pieces of rare beauty ; some, simple in form,
have light bouquets delicately studied, thrown irregularly upon their
milky surface ; the begonia, with its crimson-lined leaves, and delicate
flowers ; the banana, with its purple bracteae ; the blue lily of Japan. But
even the ordinary blue cups in vitreous porcelain are characterised by
their form, which resembles the flower with irregular petals of the
garden hibiscus. The creamy paste adapts itself wonderfully to the
representation of vegetable fibre ; strokes graved in the thickness of the
porcelain render the smallest veins which irradiate from the base of the
petals ; and the outer limb of these forms round the cups and saucers
the most graceful edging of six lobes that can be imagined.
The decoration of vitreous porcelain is generally simple, and not
crowded, the beautiful material requiring no artificial embellish
ment. The choicest consists in representations of animals in gold,
heightened with iron red ; these consist of fabulous birds with stag's
horns, lion's claws, or bat's wings; geese feeding on the side of a

90 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
river, crickets or the mantis reposing on the stalks of flowers. Later
appear paintings in the style of the Chinese Rose family, then follow
designs more complicated, probably under the influence of Chinese taste,
and vitreous porcelain becomes confounded with that of which we are
next going to treat, and which we call " artistic." Yet the old style is
kept up in the making of saki cups, and in the little pieces, which are
still produced at Imati and Fizen. It is from the same centres that we
derive the delicate cups covered with strips of bamboo, and the larger
cups with covers, surpassing in their fineness the cast or "porcelaine
coulee " of Sevres, and of which the turning and firing appear an
insoluble problem. One cannot imagine how the sides, scarcely as thick
as paper, have been formed from a layer of clay, upon which has been
afterwards applied a double coating of glaze.
The workshops are not in the town itself, either of Imali or Imari.
They rise in tiers to the numbers of four or five and twentyr upon the
slopes of Idsonmi-yoma (the mountain of springs), whence is derived
the kaolinic petro- silicious rock. Dr. Hoffman gives the names of the
eighteen workshops enjoying a special celebrity.*
The products of Firo-se and Itsi-no-se do not enter into commerce.
The other establishments situated upon the frontier of Arida, in the
district of Matsura, as Nakawo, Mits'nomata, Five-koba, belong to
different proprietors domiciliated in the province of Fizen. The blue
porcelain is mostly made at Firo-se, but it is not of the best quality.
This blue in question is easily distinguished from that of China,
being characterised by its general intensity, by its ocellated border, by the
regularity of its bouquets of flowers, in which the paeony, chrysanthemum,
and bamboo predominate. The minute exactness of workmanship is
* 1. Oho-kavatsi-yama, great mountain between the rivers.
2. Mi-kavatsi-yania, the three mountains between the rivers.
3. Idsoumi- yama, mountain of springs.
4. Kan-ko-fira, fine upper plain.
5. Fon-ko-fira, fine principal plain.
6. Oho-tarou, great vase.
7. Naka-tarou, medium vase.
8. Sira-kava, white stream.
9. Five-koba, old pine.
10. Akaye-Matsi, quarter of the painters in red.
11. Naka-no-fira, medium plateau.
12. Ivaya, the grotto.
13. Naga-fira, long plateau.
14. Minami-kawara, south shore.
15. Foka-wo, outer handle.
16. Kouromouda, black field.
17. Firo-se.
18. Itsi-no-se.

JAPAN. 91
pushed so far that one might at first fancy it had been obtained by
impression. (b) Artistic Porcelain.
We come now to the Japanese kinds with enamelled decoration in
relief, which the vulgar confound with pieces of the Chinese Rose family ;
yet there is nothing in common between them, unless in the use of the
gold red.
In Japan the enamels are so pure, the artist so continually occupied
with manipulating the various materials he uses, he is sure always to
arrive at the most artistic effects ; the gold red shines with vigour when
it is alone, and passes to the palest rose when united with white ; it is
the same with the blue, sometimes vigorous as lazulite, at others soft
as turquoise. Water green, orange yellow, partake this character of
purity. If these enamels are enriched with a fine damask work or
mosaic, the bright red relieves the yellow and the pink ; the black brings
out the sky blue ; the dark blue, mixed with touches of carmine, heightens
the pale pink, &c.
A radical difference separates the works of the two countries as
regards drawing. At Nippon the figures, though affected, and too much
resembling each other not to be the produce of " pouncing," have a simple
grace and softness, the evident reflex of Oriental manners. Certainly
it is not an imitation of nature, it is not art such as we understand it
with its complex qualities ; but it is a dreamy art, a first manifestation
of thought under form. A scene of frequent occurrence represents two
women, standing, one upon a rose the other upon a leaf, and thus
floating on the waves in an aureola of clouds ; the first, elegantly attired,
holds a sceptre, the second is her attendant, and carries a basket of
flowers, passed through a kind of lance or instrument for ploughing.
According to the indications of the Japanese pantheon, it is the
goddess of the seas or patroness of fishermen. It matters little
which it may be ; but by the modest grace of the attitude, the easy
elegance of the draperies, this painting approaches the graceful vellums
of our artists of the Middle Ages. The birds and plants partake of
these merits, and are truthfully drawn, the details most delicately
rendered. Nothing is more beautiful than these venerated silver
pheasants, the proud looking cocks perched upon the rocks, or lost
among the flowers ; nothing more charming than certain crested black
birds, with rose-coloured breasts, and other passerine birds of beautiful
plumage.

92 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
In these ornamentations art and patience seem to have exhausted
all their resources (Plate IV.) ; now mosaics in softly shaded tones and
minute details ; at other times the porcelain, almost without embellish
ment, or with a simple subject traced in Indian ink, and encircled by a
border of gold, in divisions, either burnished or in red and green, which
wonderfully brightens the metal.
A curious fact, and one which shows the common origin of the
different kinds of porcelain in Japan, is, that the more or less complicated
nature of its decoration serves almost as a date of its production. First,
the plain white translucent paste appears sufficiently beautiful in its
own simplicity to require little addition from the painter. A line or
two round the edge and a scene softly sketched in the centre, were all
that was required. Later the borders became complicated ; grounds
imitating the plaits of a fine basket, or paved in mosaics composed of
squares and octagons, formed the principal subject ; sometimes the
outlines are rendered in black and gold, sometimes they stand out
upon a pink or sky-blue tint, yellow, or pale green. When luxury
required yet more, the border, broken by reserves, loaded with flowers
and fruit, surmounted partial grounds, marked out in arabesques,
forming a framework to the middle subject, which is either a basket of
flowers, or rocks covered with plants and birds. The complication
reached to such a point that no part of the porcelain was visible ; one
had plates with seven borders, and cups, in which every tint was united
with gold and silver, and these formed a whole, which would approach
heaviness, if the perfect harmony of the forms, and the delicacy of the
details did not obviate the defect.
If we required to seek the cause of these modifications and of the
particular style of artistic porcelain, we should find it in a desire of
rivalling the Chinese porcelain of the Rose family. The special language
of the workshops furnishes us with the proof. So long as the workshops of
Fisen confined themselves to the production of this essentially national
pottery we have called vitreous, the primitive material was distinguished
under the name Imari tsousi (earth of Imari) ; from the moment the
rich decorations approached those of China, the earth changed its name
to Nan-kin tsousi (earth of Nankin). What more demonstrative?
Is it necessary, after this, to seek why artistic porcelain represents
familiar scenes of the high Chinese society ? Let us only recollect what
missionaries and travellers tell us — that the Japanese imitate in im
proving every object brought to them from without.
Doubtless it would be curious to discover to which epochs may be

Plate IV.— JAPAN.
Artistic Decoration — Saucer with Rich Enamelled Ground, and Medallion representing
the Goddess Kouanin. Collection Jacquemaet.

J 't . - -VVKii. Si ^*.

Fs Lienarilmp .

JAPAN. 93
assigned the principal changes introduced in the decoration of artistic
vases. The elements are wanting for this research. If, as we have above
stated, the Chinese have made under the Houng-Tchy period (1488 to
1505) remarkable paintings of the Rose family, the Japanese imita
tions would date from the first half of the sixteenth century, and the
vitreous enamelled pieces would go back at least to the fifteenth. Let
us also remember that artistic porcelain unites itself to the preceding
by certain specimens ; a vitreous cup in the form of the hibiscus has
shown us the cock surrounded by rich flowers of the Japan rose-tree. We
shall see connections as close are to be established between the artistic
style and those which follow. (c) Mandarin Porcelain.
What is a mandarin ? Is it a special functionary, of whom the
name designates the rank ? Not at all ; mandarin is a name derived
from the Portuguese — mander, to command ; it is by an absurd indo
lence of mind that the name is applied without examination to every
person holding a public office in the Celestial Empire. It may be
asked why, after this explanation, we persist in perpetuating the name
to designate a series of works of art. Simply because the word " mandarin"
has passed into common language, and hardly lends itself to its modern
acceptation ; the mandarin is the man with toque and vest, whether the
one be surmounted by a peacock's feather or the simplest button, or
the other be of plain stuff or embroidered on the breast with a
pelican or sparrow. It is only in this acceptation that we consent to
use the word, avoiding its application to the historic personages we see
depicted on the old Oriental vases.
Let us first express the difference between the ancient and modern
costumes of the Chinese, and recall the origin of the last. The people of
the extreme East have, above all, respect for customs consecrated by
time. When the national dynasties contended in China against the
Tartar invaders, their most powerful means of action consisted in raising
the population by the sole idea of the violation of religious rites and the
abolition of secular customs. Hence as soon as the illustrious Hong-
wou had expelled the Mongol emperors, he published an edict by which
he obliged his people to resume entirely the costume worn under the
Thang dynasty. Later the Thsing conquerors, in their turn, wishing to
efface the memory of the Ming dynasty, ordered every Chinese, under
pain of death, to shave his head after the Tartar fashion. Many

94 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

thousands of men preferred death rather than submit to the degradation.
Time alone, iu settling the Thsing firmly on the throne, permitted them
to cause the head-dress now in use to prevail. The cap or toque with
turned up edge, replaced the imperial mien and the crape cap of the
functionaries ; the long hanging tail was substituted for the hair turned
up upon the skull ; the coat or surtout cut below the hips took the place
'of the long robes of graver aspect, confined by girdles with pendants of
jade. These sonorous pendants obliged the man of respectability to
preserve a quiet gait, as the only means of obtaining a harmonious
measured sound. All this doubtless is very punctilious, but it is thanks
to these ancient rules that the Chinese have been able to remain the
most polished people on earth.
In changing the costume it was necessary to create emblems fitted
to characterise the different orders of functionaries. They are these :
1st Order. — Cap, with a button of worked gold, ornamented with a
bead, and surmounted by an oblong button of transparent ruby red;
violet coat, with a square plaque on the breast, and another on the
back, in which is embroidered the figure of a pelican (ho). The belt is
decorated with four stones of agate (yu-che), incrusted with rubies.
Military officers of the same order wear upon their plaque a ky-lin.
2nd Order. — Cap, with button of worked gold, ornamented with a
small ruby, and surmounted by a button of worked coral, opaque red.
The plaques of the coat have a golden hen (kin-ky). The gilt belt is
ornamented with four plaques of worked gold, enriched with rubies.
The military officers wear a lion (su) upon their plaques.
3rd Order. — Cap, with button of worked gold, surmounted by a
sapphire button, transparent blue. The peacock's plume has but one
eye. Plaques bearing the peacock (kong-tsio). Belts of four plaques
of worked gold. The military officers wear a panther (pao) on their
plaques. 4th Order. — Cap, with button of worked gold, ornamented by a
small sapphire surmounted by a button of azure stone, opaque blue.
Plaques bearing a crane (yen) ; belt of four plaques of worked gold,
with a silver button. Military officers wearing upon their plaques a
tiger (hou).
5th Order. — Cap, with gold button, ornamented by a small sapphire
and surmounted by a button of rock crystal, transparent white.
Plaques embroidered with a white pheasant (pe-hien) ; belt with four
plaques of plain gold, with a silver button. Military officers have a
bear (hiong) upon their plaques.

JAPAN. g5
6th Order.— Cap, surmounted by a button made of a marine shell,
opaque white. The plume is not a peacock's, but a blue feather.
Coat bearing in embroidery a stork (lu-su) ; belt, with four round
tortoise-shell plaques and a silver button. Military officers wear upon
their plaques a little tiger (pien).
7th Order. — Cap, surmounted by a button of worked gold orna
mented with a small crystal and surmounted by a button of plain gold.
The plaques bear embroidered a partridge (ky-chy) ; belt, with four round
silver plaques. Military officers bearing a sy (rhinoceros) on the plaques.
8th Order. — Cap, ornamented with a button of worked gold, sur
mounted by another button, also worked; upon the plaque a quail
(ngan-chun). Belt with four rams-horn plaques and silver button.
Military officers wear the stork (lu-su).
9th Order. — Cap, ornamented with a gold button, surmounted by one
of silver, both worked. The plaques bear a sparrow (tsio) ; belt with
four plaques of black horn, with a silver button. Military officers, plaques
with a sea-horse (hai-ma).
The special character of this costume marks out perfectly the group
of porcelain upon which it is to be found. It offers besides the advantage
of rendering incontestable the Japanese origin of these porcelains ; the
artists of the Celestial Empire have never represented mandarins in their
lacquer-work, carved wood or ivories, vases, bronzes, hard or soft stones ;
no authentic nien-hao piece has depicted anything besides the heroes of
ancient times and the subjects of ancient history. It was left to neigh
bouring nations, at the same time inquisitive and commercial, to multiply
upon the vases this execrated costume, imposed only after a time by force.
As regards fabrication, the Mandarin porcelain demands a special
description. It is rather thick than thin, and often its wavy surface
indicates that it has been obtained by casting and moulding. Sometimes
it is ornamented with reliefs. The general form of the vases is more
slender than in Chinese pottery.
The decoration, often painted and not enamelled, takes a new aspect ;
the rose tints, derived from gold, are purplish ; lilac, water green, bright
iron red, chamois or rust colour, abound. An artifice of the brush
shows itself in the rendering of the figures, draperies, and flowers ; it is
a sort of modelling obtained by stippling, and by means of parallel or
crossed hatches ; the flesh is done with the care of a miniature ; the
draperies rise in detached folds one over the other. This radical
modification in the manner of painting, is it due to European influence ?
The Mandarin style, as one may imagine, is not very old; it is in 1616

96 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
that the Thsing arrived at the throne, and the Tartar costume would
have been applied some years later to the decoration of vases.
The regularity, more or less perfect, of the decorations and the
nature of the ornamented grounds, admits of establishing several divisions
in the Mandarin porcelain. The first, one of transition, shows the
real origin of the style ; we see in it the Indian ink grounds and gold
borders framing a painted subject, or medallions with artistic figures,
surrounded by new grounds.
The second section, with filigree grounds, also contains pieces of very
fine quality; the ground is very closely seme with scrolls of gold,
forming a soft tint, broken by reserves more or less large. The principal
medallion is marked out by a stroke or by arabesques of burnished gold ;
the little reserves are filled with birds, flowers, landscapes in pink on
black camaieu of charming delicacy and freedom (Fig. 27). Some
not very old services have the borders and frames of the subjects in blue
under the glaze.
The Red Mandarin of the third section is known by its severe
aspect: a black border witli Greek pattern in gold circumscribes the
iron-red ground, divided by a basket-shaped mosaic heightened with
streaks of gold. Nothing is more decorative than this style, which sells
at high prices.
The Mandarins with variegated grounds, which form the fourth
section, are those of such fanciful design their character cannot be
expressed as a whole. Lozenges in iron red, pavements in red and black
strokes, a harlequin assemblage of colours, pink filigrees, meet each other
in this section, in which fine painting is rarer than in the preceding.
The shagreened and gauffered Mandarins form the fifth section,
which is interesting as containing carefully executed pieces, of which the
appendages and sometimes the medallions are ornamented with figures
in relief. The shagreened vases most often consist of. slender jars
with narrow necks, wide openings, ovoid sides, flattened and angular at
the point of junction between the parts moulded. Scrolls of projecting
ornament describe upon each front a large central medallion, and
smaller ones on the sides ; all the space comprised between these
medallions on the ground is sown with hemispheric points resembling
shagreen, or rather, according to the Chinese expression, "chicken's
flesh." When the vase is decorated, the colour of the ground is called
" verdigris ;" when the shagreen remains white, its projections, from which
the glaze has run off, come out without gloss upon the vitreous enamel.
The paintings of shagreen vases is generally fine, but always crude.

JAPAN.

97

The little snuff bottles brought from Egypt are "a chair de poule ;"
a ground first invented by the Chinese, and which they still apply upon
little coarse pots for garden use.
The gauffered kinds are very remarkable; fine indentures, wreaths,
and bouquets of flowers, are traced in the paste, which the glaze, by

Fig. 27.

MANDARIN JAR (POTICHE), WITH GOLD FILIGREE GROUND.

entering the cavities, brings out in the manner of the celadon. The
greatest part of the decoration is in blue under the glaze, and the
subject medallions are often enamelled.
The last section, called Mandarin Camaieu, offers those partial
H

93 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
grounds in shaded lozenges, which Saxony and the other porcelain
manufacturers of Europe imitated during a part of tlie eighteenth
century ; the style took in France under the name of Pompadour, and it
was long thought that the Orientalists had borrowed it from us, not the
only error to which the Mandarin porcelain has given rise. The Abbe
Raynal, speaking of the kind which he terms Indian porcelain, says, " In
the neighbourhood of Canton, they make porcelain, known to us under
the name of Indian porcelain. The paste is easily worked, but in general
the colours, the blue particularly, and the red of Mars, are very inferior
to those which come from Japan and the interior of China. All the
colours, except the blues, project from the surface, and are generally ill
applied. One sees the purple only on this china, which has made people
fancy it is painted in Holland. The greater part of the cups, plates, and
other pieces, brought over by our traders, come from this manufactory, less
esteemed in China than in our country are those of earthenware." We
quote this passage, in which each word is an error, only to prove what
distrust the inquirer should bring to the interpretation of old books.
Here is a writer who takes the entrepot for a manufactory, who speaks
of the enamelled character of a pottery painted in thin fusible colours,
which he declares to be of inferior quality, without perceiving that it is
not the kind that is despised, but the debasement of the workmanship,
inevitable consequence of a shameful speculation.
(d) Indian Porcelain with Flowers.
What characterises this division is the special nature or particular
delineation of the varieties of flowers. The principal kinds are the
chrysanthemum, rose, pink, jagged poppy, and double anemone, light
diminutive flowers, cinerarias, and more rarely the celosia or cocks
comb. To work up his flowers, the artist uses hatches of carmine upon
pink, black upon grey, rust upon yellow, and he heightens his leaves with
unnatural black strokes.
When the bouquets are surrounded with partial grounds they are
mostly like those of the preceding division. Yet there is one, quite
special, a rich embroidery of flowers, and foliage in white enamel, which
forms upon the vitreous glaze a kind of damask work, without gloss, of
the most charming effect. The appearance of this embroidery is so
distinguished that many excessively fine pieces have received no other
decoration. The Indian porcelain with flowers is the most common in the

JAPAN. 99
Oriental market. Complete services exist with European arms, which
proves how much the orders given, even at an epcch approaching our
own, must have had its influence upon the workshop.
Let us then endeavour to discover the seat of this manufacture, and
why the name given to its products has lent itself to such singular
interpretations. Indian porcelain does not come from Hindostan; its Japanese
origin admits of no doubt to him who seriously studies these facts.
When, after having, vainly attempted to open a route towards the
extreme East, by the north and the Polar sea, the Dutch ventured to
launch their ships into the ocean, their States-General felt the danger
of isolated enterprise in presence of the formidable Portuguese fleet.
In 1602 was founded the East India Company of the United
Provinces, with the view of supporting the Dutch navigators, and of
raising the interests of commerce beyond the seas, to the height of a
national enterprise. Under the impulse of this company the Low
Countries had soon the first navy in the world.
More than sixty years afterwards, in 1664, when the Dutch were
firmly established in the East, France also desired to found an East
India Company, but neither the genius of Colbert nor the talent and
bravery of the officers selected to found it and to defend the factories,
were able to contend against adverse circumstances. The company fell in
the eighteenth century, and the whole monopoly of the commerce of the
East was left to the Company of the United Provinces. Its principal
centre for the porcelain trade was Japan, and by virtue of special treaties,
going back to 1609, the Dutch alone exported it for all the markets of
Europe. In 1664, even at the moment when Louis XIV. conceded a
privilege for the commerce of the East, there arrived in Holland
" 44,943 pieces of very rare Japanese porcelain. In the same year
there were sent from Batavia, in the month of December, 16,580
other pieces of porcelain, of various kinds, collected by the Dutch
Company." Would one wish to know what was the effect of the Dutch merchants
upon the manufacture itself, here is what we learn in the ' Ambassades
memorables': "Whilst the Sieur Wagenaar was preparing to return to
Batavia, he received 21,567 pieces of white porcelain ; and a month pre
viously a large quantity had been sent from Desima which had not a
great sale, because there were not enough flowers upon them. For
several years the Japanese have applied themselves to these kinds of
works with great assiduity. They have become so skilful at it, that not
H 2

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

only the Dutch but the Chinese themselves buy of them. The Sieur
Wagenaar, a great connoisseur, and very skilled in these kinds of works,
invented a flower upon a blue ground, which was thought so beautiful,
that of two hundred pieces upon which he caused it to be painted all
were sold immediately, so that there was not a shop which was not well
furnished with them."
What revelations ! This Wagenaar, a long time representative of
Holland at Japan, had deserved a recompense for his services, and had
conceded to him, for a certain number of years, .the monopoly of the
porcelain trade, and there he is trafficking with the manufactories, setting
up workshops for decoration, and modifying, in the interests of his
speculations, the native genius of a whole people ; he invents designs
because the Japanese pottery is not to his taste, "there are not enough
flowers." And, to their disgrace be it spoken, one finds people ready to
applaud these absurdities, and assert that the Orientals improve by
contact with our artists. Accomplices in these enormities, the nobility,
not satisfied with ordering their arms to be affixed to the services
for their use, also send drawings more or less roughly executed,
which the poor Japanese artists render with the most minute detail,
copying all the defects with the greatest accuracy; then, when the
porcelain returns from the Dutch factory upon Dutch vessels, we find
writers who ask if the workshops whence these things issue are at
Canton, or in any other town of China.
With such documents, let us then seek to set right the history of
this pseudo-ceramic, and give a meaning to its name. The only means
of arriving at the truth is to forget books, and to compare the products
with each other so as to establish their date and derivation.
In the Indian porcelain with flowers, we have to distinguish between
the national and the mercantile work ; many pieces, with grounds either
embroidered, enamelled, or of starch blue celadon, are ornamented with
extreme delicacy. A particular decoration, which we call " variegated
leaved," is very brilliant, and might have found grace even in the
eyes of the Puritan Wagenaar. The principal subject is a group of
pointed leaves, some in blue under the glaze, others of a pale green, or of
a pink and yellow enamelled ; at the base of the tuft expands a large
ornamental flower, with notched pink petals, lined with yellow ; the
heart, forming a centre, is yellow or greenish streaked with pink ; not
withstanding the indentations which overload it, it is easy to recognise the
flower as an anona or custard apple. The leaves would lead one to sup
pose them by their form and size to be those of a chestnut tree, while their

JAPAN.

Fig. 28.

colour recalls the tricolor plane tree, so beloved by the Orientals, and
which decks itself with tufts, varying from light green to red, passing
through the intermediary tints. Behind these leaves, and upon the edge
of the pieces, appear light and delicate small enamelled flowers of iron
red, yellow, rose, or blue.
If this decoration occurs frequently upon the services sent from Japan
for European use, it is to be met with much more carefully executed
upon jars and large vases, where the
flower of the anona, variegated
leaves, and wreaths of flowers encircle
the splendid fong-hoang of bright and
harmonious plumage, still recalling
their artistic origin.
We have also met the special
flowers of the Indian porcelain upon
reticulated vases (Fig. 28) of which
the open sides of vigorous iron-red
formed a frame to medallions of
elaborate and soft painting.
Section 4. — Special Fabrications.
We come to the exceptional pot
tery of the Japanese, in which we
see their native genius and their great
supremacy over the Chinese.
In the first rank, let us place
lacquered porcelain. Lacquer, as we
know, is a resinous gum which exudes from certain trees, and from which
the hardest of varnish is made ; it is called in China, tsi-chan, and i3
extracted from the Augia sinensis ; in Japan, it is derived from the
Rhus vernix, and has the name of Ourousi-no-ki. This precious varnish
is applied in Japan to every kind of material and, in particular, to porce
lain, on which, with inlaid mother-of-pearl, the most delicate pictures
are produced. This is what is called " porcelaine laquee burgautee."
Let us explain the exact meaning of this name : the " burgau " is
a univalve shell, Turbo marmoratus; its blackish epidermis incloses a
mother-of-pearl, which, before navigation brought us the Haliotides and
Meleagrinas mother-of-pearl of the Indies and America, our inlayers
used for their incrustrations. The habit once acquired, the word

RETICULATED VASE WITn FLOWERS IN
RELIEF.

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

"burgau" has served to designate all works in mother-of-pearl, of
whatever material.
The decoration of the burgaute lacquer is generally rustic, consisting
of a pearly landscape upon a black, velvet-like ground. Minute pieces
are skilfully cut out, and coloured underneath, so as to heighten the
effect of the mother-of-pearl. One can scarcely comprehend human
patience arriving at the point of cutting out one by one the leaves of a
tree or bamboo, the feathers of a bird, the shining particles destined to
imitate the pebbly bank of a river or the broken sides of a rock. The
combining and putting together of these pieces show no less talent than
dexterity. Narrow filaments, flexible as the hairs of a brush, trace out
the clouds and water, while the trees, mountains and ground are
rendered by mosaics variously coloured. The animals, the birds par
ticularly, are modelled as if with the pencil ; the form of the pieces is
well combined to express the foreshortenings and retreat of the different
parts, giving movement to the whole and expressing the smallest
details. Often a mountainous landscape divided by water covers the
surface of the vases ; upon the bowls, we find more particularly low
plains and shores frequented by web-footed birds.
The Japanese have not always used their porcelain as a vehicle for
lacquer-work. We have found under a dish this inscription: "Made
during the Tching-hoa period (1465-1487) of the great dynasty of the
Ming," and another under a little bowl, "Made during the Yu-tching
(L723-1735) of the great Thsing dynasty." From these we may con
clude that the lacquer makers found any kind of porcelain fit for
their work, and particularly that which was of a rough, thick, close
paste, which dilates least from changes of temperature. To secure the
perfect adhesion of the varnish, it is sometimes laid upon it in the
biscuit state. We could not say whether, in this case, the workman
has not removed the glaze by the wheel, previous to applying the
lacquer (ourousi-no-ki).
By the side of this curious porcelain there is one not less sur
prising, only lately known in Europe ; it is that which is covered over
with cloisonne enamel. Fine metallic meanders, placed edgeways,
describe mosaics, arabesques and flowers, which are filled with
vitrifiable coloured powders ; after having passed it in the kiln to
make the enamel adhere, the piece is polished to give it a smooth
and even surface. How porcelain is able to resist these operations,
notwithstanding its fragility, we have difficulty in understanding ; it
is a feat of dexterity accomplished for the sole satisfaction of the artist,

JAPAN. 103
for a similar effect is produced by employing copper, the customary
excipient. According to Oriental works, crackle china would go back to a very
remote period. Writers state, " Ancient crackle vases are much esteemed
in Japan, where to acquire real crackled vases, they do not hesitate at
one thousand ounces of silver (300Z.). It is not known under what
dynasty they began to make incense burners of crackle porcelain. Under
the foot is an iron nail, which is very brilliant and never rusts." We
have never met with any incense burners with the nail, but we have
seen Japanese grey crackle vases enamelled with field flowers. Also, a
tea-pot of calf-coloured crackle which almost entirely disappeared under
its lacquer decoration, the upper part, with a ground of veined wood,
was decorated with gold lacquer in relief, mixed with several touches
of vermilion ; subject the sea-shore, with the Fousi-yama or sacred
mountain, in the horizon. Detached landscapes, in gold lacquer, orna
mented also a cylindrical crackle vase. Lastly, a kind tolerably
frequent, and of undoubted origin, consists of little vases, of a ferru
ginous, blackish paste, overlaid with a yellow or chamois enamel, so finely
crackled, that%it might be classed among the truite's. These, of
graceful form, and elegant modellings are relieved with multitu
dinous bands of bamboo, modelled in relief with a black paste.
We do not speak, be it well understood, of the truite kind known
since the eighteenth century under the name of "truite ventre de
biche." This, now very generally diffused, is a fine stoneware pro
duced in the fabric of the prince of Satsuma; it is relieved with
subjects, flowers, arabesques, in various enamels and gold. Large vases,
night lamps with escutcheons, bowls, cups, pi-tongs, and even statuettes
of modern fabrication, have enabled us to judge of the taste of the
present Japanese artists. The Satsuma stonewares are the more sober in
ornamentation the nearer they approach ancient times.
If the crackles and truite's were made at Nippon, one may suppose
the same of other celadon glazes, yet we have never met any pieces of
sea-green glaze which might with certainty be assigned to Japan. As
to the grey-blue celadon, styled starch blue, it is to be be seen in large
vases and polygonal jardinieres with flat edges ; it overlays generall)T
a special decoration laid upon the biscuit, composed of dark blue lines,
copper red, and some touches or heighteniugs in white " slip." When
covered by the coloured glaze, this decoration is very harmonious; one
often sees thus executed bouquets of flowers, bamboos, or peach trees
in flower, with white-breasted birds flying rounl them which are

I04 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

easily recognised as swallows. Upon certain polygonal vases these
designs alternate with long legends in curious Japanese writing.
Among the exceptional productions should be placed a class of
porcelains, few in number and so singular in character, one would
almost hesitate in calling them Oriental. Of a date which may refer
to the seventeenth century, they appear to owe their creation to the
enthusiasm excited among the Japanese at the sight of certain pro
ductions brought from Europe. We find in this decoration the scrolls of
acanthus, canopies and interlacings, so frequent in the ornamentation of
the furniture, carpets and tissues of the period of Louis XIIL and Louis
XIV., and also flowers and insects of species foreign to Oriental painters.
Thus on plates and cups we see within a richly-bordered frame a bouquet
of iris on which velvet caterpillars are climbing, while butterflies flutter
around. Gigantic vases, the one belonging to the Baroness James de
Rothschild the other to the Due d'Aremberg, are covered with scrolls,
flowers and arabesques, with imitations of arms and emblems, to which
only appears to be wanting the motto of Louis XIV., Nee pluribus
impar. Other pieces no less extraordinary, with black ground ornamented
with gold, and of a style and delicacy quite exceptional, have in
reserved medallions Oriental personages of European composition for
subjects ; such as a negro blowing the horn, and another crowned with
feathers sounding the trumpet.
And what adds to the perplexity that these porcelains cause in the
mind of the inquirer is, there are some of which the subjects are
national ; such as a feast where the men, well characterised as belonging
to the noble class of Japan, and arrayed in robes of the consecrated
colours, eat fish served upon a low table, in the middle of a garden ;
such again is a subject representing the preparatory ceremony of a mar
riage, the intermediary party asking the consent of the girl, while the
fathers are making the most advantageous arrangements. Here, in a
complete series of vases of analogous make, appear grounds yellow,
white, or lilac, relieved by a lozenge pattern with diamond points, a plume
of feathers, and other insignia, which appear to possess a heraldic
signification.

COREA. 105

CHAPTER III.
COREA.
To all appearance, it would have been natural to have spoken of the
Coreans before the Chinese and Japanese, since written documents
point out these last as tributaries of the first as regards ceramic art.
But, on examining facts, one soon sees that the Corean teaching refers
only to painted porcelain, the least ancient of all in the extreme East.
This established, how then define Corean porcelain ? how distinguish
it from its imitations ? This bas been our criterion ; in China, Japan,
and even in Europe, a particular uniform type has often served as
model to painters on porcelain ; a heap of graminas concealing the base
of some plant, vines laden with grapes, a kind of squirrel, fantastic
birds, such is the basis of the decoration, generally executed in enamels
of small number.
In comparing the pieces which bear this archaic decoration, we
soon remark that there is a certain number of them of which the snow-
white paste is without gloss, with uneven but not vitreous glaze. The
vases, generally of polygonal form, are of simple outline ; jars (potiches)
of eight sides, barrel-shaped or slightly thinner at the base, with the
neck narrowed and lid depressed ; cisterns and compotiers, with flat
rims like those of our plates, the extreme edge turned up and
coloured with an edge of deep brown ; boxes for tea, rather tall, square
at the base, or with truncated angles, terminated by a cylindrical
spout; hemispherical bowls, quart goblets, cylindrical or octagonal
vessels, these are what we most often meet. In the decoration,
most of the natural objects depart from pure imitation and take a
conventional disposition ; one occasionally sees several vegetable species

io6

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

often repeated, such as the iris, chrysanthemum, peony, bamboo, peach-
tree in flower (Fig. 29). The peacock, characterised by the eyes of his
sweeping tail, and another bird resembling the argus pheasant, generally
replace the sacred fong-hoang. The dragon is rare, the crane not common ;
in other words, the symbolic animals are almost exceptional. The borders
are very simple ; consisting of the zigzag, or shark's tooth, the Greek,

Fi2. 29.

COREAN JAR (rOTICHE) OF PERSIAN D:

and a kind of scroll, of which the whorls, more or less close together,
can be multiplied according to the will of the artist, to form grounds of
great richness.
The decorating materials are few, and distributed sparingly. Iron-
red of a rich, pure tint, pale copper-green almost bluish, pale yellow,
black and gold, are all the pallet of the painter. The colours, laid

COREA.

107

over the glaze, often form a relief. The red is thin and well glazed,
nor has the black, restricted to certain surfaces, any thickness ; it is
most often used to outline or surround with a thick stroke the figures.
leaves, etc. The gold, which is more solid, is always much darker than in
other Oriental potteries.
The subjects, confined to a small number of persons, are sometimes
Japanese sometimes Chinese ; in the first case, we see dairian digni
taries with the wide robes and head-dresses, insignia of their rank ¦
sometimes we recognise empresses with bare feet and hanging hair;
that is, in the manner in which they are required to appear in the
presence of the Mikado.
It is only by this double character that one recognises that this
archaic porcelain comes from a country intermediate between China
and Japan, and which, working for both emperors, has been able to give
up to commerce products of which the sale elsewhere would have been
considered as sacrilege. Fig. 30. ,

¦ CATW.u !,;•"-

COREAN TEAPOT DECORATED WITH THE JAPANESE KIRI-MON.

Charming teapots in the form of leaves, covered with gravings
in the paste imitating the waves of the ocean, show four times repeated
the figure of the imperial Japanese kiri-mon (Fig. 30). These pieces,
therefore, were destined for the Mikado. If one would thence conclude
that they came from Nippon, we would answer, that one is decorated
with Chinese figures ; and that a bo.wl of identical fabrication, enriched

108 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
with bouquets of ornamental symmetrical flowers, is inscribed beneath
with a Chinese nien-hao, indicating the Kia-thsing period (1522-1566).
Had Chi-tsong ordered it for his use or received it as a tribute ?
for Corea was for a long time under the protectorate of China and
Japan. These then, among the pieces of archaio decoration, are those
which we must recognise as the prototype, and of which the Corean
origin remains incontestable : a paste particularly white> without gloss,
and with glaze less vitreous than that used in China and Japan;
enamelled decoration in soft and few colours, with mixed subjects,
sometimes Japanese sometimes Chinese, and sometimes uniting emblems
borrowed from both nationalities, forming an aspect so peculiar that the
eye cannot be deceived between the original and the copy, when fully
penetrated with its true archaic character.
The Corean pieces have a grandeur and simplicity of style which
must have charmed our ancestors; hence it is that this primitive
porcelain was imitated at Saint-Cloud, ChantiUy, Mennecy, and Sevres ;
Saxony copied it with such fidelity, that there are certain speci
mens calculated to deceive even a connoisseur.
Corean porcelain, coming into Europe among the first sent from
Japan, remained confounded with the works of Nippon. Julliot. one of
the most intelligent dealers in curiosities of the eighteenth century,
qualifies this kind as " ancient Japan porcelain, first quality coloured,"
and speaks of it in the following terms : " This porcelain, of which the
composition is entirely lost, has always had the advantage of inspiring
the greatest sensation among amateurs by the fine grain of its beautiful
white paste, the attractive lightness and softness of its dead red, the velvet
of its bright green and dark sky-blue colours ; such is the true
recognised merit of this porcelain; therefore, all superior collections
have been and are composed of it, which alone makes its eulogium."
This enthusiastic definition is quite conformable to the characters
given above. That Julliot should have supposed the secret of archaic
porcelain to be lost is not surprising, since the country where he thought
it to have originated no longer sent any. It was a merchandise imported
from Japan, where the first traders had been able to collect it, but
where it speedily disappeared.
Yet it is believed that porcelain was long made in the Corea. A
prince of the house of Mori, Feru-Moto, sent, as late as the seventeenth
century, Corean potters to make at Fagui, in the province of Nagato,
pieces called Fagui-yaki. t

COREA. 109

There exist, in effect, vases where the blue under the glaze, accom
panying the other colours, would appear to indicate certain foreign in
fluence ; one finds civil figures imitated from those of Japan, then a whole
series of pieces of heavy paste abundant in fluxes, with a vitreous,
bluish glaze, having reliefs sealed or applied. The under part retains the
impression of the coarse linen upon which the paste has been worked.
In this series, we find tea fountains, figurative pieces representing a
cuttle-fish upon a rock, surrounded by water ; pi-tongs resembling the
trunk of a tree, round which entwines a vine or which is overspread by
branches of the pine or the flowering peach.
If this fabrication is posterior to the other kinds, it cannot have
lasted very long, for at the moment when the commerce of Holland was
at the height of its power, the Corea, debased by conquest, could not
suffice for its own requirements. At the present day, according to the
report of the missionaries, the ceramic production exists no longer, even
within the remembrance of the oldest inhabitants.

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

BOOK III.
ASIATfC CONTINENT.

CHAPTER I.
ASSYRIA— BABYLON— ASIA MINOR.
Herodotus states that the walls of Ecbatana, in Media, were painted
of seven colours. If it may be permitted to suppose that this relates to
vitrified colours upon terra-cotta, the origin of coating with various
colours would refer to a very high antiquity in Asia Minor. It is not
improbable that such was the case ; we have specimens now existing in our
museums, from Nineveh and Babylon (Fig. 31). Taking as the minimum
of the age of the Babylonian bricks the period of the destruction of the
city by Darius, we arrive at the year B.C. 522, a respectable date,
inferior though it be to those of the monuments of Egypt.
Babylonian bricks are of earth, slightly fired, of a yellowish white,
passing into rose ; the designs on their surface are not enamelled, but
of a glaze composed of an alkaline silicate of alumina, without any trace
of lead or tin ; the clay is not entirely covered over, but reserved in
some places, it adds by its flesh colour to the variety of the painting,
in which the predominant colour is the turquoise-blue of the Egyptians,
bluish grey, deeper than sky-blue, a white more or less pure,
heightened by some yellowish paint, due, no doubt, to a ferruginous
ochre. Rosettes, palmettes, series of oval and other symmetrical
dispositions approaching to Greek art, such is the general style of the
ornamented bricks, and of the ceramic fragments gathered in Phoenicia,
Assyria, Armenia, and even in ancient Persia. These remains,
together with beads worked in enamel and glass, prove to what a point
of advancement the art of vitrification had reached in these countries.
But bricks were not only decorated with arabesques. According

ASSYRIA— BABYLON— ASIA MINOR.

to Ctesias and Diodorus they were covered with subjects of the chase.
In the excavations made at Khorsabad upon the site of the ancient

Fig. 31.

CATENACCL
ENAMELLED BABYLONIAN BRICKS (MUSEUM OF THE LOUVRE).
Assyrian palace, M. Place, the French consul, laid open, behind a
colonnade, a wall still standing twenty-one feet long and five feet high,
entirely faced with painted bricks, representing men, animals, and trees.
Mr. Kennet Loftus, the first European who has visited the ruins of
Warka, in Mesopotamia, found there enamelled earth employed for
civil purposes. This is what he says on the subject : " AVarka is without
doubt the Erech of Scripture, the second city of Nimroud, or the
Orchoe of the Chaldajans ; the rubbish to be seen within the interior
of the walls offers great interest to the historian and the antiquarian.
This rubbish is literally composed of coffins piled upon each other to
the height of forty-five feet. This town has evidently been the great
burial place of generations of the Chaldeans, as Meshad-Ali and Kerbella
are, in our time, the cemeteries of the Persians. The coffins are
strangely constructed, they have generally the form of a slipper bath,
but more depressed and symmetrical, with a large oval aperture to
admit the body, which is closed with a lid of earthenware. The coffins
themselves are of baked clay, covered with green glaze, and embossed
with figures of warriors with strange enormous head-dresses, dressed in
a short tunic, and underneath a kind of long jupon, a sword at their
side, their arms resting upon their hips, and their legs apart. Quantities
of pottery and earthen figures, some modelled with great delicacy, have
been found with these coffins, which contain inside an enormous quantity
of gold ornaments, silver, iron, copper, glass, etc."
We have not seen an example of the coffins described above ; but
the description alone places before our mind the Assyrian monuments
of the Louvre, and those warriors of powerful gait, leading their prisoners
in gigantic processions upon the friezes of the palaces of Sargon and
Sardanapalus.

H2 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Such would have been the first form of art in Asia Minor, a form
explained in some manner by the contrast and . struggles with
Egyptian civilisation. Later Greece came in her turn, to impart the
poetry of her conceptions to those people so easily accessible to high
inspirations. We find evidence of this conquest in our rich collections.
M. Langlois has brought from Tarsus, in Cilicia, terra-cottas, with
embossed ornaments of a fine green, which have the purity of style, the
breadth and severity of Greek art. One of the fragments belongs to
those vases, in the form of a fir cone, imitated later in Persia, and
which were the model of the primitive wares of Deruta in Italy ; the
others are portions of elegant cups, ornamented with mouldings,
wreaths, and tasteful scrolls. The potter even aspired higher, he
desired to add to the richness of his reliefs a variety of tints ; the
inside enamel was not the same as the outside ; a yellow border would
sometimes relieve the bright green ground. Two specimens especially,
prove to what a high degree of excellence art had attained ; here a
fine comic mask of a golden yellow, shaded by red tints extending over
the ears, eyelids, and the arch of the eyebrow, these last heightened with
a thick black stroke, which indicates the line of the eyelashes ; this
judicious polychromic application giving the piece an almost natural
animation. Further is the fragment of a vase, of which the projecting
circumference, tinted in green, comes out vigorously upon a golden
yellow glaze. The embossed ornamentation consists first of a frieze of
trilobed leaves, between the points of which project half-beads, alternately
red and brown ; below, a scroll forms a crown, of which the cut and incised
leaves are opposed successively to a kind of red fruit. Nothing can be
imagined more elegant than this work, composed after the style of the
rich productions of the ancient glass-works, and obtained with the
vulgar elements of our coarse pottery.
After seeing the ceramic art attain such a height, we have no longer
to occupy ourselves with the long vexed questions among archaeologists,
whether the Greeks and Romans were acquainted with the ceramic
glazes, whether they applied this knowledge to their lamps or the
interior of their water pipes ; and if a certain potter of Schlestadt was
the inventor of this glaze in the thirteenth century. How is it these
advanced practices should be in the possession of countries con
quered by the Greeks, when the Hellenic centre was satisfied with its
lustred pottery ? Familiar from early times with the beauty of outline
and with the severity of simple compositions, the Greeks did not
feel the want of the lively tints furnished by vitreous colours, tones on

ASSYRIA— BABYLON— ASIA MINOR. 113
the otlier hand in such perfect keeping with, the luxurious vestments,
the furniture encrusted with gold and precious stones, of the satraps of
the East. It is in ascending or crossing the Euphrates and the Tigris
that we reach the real country of dazzling ceramics, and rich enamelled
terra-cottas, which are applied to the decoration of the temples and
palaces. Why is it that the elements are wanting to build up the interesting
history of art in Asia Minor ? Where are the works of its successive
conquerors, and especially of the Sassanian dynasty, who have left in the
country such lively remembrances of their rule?
At Rhodes and other localities have been found some ribbed
phials, covered with turquoise-blue glaze, Fj 32
resembling the products of ancient
Egypt (Fig. 32) ; but these isolated
examples, without character in themselves,
serve only to prove the parentage of
silicious pottery, and its irradiation from
the Pharaonic soil towards Persia and
India. We must therefore rapidly traverse
these grievous gaps, in order to arrive at
new-born Islamism, and, following its
development, see a new manifestation of ANCIE*T Mra!ED VASE OF turquoise
UCVC1U|JU1D1IU, ddu iv ."¦ BLUE, FOUND AT RHODES.
the resources of the human mind.
Mahomet, an obscure native of Mecca, began preaching an unknown
religious doctrine. On Friday, 6th of July, 622, he is obliged to flee his
native city, where his opinions are ill received. He takes refuge at
Medina, and is there hailed as an apostle. Soon surrounded- by
numerous followers, he returns to Mecca at the head of an army,
and enters it as a conqueror. In 631, he takes possession of a part of
Syria, and his death, which took place in 632, hardly stops the success
of his arms. Abubekr, one of his fathers-in-law, assumes the title of
caliph or vizier, and renders himself master of Syria; the other, Omar,
invades E°ypt. In 644, Othman, a general, seizes Persia from
Yesdejerde II. ; the last Sassanian king. The Ommaiades found the king
dom of Kairwan on the north of Africa, and conquer Spain. The
Abassides are masters of all Western Asia, and from this period begin
the incessant struggles of Christianity to set up a barrier against the
encroachments of the followers of the Koran.
The first care of the victorious Arabs was to raise everywhere edifices
1

H4 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
for the new religion, or to appropriate for its exercise those of the
people they had conquered. About 707, a tomb is consecrated at Medina
to Mahomet, and is covered with earthenware plaques, one of which is
in the Ceramic Museum at Sevres ; now this plaque, similar in its compo
sition to the pieces we find in Persia, is like them, coloured with silicon
alkaline glazes, blue and green, heightened with black. This, then, is a
type of pure Arab fabricatiou applied to buildings, and the monuments
of Konieh, in Asia Minor, built in 1074 to 1275 by Kilidji-Arslan and
Ala-Eddin, offer ns wall-tiles of the same kind. The minaret of the
mosque of Nice, built in 1389, which is the most western example of
Arabic art, will show us similar decorations.
But these are evidently only the special application of an advanced
ait, capable of doing more and better. By the side of . these bright-
coloured bricks, of brilliant and lustred surface, which, when arranged
in geometric segments, form elegant mosaics of decided colours, there
must have been a fabric of painted plaques with coloured reliefs, and
also a considerable production of vessels for use or decoration.
We know that the Seljukian princes caused to be brought from
Persia and Arabia, not only literati * and poets, but also artists,
capable of raising, by their talent, the splendour of the public monu
ments. Large manufactories of faiences and enamelled tiles were
established at Nice and Broussa ; that of Damascus had a reputation
which penetrated as far as Europe, and caused Oriental pottery to be
prized as precious gems.
The tomb raised at Broussa to Mahomet in the fourteenth century,
allows us to form a judgment upon the decorative style of the artists of
Asia Minor at that period, and on the ingenious processes of the Rouma
nian potters. The casing tiles placed on the exterior of the monument
were moulded in relief and painted, a special mode of decoration applied,
as it is said, for the first time. The ground of a metallic brown, seme with
scrolls in reserve, have fine projecting inscriptions in blue, surmounted
by birds, upon the friezes, later destroyed with the hammer by the
fanatic disciples of Omar. Other tiles presented arabesque combina
tions, the outline of which, described by a " cloisonne " line
incloses coloured enamels, forming a relief in their central part, and
diminishing towards the outline. In the interior the arched roofs and the
ceilings are decorated with monochrome pieces, describing vast mosaics •
but the walls overlaid with plaques, painted on a flat surface, show two
different arrangements ; the one not only imitates the style of the
Byzantine cloisonne enamels, but also the mingled tints to be seen in

ASSYRIA— BABYLON— ASIA MINOR. 115
the covers of tbe gospels, shrines, and other works of the goldsmith ;
composite leaves, or palmettes, a green passing to shaded yellow, a
lively blue passing to white through sky-blue, a violet degraded to
lilac, etc. The other tiles, in the Persian style, are specialised by fluid,
pale colours.
Is it, as thinks M. Charles Texier, upon the tomb of Mahomet at
Broussa that we must seek for the first application of earthenware
painted in relief? We have seen at a public sale a vase (potiche)
decorated with friezes superposed on which were figures of musicians, in
stooping positions, playing various instruments, nimbed warriors on horse
back, various animals and birds, some real, others imaginary, each group
enclosed with ornamental palms of a peculiar style, and all detached from
a golden copper network ground, with small reserved scrolls ; the animals
and vestments were themselves heightened with gilded scrolls or convo
lutions upon the greyish white ground of the pottery. A single glance at
this piece at once recalls the most ancient Arabic conceptions, such as the
baptismal font of St. Louis, and other vessels in damascened laten, on
which are the same hunting subjects aud the same symbolic animals ; it
would appear therefore impossible that this vase should not be anterior
to the fourteenth century. It is also probable that the Arab fabrication,
perhaps anterior to the thirteenth century, prolonged itself for a long
time, and that it has been carried from these primitive centres to very
distant countries.
Among the most marvellous specimens of Oriental art are to be
cited the lamps, or rather the lamp shades, of enamelled glass, wdiich,
from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, it was the custom to
suspend as ex votos in the mosques of Asia Minor, Egypt, and Persia.
The oldest of these lamps have their chains of suspension united by an
earthenware • egg of turquoise blue or white, painted blue ; but the
potters have not confined themselves there ; some of them have made the
lamp itself in faience, with white inscriptions laudatory or dedicatory,
" en reserve," standing out upon a bold ground, damascened with fine ver
micular ornaments also in reserve. We give the figure (Plate V.) of a
magnificent specimen of the fifteenth century, belonging to M. Charles
Schefer, our learned Orientalist ; the maker of this lamp has transmitted
his name, Us Elai'ny Ettourei'zy. We have found the same decoration as
that of this lamp upon a less ancient dish, belonging to Dr. Mandl, and
upon several other specimens, impressed with a relative freshness and
much more recent.
Which is the centre where this style of work was produced ? We
1 2

u6

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Fig. 33.

GOURD OF NOAH, SILICIOUS
BLUE FAIENCE.

scarcely dare affirm, for Asia Minor has made many, and in very varied
styles. We owe to the kindness of M. Natalis Rondot, a piece
remarkably approaching the silicious pottery of Egypt and Persia ; it
is a lenticular gourd, with small cylindrical neck, evidently meant
to contain wine (Fig. 33). According to the tradition current in the
country, these vessels, which are in great vene
ration, would go back to such remote antiquity,
that it was by one of them that Noah was
betrayed into the first act of inebriety recorded
in history. Unlikely as this may be, this legend
proves at least the distant ages of vessels of
this class, of which the parentage certainly is
to be referred to one of the manufactures more
or less ancient of Anatolia. The most curious
specimen which these afford us is an egg of
suspension (Fig. 34), a complement to the glass
lamps, which has painted on its white enamel
figures of cherubim and crosslets, announcing the influence of Christian
art. This is an evident imitation of the decorative style to be seen
upon the pendants of the cupola of St. Sophia, at Constantinople ;
and if we can carry back the egg, now in the possession of Baron
Davillier, to the time of Justinian, this
little piece evidences the power of a
tradition which is perpetuated in the
school of Mount Athos.
Kutahia still produces pieces of
similar paste, decorated with the same
enamels, and which are the last mani
festations of an art of which the egg of
suspension may be considered as the point
of departure. We see in it the succession
of those bowls, lozenged in relief in their
white parts ; of those charming perfume
burners, terminated in mosque-shaped
cupolas (Fig 35) ; of those elegant bell-
shaped cups, to be used with presentoirs,
with large flat borders, decorated in
lively enamels, combined in borders, bouquets, and arabesques, recalling
the taste of the textiles of Cashmere.
AVith respect to the works produced at Damascus, the brevity

Fig. 34.

EGG OF SILICIOUS FAIENCE
(COLLECTION OF BARON DAVILLIER).

Plate V.— ASIA MINOR.
Faience— Votive Lamp from a Mosque, XVth Century. Collection Scheffer.

v\ ~N i
j«W Ol^.v -v^j !> . C -V>. v

F?LienardJmp

ASSYRIA— BABYLON— ASIA MINOR.

"7

Fig. 35.

of ancient inventories does not permit of determining their nature
or style ; recent productions would not lead us to form a favour
able idea of them; then we have seen the gey-chani brought from
Syria by M. Charles Schefer, shallow bowls of common silicious earthen
ware, greyish and painted in crude enamels, with figures or birds hastily
executed. Mr. Drury Fortnum, in a
learned dissertation on a faience lamp
in his possession, expresses his opinion
that his lamp may have issued from
the manufactory at Damascus ; it is
signed by its author, " The poor and
humble Mustapha," and bears the date
of the month of Jemazi-1-oola, 956,
corresponding with June 1549. Now
this was the epoch of the reign of
Soleyman the Great (1520-1566), a
period of intellectual revival for Tur
key andSyria. Soleyman having caused
the Mosque of Omar to be restored
and redecorated precisely in 1549,
Mr. Drury Fortnum hence infers that
his lamp may have been one of the
ex votos executed at Damascus for the famous temple of Jerusalem.
This theory is doubtless attractive, the date even of the piece gives
it a serious support ; but if we must admit the Syrian origin of this
lamp, we should still see in it a decoration of Persian art ; the make, the
style, the colour, are what the finest specimens of Iranian pottery
show us, and as the Seljukian princes went to seek in Persia ceramists
to develop the art in Asia Minor, we could very easily understand that
Soleyman had borrowed from the same source artists to illustrate his
reign. Far be from us the thought expressed by some writers, that a
country could not have produced such works of art, because travellers
do not meet with them ; but, if at the end of the sixteenth century,
Damascus had given birth to potteries so distinguished as the lamp of
Mr. Drury Fortnum, one would find again the style in the monuments,
and better still in the more recent works, and of certain origin, which
are in the hands of the collector.

INCENSE BURNER, FAIENCE OF KUTAII1A.

n8 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

CHAPTER II.
PERSIA. ¦
Section 1. — History — Manners.
The ceramic history of Persia is one of the most difficult to elucidate ;
on one hand a variety of traditions, tracing back to antiquity and the
Middle Ages, and proceeding from the extreme East, Greece, Asia Minor,
and Arabia, on the other, the absence of written documents, all force
inquirers to a minute study, full of doubt and hesitation. The little
that travellers have collected relative to the manufactures of Iran is a
tissue, of errors and of contradictory assertions ; the absence of special
knowledge drives the old travellers to an inextricable phraseology whence
it is difficult to bring out the truth ; while in the empty recitals of the
modern the reader seeks in vain for the simplicity of narrative, which,
though it fails completely to satisfy curiosity, at least inspires confidence.
It cannot therefore create wonder that, sparing in quotations of which
the value and real meaning would require to be fully discussed, we here
depend entirely upon the works themselves to build up their history.
First it is necessary to throw a glance upon ancient Persian civilisa
tion, and see by what transformations their manners have passed into
those of the present day. The Greeks make the annals of Iran to begin
with Cyrus, but the Arabs go back to Kaiornars, king of the universe,
in order to arrive at the legendary Rustam, hero of so many poetic
tales and singular fables. Let us pass from this misty period to the
reign of Guschtasp and to the events wdiich render it the point of
departure of Persian civilisation. At that period a real moral anarchy
existed, the people were given up to idolatry and magic, when Zoroaster
suddenly appeared, and established the religion and manners of the

PERSIA. 119

country. We will not speak of the phenomena which, according to
tradition, took place at the birth of the philosopher ; nor will we say
anything of his first appearance in the midst of the council of the
sovereign when the floor of the room opened to give him entrance :
we will only state that he brought a book called the ' Avesta,' written
in the Zend language, containing the precepts of civil and religious
law. The dogmas professed by Zoroaster are the existence of time without
end, a first principle of all, existing by himself, and the creator of two
secondary principles, Ormuzd and Ahriman, the first, author of all.
good, the second, source of all evil. Each of these two principles, hos
a creative power which he exercises, naturally, for opposite ends. Tne
good genii, man, and the useful animals, are creatures of Ormuz ! ;
the evil genii, noxious and venomous animals, are created by Ahri
man. The world is peopled with genii and intelligences, unceasingly
occupied in preparing victory for the principle to which they
belong; the agents of Ormuzd seek to preserve the world and the
human species, which the army of Ahriman is incessantly striving to
destroy. It is superfluous to add that light is the emblem of Ormuzd,
as darkness is the symbol of Ahriman. .
The reasonable beings produced by the good principle, men or genii,
are intimately united to a spiritual substance designated under the
name of ferouher. Animals have neither soul nor ferouher. This last
is distinct from intelligence and other faculties of the soul ; it is the
principle of sensation. These spiritual substances existed long before
the creation of man, and unite themselves to him at the moment of
his birth and leave him at his death. They contend against the evil
genii created by Ahriman, and are the cause of the preservation of
beings. After death the ferouher lives united to the soul ; and under
goes a judgment which decides its fate; good conduct alone then
assures man happiness in another life. But at the last, every created
being, men and genii, not excepting Ahriman himself, will be con
verted to the law of Ormuzd, and the wicked, purified by the fire
of hell, will share with the just an eternal happiness which will be
preceded by the resurrection of the body.
This religion being based upon the antagonism of the two principles
of good and evil, one does not wonder at meeting upon most monuments
it has inspired this antagonism expressed by the wrestling of the lion
and the bull. In reality, it is not iconoclastic, and there is nothing
contrary to it in the figuration of man and the animals; it is the super-

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

stition of the sects devoted to magic which has led to a belief in the
clanger of human representation, because the image of a being may be
subjected to enchantments and tortures which act directly upon the
individual himself. The cypress is often represented, this tree sym
bolising to Zoroaster and his disciples the soul aspiring to heaven. It
was also the emblem of their religion, and, besides the fire temples he
caused to be erected everywhere, the philosopher-legislator also planted
at Balkh a cypress, brought, he said, from Paradise, and upon which he
engraved these words, " Guschtasp has embraced the true religion."
The king raised round the tree a marble pavilion, covered with a
dome, and resplendent with jewels and precious metals. Into this
pavilion, called Minou, that is, celestial, was deposited a copy of the
Zendavesta, and it became a place of judgment for the Iranian con
verts to the new religion.
The spiritualism of the religion of Zoroaster adapted itself wonder
fully to the cast of mind of the Iranians, hence it rooted itself deeply
in the masses and could be extirpated only by violence. When towards
the year 650 of our era, the Mussulmans became masters of Persia, with
that inexorable fanaticism which constitutes the principal strength of
Islamism, they sought to- impose their faith upon the conquered, and
violently persecuted those who dared to resist them. Some of the
disciples of Zoroaster preferred renouncing their country rather than
the religion of their fathers ; they first descended along the shores
of the Persian Gulf and ultimately retired into India, where they
formed a special centre of fire-worshippers under the name of Parsis,
or Parsees. This emigration is one of the most curious facts in Persian
history. In accepting Islamism, the Persians ranged themselves in the sect of
Schiites, distinguished from the Sunnites by an idea more political than
religious ; the last acknowledge, as legitimate successors of Mahomet,
the three first caliphs Abubekr, Omar, and Osman ; the others regard
these caliphs as usurpers, and maintain that Aii, son-in-law of Mahomet,
is heir to the temporal and spiritual powers of his father-in-law.
The admiration of the Schiites for Aii goes so far as to assign to him
a character of sanctity equal or superior to that with which Heaven had
invested Mahomet. This opinion was made the pretext of sanguinary
wars between the Turks and Persians.
Like all Mussulmans the Iranians admit six articles of faith. 1. The
belief in one sole God ; 2. In angels and archangels ; 3. In all the
inspired writings ; the principal are the Pentateuch, Psalms, Gospels, and

PERSIA.

Koran ; 4. In the prophets ; 5. In the resurrection of the body and in
judgment ; 6. In predestination.
Has the conversion to Islamism been sincere in every rank of society
in Persia ? The doubt is allowable, and we may rest it upon the main
tenance of certain national festivities which have resisted Mussulman
intolerance ; such is the Nourouz, or festival of the vernal equinox, the
king and the people preferring to incur the reproach of impiety rather
than abolish one of the most ancient institutions of the country. The
pretext under which it has been maintained is it being the anniversary
of the elevation of Aii to the caliphate. The day of the Nourouz
every one puts on his best clothes ; they visit, embrace each other, and
then exchange presents ; the king goes out in procession and reviews his
troops, all, in short, is movement and joy. The festival may be compared
to that of the new year among the nations of the AVest.
The time of the flowering of the tulip is one of great domestio
rejoicing. The Persians have a passion for flowers ; the poets, not
satisfied with singing their beauty, give them a language which has
now become common. Plants are in Persia, as it were, an open book
to the unlettered ; those who cannot wield the calamus or writing reed
correspond by means of expressive nosegays, called selams. In this
special language the tulip expresses love, and Chardin relates having
seen, in the king's palace at Ispahan, a vase decorated with this flower
and bearing the following inscription : " I have taken the tulip for
emblem ; like it, my face is on fire, and my -heart like a coal." At
the feast of tulips, the most curious varieties are exhibited in the
interior of the harem ; the women adorn themselves, the lights shine,
music mixes its accents to the concert of human voices, and thus breaks
the listless monotony of a cloistered life.
If the rose has not its special fete, poets reserve to it the place
of honour in their songs. Sadi has consecrated to it these charming
lines : " One day I saw some roses and some fresh grass lying side by
side. And I said, ' How has the vile herb dared to seat itself near the
sweet-smelling rose ?' The grass answered, ' Be silent : the generous heart
does not forget its old friends. Although I do not equal the perfume or
the beauty of the rose, we are not the less born upon the same soil.' "
Since we have made a first step into the domain of Persian literature,
let us go on in order to recall all that can explain or give interest to
the vases.
Persia is particularly fitted for the cultivation of the vine ; its
burning sun endows the^ grape with a generous juice which exalte and

HISTORY OF. THE CERAMIC ART.

inebriates. In all times the wines of tliis country, and especially that
of Schiraz, have enjoyed a well-deserved reputation. In the eyes of
sages this quality even is a fault, and the Arabs have qualified wine
by a word signifying " trouble the mind." Mahomet at first had per
mitted the use of it, saying that it was subject to its advantages and
evils, but afterwards, alarmed at the disorders which it caused, he forbade
it absolutely. " O ye who believe," says the Koran, " know that wine
is an impure invention of Satan ; flee from it if you wish to be saved."
Notwithstanding this prohibition, the Persians, both secretly and in
public, make use of the intoxicating liquor ; we say they make use,
whilst it is of the abuse that we should write. In fact, it is not by
reason of health that the Mussulmans transgress the religious law ; it is
to procure to themselves the violent sensations which intoxication pro
duces. Those even who do not dare drink believe that wine will be the
delight of the elect in Paradise, and this hope alone keeps them within
the prescribed limits. Nothing, therefore, is more common than verses
in praise of wine and intoxication, and most expressive passages are
often inscribed upon the cups and bottles of metal, glass, or pottery.
In truth, most of the Mussulmans pretend that these verses are allegoric ;
when Seny writes, " The cupbearer with her cup has rendered me doubly a
fool ; one would say there was an understanding between this beauty with
the perfume of the rose and the wine she serves to me." They assert that
wine is the symbol of the love of the Almighty which, carried to a
certain degree, takes possession of the reason of mortals, throws them
into a kind of ecstasy, and transports them to another world. The
cupbearer is the image of preachers and moral writers, whose dutv it is
to use every means of persuasion to bring sinners to the right path.
The cupbearer, or rather beauty of which it is the emblem, is again
the image of the divinity, which shows itself sometimes unveiled to the
beings it wishes to favour. Some passages of the mystic authors ought
certainly to be so interpreted ; there is no doubt respecting the sense
of this fragment of Hafiz :
" When thou wilt have poured out a cup of the wine of ecstasy, thou
wilt be less disposed to give thyself up to a vain egotism. Attach thy
heart to the intoxicating liquor, it will give thee corn-age to subdue hypo
crisy and assumed devotion." But when we recollect there is no party of
pleasure in Persia in which wine does not play its part, that these revels are
accompanied by songs and dances, and this Hafiz, " the mystic tongue,
the interpreter of the most hidden mysteries," has written thus : " Ap
proach, oh preacher! come and drink with us at the tavern, of a wine

PERSIA. 123

thou wilt never drink in Paradise ; ask of us neither virtue, repentance,
nor piety ; one has never obtained anything good from one whom love
has deprived of his reason," — we must admit that a large part ought to
be taken in its real sense and material application, in these doubtful
passages which the devout would apply to their theories.
Notwithstanding the prohibition of the Koran, some sovereigns
of Persia have, for a time at least, authorized the use of wine, less
dangerous in every point of view than that of the decoction of poppy
called coquenar, infusions of hemp, and pills of opium. Hafiz, alluding
to a permission of this kind, exclaims, " In this age, when our good
prince forgives the weakness of his subjects, Hafiz publicly gives himself
up to the cup, the mufti openly drinks wine."
Chardin, when describing the king's palace at Ispahan, speaks in
these terms of the ' Maison du vin :' " It is a kind of apartment from
thirty-six to forty-two feet high, raised two feet above the ground, built
in the middle of a garden, its narrow entrance concealed by a little wall
built in front, two paces distant, so that what is going on within cannot
be seen. Inside, to the left, is the officers' room, or magazine, and to
the right a large apartment. The saloon, which is covered with a
dome, is in the form of a long square extended to a Greek cross, by
means of two porticoes or arcades, sixteen feet deep, which are at the
sides. The middle of the apartment is decorated with a large basin
of water with porphyry sides. The walls are overlaid with tablets of
jasper all round, eight feet high, and above, as far as the centre of the
dome, one sees on all sides nothing but niches of a thousand different
forms filled with vases, cups, and bowls of every kind of shape, make,
and material, as crystal, cornelian, agate, onyx, jasper, amber, coral,
porcelain, precious stones, gold, silver, enamel, mixed one among the
other, and which appear incrusted the length of the walls, and hold on so
slightly they look as if falling from the dome. The offices or maga
zines on each side this magnificent hall are filled with cases of wine,
four feet high by two wide. The wine is mostly either in large flasks
of from fifteen to sixteen pints, or in long-necked bottles of two or
three pints. These bottles are of Venice glass, of various makes,
diamond point, gadrooned, or network. As the good Asiatic wines are
of the brightest colour, they like to have them in bottles. These wines
are some from Georgia, others of Caramania, and others of Schiraz,
The- bottles are fastened with wax, with the seal of the governor of
the place on a red silk above, and are only offered so sealed. Among
the sentences applied here and there upon the different walls of the

124 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
hall, I remarked this : " Life is a successive intoxication, pleasure passes
and headache remains." We are here far from the Koran and its
lessons of sobriety ! But wdiy have so impassioned a people as the
Persians had placed within their reach a liquor more capable than any
other of disturbing reason ?
Section 2. — Potteries.
What must have been at different epochs of history the nature of
the different potteries of Iran? There is no written answer to the
question ; but the Persian soil is so constituted that it can, like that
of China, supply every ceramic material. This is a fact beyond doubt*
and confirmed by recent experience. At the beginning of this century
an enlightened prince, having visited Europe, was struck with the
advancement of our sciences, and desired to restore in his own country
the industry of porcelain ; he summoned a skilful practitioner of the
name of Garanza, who set up a fabric at Ourmia and produced very
good pieces ; but markets were wanting, the prince became tired of
furnishing supplies, the manufacture languished, and the undertaker
had but one resource, which was to apply his chemical knowledge to the
making of gunpowder.
We ought then to find in Persia, pottery of hard, translucent paste,
or kaolinic porcelain, and faience. But this last kind of pottery, of
which the name, with us, has an absolute technical value, does not
preserve in Persia the same invariability, as rather different products
have been confounded under the same name. Faience is generally a baked
earth of soft paste, overlaid with an opaque tin or lead enamel ; in Iran
it affects particular forms which approach more or less to porcelain.
Its silicious paste, composed of a white quartzose sand, imperfectly
united by the clay, is easily vitrifiable, so that when the firing takes
place at a high temperature, or has been prolonged for a certain time, it
assumes an entire translucency, a vitreous aspect approaching enamel.
Exposed to a more moderate fire, it is only translucent in the thin part,
aud is scarcely vitreous except in its outer covering. AVhen it is com
pletely opaque, like true faience, it still presents two varieties, the one
not enamelled, but simply lustred by means of a silico-alkaline glaze
of admirable evenness ; the other glazed with a tin or lead enamel.
We shall, therefore, have to study — 1st, Enamelled porcelain, which
we consider the most ancient ; 2nd, Soft porcelain, or silicious trans
lucent pottery ; 3rd, Faience ; and 4th, Hard porcelain.

PERSIA. 125

A. — Enamelled Porcelain.
The rare pieces of this kind remain white, like the finest porcelains
of China and Japan ; their decoration is almost confined to open work,
pierced in the paste and filled in with the glaze ; these pieces consist
most often of wide, bell-shaped bowls, having in the centre a hemi
spheric umbo of so vitreous an appearance, that one would say it was a
delicate glass bubble ready to yield to the slightest pressure. Sometimes,
round this last are traced arabesques in black cursive strokes ; rarer
still, these arabesques circumscribe a little ground of pure, sky-blue
which proves the possibility of employing various enamels upon this
kind of paste. The rim of the pieces is not cut out, but notched from
distance to distance with little splits close together, and tinted black.
The open work ornament forms a crown near the rim. Underneath, the
pieces are very rough, the glaze forms greenish drops, from the
accumulation of the vitreous material, and the appearance of the foot
shows the violent efforts required after forming, to disengage the vase
from its support ; it is a real fracture.
We can cite several bowls of this porcelain ; we have also seen one
on a high foot, without umbo, but ornamented in the centre of the
arabesque crown described in the bowls ; rarer still, are pieces of form
such as a gargoulette, an elegant long-necked bottle, and an octagonal
recipient, having a hemispheric cap- surmounted by a short open neck.
These various pieces are decorated with arabesques graved in the paste,
and which come out by the accumulation of the greenish glaze, after
the manner of the celadons.
One might, perhaps, group with enamelled porcelain certain dishes
alike engraved with imbricated grounds, which the glaze brings out,
then decorated with regular arabesques in soft blue, and sometimes
enamelled externally with the same blue ; specimens of this exceptional
fabrication are in the Ceramic Museum of Limoges. Careful chemical
experiments would be necessary to determine the nature of these
products, which, in every case, would establish a transition between
enamelled porcelain and the kind we style " soft porcelain." Nothing
permits us to assign a date, even approximate, to the products we have
been just studying ; they certainly belong to a very ancient epoch, and
anterior to the fabrication of hard porcelain, for this once known, there
was no longer any object in continuing to produce a porcelain of such
uncertain success, which often falls in the kiln, and which a sudden blast

126 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
of heat might cause completely to sink, by changing it into a shapeless
mass of glass.
The nature of the ornaments, which are of the Arab style, scarcely
permits referring it beyond Mussulman influence, although very different
in decoration from the wall tiles and the vases enriched with various
colours. Its reputation must also be extended very far, for it has
certainly inspired the Chinese and Japanese with the cloisonne work
in glaze, called grains de riz. B.—Soft Porcelain.
This, we repeat, has the greatest analogy with enamelled porcelain,
from the composition of its paste and its glaze, the fracture of the bottom
of the piece, and the semi-translucent aspect of the white parts, but the
system of decoration is entirely different ; we would say even more : it
appears to have been borrowed from quite another order of ideas.
Very often the soft porcelains of the oldest periods are coated outwardly
with a beautiful deep blue tint, or with chamois or a warm tint. Upon
this ground are arabesques, flowers, palms, scrolls, in lustred mineral
colours, passing from the most brilliant tint of gold to mother-of-pearled
black, iridised with burnished steel.
It will be remembered that we have mentioned, among the works of
Asia Minor, wall tiles decorated with a metallic brown, more or less
lustred, but it will not be forgotten that, with the greater number of
historians, we have attributed the foundation of the workshops where
these plaques were produced to the artists called from Iran by the
Arab conquerors. No doubt then can be permitted upon the anteriority
of this style of decoration in Persia ; a slight examination of the pieces
in soft porcelain perfectly demonstrates it ; like enamelled porcelain,
it has preceded the fabrication of kaolinic pottery ; they evidently
participate with works unknown to us, disappearing no doubt with
the Sassanian civilisation, but preserving still lively traces of the
doctrines of Zoroaster. A few descriptions will better explain our idea.
The oldest soft porcelains generally range in very low cups, in bell-
shaped bowls, or in cups of the same form, always without saucers. The
decoration is rarely the same on the two sides ; the interior, almost
always of a fine vitreous white, is richly ornamented with shining copper
tints; the exterior, blue, chamois, or even white, is charged with
subjects which never acquire the same metallic brilliancy ; the copper
more often turns to blackish brown (Fig. 36).

PERSIA. 127

The most remarkable, of these cups known, now passed from the
collection of M. de Monville to England, has upon its blue exterior
border rich coppery arabesques, and within, a seme of singular plants
in bright golden red, among which is the figure of a bull. This
mysterious symbol of the ancient Persian religion is not placed there

Fig. 36.

PERSIAN BOWL, . METALLIC DECORATION, BLUE ENAMELLED OUTSIDE.
by chance ; its signification is supported by a sign neatly traced under the
foot of the piece ; it is the allegorical cypress consecrated by Zoroaster
himself. To complete the description of this marvellous specimen,
and to show the care bestowed upon its decoration, let us add this
detail. The metal, thrown in profusion into the inside, is, as it were,
streaked with a brush, and composed of two distinct tints ; the one a
pure yellow gold, the other that purple coppery red of which we have
already spoken. The vibration of the light upon these two metals
produces a most agreeable and unexpected effect.
One would ask oneself, perhaps, if this exceptional work was not
a sort of protest emanating from an artist penetrated with the
ancient doctrines, and in rebellion against Islamism ? No, if the
cup is exceptional from its merit, it is easy to find again the same
spirit and the style in works the most ordinary ; thus a cup in the
collection of the Baroness Salomon de Rothschild, is decorated, solely
on the circumference, with cypresses at regular distances.
If we have seen in enamel porcelain some rudimentary arabesques,
sketched in black strokes, or with the point under the glaze, we find
them more plentiful and better studied upon soft porcelain, where they
may rival in elegance the engraving and incrustations of the pieces
of damascened laten or copper; but its chief characteristic is, the
real or composite vegetations which burst forth upon this pottery;
the iris, .easily recognised, bunches of little ornamental flowers, leaves
resembling ferns, all those elegant fancies which, later, will take a
a precise form and determinate colours, in those remarkable faiences of

128 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
which a recent caprice would deprive Persia, to attribute them to a
passing fabric raised accidentally in an island of Turkey in Asia.
Some other cups, perhaps less ancient than those decorated with the
bull, bowls, blue externally, exhibit in the midst of the usual abundant
vegetation, fantastic birds with peacocks' tails, or the phoenix, con
tributing still more to approach the two kinds (Fig. 37).
Fig. 37.

PERSIAN BOWL, WITH BLUE EXTERIOR AND METALLIC DECORATION,
However, where it is a question of rebuilding the history of an
ancient and remote industry by meaus of the only monuments that
time or chance have preserved to us, a thousand difficulties arise. Soft
porcelain must have been made in several centres, and we must not
attribute to time alone differences which may have arisen from the
centres, and, above all, from divers contacts.
We have hitherto only mentioned fine pottery, often coloured in
part with pure blue, and only decorated with metallic tints. But
there is a series no less important, in which the blue, sometimes
combined with black, is the sole decorative resource (Fig. 38). The
forms of the vessels of this kind are extremely varied ; gargoulettes
(Plate VI.) ; bottles, often mounted in metal ; bowls ; saucers. This
manufacture must have immediately preceded or accompanied the
creation of hard porcelain ; in either case, it participates in the same
inspiration ; that is to say, it often imitates Chinese porcelain.
A pretty bowl, gadrooned at its base, has the body covered with a
soft blue lozengy ground, interrupted by oval medallions pierced
with a seme of little crosses cloisonne in the glaze, the enamel has
the light greenish tone of enamelled porcelain in the parts where
it is accumulated ; beneath is a short Persian inscription. Other
pieces of still more Chinese character, ornamented with dragons,
fantastic animals, etc., are marked with seals, leaves, and sometimes mis-

Plate VI.— PERSIA.
Soft Porcelain— Gargoulette, decorated with the Simorg. Collection Jacquemart.

\

F^Lienardlun,

PERSIA.

129

shapen characters, where one can nevertheless recognise the principal
strokes of a nien-hao, and find the date. In the kinds where the black
mixes with and heightens the blue, we find the Chinese quail or
partridge, and the ornamental dispositions common to the Celestial
Empire. Some pieces in which the blackish blue scrolls encircle the principal
subject, permit us to recognise the style still partly preserved in the
fabric of Na'in. Fig. 38.

PERSIAN FLASK, WITH BLUE DECORATION.

Is it then necessary to insist further on the traces of contact
between two neighbouring people, often brought violently in closer
contact with each other by conquest? Nor must we forget that at
the moment of his death, in 1226, Genghis Khan was master of Persia,
and that the Ilkhanian Mongols formed one of the Iranian dynasties.
Houla-ku, and Abaka-Khan, both civilising princes, contributed with all
their efforts to repair the disasters of former wars, by causing the arts
and sciences to flourish ; it is not, therefore, surprising to find Chinese
traditions introduce themselves with the Moguls, themselves tributaries
of the Celestial Empire, and, above all, of the celebrated Kubla Khan,
so much admired by Marco Polo.
We shall add but one word ; it is, that the same inspiration has
left its print upon the arms, the graved and damascened coppers,
without any doubt being raised as to their real origin.
One quite peculiar group of soft porcelain consists of bottles, and,
K

130 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
particularly, square smelling bottles, with narrow necks, a kind of tea-
box, of which the decoration in blue, black, and violet of manganese
is formed of palmettes, rosettes, birds, and Persian figures, cursively
traced. There is between these pieces and certain wall tiles a very
close analogy. G. — Faience.
We will not repeat what we have already said of the character of
Persian faience, neither, in the descriptions which are going to follow,
will we stop at the difference resulting from the nature of the glaze.
Curiosity has nothing to find in these technical details ; and we must
admit, it would be necessary often to have recourse to analysis to
determine whether it is a question of silico-alkaline coating, or of a
plumbo-stanniferous enamel.
Nor will we discuss the anteriority of Persian earthenware over that
of Asia Minor ; sufficient is the statement made in history that the Arab
conquerors of the Roumanians opened a new era to the arts and sciences
by causing to be brought from Persia instructors of the Arab empire.
If modern travellers consider that certain works have not been
made in Persia, because there are none found for daily traffic in this
unhappy country, ruined by wars, sickness, and famine, where the most
celebrated monuments will soon be only shapeless ruins, we will appeal
to more ancient travellers, who have, as it were, seen the last of these
works born under their eyes.
One incontestable fact is, that the faiences of Iran in relief, and with
metallic, damasked grounds, are much more perfect than those of Asia
Minor. A very fine wall plaque brought from the mosque of Natinz,
and dating consequently from the beginning of the thirteenth century,
gives us in blue the customary inscription, " In the name of the clement
and merciful God," standing out upon the white enamel, relieved by
scrolls and foliage of highly metallic copper-brown. Other wall tiles
of star pattern joining to form a mosaic, bore similar ornaments and
borders, forming a legend of a copper-red as pure as it is possible to
meet with upon Chinese porcelain. Unfortunately, we know neither the
origin nor date of these fragments, of wdiich one of the most typical
is in the museum at Limoges. There results this useful teaching from
their examination, wdiich is, that all the pieces of brown decoration
are painted with oxidulate of copper, which should have taken the red
metallic tint, but has become brown by revivication of the metal.
But let us leave these rare products, doubly ambiguous from the

PERSIA. 131
uncertainty of the country whence they came, and from the difficulty
of determining their classification between soft porcelain or true faience.
We will not stop to enumerate the Persian monuments, which, like
those already cited of Asia Minor, are overlaid with coloured and
gilded mosaics; these are not, strictly speaking, a ceramic decoration.
The most ancient painted specimens are little fragments of a bright
blue ground, upon which are reserved cuneiform characters enamelled
in white ; but as these rare pieces have been found, some in Persia and
some in Bagdad, we dismiss them, to arrive at works more recent, but
of certain origin. Wall tiles from the mosque of Tabriz, built in
the twelfth century, have characters reserved in white upon a bright
blue ground, with yellow borders. This brings us directly to the tiles
of more complicated designs and richer colours, and also to the elegant
vases which every one admires. In effect, the most perfect similarity
exists between the decorative style of the enamelled vases of Iran and
of the contemporary wall tiles (plaques de revetement) ; we find there
the same arabesque ornaments, the same flowers, more or less copied
from nature, and more or less conventionalised. Among these flowers
one recognises the tulip, the Indian pink, the rose, hyacinth, and
scattered sprigs of a pretty little flower, of delicate petals, to difficult
determine. Among the conventionalised flowers, it is still possible
to designate with certainty the rose ; it forms a kind of elegant cockade
regularly cut out, in which the eye traces the superposition of the petals
pressed in several rows, and the heart forming a central mass more
or less serried. In the midst of bouquets composed after nature,
often appears the rigid figure of the symbolic cypress, doubly dear to
the Iranians, as it answers at the same time to the emblematic customs
of Islamism and to the prescriptions of the ancient national religion.
Some writers have pretended, it is true, to establish a difference
of origin between the faiences richly decorated de mauresque, as say
the old travellers, in which turquoise -blue, cobalt manganese, and a
sombre olive green pervades, and the pieces totally analogous in style
which are enlivened by a beautiful copper-green, and that splendid
and pure red borrowed from iron, and obtained from that ochreous
earth known to us under the name of Armenian bole. The first kind
would be Persian, the second will have been used in the manufactories
established at Rhodes.
Let us examine these facts and try to clear the ground from the
briars wdiich obstruct it, and which result solely from ill-directed
observations. At what period and under what conditions could Rhodes
k 2

132 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
have possessed ceramic manufactories strayed from those of Persia?
Without possessing the elements for a certain answer to this question,
what we can say is this. At the time when religious ardour impelled
Christianity into mortal fight with the Mussulmans, the knights
of Rhodes showed themselves among the most zealous. In their
maritime excursions they took a vessel which was not only carrying
a cargo of fine pottery from Iran, but also bringing a certain number
of workmen versed in its fabrication; the idea doubtless suggested
itself to injure the enemy's commerce, and to oblige the Persian
potters to setup their manufacture in Rhodes itself, and thus establish
a competition with their fellow-countrymen. The Musee de Cluny
possesses a considerable series of pieces produced in these suddenly
formed workshops. One recognises in them perfectly the work of men
who have left their country, of exiles detained far from their homes ;
certain pieces manifest the impatience felt by the captives to reconquer
their liberty; upon one, the workman has painted himself in the
attitude of prayer, his arms extended towards heaven, supplicating
his Divine master to break his chains.
In these conditions, the wares made at Rhodes would suffice to^
determine the nature of Persian faience, even when we have not under
our eyes the original pieces. How indeed could we suppose that
prisoners, enemies retained in spite of themselves in a strange land,
would have made there any other thing than that which they had long
produced every day ? How admit that upon an unknown soil, without
resources, they could have been able to invent new processes, create
a style, imagine the employment of decorating matters different from
those they had in constant use ? No ; the Rhodian pottery is Persian
faience of an inferior order, and which yet may create surprise, in
considering the circumstances under which it was produced.
As to supposing that the Persians had been able to find out of their
own home the chemical elements of an unused decoration, it is again
by Persian works themselves that we will prove that cannot be. One
knows what was, from before the thirteenth century, the perfection of
the glass works of Persia and Asia Minor ; we have already spoken
of the lamps of the mosques, let us here more particularly insist upon
the cups, vases, and bottles, which the Persians covered with delicate
gildings and with enamelled ornaments, while the azure and bright
red furnished the most elegant designs ; and yet there are those who
would assert that a people who had arrived at this sure practice of
the art of vitrification would have been wanting in resources to apply

PERSIA. 133

the same enamels upon the glaze of their vases ! The doubt is not
even admissible.
Others again would attribute to modern times the production of
the large cups (coupes), dishes, and bottles of faience ; " the Persians,
essentially a nomadic people, considering the faiences as objects of
curiosity, and using habitually recipients of copper or bronze." We
will not only answer by invoking the testimony of ancient miniatures,
in which pottery appears under its various forms, but we will refer to
the descriptions made by old travellers, or to Oriental literature itself.
" When the king of Persia eats in private," says Kcempfer, " they do
not use vessels of gold, but of murrhine or porcelain ; there are twenty
for dinner and twelve for supper." We read in the ' Lettres edifiantes,'
"After having helped the king, the guests are served with rice,
bouilli, and the roasts, in more than a hundred and fifty dishes of
gold, with their covers, which weigh twice as much. . . . The
entremet dishes are of gold, and before serving in gold, the sweetmeats
have been already served in vessels of silver and porcelain."
Let us open the stories of Bidpai and the ' Thousand and One Days,'
and we shall see similar statements : " The cat of the old woman had no
sooner smelt the odour of the viands and heard the sound of the dishes,
basins, and other porcelain vessels in which they were served, than he
threw himself upon them."
" They saw enter in the apartment twelve white pages laden with
vases of agate and rock crystal enriched with rubies, and full of
exquisite liquors. They were followed by twelve beautiful slaves, some
of whom carried basins of porcelain filled with fruits and flowers."
"They brought a prodigious quantity of golden vessels enriched
with precious stones, and filled with every kind of wines, with dishes
of porcelain filled with dried sweetmeats."
" Two slaves at once prepared a" table, with a sideboard covered with
porcelain, with dishes of sandal-wood and aloes, and with several cups
of coral, perfumed with ambergris."
" They arranged the furniture and prepared a table, upon which they
placed several porcelain basins, filled with fruits and dried sweetmeats.
We could multiply ad infinitum these quotations, which show to
what a point rich potteries are esteemed in Persia, and what a place
they hold in the usages of both private and public life.
Nor will we insist upon the signification that we must attribute,
in these extracts, to the word " porcelain "; it is a question we shall
have to clear up later, but will call attention to the multiplicity of

134 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
names applied to the pieces. In fact, the forms of the earthenware
vessels in Persia are very varied ; the dishes have a horizontal
rim, the narrower as the dish approaches a hemispherical form; one
arrives thus by insensible gradations to the true cup, sometimes
hemispheric, sometimes bell-shaped, standing upon rather a high
stem. Some are simple open basins, others are provided with a
lid. The bottles are numerous ; almost all have a long neck, some
times divided by a projecting boss which adds to the natural grace
of the form; most often they are intended to contain wine. Water is
generally placed in a vessel of spherical body, surmounted by a short
cylindrical neck, and furnished with an S handle ; it is the water-pot
such as it has descended to us, and the more we go back to remote
ages, the more we see how faithfully we have imitated it. The ewer, a
kind of bowl with handle and long spout, serves also to hold water ;
but its use is specialised to ablutions, therefore this piece is accom
panied by a tub or basin, with a perforated cover; at repasts, it is
presented to the guest, who places his hands above it, and receiving
the water from the ewer, washes the ends of his fingers, conformably to
the laws of religion and etiquette. The basin thus makes the round
of the banquet table, without any one seeing the water which has been
used by those who have preceded him in this strictly observed cere
mony. There is also another recipient for water, the gargoulette;
its form is habitually spheroidal (Plate VI.), with a short neck, wide
mouth at the top, and a biberon with narrow opening upon the body.
It serves as a drinking vessel for any one pressed by thirst. The water runs
out in a long stream fiom the extremity of the biberon, and politeness
requires that he who drinks should not receive it directly in his mouth,
but in his hand brought near his mouth, answering the purposes of a cup.
The ' Magasin pittoresque ' gives, after a vellum of the miniaturist Kabir,
a scene representing a horseman drinking after this fashion, near a well,
the water being offered to him by some young females. A similar vessel
used for the smoke to pass through water is termed a " hookah base."
One particular vessel, upon the use of which we hazard no theory, is
a kind of cylinder furnished with a straight handle, fastened angularly
near the upper rim, and shorter by a third than the cylinder. In the
West, the beer-mug (chope) alone answers to this ungraceful disposition.
We say nothing of the bowds more or less large, except that they
are either very wide, sometimes conical, very open, or deeper than are
the vessels of the same name in China, Japan, or elsewhere.
In order well to understand the use of these numerous vessels, it is

PERSIA. 135
sufficient to recall to oneself the quotations given above, and to throw
a glance upon the representation of an. official repast in Persia. AVe see
the guests crouched round the table, upon elegant carpets, each having
before him a little table of wood incrusted with mother-of-pearl, or
perhaps a waiter placed upon the carpet. Of the dishes composing
the service, the sweetmeats arrive first, the entremets next, the meats
come after, and the soup closes the series. All these are accompanied by
Sherbets and those delicious wines which the Persians are not afraid to
compare with the topaz and the ruby, so brilliant and transparent are
they in colour.
Let us now return to the different styles of decoration in Persian
earthenware, and from their differences hazard some conjectures upon
the place of their fabrication.
There is one incontestable thing which may serve as a criterion for
forming a judgment of works of Persian art, and that is, the examina
tion of the most esteemed modern productions. Schah Abbas I., who
reigned 1555 to 1628, was, in some manner, the Louis XIV. of Iran.
In the palace he built at Ispahan, are large pictures six and a half
feet long by five wide, representing different subjects in Persian history,
and composed of tiles or bricks of five or six colours, about twenty
inches square.
There certainly is an advanced industry, and a fact which may
create surprise ; for Mahomet had denounced as impious any one who
would seek to rival Divine powers by creating perfect beings. It is to
the exaggeration of this doctrine that is due the sect of the Sunnites,
who, after the precepts of Omar, proscribed the representation of the
human form or of living beings. In Persia, an intermediate school,
which we might style Jesuitical, conceived the idea of inventing
supernatural monsters, or of making imperfect the representations
of natural beiugs. Thus the head of a woman would surmount the
body of a bird ; the body of a man become the forepart of a dragon ;
or be attached to the hinder part of a quadruped ; a human head was
deprived of an eye, a face of one of its features. We must, therefore,
not attribute those defects to the inexperience of the artist, where it is
one of the most curious traits of the manners of a people.
The persistence in representing, even incompletely, natural beings,
indicates in a people a rare tendency towards high art, an incessant
thirst for intellectual development, Nevertheless, there is yet a dis
tinction to establish; Chardin tells us that, according to several
Mussulman doctors, Heaven has placed in Paradise certain animals

136 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
called " hedgehog's feet," which have the legs of a stag, the tail of a
tiger, and the head of a woman. Mahomet and Aii will both ascend
on these animals at the end of ages, and thus will distribute to the
elect the water of Kauter, a river in the celestial abode. This cer
tainly is an orthodox figure, which a Mussulman may represent, and
which we find on carpets, looking-glasses, and vases belonging to the
eleventh century.
Nor is this the only figure which may lend itself to an equivocal
interpretation. In the ancient religion of the Fire-worshippers, or
rather in the legends which crowd among the first events of Persian
histoiy, we often meet with fabulous animals easily to be confounded
with those of China.
The ouran or ourambad has its retreat in the imaginary mountain
of Aherman. The author of 'Tamourath nameh' describes it, and
says it flies through the air like an eagle, and devours everything it
meets ; that it walks upon the earth like a hydra or dragon, and finds
no animal able to resist it.
The soham is another terrible animal, that Sam Neriman, son of
Caherman Catel, subdued to ride upon in his wars against the giants.
This animal, whose head resembled that of a horse and the body that
of a dragon, of the colour of shining iron, had four eyes in its head, and
was not less than eight feet long.
The simorg, or simorg-anka> is thus described by d'Herbelot in
the ' Bibliotheque orientale :' " Fabulous bird, which we call griffin."
The Jews mention in their Talmud a monstrous bird they name
iukhneh and ben-iukhneh, of which the rabbins relate a thousand
extravagances. The Mahometans say that the simorg is found in
the mountain of Caf. The 'Magasin pittoresque,' in representing,
from an Arabian manuscript, the figure of the simorg, says, with
the Caherman Catel, " that this wonderful bird, whose plumage shines
with every imaginable colour, possessed not only a universal knowledge
of languages, but also the faculty of foretelling the future." In the
fabulous history of the birth of Rustam, it is he who, when the
beautiful Roudabeh is exhausted with fatigue, instructs Zal how to
relieve her. " The bird of good fortune, chosen of the world, flew,"
says Ferdousi, " to Zal. Zal addressed him long praises without number,
thanks, and prayers. The simorg says to him, 'Why this grief? why
is the dew in the eye of the lion? From this silver cypress, from this
moonlight face, will come for thee a son who will seek glory ; the lions
will kiss the dust of his feet, the clouds will not dare to pass over his

PERSIA.

137

head .... Every hero, every warrior with heart of steel, who will
hear the noise of his club, who will see his breast, his arm, his leg, will
not be able to stand before him. For counsel and wisdom, he will be
grave as Sam ; in wrath, he will be a warlike lion ; in stature he will
be a cypress, and in strength an elephant.' " " At his birth," adds the
poet, " the child was a hero resembling a lion ; he was great and
beautiful ; the hair of his head was red, and his face animated as blood.
Ten nurses were had to satisfy him. When he was weaned, he fed upon
bread and meat. He ate as much as five men." It required nothing
less than the intervention of the simorg to bring to light such a
prodigy ! One sees, besides, the religious purpose, the poetic souvenir,
Fig. 39.

PERSIAN BOWL OF FAIENCE, WITH EXTERIOR POLYCHROME DECORATION.
the fancy, purely picturesque, which may inspire the painter with images
easy to confound with each other, and that we must study with reserve
to arrive at their meaning
Symbolic or other figures have rarely appeared upon the tiles, and
that is easily to be conceived. The greater part have remained upon
the monuments they decorate, and where travellers have described
them, but vases, and large bottles especially, dishes and shallow cups,
often exhibit fabulous birds with human heads, monsters and dragons,
answering to the descriptions given above.
As for ordinary animals, gazelles, antelopes, running hares upon an
arabesque ground, or horsemen with a falcon upon the wrist, these are
figures which only show the passion of the Persians for hunting.

>3S

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Some tiles, on which the relief mixes with the brilliancy of polychrome
enamels, have been lately sold as being the representation of Schah
Abbas I. It is nothing- of the kind; the pretended portrait is no
more than the hunter with a falcon already alluded to ; a creditable
traveller has found some of these tiles in their original position, in a
house where they overlaid a kitchen furnace. The Orientals have too
much respect for power to allow the effigy of their beloved monarch to
be thus profaned. Besides, it is easy to remark among the pieces of
this style gathered in collections, difference of make and style indicating
different periods. The most ancient and most remarkable belong to
Baron- Charles Davillier.
One common taste among all the people of the far East, is a pre
dilection for blue. We have met it among the Chinese ; we see it
manifested in the ancient potteries of Persia, and remain permanent
even when chemistry had placed at the disposal of the painter the most
complicated pallet. Many earthenware pieces are entirely decorated
with turquoise and cobalt blue, scientifically combined, and forming
the richest arabesques and the most elegant floral combinations. By
degrees, the first group becomes modified, some green tints, a manganese,
violet almost pink, a pure black, surround or heighten the sky-blue
medallions; sometimes complicated colours decorate- the outside of
the cup, while the inside preserves
its turquoise-blue, framing medallions
with reserves of flowers, whose slender
stalks combine with soft blue ara
besques. Nothing is more remarkable in this
style than the splendid piece figured
here (Fig. 39) ; it is one of the largest
and most masterly examples of the
pottery of Iran.
The third group, as remarkable from
the number as from the splendour of
the specimens which comprise it,
furnishes the greater number of the
types gathered in collections; wall
tiles, monumental bottles, bowls and
cups for service, dishes worthy of
rivalling the gems and goldsmiths' work of the East — everything which
constitutes a pottery of rich decoration — are united in this group. We

Fig. 40.

H-CATENACr. PERSIAN TILE WITH POLYCHROME
ARABESQUE DECORATION.

PERSIA.

139

will not assert with some writers that here is to be found the modern art
of Persia ; we believe in the antiquity of many of the specimens, but it
is pure Mohammedan art, with its ingenious combinations of straight
and curved lines, which one would think an inextricable complication ;
when it relates solely to happy repetitions, with its mixture of conven
tional and natural flowers, furnishing inexhaustible resources to the
painter (Fig. 40). Sometimes we shall find there human or animal
figures, but more often these will be the work of the compromise men-
Fit;. 41.

frmfe

Wd^&Mp^us;

5$%^j>^fe\&$

ATENAi.r I. pi

PERSIAN FAIENCE PLAQUE, REPRESENTING THE CAABA OR SACRED MOSQUE OF MECCA.

tioned above, a compromise which opens to the true believer a back
door into the domain of iconography.
The wall tiles are of two kinds : the one when the tiles are placed
together furnishes a continuous ornamentation, either in squares or
saltiers, by means of joinings skilfully combined ; the other, surrounded
by borders, have naturally a circumscribed subject, forming the
principal design in combined decoration. To give a type of these,
we choose one of the most interesting figurations (Fig. 41), the holy
Temple of Mecca. We here see the Caaba, with its minarets, its

Ho HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
pulpits, oratories, and all its holy places. The temple, properly so
called, is an almost cubical edifice, thirty-eight feet long by thirty wide,
and thirty-four high, whence comes the word Caaba, signifying in
Arabic, square house. The entrance is by a folding door, pierced some
feet above the ground, and ascended by a movable staircase, here re
presented to the left near the opening of the general enclosure. The
whole edifice is covered with a veil of black silk, called the sacred veil,
which is removed annually, and the pieces of the old sold as relics to
the devout Mussulmans ; the rich, when dying, sometimes desire that
their coffins may be lined with it. Towards the top, this veil is
traversed by a white band, called girdle, because it encircles the
edifice. The rectangle consists of several compartments ; not far
from the door, is the " place of Abraham ;" it being there, according
to the Mussulmans, that the patriarch stood to build the temple ; the
stone is still preserved upon which his feet reposed, and the fervent
still believe they see the mark of the holy contact. The half-moon
traced on the right of the Caaba is the edifice called " the wall hatem."
There, if we believe the Arab legend, repose the ashes of Hagar and
Ishmael. The pear-shaped spot near the upper angles of the Caaba, is
the golden gutter, a pipe intended to conduct the rain-water which falls
from the platform of the temple. When it rains, the pilgrims come
to receive this water, and then consider themselves to be purified from
all their sins. This water conduit is called "the gutter of mercy."
The little recess, placed near the steps, appears to be the well of
Zemzem. This miraculous spring flowed from under the feet of the
angel Gabriel, when Ishmael and Hagar, deserted in the desert of
Mecca, were on the point of dying from thirst. The holy water gave,
at the same time, life to this frightful solitude, therefore the Mussulmans
attribute to it supernatural virtues ; all the pilgrims have to drink of
this water, and they carry it away when they return to their homes.
In the angle of the Caaba, to the left of the door (the object circum
scribed with a white line), is the famous black stone which contains
the pact between God and man. According to the Mussulmans, the
Almighty, at the creation of the world, assembled together the souls
of all those who were to be born of Adam, and made himself known to
them as their sovereign Lord and Master. The evidence of this
communication was written by the Deity himself in mystic characters,
on the surface of the stone, which, at the day of judgment, will witness
against those who will have disavowed their Lord and Master. The
stone, which was originally white, has become blackened by the tears

PERSIA. 141

it sheds over the sins of mankind. A circular inclosure surrounds
the Caaba, it is " the place of circuit " for the pilgrims ; the rest of
the sacred mosque is surrounded by a square peristyle, the different
stations are indicated there, and vases with handles point out the places
where the pilgrim should make his ablutions.
We have dwelt upon these details because the representation more or
less complete of the Caaba is one of those most often to be met with
upon Mussulman works. Generally, these configurations serve for
magic and cabalistic operations, of which the success is the better secured
by turning towards Mecca or towards the image of the holy temple.
But here, we are far from these superstitious practices ; he for whom
this plaque was made, scarcely believed in the efficaciousness of these
rites, and even doubted the necessity of a pilgrimage to Mecca ; a philo
sopher, maybe, of the Souffee sect, certainly a sceptic, he expresses his
opinions in this bold couplet :
" Get a heart, for there is the great (and true) pilgrimage ;
A heart is worth more than stones of the Caaba.
The Caaba is the edifice of the friend (of God), son of Thore ;
But the heart is the theatre of the great friend (God)."
Since the interest of the subject has led us to choose this piece as a
type, let us continue its technical description. The colouring is at once
rich and simple, as in all ancient products. The enamels consist
of blue of two different degrees of intensity, bright red, derived from
iron, copper-green, rather pale, and black. The primitive vases of
the same division have for basis the same tones; but as we approach
the epochs of luxury and splendour of the Mussulman Persian, we see
artists seek new tints and combine them so as to produce a richer effect ;
the red, always so unctuous, so shining, will often be given as a ground ;
green and turquoise-blue will cover the body of the vases, the exterior of
the cups, the bottom of the dishes describing masterly arabesques, delicate
bouquets, or outlines of natural or fantastic beings, set off in their turn
by bright touches of colour, skilfully selected so as to enhance the
beauty of the general ground.
It is generally upon pale green or blue tints that we meet with
running hares, dogs, and swans surrounding the singular birds, with the
head of a woman of which we have already spoken (Fig. 42). For Mussul
mans it is an unusual and delicate thing, the figuration of living beings ;
but the hare and the dog have not this character alone; they are
reputed impure, and the passion of the Iranians for the chase can alone
explain their presence upon vases.

142

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Let us try now to discover if it is not particularly to the faience of
this division that Chardin alludes in his works. After having said that
this pottery is made throughout Persia, he adds : " The most beautiful
is made at Schiraz, capital of Persia ; at Mesched, capital of Bactriana ;
at Yezd and Kirman, in Caramania; and particularly in a town
in Caramania, called Zorende . . .
Flg- 42- The pieces in which the Persian
potters called kachy-pez, or bakers
of faience, succeed best are the
enamelled tiles painted and cut
with ' mauresques.' In truth,
nothing can be seen brighter in
this kind of work, nor of more
equal and fine design." There is
much to study in this passage.
Eachy, or rather Caschi, is the
name of the products of Cachan,
and perhaps of all Irak-Adjemi ;
these products seem to be parti
cularly the pottery decorated in
blue and turquoise-blue upon a
white ground.
Must we attribute to Mesched,
where it would bear the name of
Meschhedi, the beautiful poly
chrome faience of the second
group, particularised by the man
ganese pink and the dull green
united to various blues ?
With respect to the tile with the Caaba, brought from the Egyptian
expedition by M. Jomard, of the Institute, it was said by that savant
to have come from Zorende or Kirman. This information confirms the
assertion of Chardin ; the third group would be formed of the ancient
wares of Caramania, and the more recent of Ispahan.
The elegant border reserved in white upon bright red, which
surrounds the tile with the Caaba, is reproduced upon a good many
fine bottles, cups and dishes, and is of sufficient character to throw
together these pieces in one group, the product of a same centre. A
quantity of other pieces not less beautiful, ornamented with the same
enamels, and with the same grounds, are constantly bordered with a kind

PERSIAN BOTTLE OF POLYCHROME FAIENCE
WITH PALE GREEN GROUND.

PERSIA. 143
of blackish filigree in the Chinese style, intersected by medallions.
Would these be an indication of place or date ?
It will be seen these questions are so knotty, and are involved in so
much obscurity, that an honest writer must hesitate in deciding upon
them even with reservation. In Persia, traditions are lost, they are
ignorant of dates even of yesterday ; and besides, it is in Syria, and
specially Egypt, that we must seek for fragments of the ancient splen
dour of Iran ; only to what delicate discussions does it not give rise, not
to confound the real Persian products with those of Asia Minor, issued
from the same and almost contemporary school ?
A proof of the high esteem in which Persian works were held in the
East is evidenced by this fact : " We have found," says M. Eugene Piot,
"plaques of Persian faience in a tolerably large number, and fragments
of vases similar to those we know at the present day, incrusted in the
white marble of an ambo in the little church of S. Giovanni del Torro de
Ravello, in the kingdom of Naples." (The church is of the twelfth
century, the ambo of the thirteenth.) Now M. Piot, one of the first
seekers of Persian faience, is too fine a connoisseur not to attach to his
assertion the importance it deserves.
The learned Mr. Drury Fortnum has also found fragments of Oriental
pottery in the campanile of the church of Santa Cecilia at Pisa ; the
excellent plate he gives of it shows that the pieces, placed at from 1103
to 1107, belong to the kind we call soft porcelain ; upon the blue
ground is a rich arabesque pattern in black, relieved by strokes raised
with a style, a constant practice of the Persians. This is one of the
fabrications which, we are assured, come from Rhei' or Rhages, or
Natinz, where some are still in situ.
D. — Hard Porcelain.
The hard paste potteries of Iran are generally little known, notwith
standing their special character and the unequivocal testimony of
ancient writers. We must be permitted to insist upon their history,
which we have been the first to gather from scattered documents. To
begin with what Chardin says : " The earth of this faience is a pure
enamel both within and without, like Chinese porcelain ; it has a grain
as fine, and is likewise transparent, and this it is which causes us often to
be so much deceived in this porcelain that we cannot distinguish the
Chinese from the Persian. You will sometimes find this Persian china
passing for Chinese, so fine and bright is the glaze — what I mean is
not the old Chinese porcelain, but the new. In the year 1666 an
ambassador of the Dutch Company, called Hubert de Layresse, having

144 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
brought presents to the court of a quantity of valuable things, and,
among others, fifty-six pieces of old Chinese porcelain, when the king saw
this porcelain he began to laugh, asking contemptuously what it was.
They say that the Dutch mix the Persian with the Chinese porcelain
which they transport to Holland."
De Pauw in his ' Recherches philosophiques,' writes, " The Persians
claim several discoveries relative to the different kinds of painting, and
if they dispute with China and Japan the invention of porcelain paste,
they also dispute with them the invention of the colours proper to diaper
them, although they do not appear to have carried this practice so
far as those with whom they contest it."
The existence of Persian porcelain was doubted by no one in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and if it is wished to dispute with
us the word faience, which we purposely underline, we would remark that
it is employed by Chardin to designate the most various potteries ; but
it is impossible to suppose that a man imbued with the prejudices
of his age, when affirming the superiority of the modern Chinese por
celain over the ancient, and thus proclaiming, as it were, his knowledge,
could have confounded the kaolinic potteries of Iran with earthenwares
so different in aspect, material, and style. This opinion was that of
Alexander Brongniart, who, without having seen them, and upon the
sole description of Chardin, admitted the existence of Persian
porcelain. Since then proofs have accumulated ; ancient catalogues, that of
Horace Walpole, and among others the inventories examined by Mrs.
Bury Palliser, and quoted by Mr. Marryat, all have contributed to open
the eyes of the incredulous. We have only one more observation to
make in extenuation of the involuntary error committed by some
travellers, and especially by translators of Oriental works. Not only do
these last qualify the choice vases by the name of " porcelain," but
they add the epithet " Chinese." That the Persians have a translucent,
hard paste pottery is incontestable ; that they have sometimes improved
it to a point to rival the works of the Celestial Empire, is possible.
In either case, they are tributary to China for this branch of the art, as
their language bears evidence, since tchini is the name they have applied
to their porcelain. One can understand that linguists, indifferent to
the technical question, have been led to give a true literal translation
which has become the source of error. Besides, the resemblance of
the porcelain of the two countries is so close that, to describe the
products of Persia, we will follow the classification adopted by us with
respect to the kaolinic potteries of China.

PERSIA.

'45

Porcelain with Blue Decoration under the Glaze.
This, the most common kind, has often a coarse paste, hastily worked,
and consequently liable to various accidents, such as twisting, splits,
sandy or metallic specks, and the disunion of the parts united by
barbotine. The bluish vitreous glaze is not always equally laid on,
but its striking characteristic is the mode in which it is fired. In China,
every piece is placed upon a circular plateau of seggar paste, which keeps
the base of tbe piece in its shape and leaves a narrow hollow rim,
upon which later are adapted mountings of carved wood or metal. The
Persians content themselves with placing their vases on a coarse sand,
the grains of which adhere to the softened paste and penetrate it deeply ;
on the piece being taken out of the furnace, many of these quartzose
pebbles are found embedded at the bottom, or if the piece is particularly
carefully finished, one sees that its base has been polished with the
wheel, and some of the pebbles, loosened by the friction, have jumped
out, leaving their cells empty, and others, worn down by the wheel to a
smooth surface, form with the porcelain a kind of pudding stone. The
specimen which has furnished us with the most eloquent evidence of
the nature of Persian hard porcelain,
is the bottle or lagaBna, of which we
give the figure (Fig. 43). Its tech
nical characters and mode of firing
answer the above description ; the
decoration is inspired partly by Chinese
art, consisting of broken lines deeply
graved in the moist paste, and in
patterns executed under the glaze
with cobalt blue. Upon the neck,
below the large leaves of a water plant,
hang groups of vases and wine bottles
attached by knotted ribbons with float
ing ends. Below, upon the declivity,
a border of flowers offers this pecu
liarity, that in the place of the Chinese
peony appears the Indian pink, well
characterised. The lozengy border is broken by four, reserved me
dallions, in which are inserted the lines of a couplet. Although dis
figured by characters run together, by the blotting of the colour, and
the absence of distinctive stops, this legend has been deciphered by

Fig. 43.

SURAHE, OR WINE BOTTLE, OF PERSIAN
PORCELAIN, DECORATED WITH BLUE.
(COLL. JACQUEMART.)

146 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
the learned professor of the College de France, M. Alexandre Chodzko.
The poet therein invites drinkers to use the liquor prohibited by tbe
Prophet, and "to forget in intoxication the cares of this valley of tears;"
'• Mei benouch," drink wine, he says to his companion in pleasure. " Ne
boud djuddi-biderdi " — -we do not part from each other without suffering.
" Deh surahi" — give me the surahe. Thus this inscription, in recalling
a trait in Persian manners, furnishes us with the name of the vessel upon
which it is inscribed. In the reserved medallions between the incised
lines are dragons rolled and conventionalised after the Chinese fashion.
Two similar surahes are inscribed with the same verse, placed
not upon the border, but upon the medallions of the body. Many
others, destitute of legends, pass unperceived in commerce, lost in the
mass of common Oriental porcelain with which the Dutch inundate our
markets. Another "piece in our collection is interesting to study : a shallow
cup or dish without rim, of which the exterior surface has been graved
under the glaze with waves of the sea ; the porcelain has been made
yellow by the smoke of the oven, and the cobalt of the decorator has
revived and assumed a black tint. The decoration consists of an inside
border, circumscribed between fillets, and composed of a long Persian
legend ; in the middle are five medallions disposed in the form of a cross,
that of the centre is the largest ; all are filled with Persian characters,
conventionalised to fill the space reserved for them. Under the foot is a
legend, incorrect but easily deciphered, written in Chinese, setting forth
that the piece was made in the Siouen-te year of the great dynasty of
the Ming, that is from 1426 to 1435. This is one of the dates most
often met with on Persian porcelain. Schah Rokh reigned then,
and succeeded his father, the illustrious Tamerlane or Timour-Lenc ;
this was one of the princes to whom Iran partly owed her splendour.
Touched with the evils of war, he did everything to restore the well-being of
the exhausted population ; he surrounded himself with enlightened men,
called from neighbouring countries, caused the revival of the arts and
sciences, and gave a new impulse to commerce. One is not therefore
surprised to see close relations established between Persia and China,
whose products were often imitated if not surpassed, and to find the
trace of this imitation even in the reproduction more or less faithful of
the nien-hao.
After Siouen-te, the most frequent date is that of Kia-thsing, next
AVan-li ; let us add, many Persian pieces have been shown to us with the
votive legend, " Fortunes, dignities, an eternal spring." These borrowings

PERSIA. 147

from a neighbouring country upon hard porcelain ought not to create
surprise, since we have already alluded to them in soft porcelain with
Chinese decoration. Persian porcelain is also often marked beneath
with Chinese symbols, as the leaf, the jade tablet, pearl, etc.
The Persians evidently attached much value to their porcelain,
decorated in blue, as we will show. We have already spoken of the
granulated nature of the paste, and of the tendency of the parts joined
by barbotine to disunite, in the kiln; this accident is especially common
in the bottles, the long necks of which are soldered in the middle. When
this occurs, the piece is not thrown away, but passes into the shop of the
goldsmiths, who give it a neck of repousse silver, sometimes ornamented
with the richest arabesques.
M. Scheffer possesses a surahe decorated with fabulous birds and
groups of clouds; to heighten its beaut}', the goldsmith has placed upon
it, arranged in quincunx, bezels, or chatons of gold, enclosing rubies and
other gems of bright colours, a kind of embellishment often applied upon
jade. Y'et the Persians have more often sought the beauty of their vases in
the delicate perfection of their decoration ; as in China, this shows itself
specially in pieces of small size ; certain cups, called a Sponges, have a part
of the body cut out in the finest open-work, the rest, borders and medal
lions, of a pure soft blue, are of most delicate execution. We have also
met with pieces no less perfect, where the blue, more brilliant, was
heightened with manganese, and even with some touches of a reddish
yellow, procured no doubt from iron. This employment of manganese
for outlining would alone suffice to prove the Persian nationality of the
pieces which bear it. The Chinese have never united their blues
except with copper-red.
We will not stop to describe the numerous and often gigantic dishes,
the vessels for ablutions, the biberons, the recipients for narghilis, in
which the painting in blue camaieu is combined with reliefs in the paste.
We will only say a word on the pieces trempes in blue ; they consist in
large ewers without handles, the spout in the form of an S, the upper
opening developed in the form of a crescent, covered coffee-pots, and little
purse-shaped pots with handles, what we should call cream pots. The
blue of these is very fluid, but wanting in purity ; it would appear to
have been applied like a celadon upon rather a grey paste.
The porcelain of Iran goes back to an ancient date, and anterior
certainly to the fifteenth century, since, in 1426, it was in perfection.
As to the origin of these blue pieces, we may attribute them to
l 2

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Khorasan. Professor Chozdko, whom a long residence in Persia had
initiated in all its history, immediately recognised these pieces as those
which the inhabitants call Meschedi, porcelain of Mesched. For some
time, no porcelain has been made in Khorasan. We must without
doubt attribute to the same origin certain pieces decorated in blue, with
glaze lightly tinted with Nankin yellow.
Porcelain with Polychrome Painting.
Chrysanthemo-Pseonian Family. — The greater number of pieces of
this division are decorated only with iron-red and gold ; blue under the
glaze is rarely associated with it. Among the most important examples
may be instanced the ewers for ablution ; the most complete is in the
cabinet of M. Sechan ; it stands upon its basin covered with a perforated
plate ; the neck, encircled by a ring,
is elegantly channeled with a double
row of flutings. On each side of
the body is a palm in half relief,
generally of a red ground with
reserves in arabesques. Leafy
branches diverging under the palm,
expand into a bouquet of flowers, of
which the principal flower is a lily
with long pistil surrounded by
flexuose stamens. This bouquet,
with the leaves of a water-plant,
scrolls, etc., in red or in gold outlined
with red, forms the whole decoration :
at the same time simple and severe.
A kind of bottle with fluted body,
w ide neck, a little open above, and
Persian porcelain ewer for ablutions. biber0ns, have the same style of
(COLL. SCEHAN). ornament, with slender stalks and
grasses in gold, not outlined, which add to the delicacy of the painting.
Green Family. — The pieces enriched by this kind of decoration
are numerous and varied. The enamels equal the Chinese in purity
and vigour, but the class of ornament and general style perfectly
characterise the works of Persia. No doubt can exist as regards pieces
with large indented scrolls, resembling rather the Greek acanthus than
the slender scrolls of the painters of the Celestial Empire ; an

PERSIA.

149

ornamented tulip, no less characteristic, forms the centre of each bend.
The symbolic palm is another sign widely spread ; we find it habitually
surrounded by a toothed border, and filled, in the interior, with regular
bouquets like the embroidery of Cashmere shawls. There are certain
pieces, in which the ornament consists entirely of palms distributed
in symmetrical order.
A second group, more directly imitated from the Chinese, is composed
of dishes, jars, bottles, etc., ornamented with bouquets of peonies, the
fong-hoang, and other fantastic animals, surrounded by rich vegeta
tion; in these kinds the ground of the porcelain is covered with a
mosaic, a lozenge pattern, or broken lines in iron-red, which give to these
vases a peculiar aspect and warmth of tone.
The third group has subjects of hieratic Chinese persons, but the
figures, more elongated than they make them in the Celestial Empire,
offer a visible exaggeration of manner and expression ; the short men
become obese, the faces with marked features are pushed to grimace ;
one sees it is a caricature, as indeed are all copies which exaggerate
the defects of the original.
The green decoration in Persia has often been associated with
grounds variously coloured ; the bleu fouettee, heightened with gold,
covers the exterior of bowls with palms Fig. 45.
and bouquets in the interior, and the
green palms and scrolls run outside,
round a fine Nankiu or dead leaf glaze
(Fig. 45). The most remarkable piece in
which we find brown (tse-kin-yeou of the
Chinese) united with the enamels of the
Green family, is the recipient or basin
of a narghili belonging to M. Dutuit of
Rouen. Divided by two borders, with
reserves filled in by scrolls, the recipient
has upon its side medallions in the form
of palms, tinted in turquoise-blue, with
bright blue decoration; the blue palms
are disposed in quincunces round the first,
and large green scrolls run round the
neck; the rounded base is tinted in a copper washy green, of a
peculiar aspect, which we have sometimes found under bottles and
jars of the Green family, decorated with flowers.
Rose Family.— The porcelains of this family are the least numerous,

PERSIAN PORCELAIN NARGHILI, OF
THE GREEN FAMILY, FEUILLE-
M0RTE GROUND.

ISO HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
and probably the most recent, yet their decoration would appear to
emanate from the same taste as the first group of the Green family,
large stiff stalks issuing from a kind of spheroidal pot, and terminated
by a cruciform flower well expanded ; leaves cut out and disposed in
scrolls — all this in bright tints, scarcely fired, such are the charac
teristics of this family. We have seen enamels of the Rose family
upon square tea-canisters with cylindric spouts, upon a magnificent
ewer of the Davilber collection, and upon gigantic jars enriched with
the figure of the simorg. The beauty of these, and the delicacy of the
painting, more finished than in the smaller pieces, show to what a
degree of ceramic richness the interior decoration of the Persian palaces
must have arrived. Fraser, the traveller, demonstrates it when describ
ing the tomb erected at Ardebil, in 1523, to Schah Ismael : "The large
octagonal apartment, covered by the principal dome, has obtained the
name of Zerfkaneh, or chinaware room, because all the china dishes
used in the feasts which Schah Ismael gave to his daily guests were
preserved here in niches formed for the purpose in the wall. This
apartment has been richly adorned, and the niches which occupy the
wall on all sides, and in various figures, produce an effect resembling
that of magnificent fretwork. But the chinaware no longer fills them ;
in one of the earthquakes, to which tliis district is liable, many of
them were taken from their cells and placed upon the floor, where they
stand coveied with dust.'' Schah Ismael reigned from 1501 to 1523 ;
hence one sees, from that time, how much the Persians prized their
china, and with what ostentation they exhibited pieces which had been
preserved either for the talent of the workmen or for the merit of the
personages who had used it. At the same time, one understands the
rarity of these pieces, as even the convulsions of nature combined with
social revolutions to hasten their destruction.
May we hazard some conjectures as to whence came this polychrome
porcelain ? The blues of Mesched, made at the extremity of Persia on
the frontier of Tartary, may well show the influence of such vicinity,
and above all of the commercial traffic existing between the two
countries. Are the polychrome pieces also from Khorassan? Must we,
on the contrary, take to the letter the assertions of Chardin, and
biippose they came originally from Yezd in Ears, or from Caramania ? It
would be rash to pronounce an opinion in this matter when documents
worthy of belief are completely at fault.
Various exceptional Porcelains. — The embarrassment becomes still
greater when we seek to bring methodically nearer each other the

PERSIA.

<5<

numerous pieces on which we trace the Persian taste, and which are
remote from each other in material, make, and mode of decoration. The
Chinese white has certainly penetrated into Persia, and been imitated
there. We possess a double cup, of which the open work of the exterior
piece, formed of scrolls of flowers, has been chased and then covered
over with a gluey glaze of creamy whiteness. Another white, quite
rudimentary, is a cylindrical fluted candlestick, with a wide base, of
which the sole decoration consists in crossed arches, traced with the
point and surmounted by dots. The glaze, by its greenish coloration,
sets off the pattern. As for the granulated, coarse paste, it has, notwith
standing its hardness, the appearance of the silicious and friable frit of
soft porcelain. The Museum of Natural History possesses another white
piece worthy of comparison with the finest pe-ting of China ; a large ewer
covered over with the most elegant reliefs, and dated in blue of the
Siouen-te period. But sceptics will say, this is evidently of Chinese
workmanship, ordered for Persian use. AVe regret this common objec
tion, which can only affect people strangers to all knowledge of art, we
would almost say, to all logic. What ? to execute according to order, will
the workmen of the Celestial Empire have suddenly forgotten all their
ancient practices, their manual habits, and, more still, their mode of
manufacturing ? This objection will not bear examination, and is revolt
ing to good sense; to convince oneself, it'is sufficient to throw our eyes
upon the first piece executed by European order. No, the Persians have
done everything, and sometimes their works have a remarkable perfec
tion and ingenuity. An open work white cup we possess is decorated
in its middle part with, a rich scroll, of wdiich the flowers and foliage
are worked with a point in the enamel ; above is a Greek border
reserved in enamel upon the biscuit, and the gadrooned base is also
traced in the glaze. The foot of this piece, like that of the cup
mentioned at page 147, has remained destitute of enamel.
Celadons are very common in Persia; they have the beautiful
sea-green tint of the old Chinese celadons, and are only to be recognised
bv their style. Some are simply gadrooned or fluted, others have orna
ments in relief of good taste.
Petis de la Croix mentions another coloured porcelain in his trans
lation of the ' Thousand and One Nights,' the Martabani. " Six old
slaves," he writes, "less richly dressed than those who were seated,
immediately appeared; they distributed mahramas " (blue squares of stuff
used to wipe the finger), " and served shortly afterwards, in a large basin of
martabani " (green porcelain), " a salad composed of whey, lemon-juice,

152 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
and slices of cucumbers." Chardin cites a green porcelain, which seems
to be the same. He writes : " Every thing at the king's is of massive
gold or porcelain. There is a kind of green porcelain so precious, that
one dish alone is worth four hundred crowns. They say this porcelain
detects poison by changing colour, but that is a fable : its price comes from
its beauty and the delicacy of the material, which renders it transparent,
although above two crowns in thickness." This last peculiarity has a
great importance. It is impossible to suppose travellers would here
allude to the sea-green celadon of which we have spoken above ; this,
laid upon a brown, close paste, approaching stoneware, is never trans
lucent. In the martabani, on the contrary, a thin, bright green glaze,
is applied upon a very white biscuit, which allows the light to appear
through. It is most wonderful that a material so esteemed, and of so high
a price, is not more frequent in our collections. Its name, on the other
hand, leaves no doubt of its Persian nationality. Martaban (Mo-ta-ma)
is one of the sixteen states which composed the ancient kingdom of
Siam ; it would not be impossible, then, that we must restore to this
kingdom the porcelain mentioned in the Arabian story.
One word on a kind quite special, coloured in the paste, " trempee
en couleur," and which cannot be confounded with the other browns
(tse-kin-yeou), because its decoration is always laid on with a "white
slip or barbotine. Most of the pieces are bottles or surahes to contain
wine, others are of a conical body, with a swelling towards the top of
the neck ; there are also biberons and teapots with an upper handle, or
one forming a depressed arch. Upon the beautiful brown ground are
arabesque borders with pendants of pearls, bouquets of chrysanthemums
issuing from a spheroidal pot spread over each side of the piece, and
accompanied by a kind of cactus stem with alternate branches. All
this is largely traced by a white paste decoration laid on rapidly,
and there where the strokes touch or intersect each other, the white
becomes purer and less glossy. Hence results almost a kind of
modelling, which gives a real appearance to the flowers ; the conical
leaves have three large segments, a peculiar form, much less charac
teristic of a particular species than of the Persian style in general, for
we again find this form in the open-work whites and in the paintings of
the Green family.
The porcelains " trempees en couleur " must be held in esteem also
from the care taken to grind down the rim of the base, in order to leave
no trace of the coarse sand or pebbles — an indication of careful finish
not to be found in the blue. This porcelain is rare.

INDIA. 153

CHAPTER III.
INDIA.
Section 1. — Manners.
The Hindoos are incontestably the most ancient people on earth, and
we should have occupied ourselves with them first, but in the same
degree as the Chinese have carefully preserved the history of even
their least institutions, so have the Brahmins sought to cover with an
impenetrable veil their origin, religion and sciences. Their ancient
hymns, the Vedas, united in a collection towards the fourteenth century,
before our era, contain, among some notions apparently historic, fables
so singular, that no belief can be attached to them.
The only useful thing coming out of this primitive literature, is the
frequent mention of an undefined pottery. The laws of Manou, codified
in the ninth century before Christ, are more explicit ; we see therein how
metal or earthern vessels polluted accidentally should be purified, and
the kamandalou, or ewer, used by ascetic devotees in their ablutions, is
designated by name.
It is difficult to suppose what, at a time so distant from ours, were
the transformations effected in the substance, form, and decoration of
the pieces, and yet it is fairly to be presumed that stability of manners
has caused immobility of art, and that no fundamental difference
separates the products of different epochs in this aged society.
The relations of the travellers of the two last centuries, almost all
strangers to ceramic studies, complicate rather than elucidate the
question. Chardin writes, "No faience is made in India ; that which is
consumed there is all brought there either from Persia, Japan, or China,
or from the other kingdoms between China and Pegu." Raynal, on the

i54 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
other hand, speaking of the houses occupied by the Banians at Surat,
says, " They are built in the manner most suitable to the heat of the
climate. Beautiful wainscoting covered the outside walls, and the
interior as well as the ceilings were incrusted with porcelain." De
Pauw, not less affirmative, declares that the Persians dispute with the
Chinese the invention of porcelain. " I have never been able to learn,"
he says, " what the Indians think on this point, but I know that they
make pretty good porcelain, and probably they make it without dis
puting, shrouding themselves in that impenetrable obscurity which
reigns in the history of the arts of Asia, where each one may boldly
arrogate to himself any discovery, because monuments are wanting to
establish facts and dates."
More fortunate than the writers of the eighteenth century, we possess
now some pieces of various ages of which the testimony is more eloquent
than contradictory accounts. We will try to make them speak. But
before all, it is necessary to say a word upon the manners and customs
of India. The nation, from the most ancient time, has been divided into
castes which have no relation among themselves ; social instincts, the
relations of reciprocal goodwill do not then exist, everything being
confined to the observation of the conventionalities wdiich intercourse
with their equals and respect to the sovereign impose upon public
men. Hence no gaiety or animation in public parties ; each oue is
preoccupied in avoiding contact with a man of inferior rank. This
constant pre-occupation to avoid pollution, fixes every one in his assigned
place and tends to an egotistic life. If some rich nabob invites to his
table a certain number of guests, the strictest precautions are taken to
set the consciences of every one at ease. The ground, disembarrassed of
its mats, is laid bare and scrupulously cleaned ; before each guest, sand of
various colours is usually disposed in graceful arabesques, holding the
place of the absent carpets ; it is upon this ephemeral decoration that
are set the numerous dishes served to each. AVe say dishes, be
cause we suppose it to be at the table of some great personage,
abundantly furnished with the comforts of life. In the middle classes,
and particularly among devotees, the scruple is carried to such a pitch
that the dishes are placed in newly-gathered leaves, which are thrown
away after the repast. It is superfluous to mention that, on sitting
down to table, and on going out, the ablutions required by etiquette
and religion are strictly observed.
At visits, the ceremonial is equally rigid, and is subject to fastidious
regulations ; the place occupied by each class is fixed beforehand more

INDIA. 155
or less near the entrance door ; a prince or great person is seated at
the upper end of the room upon a raised platform, and sometimes under
a dais of embroidered stuffs ; it is what is called the masnad or gddi,
and is that which serves as a throne to sovereigns who have not the
rank of kings.
Every visit terminates at the moment when the master of the house
offers to his guest the betel and areca nut ; at the same time he pours
upon the handkerchief of his guest essence of rose or some other
perfume, and sprinkles his clothes with rose-water by means of a phial
of narrow opening ; this ceremony indicates it is time to take leave.
Notwithstanding this stiffness of manners, there are some fetes which
are common to people of all classes ; the principal, perhaps, is the
Holi, celebrated in honour of spring. The people dance in the evening
round large bonfires, singing convivial songs, and playing all kinds of
practical tricks upon their superiors, who never show any irritation
The great amusement of the fete is to squirt water upon each other, and
to throw upon the face carmine powder, which is difficult to remove. The
powder is prepared in the form of balls covered over with isinglass, the
slightest touch suffices to make them burst like the Italian confetti ; the
mirth is the greater in proportion to the number of faces smeared and
of dresses spoiled.
The dioudli is again a general fete, when all the temples and houses
are illuminated . with wreaths of coloured glass lamps, which extend
along the roofs, windows, cornices, suspended to scaffoldings of bamboos
prepared for the occasion. Benares, seen from the Ganges in the evening,
presents quite a fairy spectacle. We do not allude to scenic repre
sentations mixed with dances and singing, nor to the graceful and
monotonous series of attitudes, accompanied by a recitation still more
monotonous, which constitute the art and pow er of the bayaderes. In
general, these things pass in private meetings, and the passion of the
Hindoos for this kind of exhibition is so great that they would remain
whole nights standing to contemplate it without feeling fatigued.

Section 2. — Potteries.
jt Let us now return to the potteries of India and seek, so to say, the
moral proofs of then- existence and style. Every one knows, at least,
by their representation, the gigantic reck temples of Lllora, sur
mounted by monolithic elephants, loaded with mystic figures, creations
of the Brahminic religion. In the midst of colossi, with animals'

156 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
heads, strange symbols of a complicated theogony, appear the rudiments
of a rich and masterly ornamentation. Upon the marble of the pilasters,
in the coffered recesses of the vaults, wreaths of acanthus, the stems
elegantly cut out, and ornamental flowers, reveal in the Hindoo artist
a purity of conception, an understanding of masses and details, that
one would only expect to find in the finest works of Greece.
In approaching more modern periods and in observing other materials
one sees that time, far from modifying the taste, has rendered its ex
pression more delicate. Precious gems, worked with marked superiority,
set off by the addition of emeralds, rubies, and sapphires, will rival what
Western antiquity has left of most esteemed. Nothing is more dis
tingue than the cups of jade of slender form, delicate as the corolla
of a flower, and chased with leaves and flowers in scarcely sensible
relief, in those fly-flappers, those cups encrusted with fillets of gold bent
in scrolls, and charged with flowers and fruits in glowing rubies. Could
one suppose a people so enlightened in the art would have neglected
the ornamental resources offered by the ceramics? No. It only
wanted observers less superficial than the old travellers to furnish the
proof. After having carefully explored Central India, of which he gives
a curious picture in the 'Tour du Monde,' M. Louis Rousselet has
brought back types of the ancient ceramic art of this mysterious civili
sation. The valley of Sanchi furnished him with numerous specimens
of funeral urns, some cut in steatite, the others kneaded in grey or
red potter's clay. The steatites, sometimes grey, sometimes brown,
affect studied forms, and are covered with sculptured gadroons and
figures of animals, among which we specially recognise the elephant
and the fox. These works, found in the topes of Sonari and Andher,
go back to the end of the third century before the Christian era.
With respect to the terra-cottas, this funereal
Fig. 46. urn (Fig. 46) from the tope of Satdahra, dates from
300 to 280 B.C. ; its spheroidal form, with turned over
rim, recalls certain primitive Greek vases, themselves
perhaps copied from Asiatic potteries brought by
Phoenician commerce.
• We give (Fig. 47) another type of red pottery from
funeral urn of j^g ^0^e 0f Ohojepore. It is a covered jar, of primitive
RED POTTERY, r J r J ' r
from the tope make, and appears rather to have been kneaded by
hands than turned on the wheel ; yet it shows a certain
refinement of ornamentation, and the body bears an inscription in ancient
characters; its date is probably from 260 to 240 r..c. Of the same

INDIA.

157

date are urns, also in red pottery (Fig. 49), discovered at Andher, and
of which the very peculiar forms have left their trace on certain objects
of vulgar use figured in Solvyn's Journey.

Fig. 48.

COVERED URN OF RED POTTERY, FROM
THE TOPE OF OHOJEPORE.

URN OF RED POTTERY, FROM
THE TOPE OF ANDHER.

So much for the old terra-cottas ; but the discoveries of M. Rousselet
did not end there; it was reserved to him to make us acquainted
with the application of enamels to monumental decoration in a series of
elaborate edifices, palaces, temples, and fortresses, created from the
fifth to the eleventh century, and dispersed over Gwalior, Canoudji,
Delhi, Chittore, and Oujein. These constructions have, amid reliefs
of a studied architecture, friezes, and compartments divided by pilastered
rows of arches, relieved by a coloured ornamentation in bright and pure
tones, dark blue, pale blue or turquoise, green, yellow, orange, chestnut,
and violet-brown of the colour of bronze. These consist of a kind
of rectangular brick, combined to form a succession of square denticula-
tions alternating in colour, chequers, and rows of shark's teeth or saw
like ornaments. In the metopes a ground composed of blue bricks
brings out the outline of a palm tree traced in a fine green mosaic. In
some of the friezes at Gwalior are web-footed birds, elegantly outlined,
which detach themselves from the ground, or foxes dexterously executed
in mosaic. In spite of the injuries of time these remarkable works still
set off the majestic ruins on which we found them.
In a purely ceramic point of view the bricks of India have a peculiar
interest; they are very smooth on the surface, rectangular, very thick,
bevelled at the edges, and do not appear to be of a clay paste, but of
a kind of stoneware ; the enamelled covering, probably silico-alkaline,
is excessively thin, very adherent, and of a translucency which shows the
greyish brown tint of the subjacent rock.
Thus are resolved the doubts of Alexandre Brongniart on the subject

158 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
of certain ancient fragments, which appeared to him to be enamelled
direct upon a silicious rock. This practice would unite itself with that
of the ancient Egyptians, who knew how to make the coloured enamels
in the fine sculptures adhere to their granite sarcophagi.
Let us pass to times nearer our own, and to works of pure pottery,
that is of pieces where the enamel is applied upon terra-cotta. From
the time of the publication of the 'Traite des arts ceramiques,' England
possessed some wall-tiles brought from Gour, a town deserted in the
fourteenth century in consequence of one of the branches of the Ganges,
which watered it, having very suddenly changed its bed. Brongniart,
describing these plaques of black or blue ground, ornamented in
relief with primitive white pattern, would not venture to decide on the
exact nature of the enamel, but he established the fact of the monu
mental application of pottery. He added, " I have had other informa
tion of glazed fragments, found in India, derived from the ' Asiatic
Journal,' and communicated by M. Garcin de Tassy.
"M. Treader has sent to the Asiatic Society (of Calcutta) some
fragments of glazed pottery found upon a place slightly elevated, in the
neighbourhood of Jounpore, which forty years back was covered with
a thick forest. * * * * The fragments in question are of coarse work
manship, but the glaze is good and the colours brilliant, considering
the time they have been exposed to the air (probably two or three
hundred years) ; the blue has great brilliancy ; the designs have no
elegance, and evidently are not either Chinese or imitations from them."
Since the publication of M. Brongniart's book, science has advanced ;
fragments, then so rare, have multiplied, and we have just shown to
what a point the Indians had pushed the science of enamelling. We
ought also to mention here other coloured monuments, of which unfor-
nately we know neither the date nor the locality, but which by the
grandeur of the style and the nature of the ornaments recall the ancient
Hindoo temples. These are sculptures in high or low relief, of which
the grey earth, bordering upon brown, is of an inconceivable hardness
and of excessively fine grain ; the details are moulded with infinite
care and overlaid with bright colours, yellow, red, green, and black.
What is the nature of this decoration ? Is it a simple glaze or an
enamel ? Chemical experiments would be required to demonstrate it.
What is certain is, that notwithstanding the relative .whiteness of the
earth, certain colours are applied upon an engobe which increases their
brightness. These fragments evidently form part of an architectural
decoration ; we see large friezes with the borders of different colours,

INDIA. 159
and ornamented in relief with a cruciform pattern, recalling the rich
ness of the most elegant filigree jewels, pilasters with foliated scrolls,
having red daisies with yellow centres, Greek borders with half rosettes
and projecting bosses, columns of arabesques with conventional flowers,
trilobed foliage of elegant form, and lateral palmettes united with
divergent stalks twisted into scrolls. But what are still more remarkable
are the fantastic birds with scaly thighs, enclosing in their powerful
talons reptiles writhing in agony ; dragons' heads, propelling from their
open jaws a wave of scrolls crossing each other, unrolling their
numerous volutes, variously coloured ; and most wonderful of all a kind
of monstrous head, with startling eyes, hairy eyebrows, bearing upon
its frontal boss a pearl set in an oval, and crowned with the Brahminic
mitre. Before these bold and masterly productions, where the sciences of
form and colour lend their powerful support, one remains confounded, and
we ask ourselves if the Hindoos are not the first ceramic artists in the
world. These precious fragments form part of the rich collection of
M. Duglere. Unfortunately, we repeat, their derivation is not known,
and according to the judicious observations of M. Louis Rousselet, their
fantastic style, even the extravagance of their monsters, would announce
less the conception of India proper than of Indo-China.
Posterior to these monumental works, India has produced faience
of the same nature as that of Persia, wall tiles, plates, and other usual
pieces for table service; the paste is white and silicious ; it has for deco
rating basis a fine turquoise-blue, applied in scrolls, disposed in bouquets,
or spread on a ground with reserves of white arabesques. The simi
larity is so complete between this and Persian pottery, that a natural
suggestion arises in the mind : how a people, advanced at all times in
the art of enamelling upon copper, applying vitrifiable colours to the
decoration of monuments, could have been able to escape the want of
producing a decorative porcelain richer than the simple camaieu?
Then one chooses among the pieces ascribed to Persia, certain
plates, of which the rich bouquets resemble those upon plates in cloisonne
enamel upon " resille ;" and others, no less elegant, where the peacock,
sometimes spreading at others sweeping his rich ocellated tail, forms the
principal subject ; then comparing these paintings no longer with Persian
works, but with the reliefs of repousse goldsmith's work, and with the
paintings to the frames of Indian miniatures, one involuntarily forms
a group which, in the great whole of faiences of Oriental origin, would
be the special share allotted to Hindostan. It is audacious, perhaps

160 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
premature, yet the conscience is awakened ; and the day is not far
distant when, with one accord, amateurs, writers and collectors, meeting
on one common ground, will give at last a solution to these questions
so interesting to the history of art.
Besides, it is certain that even at the present time, India makes
faience. The centre of the manufacture appears to be Hyderabad ; the
• forms and decoration reveal ancient traditions preserved in spite of
time. Elegant cups with raised covers, hemispheric bowls with ga-
droons in relief, are in the ceramic museum at Sevres ; the ground of the
pottery is of the colour of tortoise-shell, green or bright blue, heightened
with patterns in black ; graceful scrolls of incised foliage, their rolls
terminated by large radiated flowers, decorate the principal friezes;
beaded borders, others toothed, whence rise palmated leaves alternating
with delicate groups of ferns ; daisies scattered between the rosettes
and beading, imbricated surfaces, other semees of vegetable patches-
such are its elements of decoration. Now one finds precisely these
elements in the greater part of the objects of Hindostan, and parti
cularly upon the painted and gilded niches of the Buddhist divinities
and upon the boxes and vases of lacquered work.
These numerous and choice modern potteries that the Universal
Exhibition has shown us are the best proof that can be furnished of
the antiquity of the ceramic art in India. Is it then at the moment
when, conquered and reconquered by the stranger, who imposes upon
it his products, this unhappy country, without chiefs, without initiative,
decimated by disease, ruined by taxes, seeks in vain to reunite itself by
the ties of a religious faith, is it then that she would go and renew old
or create new industries with which she has dispensed in the days of her
power ? Reason .would not admit it, and we must, on the contrary,
recognise all that there is of vitality and persistency in a people who,
in spite of these misfortunes, still find within themselves strength to
perpetuate some of their ancient products, and to oppose to the
detestable importations of the conqueror works always bearing the
impress of national vigour. Section 3. — Porcelains.
We have just thrown a rapid glance upon the ordinary pottery
of India. We must now seek to recognise those of fine hard paste,
that is to say, porcelain. But to attain this end it is indispensable
to defend the bases of art in this singular country. The Indian paintings
and those of Persia have been too often confounded, and nothing has

INDIA. ,6i

been hitherto earnestly done to trace out the limits between two styles
bordering on each other.
The first fact deduced from an attentive examination of the two kinds
is, that the Indians are more of miniature painters than the Persians ;
their figures are executed with scrupulous care, no detail escapes
their minute rendering, and yet the whole preserves the most perfect
harmony. As a consequence of this intelligence in art, even the frames
which surround their historic scenes or portraits are enriched with de
signs skilfully softened in their tones not to detract from the principal
subject. The taste of the ornament is such as we find in the tissues of
Cashmere, printed cloths, and other textile products.
Raynal had remarked this tendency, and writes in his ' Recherches
Philosophiques ': " There are painters at Surat who would not yield in
rank to the most skilful hoa-pei of Nankin, and above all in that which
they term works in miniature. AA'e know of pictures crowded with
from eighty to a hundred figures, in which all the women resemble each
other, and the men the same, for there is but one look and one phy
siognomy for each sex, proving in the most manifest manner that they
paint by rule." This ridiculous observation is founded on fact, and
is of the first importance ; the philosophic abbe could not have been
ignorant that all primitive arts proceed thus ; the species takes the place
of the individual, the type dominates varieties, the school constitutes a
great whole which absorbs the personal tendencies of each of its adepts,
and submits to the level of one master the attempts at originality, what
ever it may be.
Applying this principle to the study of Indian ceramics, we were not
long in finding a criterion by which to establish the_ characteristics of
their figure decoration. There exists at Sevres a porcelain plaque, with
double face, probably the cover of the betel box of some rajah ; on each
side is represented a prince sitting cross-legged upon his masnad, and
holding in his hand the jewel, emblem of power ; near him is an officer,
who fans him with a fly-flapper of peacock's feathers ; on the other side
the prince is alone, appearing to contemplate the verdant landscape and
misty sky seen through a pierced gallery. These paintings, are executed
in muffle colours, with marvellous delicacy, evidently by hands ac
customed to miniature painting; examined by a magnifying glass, the
faces have the most striking character of nationality. It is the elegant
type of India, the straight forehead, short nose, almond-shaped eyes,
arched eyebrows, and fine beard terminating in a point at the base of
the oval. Now we know with what difficulty the Chinese and Japanese M

1 62 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
painters copy things contrary to their habitual practice, and to what
a point they disfigure them ; all profile is detested by the Chinese, and
even in its ugliness there are certain conventional signs ; the nose, for
instance, has the form of the 4 in Arab numerals. The Japanese artist,
more pliant in handling the pencil, will make the features less ugly,
but profile not being familiar to him, there will be a singular constraint
and a conventional uniformity in his delineation, which will scarcely
admit of distinguishing between the two sexes, and less still between
the different races.
In the painting of ornament, the delicacy and minuteness of detail
will furnish the character. Finished as may be the Japanese grounds,
with their delicate mosaics, they will never rival the grounds' in gold
or coloured scales, minutely mingled together and relieved with imper
ceptible dots ; with the Indian, the narrow fillet becomes a wreath of
foliage or an embroidered ribbon ; gold, in hair strokes, heightens the
smallest flower; in a word, the porcelain has nothing to envy in the
most carefully finished body colours.
If to corroborate these remarks made in sight of tbe pieces them
selves, we seek for further indications, we find most valuable ones in
the miniature drawings, which have already furnished useful com
parisons. We have seen in Persia, public piety bring together in a
special chamber of the tomb of Schah Ismael, the porcelains used by
that sovereign. Similar rooms to this zerfkaneh (porcelain room)
exist in the palaces of India : a miniature formerly belonging to M.
Emile AVattier, shows us the Sultan Akbar giving audience in a salle,
studded with niches, containing vases of every form. Thanks to the
exactness of the Hindoo pencil, one is able to distinguish in these
vessels the works of the goldsmith, the gems and the pottery, these last
affecting two distinct kinds of decorations, one blue upon white, the
other in bright colours ; the style of the pieces, with figures, birds, or
arabesque ornaments, has nothing in common with the works of the
Celestial Empire, and one cannot therefore suppose them to be imported
works. We were not satisfied with examining the miniature of M.
AVattier alone ; another, representing the fete of Holi, shows us the
sweetmeats and the wine in large bowls of a blue pattern. Magnificent
pages, in which are represented receptions and feasts, enable us to establish
the presence of richly enamelled porcelains only among the vessels of
gold and the gems. These coloured porcelains therefore constituted
the most esteemed kind ; the others are the vessels in common use.
Let us now determine the exact character of these two kinds.

INDIA.

163

Blues of India. — The paste is generally better worked than that of
Persia ; rather courte, it is apt to split, but it is very even, close, and
overlaid with a very fine bluish glaze, well lustred, and which appears
sometimes to have been applied in two coats ; the light blue of the
ornaments seems scarcely to show itself through the glaze under which
it has bubbled (bouillonne), which gives it a special softness and delicacy.
Of this blue we find vases, bottles for aspersion, and gargoulettes in the
form of a recumbent elephant. Other blues with ordinary glaze are of
much brighter tint. They have ornamental borders, with notched scrolls,
and for principal subjects bouquets composed of various flowers or birds,
terraces decorated with plants, resembling the Chinese compositions.
These last blues appear less ancient than the others; some already
savour of European inspiration.
Polychrome Porcelain. — The Hindoos were skilful in enamelling, and
for them the use of vitrifiable colours upon kaolinic pottery must have
been easy. Yet as one escapes with difficulty from the traditions of
an old and reputed workshop, so the Indian painters have sought
for an equivalent to the Green family of the Chinese ; we find it in a
deep bell-shaped bowl (Fig. 49), simply decorated in blue, red

Fi?. 49.

BOWL OF INDIAN PORCELAIN  GREEN FAMILY.

and green enamelled. If the whole bears a Chinese character,
the details are widely different. The borders of rosettes and den-
ticulations are of a perfect original taste. Straight, slender stalks
rise vertically from the base at equal distances, bearing daisies,
M 2

164

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

alternately red and blue, surrounded by leaves regularly disposed, so
as to form upon the white ground, as it were, a close network. There
results from this arrangement an effect resembling tissues rather
than pottery.
Another covered bowl, belonging to the Baroness Salomon de Roths
child, affects an analogous disposition upon a gold ground. The cup
with a foot, figured here (Fig. 50), is richer still, with the exception of the

F12. 50,

CUP IN INDIAN PORCELAIN, IMITATING CLOISONNE ENAMEL-
(COLL. BARONNE S. DE ROTHSCHILD).

lower edge, where we find the porcelain ornamented with a yellow zone
of enamelled flowers. The surface of the vase is filled with the
grounds ; one light green, divided by arches of gold, invades the
circumference ; the other, garnet-red, forms upon the first a kind of
rosette, of which the segments bear a decoration of flowers and foliage
resembling that of the pieces previously described. All, from the
outline of the grounds to the smallest point to the least leaf, is edged
with a line of brilliant gold, imitating the workmanship of a cloisonne
enamel ; the style of the borders resemble,- at the same time, this work,
and that of gold incrustations and precious stones.
It does not require any artistic feeling to be struck with the
identity of this piece with those which miniature painters place
before the Eastern princes, filled with fruits or sorbets.
The porcelains imitating enamels appear to be of old date, and of a

INDIA. 165

taste general in the peninsula of India. AVe find them again in Siam and
Cochin China. Another kind, which might be termed Indo-Mussulman,
affects an austere style ; in the partial ground of a blackish blue under the
glaze, relieved with stars and crescents in gold, are reserved borders and
oval medallions filled with delicate inscriptions in gold, taken from
the Koran. A wreath of small flowers with green foliage, and fillets
in green relief, red and gold, framing the reserves, alone recall the
resources of the mineral pallet. A bouquet, heightened in gold, at the
bottom of the cup, would also lead to suppose a habit of Japan inspiration.
Hence it has been advanced that there exists in China a numerous
sect devoted to Islamism, to whom should be probably attributed these
pieces. As regards paste and fabrication, the Mussulman porcelains are
incontestably Indian, the borders of little flowers which surround their
base is of the special style of decoration of the Green family. Another
observation overrules this: we know what is the power of manual habit
among Oriental nations ; the Chinese write with a brush, raising or
leaning on it to obtain the flexible touch wdiich gives to calligraphy its
elegance and distinction. The Arab, the Persian, and the Indian write
with the reed, and hence preserve to their characters the graceful
lightness, the cursive form, which the brush can never impart. It
would therefore be easy to distinguish Arab characters traced by a
Chinese hand. A piece of blue decoration in our possession, shows that
even in China these characters are copied with difficulty, and, we may
say, as awkwardly as if they had been French. No doubt then can be
permitted with respect to these porcelains ; which are, besides, closely
united with other kinds which, in the eighteenth century, had thrown
collectors into the greatest confusion.
The natural stopping place on the route to China and Japan, India,
has now become the general emporium of the merchandise of these
countries ; Arabia, Persia, the Sunda Islands, Moluccas, etc., make
themselves tributaries of this central market, where exchange of products
is made with the greatest facility, inasmuch as the demand and supply
are in continual contact. Goa, Pondicherry, Madras, Calcutta, receive,
either direct from China, Japan, the Corea, or Batavia, those immense
quantities of porqelain destined to furnish part of the return cargo
of the western fleets. It is certain that the Hindoo and Persian
ceramic works stepped into the commerce without awakening the
attention of the traders, and without exciting the curiosity of European
amateurs. Thus, as the Dutch, masters of the Japanese factories, sent

1 66 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
their orders to Desima, the French, finding in India manufactories in full
activity, sent theirs to Pondicherry.
Now that the Hindoos, delicate artists, lovers of detail, accustomed
to the working up of their miniatures, should have sought to derive
their inspirations from the Japanese rather than from the decorated
Chinese porcelain, at once explains itself. Nor can we be astonished
to see the orders sent from Europe to Pondicherry confounded, from
their style, with the porcelain executed at Nippon under the care of
the Dutch Company of the Indies. What, it will be naturally asked, are
the characteristics by which to distinguish the works of the two origins ?
These are the characters, derived not only from the porcelain, but from
the products of other industrial arts.
The Indian paste is of bluish or greyish cast, its enamel lustred
and brilliant ; it is often obtained by running into moulds, and appears
tremblee on its surface ; this may be also found in some Chinese and
Japanese porcelains. One of the elements of Hindoo decoration is a
bright and deep enamelled blue. Quite characteristic, it has nothing
analogous but the blue of the pate tendre of Sevres ; on some pieces it
forms partial grounds, or outlines of bouquets, in the style of ancient
paintings ; we see pine-apples, paonies, chrysanthemums, and small
flowers, the details of which are rendered by heightenings of gold
with marvellous delicacy. This infinite delicacy, which leaves far
behind it all the Oriental paintings in enamel, is the surest indication
of works of Hindoo artists. Green or blue fillets, with points of gold,
form an embroidery, wreaths from these points supporting minute
daisies, with red centres almost imperceptible to the eye. Soft and
melting green or flesh tints throw a perfect harmony over the borders ;
arabesque designs, with guillochures of gold, and microscopic lozenges,
spread themselves over ribbons interlaced with flowers, and com
plete the resemblance of the ceramic decoration to the richest stuffs.
In the midst of all this, escutcheons of vivid colours, with mantliDgs
or heraldic supporters, rival the most beautiful the Japanese have
produced. One of the choicest collections of Indian porcelain with
European designs, is that of Admiral Juares. We find there pieces of
pure and marvellous taste, especially an escutcheoned plate, covered
with rich arabesques in pale green and gold, of which the Sevres artists
might envy the composition.
If we have insisted, upon the description of these almost modern
porcelains, it is that uncertainty has particularly attached itself to them,
and that they have advanced as exceptional pieces from their resem-

INDIA. 167
blance to those ordered by the Dutch India Company, to increase the
confusion brought about by empiricism in the products of the seven
teenth and eighteenth centuries.
Let us dismiss these commercial works to return to the porcelain
made for the use of the Hindoos. The double-faced plaque that we
have cited in the beginning already gives reason to suppose that it was
particularly from the Japanese that the Indian artists have borrowed their
processes. Pieces of rare occurrence, but easily to be recognised, show
this inspiration in another light. There are cups with feet, run in a
mould, and of very characteristic form ; dishes and plates of good make,
adorned with enamelled flowers, rocks covered with fabulous birds or with
gallinacese. Upon a cup in our collection the flowers nearly approach,
by their enamel and make, to those of the artistic school, but the rocks,
tinted with yellow and heightened with brown, differ from what we see
in Japan; a border of gold filigree, Mandarin style, surrounding the
base is equally characteristic of the school of which we have been just
speaking. In plates the difference is still more marked. Round the edge
are bouquets, mixed with open pomegranates, partly in enamel, in
relief, partly in thin colours, particularly in iron-red. Flowers of the
pomegranate of this last tint are finished with a care which renders
possible their association with the roses and lilies, in which shine the
golden red and white enamel. In the centre, among the most graceful
plants, are a cock and hen surrounded with chickens, of which the iron-
red plumage, with black stems, are finely worked in strokes of gold,
raising the painting to the level with the most perfect creations of
the Japanese. To those who, struck with the unanimity of travellers in
denying Hindoo porcelain, would write that this pottery is imported
from China, we will oppose, as a last argument, the curious book trans
lated by M. Stanislas Julien, upon ' L'Histoire et la fabrication de la
porcelaine chinoise.' It contains these indications : "47. Vases orna
mented with enamels in the European style." " 54. Imitations of the
gilded vases (literally, ' rubbed with gold ') of Iudo-China : Tong-yang
mo-kin khi-ming. "55. Silver vases (literally, 'rubbed with silver') of
Indo-China : Tong-yang mo-in khi-ming."
This passage is curious in more than one respect ; it proves that,
notwithstanding its anterioiity in the ceramic arts, the Celestial Empire
does not hesitate to acknowledge the borrowings it has made from its
neighbours, and even from barbarian strangers. Who then would dare to
deny the existence of Hindoo porcelains when the Chinese admit that

1 68 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
they have imitated them ? We hastened to seek the vases " rubbed with
gold "; and the museum of Sevres, rich in ancient objects, has shown us
two pieces, a little coffee-pot with elegant spout, and a water-cup of
singular form, representing the Indian kind. Covered with a brownish
Nankin glaze, powdered over with gold scantily laid on, these vases, of
wdiich the metallic aspect is seen only in certain lights, appeared as
old yellow copper gilt, worn by use, and jaspered with blackish stains
of a patina accumulated by time. The Chinese " rubbed with gold," on
the contrary, is always to be recognised by the form of the vases and
the nienhao, with which some of them were inscribed ; it is besides
laid upon an iron-red ground, which animates the clouds of gold with
a warm tone like that of an old gilded bronze.
The frotte d'or is not the only exceptional porcelain of India that we
have pointed out. There exists in the Gasnault collection a cassolette
of red-brown ground, decorated with medallions traced in wdiite
enamel in the national style. The lid is surmounted by a golden
bouquet that might be taken for a metal mounting. The nature of
the floral medallions and white arabesques resemble a bowl with
Nankin glaze, enriched with medallions in the same style, heightened
upon the white with some touches of pink. This again is a style of
decoration similar to what one meets upon the Hindoo productions
of European order ; the enamelled pink bands are relieved by a white
embroidery in relief. Siam.
WTe have said a word in passing on the porcelain of Anam and
Siam. These countries, rushed through by a number of travellers,
are destitute, they say, of all artistic industry, and have recourse
to Japan and China to provide them with the slightest objects of
luxury. The Universal Exhibition came, bringing the most eloquent
denial to these assertions. Already, long before the first maritime
movements, occasioned by our expedition to Cochin China, there
suddenly arrived porcelains of unknown aspect, some pretty fine, the
others of common fabrication; the colours of demi-grand feu cover
the biscuit, the white glaze is only perceptible under the foot of the
bowls and the interior of the glazed pieces. The principal ground is
of a greenish black enamel, seme of lobed flowers heightened with red
upon white. Buddhic figures, with the tiara and nimbus, fill the
four sides of the vase ; two are represente:! in bust iu arabesque
medallions; the other two, upon the ground, terminate in tails like

SIAM. 169
those of a mermaid. The borders are seme with scrolls, flowers, and
palmettes, recalling the style of the cup figured at page 164, and the
white earth of the engobe, the isolated and projecting pearls imitate,
with less delicacy, the special decoration of Hindostan. The delineation
of the figures is conformable, besides, to what the Indian pantheons
show us. These pieces, mostly of modern fabrication, evidently belong
to ancient tradition ; we want no other proof than a bowl decorated in
blue under the glaze, and patine by time, which came to throw light
upon the subject by its appearance in a public sale of Dutch merchandise.
If the name of Siam had not been pronounced from the beginning
relative to these vases, the precious pieces sent to the Champ de Mars
by M. de Grean would have made it known to us. We saw there,
besides ceramic pieces of great interest, enamels upon copper, which
seem to have served as models to the vases we have just described.
Let us add to this brilliant pottery the Martabani, which we must
naturally restore to its country, and it will be seen that this part of the
Indian peninsula has nothing to envy the other in their products.
This will show only by what serious studies, and by what patient
researches, we must prelude the determination of the natural character
of certain ceramic works. Let us not then wonder if travellers not
prepared, pressed by time and preoccupation with the special object of
their distant journey, should fall into error and confusion that the
most learned would scarcely avoid in seeing hurriedly a profusion of
objects inspired by the same ideas, answering to analogous wants, and
often copied from each other.

170 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

APPENDIX TO BOOK III.

Section 1. — Magheeb.
We have seen with what ardour the disciples of Mohammed sought to
spread their doctrine, by extending their conquests. Masters of Egypt,
Syria, a part of Asia Minor, and of Persia, they turned their looks
towards the north of Africa, Sicily and Spain.
The first army which invaded Cyrenaica, was led, in 644, by Amrou-
ben-el-Aas; but not sufficiently numerous to retain possession of a
country where resistance arose on every side, it was compelled to retire.
But the impulse was given and ambition awakened ; four other ex
peditions followed, the first, in 647, headed by Abdallah ; the second
by Moaouyah-ebn-Kadydjeh ; the third, in 666, by Bacher-ben-Artah ;
the last, in 670, by Oqbah-ben-Nafy, which not only established itself
in the country, but also founded there, in 675, the first Mussulman
city, Quayrouan or Keirouan, upon the site of the ancient Cyrene.
Notwithstanding the constant revolts of the natives, conquest extended
rapidly, and geographers soon divided into districts the extensive shore
made subject to Islamism. The Maghreb-el- Aksa, or the extreme west,
extending from the Atlantic to Tlemsen ; the Maghreb-el-Ouassath, or
Maghreb of the Middle, comprising the country east of Tlemsen as far as
Bougie ; and lastly, Afrikia, or Africa, properly so-called, of which the
eastern frontier touched Egypt.
Established in these centres, the Arabs built mosques, public edifices,
and private houses, in which they displayed their taste for brilliant
decoration. Unfortunately, Europeans have not shown much zeal in
making known the nature and style of these ornaments ; travellers

MAGHREB. - 171

seeking rather to follow the tracks of the great events of ancient history,
and to gather inscriptions commemorative of the Greek and Roman
conquests, of the Punic wars, and the varied fortunes of Carthage.
Yet one may still find in their narratives some useful indications.
One sees that at Fez, the ground of the principal Arab houses was
paved with various coloured enamelled tiles. In the different regions
of the present Algeria, the domes of the mosques shine with the
brilliancy of the glazed tiles ; the mosque of Sidi-Belabbes, at Morocco,
is still overlaid with this brilliant decoration. M. Prax has given us
the following interesting description of the Zaouia and of the great
mosque of Sidi-Shabi, above half a mile west of Keirouan :
" The Zaouia of Sidi-Shabi is a large lime-washed building. Above
its walls of enclosure and other erections rise the dome of the tomb and
the minaret, which have preserved the brown red tint of its cut stones.
These stones have square facings, and form courses at an angle
of forty-five degrees. AVe entered the first court; we found another
further on, adorned with columns of marble, forming galleries,
iu which we saw students in theology, talba, who were studying.
Beyond the second court is a mosque. A staircase led us to a terrace,
flagged with white marble, and with galleries and columns of marble.
The walls of this terrace are overlaid with glazed tiles of great variety
of pattern. We entered into a cupola-covered apartment, of which the
walls were overlaid with tiles forming large patterns of vertical bands.
In the midst of this salle is the tomb of Sidi-Shabi, under an apple-
green silk sheet with red borders, surmounted by two standards of red
brocade. Upon the tomb is a closed book, richly bound ; at its angles
are candelabras, bearing tapers, painted spirally. Around it is a
railing with green bars of flattened iron, crossed at an angle of forty-five
degrees, and rivetted with nails, with heads alternately red and yellow.
The area prescribed by this radius has tiles half black and white, which
are arranged so as to form zigzag bands successively white and black."
In reading this description one figures monuments as sumptuous as
those of Cairo and Damascus. One sees, in fact, that the Arabs had
introduced into the Maghreb the luxury of marble buildings and
ceramic overlaying.
Nor is this all. The same traveller, M. Prax, in enumerating the
different kinds of merchandise which converge towards Keirouan, the
great commercial centre of Tunisia, the city of caravan, particularly
mentions the fine potteries of Beled-Zouarin, on the east of Kierouan.
It was a great deal to possess such indications of a country which may be

iyi HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
said to be unknown ; but it was more difficult to find types of the Arab
manufacture of Maghreb, and to compare them with other Mussulman
productions to bring out the difference.
Tliis mission has been rendered easy by the courtesy of M. Georges
Martin, in laying open to us his fine collection. A word, first, on this
unparalleled series. M. Martin not only went through the north of
Africa as an intelligent artist, gathering everywhere the waifs of
Mussulman splendour, which will soon be only a thing of the past,
as present indolence lets all fall to ruin ; he learnt tliat an Arab,
enlightened by long contact with European civilisation, had carried
back into his country a taste for archaeological research, and had
surrounded himself with a real museum, collected at great expense
and trouble, and composed not only of the most elegant and
original ancient vases, but also of a series of coloured drawings
representing pieces impossible to acquire. Here then was a complete
monumental history of the potteries of the Maghreb ; a history
elucidated by manuscript notes, which, it appears, have been subsequently
burned by the indifferent. At the moment M. Martin heard of this
interesting collection the discoverer was dead ; it was his widow, who,
seduced by the offers of the traveller, finished by giving up to
France (the courteous reception M. Martin gives to those who visit
his cabinet allows us to employ this term) the vases and drawings
collected with so much care and love. We remain stupefied before this
numerous series of unknown works ; here are urns of an elegance almost
antique, some furnished with two or three handles uniting the neck to
the body (Fig 51) ; others without appendages, and by this happy form
recalling the canopus of ancient Egypt ; then there are jars or po tidies,
if this name from the extreme East may be ventured upon in
Africa; some almost oviform, with short necks, often flattened and
reduced at the base, or turbinated. There are also before us vases
(Fig 52) with one handle, furnished with a biberon, like the Italian
brocca, or, better still, like those pitchers of the south, which
are evidently derived from it. We might also speak of lamps on
tall stems, intersected by successive planes attached to each other
by handles superposed. All these pieces, covered with a pinkish grey
enamel, of rose colour, are heightened by a polychrome decoration in
zones, generally consisting of bands of scrolls, flowers, denticulations
rosettes, etc., where citron, yellow, manganese brown, green, and blue,
form the most charming harmony.
But the series of ceramic works where we find the greatest variety

MAGHREB.

173

of form and distinction, is that consisting of dishes and cups ; not only
have the Arabic artists exhausted the hemispheric combinations more
or less prolonged in cylinder, but the bursary form, often with flattened
sides ; all these upon a broad foot, sometimes fluted, or applied to a
finely gadrooned stem. The exterior ornamentation of these pieces is
like thatof the vases described above; in the interior vast rosettes, arches
enclosing palms and bouquets, ingenious linear conceptions, forming
gigantic stars, with segments richly varied, and checquered in star-shaped
or polygonal compartments ; they have even approached natural repre
sentations with a fancy, a liberty of conception, bordering often on licence ;

Fig. 51.

Fiir. 52.

ARAB URN — (COLL. MARTIN).

ARAB GARGOULETTE — (COLL. MARTIN).

at the bottom of a cup, a black mass describes the outline of a tiger,
with outstretched claws, of aspect rendered as terrific as possible by
reserving in the black, two eyes, widely opened, scarcely divided by two
vertical pupils. Upon a largish dish a carnivorous animal, a lion, no
doubt, attacks and tears another mammiferous animal, an antelope
perhaps, if one may judge from its size ; others would say a hare, deter
mined by the length of its ears.
These figures doubtlessly are barbarous, yet they are not wanting in
savage energy or boldness ; they are besides valuable in another point
of view, since, unknown perhaps to their authors, who follow ancient

174 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
traditions, they perpetuate the type of the conflict between the two
principles of Good and Evil, inaugurated under Zoroaster by the fight
between the lion and the bull, transformed after the Hegira into a
simple hunting scene. Need we mention also a man on horseback, and
some other representations of the human figure ? Notwithstanding
their relative poverty, they are deserving of notice ; for they ally them
selves on one part with the Persian pieces with like figures, and on the
other with the Gey-chany of Asia Minor.
In fact, we have no doubt that African pottery should form two
sections ; the first, comprising the common and barbarous pottery of the
ancient inhabitants of the soil, that is, of the Kabyles and all those wan
dering shepherds, remained, notwithstanding the lapse of centuries and
social modifications, what they were at the Bible period : the greater part
of that pottery is not glazed, and consists of water vessels, ordinary
recipients, and lamps of rather singular forms. The second contains,
not only the numerous series of enamelled pieces, elegant vases of
various uses, cups, and plates of every dimension, but also innumerable
wall tiles, which may be still met with in situ in the ruins of some
monuments, or that collectors may have saved from destruction by
gathering them from among the rubbish.
M. Martin's collection is invaluable as regards this kind of faience ;
one may follow in it, as it were, step by step the march of ideas
and facts. The Arabs, too little masters of the country to set up an in
dustry and establish manufactories, imported from their other possessions
the wall tiles with which they wished to brighten their religious edifices,
in order to strike the imagination of the people they had4 conquered.
Here then are the Persian tiles with blue grounds, and reliefs some
times gilt, with inscriptions projecting in white, in meanders and
bouquets of flowers ; some have been collected by M. Martin himself
from the mosque of Constantine ; here then are works brought from
Asia Minor, heightened by these ingenious arabesques, brightly coloured
and bordered with projecting fillets. Later, affairs settled down, the
country conquered, the Arabs felt themselves at home, and their
industries and commerce take that incredible development of which
Mussulman geographers are so proud. Then workshops rise, workmen
are trained, and architecture finds, under their hands, the necessary
elements of ornamentation. Yet — and here is one of those facts more
easy to establish than to explain' — sensible differences characterise the
Arab fabrication from the Maghreb ; the earth is less purified than in the
anterior products which have served as models; the colours are less

MAGHREB. 175

lively and less marked. The tiles, imitated from the Persian, have a
smooth glaze, perhaps silico-alkaline, it appears so thin and fluid ;
but it covers over a pale washed blue, detaching without vigour the
inscriptions reserved in white ; the arabesques show themselves less at a
distance. In the reproduction of the style of Asia Minor, the enamels
form good relief in the black cells tracing the drawing; but these
enamels, granulous and paste-like, have no longer that clear tint which
recalls in their other enamels the cloisonne enamel upon copper..
A style quite special to the north of Africa are the plaques, far
larger than ordinary tiles, of white ground, with floral scrolls and
symmetric combinations, one would fancy, of Italian conception ;
Fig. 53.

ARAB CUP — (COLL. MARTIN).
the flowers are not imitated from nature, and the whole resembles
the branches of certain tissues of the seventeenth century. Unfor
tunately, we are ignorant whence these plaques came, and the nature
of the monuments they decorated. Yet the beauty of their excessively
fluid glaze, the purity of their tints, would lead one to suspect that
they have been made in the same centre as those remarkable cups
(Figs. 53 and 54), quite different in fabrication from the vases figured
above. Nor should we be surprised if some weak attempt atEuropean imita
tion had slipped into the art of the Maghreb. The Arabs carried their
arms to Sicily and Spain ; but beyond these motives, they had a natural

i76

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

intimacy with Europe by their commerce. From the fifteenth century,
at the time of the expedition of Jean de Bethencourt, Morocco opened
relations with France. A government agent and a consulate .were
established there, in 1577, by an act which declared that this consulate
should have the same rights and privileges as those constituted "at
Alexandria, Tripoli of Syria, Tripoli of Barbary, Gelby, Tunis, Bona, and
Algiers." How is it then that our navigators have gathered nothing
from the manufacturing centres of these several countries ? In the
present day we are reduced to conjectures. The fine potteries of Beled-
Zouarin, mentioned by M. Prax, are they enamelled or glazed ? Do their
forms resemble the vases described above ? M. Martin, in his efforts to
throw light upon Arabian fabrication, has only been able to gather this
tradition : that the finest ancient faiences were made at Sfaqs, upon the
eastern coast of Africa, in Tunisia. Probably this establishment did not
Fig. 54.

&$m&msPsML
Wm&im

ARAB CUP OF BURSARY FORM— (COLL. MARTIN).
furnish alone the pottery and wall tiles which were used from Tripoli to
Morocco ; many others have contributed to produce the requirements for
local consumption and exportation, for it is easy now to establish that
the greater part of the common pottery of the south of France par
ticipates, by its form and decoration, with the Arabian. The first
landmarks are set out, let us wait till further investigations enable us to
complete this part of ceramic history, of which we sketch the principal
features. Section 2. — Hispano-Mokesque.
We have seen the first ceramic works of the Arabs manifest themselves
in Asia Minor, and spread with the conquest of Islamism over the north

HISPANO-MORESQUE. 177

of Africa, we must now follow the different branches of the art in its
importation into Europe, and especially into the Iberian peninsula,
where it has left ineffaceable traces. We know what were the destinies
of Spain at the time of the great Mahometan inundation ; conquered in
756, by Abderamus, an Ommiade prince who escaped from the per
secutions of the Abbassides, Abd-del-Rhama caused himself to be pro
claimed king of Cordova. In 1038 the dynasty of the Ommiades ended
in the person of Mutamed-al-Allah, and anarchy prevailed during the
prince's government of the kingdom. The Almoravides and Almohades,
originally from Morocco, took advantage of these divisions to establish
themselves at Granada, and found there a new empire which the efforts
of the Christians succeeded in overturning in 1492. The apparition of
the Arabs and Moors in Spain was, for the arts, like a dazzling flash of
lightning ; monuments arose on all sides, and viewing it at the distance
of centuries, the struggle between the Abbassides and the Saracens seems
to have been less a violent shock brought on by ambition, than an
ardent tournament between two races envious to surpass each other in
excellence. The Moors had found the mosque of Cordova, a splendid
monument, its ornaments appeared to be sculptured in lapis-lazuli and
gold, its architecture enriched with ceramic overlayings of the most bril
liant colours, and they desired in their turn to show their power and their
genius. Mohamed-ben-Alhamar, first king of Granada, caused to be
built in 1273, that is, at the end of his reign, the Alhambra, that
marvellous, fairy palace, of which all the world knows the lace-like
architecture, the aerial porticoes, and the " azulejos," with wonderful
arabesques, adorned with the motto of the Moorish sovereigns, " There
is no conqueror but God."
There are therefore in Spain works of Oriental origin of two styles ;
in architecture, these are easily distinguished, but not so in ceramics.
The Arabian azulejos, though excessively rare, are still to be met with ;
but the earliest vases fabricated in Spain must bear so close an
analogy with those imported from the Maghreb, that it would be very
difficult to define their characteristics.
The Hispano-Moresque pottery, much better known, because its
fabrication continued even after the destruction of the Mussulman
power, is specially characterised by the elegance of its form and the
charms of the metallic lustred tints with which it is overlaid, and which
have acquired for it the name of "gilded works." Transported
into every country of the globe, for the commerce of the Moors was
flourishing, these lustred wares contributed, with the works of the
N

178 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Persians, in furnishing models for the dawning industries of Italy.
These potteries may even be subdivided into defined groups by their
stvle and make; in other words, it is possible to determine, after some
study, different centres whence they were issued, which we propose
doinc, making use of the remarkable work of Baron Charles Davillier.
MALAGA.
This city, situated upon the coast, at the mouth of the Guadal-
medina, is, in all probability, the most ancient and most important
centre of Moorish fabrication ; its vicinity to Granada, its regular rela
tions with India, would make one naturally think so, did not a document
referring so far back as about 1350 furnish the written proof. In the
' Travels of Ibn-Batoutah, of Tangier,' we read, " They make at Malaga,"
says the Maghrebin, " the beautiful golden pottery which they export to
the most distant countries." If one seeks among the Moresque works
those whose creation goes back to the date of the "Travels of Ibn-
Batoutah,' and which may be attributed to the town he alone mentions
for its ceramic industry, we find ourselves in presence of the admirable
vases of the Alhambra, cited as masterpieces from the moment of their
discovery. "In his ' Paseos por Granada,' Dr. Echeverria makes this curious
statement relative to these vases and their invention.
STRANGER.
" Let us talk of these vases which you were telling me contained a
treasure : where are they now ?"
GRANADIAN.
" At the Adarves, in a lovely little garden, which was put in order
and decorated (in the sixteenth century) by the Marquis de Mondejar,
with the gold coming from this treasure ; perhaps he had the intention
of perpetuating the remembrance of this discovery, by placing in the
garden these vases, which are very remarkable pieces: Let us go to
the garden, and you will see them. We will enter by this gate and go
out by the other." STRANGER.
" What a wonderful garden ! what a lovely view ! But let us see tho
vases. AVhat a misfortune ! how they are damaged ! And what is still
more to be regretted is that, neglected as they are, they will every day
become worse."

HIS PA NO-MORESQUE. 17)

GRANADIAN.
" They will end by being entirely destroyed. Already, there only
remain the two you see, and these three or four pieces of the third.
Each person, going out from here, wishes to carry away a little re
membrance, and thus the poor vases are gradually destroyed."
STRANGER.
" But upon these two, among the most beautiful arabesques with
which their magnificent enamel is adorned, I perceive inscriptions . . ."
GRANADIAN.
" True, but you see in the state of degradation in which these vases
are, their enamel being worn or carried away, it is hardly now possible
to read them; upon the first one can scarcely read the name of
God twice repeated ; neither of the two bear any other inscription quite
legible. It is certain, as you are witness, if any one flatters himself he
has a copy of these inscriptions, it is that it must have been taken off
sixty to eighty years ago, at a time when they were less effaced and
more legible."
Dr. Echeverria evidently exaggerates the state of degradation of the
vases ; the enamel has been removed in several places ; one handle is
broken, but Baron Davillier succeeded in taking an exact tracing on
the one remaining, and if the inscriptions have not been able to be
deciphered, it is because they are blended with the ornaments in which
they are interlaced.
The fears manifested by the author of the ' Walks in Granada' are
realised. Of the vases of the Alhambra, one only remains ; every one
knows its form and richness of decoration, thanks to the photograph
which has been made, and to the drawings taken by Baron C. Davillier,
so that M. Deck has been enabled to give, in faience, an approximate
representation of it in its real dimensions, 4 feet 3 inches high by 7 feet
in circumference. The turbinated body, surmounted by a wide neck of
most happy proportion, is embellished by the flat handles which accom
pany it like two outspread wings. The subjects of the ornamentation are
drawn from the inventive genius of the Mussulman people, so ingenious
in finding unlooked-for geometric combinations, and in mingling
meanders of foliage and arabesques with the elegant characters of their
capricious calligraphy. One principal medallion encloses two animals,
N 2

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

which travellers generally describe as antelopes, but in which, after the
figures of the vase, we incline rather to recognise the alpaca, with its
high, stiff neck, and head unprovided with horns.
The decorative colours are few in number, golden yellow,
iridised, and a pure blue, encircled or heightened with rather a pale
gold tint, which harmonises as well with the azure of the designs as
with the yellowish and almost pink white of the enamel ground.
The second vase, mentioned by Dr. Echeverria, no longer exists, noi
l's it known what has become of it. It is only known by the engraving
given in 1785, by P. Lozano, in his ' Antigiiedades Arabes,' and
which has been copied by several authors. Baron Davillier thus
describes it: " The vase which has disappeared considerably resembled,
in form, the one still remaining, it was of the same style and period, only
the handles, instead of inscriptions, are ornamented with arabesques and
foliage in which birds are sporting ; instead of the two antelopes facing
each othei-, the middle or body contains three circles with a shield
bearing the device of the kings of Granada, 'There is no conqueror
but God,' a device so often repeated in the Alhambra, particularly upon
the azulejos. I may also remark that upon this vase, the great circular
inscription was replaced by varied interlacings of very elegant design."
If we seek among the pieces gathered together in museums and
private collections, potteries answering to the description of the vases
found in the Alhambra, we find a sufficiently large number, and one
may hence logically infer that, like these, they have issued from the
workshop of Malaga. Such is the opinion of Baron Davillier : " I do not
hesitate," he says, " to attribute to this fabric, three large deep basins
in the musee de Cluny ; these basins or aljofainas, as they still call
them in Spain, from their Arab name, are covered with designs in
metallic lustre, and with blue enamels, of which the analogy with those
of the Alhambra vase is quite striking."
The pieces of Malaga give scope by comparison to curious ob
servations, some of pure Moresque style may be contemporary with the
Alhambra vases, and go back to about 1350 ; such is a magnificent urn,
of similar form and importance to those described above, belonging to
M. Fortuny ; then the style gradually changes. The decoration, less
understood, has no longer the same elegance.
To legible inscriptions succeed deformed characters of which the
potter does not understand the meaning, and which he employs as
simple ornamental decoration, copying them unskilfully from the old
works; the arabesques weaken in the hands of artists incapable of

HIS PA NO-MORESQ UE. 1 8 1
seizing their taste and delicacy ; lastly, the escutcheons of Christian
princes occupy the principal places in the piece, and show as complete a
transformation in the political state of the country as in its ceramic
industry. In bringing together a large number of specimens, one can follow
the progress of this degeneracy and fix approximately the dates corre
sponding with the prosperity of the Moors, their reverses, and definitive
abasement. Yet do not let us exaggerate, but seek to explain the succession of
facts. In the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, if religious opinions
carried Christian nations to reaction against the invasions of Islamism,
it was rather the doctrine of Mahomet they pursued than the men who
followed it. The advance of the arts and sciences among the Arabs
and Moors imposed respect even among their enemies, and, by a mutual
tolerance, Christian hands often came to assist in the works of Saracenic
palaces ; Arabs and Mussulmans devoted themselves to the embellish
ment of Christian dwellings. And more, at the moment of the expulsion
of the Almohades from Spain, it is said that Italy opened her gates to
colonies of Mussulman artists whose belief she tolerated, and whose
talents she liberally rewarded.
This fusion long manifested itself not only at Malaga, but through
out Spain, and when, in 1492, Ferdinand the Catholic took the kingdom
of Granada, the Mussulmans remained subject to the conqueror, and
did not leave the blessed land, the paradise of their ancestors. Later,
they became the object of increasing persecutions excited by fanaticism ;
first, in 1506, Cardinal Ximenes worked ostensibly at their conversion,
and succeeded in baptizing three thousand in one day. Nor was this
enough ; the vocation of these " Cristianos nuevos," as they called them,
gave rise to scruples ; it was supposed that they had not given up all
the traditions of the past, and in order to efface the remembrance of
them, a royal pragmatic, in 1616, prohibited the Moors to speak, read, or
write Arabic either in their houses, or out of doors publicly, or secretly ;
prohibition was made against wearing vestments recalling those of the
Moors; the women could not veil themselves to go out; the baths
were suppressed or demolished; it was forbidden to keep books in
the Arab language, to sing leylas or zambras (airs for dancing) to the
sound of instruments, and to dance or work " after the Moorish fashion."
Nor did these prescriptions satisfy the fanatic zeal of Philip IL, he
ordered the expulsion of the rest of the race from the soil of Spain;
six hundred thousand souls left their hearths, and a certain number

1 82 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
courageously defended themselves in the mountains round Valencia ;
but the blow was struck, a blow as fatal to Spanish industry as to the
descendants of the Moors of Africa.
While following Baron Davillier in his picture of the political
faults committed by the sovereign of Christian Spain, we have gone
before time, and lost sight of the precious pottery of Malaga. In 1517,
notwithstanding the fall of the kingdom of Granada, vase-making was
in full activity. Lucio Marineo, chronicler of their Majesties Ferdinand
and Isabella, expressly says that at Malaga " they also make very
beautiful faience."
Baron Davillier has not found in any Spanish author mention of a
later date, hence he concludes the manufacturers of Malaga declined
in proportion as those of Valencia rose in importance. The examina
tion of specimens confirms this assertion. A large dish belonging to the
Baroness Salomon de Rothschild, covered with magnificent arabesques
and false inscriptions, is certainly not later than the sixteenth century,
and it already bears underneath, a spread eagle, an evident imitation of
the reverse adopted by the manufactory of Valencia. The favour
enjoyed by this last manufactory is also explained by the metallic
resplendency of its lustre; its refulgent brightness would have had
more effect upon an uncultivated people than the sombre designs of
the faience of Malaga, where the blue partly absorbs the effect of the
copper heightenings, often very subdued in the mass. The charac
teristic of the degeneracy of Hispano-Moresque pottery, is precisely
the increase in intensity of the tints passing from golden yellow
associated with blue to the copper red, becoming more and more bright.

KINGDOM OB" VALENCIA.
It is there we must seek the true centre of the ceramic fabrication
in Spain, for tradition carries it back to the Roman domination.
AAre have no occasion to speak here of the red jasper pottery of
Saguntum (Murviedro) vaunted by Pliny ; we do not know if, from the
eighth century, the Arabs took advantage of the beds of clay at Paterna,
Manises, Quartse, Carcre, Villalonga, Alaquaz, etc. But when, in 1239
James I. of Aragon, "el Conquistador," had taken possession of
Valencia, the ceramic industry of the Moors was sufficiently advanced
for him to guarantee by a special charter the Saracen potters of
Xativa (San. Felipe); this charter sets forth, "that everv master

HISPANO MORESQUE. 183
potter making vases, table ware, tiles, ' rajolas ' (wall tiles), shall
pay annually one besant for each kiln, in consideration of which he may
freely exercise without any servitude." This document therefore would
place the fabrics of the kingdom of Valencia in the first rank of
antiquity, if one could surely establish the character of their primitive
products, and compare them with those of Malaga and the other Hispano-
Moresque centres. The book published in 1517 by Marineo Siculo
affords the earliest notice in this passage : " Although in a great many
places of Spain they make excellent faiences, the most esteemed are
those of Valencia, w hich are so well worked and so well gilded." Now the
faiences so well gilded do not go back to a very remote period ; the
vases where the lustre of a mother-of-pearl yellow blends with some
blue designs, and which thus recall the Granadine taste, have certainly
preceded those ornamented with brown or reddish gold. Among the
oldest pieces mixed with blue is cited a dish in the British Museum,
where, upon lustred scrolls, figures a kind of antelope ; round the edge,
in golden letters, is the motto, " Senta Catalina, guarda nos." There
exists at Valencia an ancient church and a square under the patronage of
St. Catherine, but if one may infer from it that the above-mentioned dish
is Valencian, we must necessarily acknowdedge that, notwithstanding its
Arab taste, this work is of the Christian epoch. An important vase, with
two handles in the form of wings, belonging to the collection of Baron
Alphonse de Rothschild, shows St. Catherine herself, holding the palm
and leaning upon the wheel set with razor blades ; the rest of the decora
tion consists in large scrolls of the first or pure Moresque school. We
find again these same scrolls surrounding medallions of palmettes
reserved, upon a flower vase in the Louvre, in the form of a fortress,
flanked with little towers, upon each of which is, in half-relief, a figure of
the Virgin. All these pieces then are posterior to the Christian conquest,
as well as the fine dishes of Cluny, which bear the arms of Leon (a lion)
and Aragon (an eagle). Baron Davillier remarks there is a distinction
to establish on the subject of this last symbol ; the eagle which constantly
accompanies St. John the Evangelist is become his emblem. Now St.
John is particularly venerated in Valencia ; they like to inscribe upon
their monuments the first words of his Gospel, " In principio erat verbum,
et verbum erat apud Deum ;" many vases bear this inscription more
or less complete, and some have, upon either the front or back, a
large eagle wdiich, not being enclosed in an escutcheon, has no
heraldic character : it is under this form that the eagle of St. John
still figures in religious processions, holding in its beak a banderole

1 84

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Fig. 55.

inscribed with the above legend. Hence Baron Davillier infers that
the pieces on which are the eagle or the holy legend are of Valencian
origin. We admit this theory, but with some reservation ; the communica
tions between the various centres of Iberian fabrication were sufficiently
easy for the one to borrow from the other ; we have seen the legend,
" In principio " etc., more or less incorrectly rendered upon vases incon
testably of Majorca, and we have already cited the great eagle of St.
John on the reverse of a magnificent Malaga dish. In our eyes, the
words of the Gospel of St. John, always inscribed upon pieces destitute
of blue and with tolerably bright lustre, would belong to the second
epoch of Valencian fabrication ; the
masterpiece of this kind is repre
sented, at Baron Gustave de Roths
child's, by two elegant vases with
four handles, between which rise
ornamented bosses. The one figured
here (Fig. 55), bas a floriated zone in
open work ; in the other, the zone is
solid, and inscribed with the legend :
"In principio Ave Maria gracia plena
dominus tecum et benedicta tu;"
below we read: "In principio er
verbu er voto da gracia nostra lecern
entre qvea ibanoa manece ;" a mix
ture of Latin and national Spanish
difficult to translate; lower, upon the
body between inclined gadroons in
gold or in flowers, are these two other
legends: "In manus tuas domine
comendo spiritum meum reder in te
domine esperavit non cum orve." The first inscription shows sufficiently
that these vases had been made as " ex-votos " to adorn a church ; hence
one understands their perfection. As in all the pieces of the same date
and origin, one sees a kind of net work with golden dots, borders or
grounds of gold semes with wheels of six spokes, bands, on which a kind
of fir cone alternates with the flowers of thistles or centaureas united
by an ornamental festoon. What is the epoch of the production
of these golden vases ? Baron Davillier refers them to the fifteenth
century, and declares that, in the seventeenth, ornamentation had

H.IATEN

GOLDEN VASE OF VALENCIA WITH VOTIVE
INSCRIPTION (COLL. BARON GUSTAVE
DE ROTHSCHILD).

HISP A NO-MORESQUE. 185
completely lost its Moresque character; this was manifestly a decline
which was to increase with prodigious rapidity to the present
epoch. But before leaving Moresque art more or less pure, let us stop a
moment to see if Valencia had the monopoly of the golden vases. The
chorography of Barreyros, edited in 1546, cites the faience of Barcelona
as superior to that of Valencia. Now, among the works lost in the
great unknown of the Hispano-Moresque faiences, we find charming
pieces often bearing the arms of Aragon-Sicily, and of which the
ground is divided into inclined bands one upon the other, and subdivided
in columns with cross hatches and trilobed ornaments. Would not one
think that these are the faiences of Barcelona? One has besides a
means of comparing them with the ancient fabrication ; the Real
Audiencia (palace of the deputation) has a garden planted in the
Arabian style ; in which are tubs of faience containing sweet-scented
trees, almost centenarian. These boxes date from the foundation of the
palace in 1436, and were respected when the edifice was restored in
1598. They give, therefore, the type of the ancient faience of
Catalonia, vaunted by Barreyros, and which Hieronimus Paulus, of
Barcelona, mentions in 1491 to his friend Paulus Pompilius, of Rome,
as long esteemed and sought after even at Rome.
In 1564, Martin de Vicyana mentions the town of Biar, which had
fourteen workshops, and that of Trayguera, which possessed twenty-
three. Escolano says that, in all times, faiences were fabricated with
great elegance at Paterna, because the Christian population are there
mixed with the Moriscoes. What an admission of the superiority of
the Arab race over the first inhabitants ! These evidences show besides
how much discretion one ought to carry in the determination of
ancient vases; we must often confine ourselves to the admiration of
their elegant forms, their ingenious decoration and harmonious beauty,
without affirming their origin. Thus, in the musee de Cluny, is a
superior piece with ovoid body upon a stem, wide neck, and wing-
shaped handles ; upon the body, a shield per pale of blue and gold, bears a
lion counterchanged, the rest of the decoration consisting in zones of
foliage, disposed in pairs alternately blue and gold, between which run
little scrolls of gold. Is it a Valencian piece differing from the
customary decoration ? or would it not rather be the type of a particular
fabrication, as one might suppose, from finding in the same museum
two " albarelli " or drug pots with the same decoration, but more
common and of a later period ?

186 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Another approximate decoration, also in blue and gold, consists in
scrolls inter-crossed, bearing rosettes of flowers opposed to trilobed leaves,
perhaps of parsley ; one would almost hesitate whether to attribute this
piece to Spain or Italy.
Let us return to the manufactories of the kingdom of Valencia, to
mention that of Manises. " Its faiences," says Escolano, " are so beautiful
and so elegant that, in exchange for the faiences which Italy sends us
from Pisa, we send into that country ships laden with that of Manises."
Fra Diago declares that this pottery "is so well gilded, and painted
with so much art, that it has attracted the whole world to such a
point, that the pope, cardinals, and princes send their orders here,
admiring that with simple earth such things can be made." This refers
to pieces of a lower epoch, of which we will speak and which we will

figure elsewhere.

MAJORCA.

Baron Davillier had placed this locality in the second rank as regards
antiquity, and after that of Malaga, because the first written traces we
have found of it are contained in a treatise on commerce and navigation
by the Italian Giovanni di Bernardi da Uzzano, published in 1442 ;
this author, when speaking of the wares made in Majorca and Minorca,
cites " faience which had then a great sale in Italy." But ceramic
traditions in the Balearic islands ought to go back to a much earlier
epoch, since the conquest of Majorca by the Christians took place in
1230 under James I. (the conqueror) ; and at the beginning of the
fourteenth century James II. caused Arabic to be taught to the monks,
who devoted themselves to the conversion of the Mahomedans, at a
time the kings of Granada were still possessors of their thrones. Here,
as in Valencia, primitive examples are absolutely wanting, and the oldest
pieces in collections are certainly posterior to the Christian conquest.
Yet there is reason to believe that the Moresque style long preserved its
purity in Majorca. Besides the necessities of commerce, which demanded
a kind of sameness in the accepted style of decoration, there was
another reason : Minorca, second of the Balearic islands, had herself a
manufactory, and she remained in the hands of the Moors until 1285 ; a
forced rivalry would keep these two centres at an equal level of merit.
If we seek among the Hispano-Moresque works those wdiich may be
attributed to Majorca, examples crowd upon us, eloquent by their pecu
liar decoration, and by certain emblems. The principal type appears
forcibly in the musee de Cluny, in a dish with the arms of the town

HIS PA NO-MORESQUE. 1S7

of Ynca. There, in the interior of the island, and at some leagues from
the capital, was the centre of fabrication. This dish, brightly gilded, bears
on its rim Gothic characters, deformed and illegible, evidently copied
from the customary inscriptions of Valencia, " In principio erat verbum ;"
only here, the artist, copying at hazard, has repeated the word E VBAM
for " verbum." We find the same inscription deformed and backwards,
upon a charming hanap in the Louvre ; the ornamental subjects are
principally palmettes of light details resembling ferns, scrolls terminated
by a radiated flower, and other flowers similar to those of Valencia,
or rather with stamens arranged in a pyramid. The Cluny dish, the
Louvre hanap, and many other pieces in collections are not anterior to
the fifteenth century ; a plaque, ornamented with the " sacred coun
tenance" quite of primitive design, is older and less bright in lustre;
but we know no piece purely Moresque, which one can believe to be
anterior to the conquest.
The manufacture at Majorca must have been considerable ; its com
mercial relations were very extensive, since, from the fourteenth century,
nine hundred ships, some of four hundred tonnage, sailed from its ports.
It is not therefore to be wondered at that the name of Majorca, the most
widely known among the neighbouring nations, should be considered
by many writers as the origin of the name applied to Italian enamelled
wares. J. C. Scaliger, wdio wrote in the first half of the sixteenth
century, praises the vases which were made in his time in the Balearic
islands, and compares them to the porcelain of China, of which he
considered it to be an imitation, so that he says, " It is difficult to
distinguish the false from the true; the imitations of the Balearic
isles are not inferior to them in form or brilliancy, they even surpass
them in elegance, and they say that some are brought so perfect as to be
preferred to the most beautiful pewter plate. We call these ' majolica,'
changing one letter in the name of the Balearic island where, they
assure one, are made the most beautiful." The Dictionary della
Crusca is still more explicit ; defining the word " majolica," it says
that pottery is so named from the island of Majorca wdiere they began
to make it.
It is very certain that the Balearic faiences were the most numerous,
if not the most ancient, and that Majorca was not the sole centre of
fabrication; in 1787 Vargas thus expresses himself: "It is much to
be regretted that Ivica should have ceased to fabricate its famous
vases of faience, made not only for exportation, but also for local
consumption."

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

We have hitherto only spoken of the vases and dishes we find dis
tributed in museums and among collectors, yet Moorish industry has
left us some other evidences of its activity and intelligence ; we have
sometimes met with kinds of cylindrical pots or albarelli almost entirely
covered with inscriptions in Arab and Cufic characters, and azulejos or
" rajolas " of the most ancient fabrication. Baron Davillier has one
which would appear to go back to the thirteenth ceutury, and which
comes from the Casa de los leones at Toledo. But the very rarity
opposes itself to these monuments being submitted to the analysis of the
critic — to what compare them ? on what base any theory as to their
probable origin ? These rare specimens must therefore be left in the
great unknown, reserved to future researches. The fame of the gilded
wares has certainly caused to be neglected a host of works not less
interesting, where one will find some day the source of the fabrications
proper to Spain. Marineo Siculo declares that at Murviedro and Toledo
they make and work many solid earthenwares, some white, others
green, and of which the most esteemed are those enamelled in white.
He adds, " At Talavera they make and work an excellent white and
green enamel, which is very delicately and craftily wrought, and they
make also many table services of differeut kinds." He also mentions
with praise the table wares of Jaen, and especially those of Teruel in
Aragon. But there is one product which is nowhere mentioned ; certain
azulejos or wall tiles, of Arab origin, and of which the manner of making
seems to originate in Asia Minor. Upon a fluid white enamel ground, we
find, in light relief, rosettes, scrolls, arabesque ornaments filled in with
chamois, green, and blue enamels, which are, as it were, confined in the
projecting cells of the outline. This style appears to go back in Spain to
an ancient epoch, and to have been continued a long time, as is proved
by the remarkable plaques which decorated the Alcazar of Toledo, the
residence of Charles V. The richest conceptions of the Renaissance
animate these azulejos ; palms terminating in the heads of hippocampi,
the genii, the " candellieri " of Italy are there framed in elegant pilasters
supported by a scroll frieze. Section 3. — America.
If there is a series of ceramic monuments interesting to study, it
is the assemblage of the ancient works of that world called New, because
it had long escaped the ambitious researches of European navigators.

AMERICA.

When, after the discovery of Columbus and Vespucius, the Spaniards
rushed upon the virgin continent, the fever of gold so blinded their
eyes as not to leave them the common curiosity which leads travellers
to explore a newly found country, in the double view of geography and
history ; they extirpated the aborigines to force them to divulge their
treasures, and, without even seeking to learn their origin, or to study their
civilization, they left to nature the task of concealing so many horrors
and such devastation under the luxuriant veil of tropical vegetation.
Adventurers in our days have by chance found unforeseen testimony
of the extinct civilization of the old nations of America. In 1750, two
Spaniards saw the monuments of Guatemala, and spoke of them, without
awakening public attention. It was only in 1805, and more recently in
1828, that earnest explorers devoted themselves to the study of the
ruined palaces of Mitla and Palenque. M. Alcide d'Orbigny, in his travels
to Peru, made known a whole series of works attesting the high artistic
intelligence of the Incas; then M. de Zeltner brought back curious
specimens gathered in the tombs of the " quacas " of Chiriqui, in the
state of Panama.
It is not within our province to enter into the domain of architecture,
and to compare the general form and certain details of the American
and Egyptian monuments. But we cannot refrain from pointing
out the close connection which exists between certain vases of Memphis,
Greece, and Etruria, with the majority of the American potteries ; the
material, general form, and ornamentation, either painted or in relief,
would often leave a doubt in the mind as to the origin of the pieces.
Of a paste sometimes red, very fine, hard and lustrous ; sometimes black
or greyish, less fine, and rendered shining by rubbing, the American
earth is often ornamented with reliefs and engravings, and even
upon the red earth, with drawings traced in a black, bearing some
analogy to ordinary ink ; some pieces are overlaid with a yellowish or
greenish-brown glaze of metallic lustre.
But here it is not the fabrication which strikes most ; it is the
simple, pure, and often grandiose style of the greater part of the vases.
One pauses wonderstruck before certain natural imitations where pene
trates a rare intelligence of art, and one particularly admires those
figurative lagense or bottles in which the American people have left us
such remarkable images of themselves. It is difficult now to go back to
the certain origin of the majority of pieces to be found in collections, yet,
by analogy of types and materials, one can distribute pretty regularly
the American terra cottas among three distinct peoples. The most

igo HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

ancient, perhaps, fixed in Central America, and particularly at Copan,
in Guatemala, goes back to great antiquity ; its works found in vaulted
sepulchres are principally plateaux and urns in red paste, placed on the
ground or in niches, some of the pieces containing human bones em
bedded in lime. The crypts or tumuli of the caverns of Mitla and
Palenque contain, besides the red potteries, very hard grey earths,
seme- with sparkling lamina?, and sometimes covered over with a silico-
alkaline glaze. Together with the urns and vases, some of which
imitated the form of a Tatou enveloped in its carapace of geometrical
scales, were found a quantity of whistles, flutes, and bells, and divinities
more or less shapeless, which one can hardly assign to the same origin
as the vases.
The " cuevas " or caves of Gueguetenanco have yielded cups, urns,
and recipients for water, as remarkable for their workmanship as for their
richly graved ornamentation.
But, beyond the works of the ancient inhabitants of Copan, and ot
the Aztecs of Mexico, Peru has furnished pieces so exceptional that
it is impossible not to stop to describe them. The Quichuas or Incas of
Bolivia have built imposing temples, and left fragments of statues of an
inconceivable truthfulness of style, yet, extraordinary as it is, one sees,
in the same centres, the stone either yield itself under the chisel of the
artist and render all the refinements of a human type primordial and
grandiose, or follow combinations of geometric lines huddled together
to represent with a ridiculous coarseness the horrible forms of the most
monstrous fetishes. Are these things contemporary ? Do they come
from the same people ? do they answer to the same ideas ? Delicate
questions, perhaps, now insoluble. In fact, in the tombs of the Aymaras
of Bolivia and of the Quichuas of the coast of Peru, M. Alcide d'Orbigny
has found pell-mell terra cottas of the most opposite kinds, some
imprinted with all the poetry of art, others deformed and hideous. Is
this fact analogous with what we have already shown among ancient
peoples ? Rudimentary, barbaric art, is it a canon imposed by religious
law? The image ridiculously deformed, is it to recall the primitive
idols so long respected ? As in Egypt, at certain epochs, the statuary
and the potter only found their liberty in presence of civil configura
tions, creations not official, but abandoned to the caprice of imagina
tion or of individual talent. AVe should not be far from admitting it,
after having compared the enormous mass of identical fetishes with the
small number of works of real beauty, and which are almost always
water vessels and utensils for vulgar use. But let us leave these per-

AMERICA.

191

Fig. 56.

plexing questions, wdiich later researches will perhaps enlighten, and
pass to the examination of these most curious products.
Here is certainly a masterpiece of American arts (Fig. 56). This
vase, composed of a fine head, offers at once a real and grandiose type,
and one feels that he who has modelled this finely outlined nose, these
calm eyes, this vigorous mouth, had bafore him one of those primitive
and powerful organisations which con
stitute the stock of the old families of the
human race. Struck with this idea, we
wished to submit to the much regretted
Charles Lenormant, this remarkable image
of the ancient Quichuas ; the savant was
astonished like ourselves at the beauty of the
type, and the perfection of the work ; then,
with that sagacity which was his attribute,
he made us remark that a large number of
the prisoners attached to the victorious car
of the Pharaohs upon the Egyptian bas-
reliefs, had the characters of an identical
race, bringing together this ethnic type
with that of the ancient stock of the sove
reigns of Japan ; he made us see the close
analogy, and soon, launched in the highest speculations of science, he
went back to the dispersion of races, to the probable communications
between the old and new worlds by that mysterious Atlantic, of which
the historic epoch appears to have pierced through tradition ; he thus
threw for a moment the lights of his high science and persuasive
eloquence upon all these constantly agitated, and never resolved
questions, that genius and erudition will again raise in vain, because the
material elements are wanting to throw light upon them. And all this
on the subject of a vessel of clay that the slightest shock might
destroy ? True, but this fragile work is there, laying down, under the
immutable tranquillity of the man it represents, one of the most im
portant problems in the history of the world. For us, in this work, we
have only to see two things; an ethnic type announcing the cultivated
intelligence of a people advanced in civilization, a work sufficiently
perfect to strengthen the first proposition, and to show how large a place
the arts have occupied in these societies not known for centuries, and
scarcely glimpsed at now.
If, indeed, we have spoken first of this vase, on account of the

ANCIENT PERUVIAN VASE.

192 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
importance of the portrait which it preserves to us of the Quichuas, it
remains to us to mention many others which show, among the ancient
people of America, a marvellous aptitude for the reproduction of
natural objects, and a native disposition for linear compositions of the
style of those invented by the Egyptians and the Greeks. Thus, a
kind of maeander, of which the principal scrolls are united by a
symmetric ornament, lozenges, dentals, frets, chequered divisions
forming upon the vases zonal compartments, sometimes in relief, some
times indented and traced in colours.
As to forms, certain ones are of so perfect an identity with the
Egyptian data, that one is astonished to have to attribute them to the
New World. A cup with handles, terminating in a duck's head, appears
to issue from the Memphian tombs ; a lagsena, with handle, has upon
its side seme with a ground of dots in relief, the figure of a long-
legged bird one would readily take for the sacred ibis of the Nile ; a
footless amphora, with two low handles and wide neck, recalls the
elegance and ornamented richness of the finest painted pottery of the
Grseco-Egyptian period.
So much for resemblance ; yet it must not be thought that Peruvian
art has nothing of its own. In a burning country, where the thirst for
cooling beverages is only tempered by the fear of noxious animals
introducing themselves into the drinks, it was natural that the potter
should seek such, combinations of forms as to secure the drinkers from
danger. Nothing then is more frequent, in American pottery, than
composite vases, with syphons, or various divisions, where the liquid
has to run through several cavities, traverse various channels, and be as it
were strained before arriving at its destination. Lenticular flasks, vases,
yoked or twin-joined, those with
quadruple and quintuple recep
tacles, surmounted by an arched
tube with an upper spout are
forms well characterised. Some
cubic vases support singular ani
mals or parrots placed in commu
nication with the arched syphon
 already mentioned. This dispo-
>i™' sition, besides, adapts itself to
PERUVIAN VESSEL IN THE FORM OF A FISH . -in
with syphon handle. pieces with figures, and nothing
is more common than ducks, fish (Fig. 57), goats, or the most monstrous
animals disposed in syphoid vessels.

AMERICA.

193

These works in earth have they only had for end the satisfying the
usual requirements of life ? has not the artist been sometimes able to
animate the clay under his fingers and follow the inspirations of genius ?
We are tempted to believe in examining certain specimens, and spe
cially a vase in the Louvre, in which the accessories abound, that the
potter sought rather a graceful figuration than a useful arrangement.
One of those vigorous articulated stems, so plentiful in a tropical climate,
bends itself to put forth on one side a fruit widely opened ; this forms
the recipient ; the superior articulation shows the same fruit in its de
velopment, then a bud ready to burst, surmounts the whole group.
The exactness of the details, and the truthfulness of the whole, give
to this composition the interest of a close study after nature.
We have said that the general tendency of the American nations
to seek the exact representation of the human type is the index of
high intelligence, and if religious figurations remain below others, the
canon, the religious respect for the first essays of art in its infancy, is its
cause. The Incas and ancient Mexicans have, in fact, exhausted the ideas
of the ancient peoples of the AVest ; like them, they have made the vase
pass through all the eccentricities of form, here submitting it to natural
representations, there, by a singular- caprice, figuring an animal bound
and prepared for sacrifice, a foot enclosed in its shoe, a man embracing
a wine skin ; and let us confess, in this last composition, common to the
Americans and Etruscans, the first are not further removed from the
pure form than the second.
To recapitulate : this art, yesterday still unknown, has claim to au
honourable place in the ceramic history of ancient nations ; it shows
once more the close connection between primordial ideas and the identity
of the processes by which human intelligence raises itself in the path
of progress.

i94 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

BOOK IV.
WEST.

CHAPTER I.
antiquity.
Section 1. — Greek Ceramics.
A. — Greek Art — the Ceramic specially.
The greater number of inquirers, accustomed to circumscribe art within
its purest manifestations, scarcely admit that one may occupy oneself
with works executed elsewhere than in Greece, or that one could find
in the ceramics of the Hellenes anything but beauty of form, boldness
of design, and excessive elegance of composition.
Yet, within these last thirty years, science has thrown singular light
upon this branch of human knowledge ; it has proved that Greece, like
other nations, was indebted to her forerunners; it has shown that
there, as elsewhere, the vases preserved the traces of the history,
manners, and passions of those for whom they were intended. In a
word, it becomes now incontestable, that Greek ceramics should be
studied with the same method — let us say more, with the same im
partiality — we should give to the examination of the products of the
Hindoos, Egyptians, or Chinese.
When in 1790, before the Christian era, Inachus led the first
Egyptian colony into Greece, when, in 1582, the Egyptian Cecrops
founded the kingdom of Athens, they could only gather around them
savages, strangers to all civilization ,• these savages, it is true, had
received from heaven, with the gift of beauty, the germs of a supreme
intelligence, so that their legislators had only to show them the path

GREECE.

'95

they should follow for them soon to attain the highest eminence. It is
only under Erechtheus, B.C. 1409, that Ceres taught the Hellenes how to
cultivate corn, and to substitute bread for wild fruits as their food ; it
was only towards the middle of the tenth century B.C. that Dibutades of
Corinth invented the plastic art.
As regards statues, ancient writers and ancient medals prove to us
that they long consisted only of the most shapeless images; posts
smeared with red, trunks of olive-trees roughly hewn, such were the
primitive Pallas of Athens, and the Ceres of Phaos. Dsedalus, sung by
poets for the progress he brought about in sculpture, composed only
kinds of puppets, moved by threads or by means of a certain quantity
of quicksilver poured in the interior ; the coarseness of works of this
nature was concealed by the tissues which formed their exterior
decoration. In this situation, which assimilates them with all other nations, the
Greeks become more easy to study, and their arts cease to be a
wonderful problem. Furnished with an easy means of exchange by the
invention of silver money, for which they were indebted, B.C. 895, to
Phidon ; put in the way of navigation by Danaiis, who, from 1511, had
led the first ships (penteconters) from Egypt to Greece, they traded
with nations already civilized, and enlightened themselves by the
contact. There are then upon the soil of the Hellenes, and especially on what
touches the object of this study, two sorts of works, the one imported,
the other natural ; and although it appears probable that even at these
remote epochs, the East, whence proceeded the inspiring ideas of the
Greeks, possessed the secret of the finest ceramic pastes, it is more
particularly to the making of soft pottery, of which the elements are to
be found everywhere, and which may be worked by rudimentary means,
that trade and industry consecrated their first efforts. This may be ex
plained. The Phoenicians, in their commercial relations with the people
of the West, exchanged their pottery for natural products, it was, there
fore, specially vessels for use and of inferior prices they had to take in
exchange. On the other side, the Greeks, inventors of a rudimentary
plastic, would be desirous of possessing works superior to their own
essays, but of the same kind, and increase their demand in proportion
to the improving practice of their artists.
Hence the most ancient vases collected in Greece are remarkable
for their simplicity of style ; they are only of a yellowish earth,
scarcely lustred, with circles, chequers, inlanders, Vandykes and
0 2

196 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
rosettes or wheels. Later, these elementary designs alternate with
zones of fabulous animals, of which the Oriental origin is easily re
cognised, whether the vases come either from Phoenicia or other
industrial centres of Asia Minor. It is, therefore, works of this style
that the Greeks first imitated ; and if sometimes it is difficult to dis-
Fig. 58.

CANTHARUS.

tinguish the copies from the originals, a valuable remark of M. de
Witte allows us to lay down a rule which should guide the dis
crimination of the student. Like every model, the Oriental work
is generally more perfect than the copy, and has upon the last an
anteriority of at least a century.
It is interesting to point out how reserved Greek writers are in all
that relates to ceramic art; one scarcely finds in their writings any
indication of the use of the vases ; only they have been pleased to
trace back the invention if not to the gods, at least to heroic per
sonages. Ceramus, son of Bacchus and Ariadne, is, for some, the
prototype and protector of the potter, and it is thus his name has been
given to the ceramic art, a district in Athens assigned to the potters
being called Ceramicus. This fable is founded upon the immemorial
custom of preserving wine in earthen vessels, and of using cups of the
same material to carry the wine to their lips (Fig. 58) ; others attribute
the invention of- the potter's art to the Athenian Coroebus, to the
Corinthian Hyperbius, or to the Cretan Talos, nephew of Dasdalus.
In the time of Homer, the fabrication was already general ; for

GREECE.

197

the poet, describing the dance of Ariadne, compares the velocity
of the young men and girls, forming a circle, to the rapidity of
motion given by the potter to his wheel. Another piece attributed to
the immortal poet, and which is given in a history of his life, composed,
it is said, by Herodotus, expresses all that the firing of vases can
present of fortunate or unfortunate. We give an extract of the passage
from the translation of Cowper.
" Certain potters, while they were busied in baking their ware,
seeing Homer at a short distance, and having heard much said of his
wisdom, called him, and promised him a present of their commodity,
and of such other things as they could afford, if he would sing to them,
when he sang as follows : —
" Pay me my price, potters ! and I will sing,
Attend, O Pallas ! and with lifted arm
Protect their oven : let the cups and all
The sacred vessels blacken well, and, baked
With good success, yield them both fair renown
And profit, whether in the market sold
Or streets ; and let no strife ensue between us.
But, O ye potters ! if with shameless front
Ye falsify your promise, then I leave
No mischief uninvoked to avenge the wrong.
Come, Syntrips, Smaragdus, Sabactes, come,
And Asbestus ; nor let your direst dread
Omodamus delay ! Fire seize your house !
May neither house nor vestibule escape !
May ye lament to see confusion mar
And mingle the whole labour of your hands !
And may a sound fill all your oven, such
As of a horse grinding his provender,
"While all your pots and flagons bounce within." *

B. — Nature of Greek Vases — their Inscriptions.
In order to well understand what goes before, it is indispensable to
return here to the nature and fabrication of the Greek vases. They
all belong to the order of soft pottery ; their firing is made at a low
temperature, and only once, without seggars; they can always be
scratched with an iron point, and are often permeable. In short, it is the
most common pottery ; its porous, opaque paste is composed of potter's
clay, argillaceous marl, and sand. According to present custom, it is
* Syntrips and Smaragdus express the breaking of the earth in pieces. Asbestus is the
fire that cannot be moderated. Sabactes characterises the misfortune of workmen whose
work is destroyed. Finally, Omodamus is the destructive force which nothing can resist.
This hymn expresses with a striking truth all the processes of a ceramic kiln, and proven
also how far back the secrets of art were known.

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

consigned to the most vulgar uses, and cooking pots, pitchers, pans,
sugar moulds, and flower- pots are made of it.
Care in the preparation of materials, the beauty of its form and
decoration, have alone been able among the ancients to raise this
coarse earth to a level with the most esteemed works of art.
In ancient ceramics, two well-marked divisions have been esta
blished ; unglazed soft pottery (poteries tendres mates), and soft lustred
pottery (poteries tendres lustrees).
The first furnishes utensils for domestic economy ; that is, amphorae
in which were preserved corn, water, oil and wine ; cups and dishes
for culinary use ; often these vessels were plain and without any
ornamentation ; sometimes they were gadrooned at the base, furnished
with zones of foliage, Greek borders, arabesques in relief, or even com
positions of the chase, with animals either real or imaginary, and more
rarely, with mythological or historical subjects.
Some jars or amphorae were above six feet high ; in these the water
and the cereals were kept. The am
phora? for holding wine or oil were gene
rally pointed at their lower extremity ;
their standing upright was secured by
half burying them in the sand of the
cellars (Fig. 59).
Such large pieces could not be
fashioned by the wheel, but were made
by hand by means of " colombins," kinds
of rectangular, curved plaques, which were
placed by circular zones superposed, press
ing them with the hand by their two
faces to make them adhere to each
other, and to unite them closely with
the zones already placed. After a dry
ing, more or less prolonged, according
to the thickness of the sides, the vases
were rolled to the oven, where they were carefully placed to receive
s^. firing of about forty-eight hours. At the end of eight days'
cooling, the process of drawing them out of the oven (defourne-
ment) takes place ; this is the modern practice, precisely identical with
the ancient. The soft lustred potteries are worked with great care.
Although of a loose texture and dull fracture, their paste is fine
and homogeneous ; composed principally of silica, alumina, iron and

A3IPH0RJE OF RED EARTH.

GREECE. 199
lime ; it is fusible at the temperature of 40° of Wedgwood's pyrometer,
and produces a mass of yellowish brown enamel, with dark brown
surface, not metalloid. The lustre or glaze of these potteries has
exercised the sagacity of the learned, and it is by dint of researches
and ingenious inductions that they have arrived at recognising its
nature ; it is an alkaline silicate, modified and hardened by the devitri
fication consequent on being long buried in the earth, and becomes
almost infusible by the blowpipe, in borax ; caustic potash in fusion,
under the influence of a high temperature, can alone effect its decom
position. The elements of the colouration of the black lustre are
oxide of iron and oxide of manganese.
The Greek vases, especially the Campanian, present three colours
of glazed grounds; brick red is the tint of the paste, sometimes
brightened by a simple polishing given by the turner to tbe raw piece,
sometimes by a very thin glaze heightening the colour of the earth,
or itself possessing, in some instances, a red lacquer colouration.
Black, in large ornaments, or as a ground, is placed over the first lustre
or upon the paste itself; it is very brilliant without crudity, and so
perfectly laid on, that, when it coats both the interior and exterior of a
piece, one might think it of black paste. Yet this black passes some
times to bronze or metalloid lustre, probably by the action of a smoky
fire, an alteration known to porcelain painters, who call it " poisoning,"
and qualify as " impure " the fire which has produced it. Chestnut
brown is a shade resulting from a very thin black allowing the reddish
subjectile to appear through it ; by excess of fire, it turns into a very
glazed olive green.
These varieties in the black colour are in themselves of no im
portance, as they are almost accidental. An overheated oven may
even cause the black to evaporate, and bring the vase wholly or in part
to the red brown ; the red, in its turn, may pass to a blackish hue by
absorption of smoke. Moreover, the pottery altered by accidents in
firing must not be confounded with those called "burnt," because,
before having been carried to the tombs, they have been exposed upon
the pile, where the dead were burned. The burnt vases, from their
original red become yellowish brown and ash grey, the black ornaments
being partially effaced.
To enrich their vases, the Greeks employed several heightening
colours which are not glazed, and which may be considered "rather as
argillaceous slips (engobes) ; these are brick and violet red, yellow, and
white, sometimes laid on raised, sometimes spread on a ground

200 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
and then relieved by designs of bright red, green, blue, and yellow,
either placed on in strokes or spread in flat tints. Red, green, and
blue so employed are not vitrifiable ; they combine with gold applied
upon a reddish slip, to compose what is styled "richly coloured" orna
ments — a decoration as rare as valuable.
And as if everything which relates to the Greeks is destined to
take a special stamp of historic interest, even of the potsherds
of their most ordinary vases we have here to speak. These pot
sherds, at a time when papyrus, a rare and dear material, was the
only subjectile fit to receive writings served to the tax-gatherers to
give their receipts. Our museums still preserve a number of these
receipts, which, in dry countries, have escaped the ravages of the
elements. But a still more important part wras that enacted by
these fragments of potter's clay in public deliberations ; there each
citizen wrote his vote upon the "ostrakon," or potsherd, and decided
the fate of a general suspected of employing his fortune to corrupt his
fellow-citizens ; the exile pronounced against the culprit'took the name
of ostracism. Accomplices of the most violent passions, the fragments
of vases often condemned illustrious victims who were recalled by
general acclamation even before the rains of Attica had washed
the ink off the accusing fragments, or that the feet of passers-by
had reduced them to powder. Themistocles, the conqueror of Salamis,
who was banished about 471 B.C., after having been the idol of the people,
went to die among the Persians, his ancient enemies, who received him
with the respect due to the remembrance of his numerous triumphs.
No doubt, remorse, at having himself caused Aristides to be exiled,
must have cast some bitterness over his latter years.
This exile of Aristides brings to our memory an anecdote related
by Plutarch. At the moment when the assembled tribes were going to
pronounce the fate of the virtuous legislator, an obscure citizen, seated
at his side, presented him with his "ostrakon,"' and begged him to
inscribe the name of the accused. "Has he done you any injury?"
inquired Aristides. "No," said the unknown, "but I am tired of
hearing him everywhere called the Just." Aristides' wrote his name,
was condemned, and left the city, offering up prayers for his country.
Since we are in the domain of history and erudition, may we be
permitted a little pedantic digression? In almost all the books, we
find that ostracism was a sentence pronounced by means of shells,
This is a dictionary error ; the word ostrakon properly means a pot
sherd, or even worked earth ; its signification has been extended to

GREECE. 201

the shell of mollusks, and to the plate or cuirasse of the tortoise
tribe, but the vote was written upon terra cotta on the fragment
of a vase, not upon a shell.
An analogous lexicographic deviation has often condemned primi
tive people to feed upon acorns, wdien it ought to have said, they
fed themselves with fruits. This proves to what erroneous inter
pretations he may be led who, translating a dead or foreign language,
neglects to 'initiate himself in the manners and history of the nations
among whom the author lived whom he interprets. But to return to
the potsherds, let us add that a game of the Greeks called "ostra-
kinon," was based upon the use of pieces of lustred vases, black on one
side, which thrown into the air and falling down black or red, heads
or tails, made the player enter into one or the other camps called to
dispute the game. In occasions less grave than the exile of citizens,
the potsherds, dark or pale, did the office of black or white in the
deliberations of the Roman people.

C. — Use of the Greek Vases.
It is pretty nearly beyond doubt that a certain number of vases
have served for. domestic use, but there are very few among those which
have come down to us, to which we can attribute this destination ;
the greater part, on the contrary, were intended for the decoration of
temples and private dwellings ; which their elegance, proportion, the
nature of the subjects and ornaments would sufficiently indicate, if con
temporary authors had not taken care to make it known to us.
Certain pieces are of such large dimensions, that they of necessity
were intended to remain in the same place. Others, without bottoms,
perforated from one end to the other, had evidently a destination purely
decorative. We have seen the same in Chinese antiquity. Lastly, we
know that the ashes of the dead were enclosed in urns of terra cotta ;
the cabinet of medals in the National Library has a fine vase with
black glaze, decorated with a simple crown of laurel, which passes, with
every probability, as containing the remains of Cimon, son of Miltiades.
Besides these funeral urns, we find in the tombs a great number of
vases placed upon the funeral bed, or attached to the walls by bronze
nails. One could not admit they had been made for such a purpose,
and the subjects they represent would exclude the thought. Evidently
it was wished to consecrate to the dead a part of the objects he had
loved during his lifetime, and it is thus that arms, jewels, and ceramic

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

works of the greatest value have remained buried for centuries, to
reappear at last, and reveal to us all the splendour of ancient art.
Some vases bear inscriptions wdiich sufficiently explain their destina
tion. First among these must be cited the panathenaic amphorae, upon
which one reads, TON AOENE0EN A0AON, " one of the prizes
from Athens." Filled with oil, product of the sacred olives of Minerva,

Fig. 60.

PANATHENAIC VASE (MUSEUM OP THE LOUVRE).

they were publicly awarded to the victors, in the panathenaic festivals.
The most ancient known is in the British Museum ; its retrograde
inscription runs thus: TON A@ENE@EN A0AON EIMI, "I am
the prize given to Athens." Three of these, preserved at the Louvre, are
dated each with the names of the archon eponymus, or chief archon,
Cephisodorus (b.c. 323), Archippus (b.c. 321), and Theophrastus (b.c

GREECE. 203

313). The one given (Fig. 60), bears the name of Archippus :
APxmnos APxnN.
The archon eponymus was the chief magistrate elected to manage
the republic ; he was so called because his name appears at the head
of all public acts and decrees. The archon eponymus, the archon
basileus or king, and the polemarchus, presided over the fetes and
public games. Hence one sees the value the signature of the archon
eponymus gave to the panathenaic amphorae. They are all likewise
remarkable for the beauty of their form, and the refinement of their
ornamentation and subject.
A large series of specimens were, to infer from the scenes represented
on them, intended as wedding presents. Acclamations clearly express
the use of certain pieces ; thus, drinking cups invite the guest to
gaiety; XAIPE KAI TIEI NAIXI, "Rejoice, and empty me for the
Gods." EVA EVOE, "Eva, Evohe," Bacchic cries, indicate still more
the eagerness of intoxication. Nor is this less significant : XAIPE KAI
riOME, "Health, and drink me ;" TPOriNEME KATBHI2, "drink
and lay not down (the cup)."
But the most numerous class is that of vases which it was the
custom to offer as pledges of friendship and love. No doubt a great many
of these were to be found ready-made for sale in the shops of the makers,
which, having nothing special, but only a decoration more or less rich,
suited the plurality of purchasers. We read KAAOS, " handsome ; "
KAAE, "beautiful," or HOrAlS KAAOS, "the handsome boy;"
KAA02 HOrAlS KAAOI2, "the handsome boy to the handsome
boys;" HErAlS KAAE, "the beautiful girl." #
Others were executed to order, and give us the names of those for
whom they were intended. HEPAX KAAE, "the beautiful Heras;"
KAAirE KAAE, "the beautiful Calipe;" TIMOXSENOS KAAOS,
"the handsome Timoxenus;" TANAITIOS KAAOS, " the handsome
Pansetius." Some recall memorable occurrences; thus, according to all pro
bability, the proprietor of a horse which had gained prizes in the
public races, caused to be inscribed upon an amphora, AirAOIAS
KAAOS HIIIOS, " the beautiful horse, twice conqueror at the Pythian
games." Lastly, as if one must perforce find in all human works the
application of the same ideas, the Greeks have their vases of great
men, and one is surprised to find the names of the kings, Croesus,
Darius, Arcesilaus ; of the poets, Alcseus, Sappho, Anacreon, Musaeus,

204

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Linus, upon the ceramic works of a much later period than the persons
they mention. These are evidently a public or private homage to
merit and fortune.
We cannot say whether it is by a kind of consecration or offering
that certain pieces of the Italo- Greek decline bear in white upon a
black ground, BELONAI TOCOLOM "cup of Bellona ;" SAnTVRNI
TOCOLOM, "cup of Saturn." The rich collection of the Louvre
contains vases of this kind which do not recommend themselves either
by refinement of form or elegance of decoration.
The inscriptions written or graved which give us the names of the
authors of the Greek vases, are very numerous, and of two sorts. Those
of the potters, turners, or modellers of baked clay ; those of painters
who, upon the raw pieces, traced with a point, then with a brush the
subjects and ornaments intended to embellish it. We distinguish them
by means of the word which accompanies them : iiroirjo-ev (epoeisen),
" has made ; " eypatyev (egrapsen), " has painted." Below, in alpha
betical order, are the names we find on the vases :

iEniades, painter.
Alsimos, ib.
Amasis, potter and painter.
Anacles, potter.
Andocides, ib.
Arachion, son of Hermocles.
Archechles, potter.
Archonidas, ib.
Aristophanes, painter.
Asteas, ib.
Cepbalos, potter.
Cachrylos ib. *
Chserestratos, ib.
Chares, ib.
Charitseus, ib.
Chelis, ib.
Cholchos, ib.
Cleophrades, ib.
Clitias, painter.
Deiniades, potter.
Doris, painter.
Bpictetos, potter.
Epitimos, ib.
Erginos, ib.
Ergotimos, ib.
Eucerus, son of Ergotimos, painter.
Euthymides ib.
Euonymos ib.
Euphronios, potter and painter.
Euxitheos, potter.
Execias, potter and painter.
Glaucythes, potter.

Hector, painter.
Hegias, ib.
Hermssus, potter.
Hermogenes, ib.
Hieron, ib.
Hilinos, ib.
Hippsechmus, painter.
Hischylos, potter.
Hypsis, painter.
Lasimos, ib.
Mikadas, potter.
Medias, ib.
Naucydes, ib.
Neandros, ib.
Nicosthenes, ib.
Onesimos. painter.
Pamaphios, potter.
Pandoros, ib.
Panthasus, painter.
Phanphalos, ib.
Pheidippos, ib.
Philtias, ib.
Phrynos, potter.
Pistoxenes, ib.
Polygnotus,
Poseidon,
Pothinos or Pithinos,
Prachias or Praxias,
Priapos, potter.
Psiax, painter.
Python, -potter.
Silanion, painter.

painter.

ib.
ib.

[Simon

GREECE.

205

We see that some artists united the double occupation of potters
and painters ; thus Amasis, signed sometimes as potter, sometimes the
draughtsman of a vase made by Cleophrades, and another time,
AMASIS ErPA<I>SE KAI EnOIESEN, " Amasis has painted and made
this." Exekias signed the same. Potters often associated themselves
with one painter alone ; thus Glaucythes worked with Archechles,
Hilinos with Psiax, Nicosthenes with Epictetos ; but this same Epictetos
lent his talent to Hischylos, another potter. Capricious fortune has
besides a thousand ways of preserving the names of her favourites ; in
the foregoing list, we see a certain Cephalos, a bad turner of little
plates and common vases, who is only known to us by the jokes of
Aristophanes. The great comic author has perpetuated the name of
the poor artist by his raillery.

D. — Ornamentation of Greek Vases.
One special character of Greek pottery is, that from its origin it
adopted a conventional style of ornament from which it never departed ;
110 natura] object, be it plant, bird, or animal, is rendered in its real
form, or in its intimate details. The artist has evidently looked around
him, the physical sources are no strangers to him, but, in the pride of
genius, he has despised servile copies ; naturalism would have degraded
him in his own eyes, he has inspired himself with things placed within
his reach, by modifying them according to his wishes, and thus creating,
where others would have copied.
Everyone knows the graceful fable of the invention of the Corinthian
capital by Callimachos : the artist was wandering in the country,
dreaming, no doubt, of his numerous conceptions ; he stops struck
before the grave of a child — a simple stone upon which a mother had
placed a basket of fruit — but that the birds should not devour the
collation prepared for the beloved manes, she had placed a tile upon the
orifice of the basket ; now an acanthus had sprung up there ; in growing,
its flexible stalks, arrested in their ascent by the rough tile, had bent

Simon of Elia, son of Xenos,

potter.

Timagoras, painter.

Socles, painter.

Timonidas,

potter

Sosias, ib.

Tlempolemos,

ib.

Taconides, ib.

Tleson, son of Nearchos,
ib.
Taleides, . painter.
Tychios, ib.
Theoxotos, ib.
Xenocles, ib.
Thericles, ib.
Xenopbantos, ib.
Thypheitheides, ib.
Zeuxiades, painter.
206 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
spirally. Nothing more was necessary, the tile became the abacus of
the capital, the leaves of acanthus enveloped its base with a notched
crown, the stalks with their sheaths became the volutes and the caulicoli,
and the most elegant among the Greek orders of architecture was
found. There is the whole history of Greek ornamentation. The pods of the
carob tree variously united and twisted formed the palmettes ; extended
in architectural scrolls, grouped with stems and plumes, the acanthus has
only its natural form; the olive, the ivy and the convolvulus, lose
their capricious flexibility to affect traditional dispositions and form
upon the vases wreaths or symmetric crowns. Even the waves of the
sea, of which the foaming crests so often fretted by the winds seem
essentially changing and capricious, are submitted to the yoke of
ornamental regularity, and form the cymation or waved ornament
which painters placed always at the base of their vases ; while we,
ignorant of its meaning, sometimes put it where it has a different
signification. With these dispositions, the Greeks would naturally give a symbolic
form to their subjects ; thus the study of their vases is full of difficulty.
It would appear as if artists loved to shroud their thoughts under a
thick veil, and to dissimulate even the divinities best known, under a
heroic form. The nature of the subjects often explains this reserve,
everything relating to the mysteries, or to the secrets of initiation, was
to be ke*pt hidden from the vulgar.
Yet, by dint of researches and comparisons, our ceramographs have
arrived at constituting a science almost complete of the symbolism
employed in the paintings. It does not come within the scope of this
volume to approach such thorny questions ; a few indications will
suffice to show the interest each may find in the study of Greek
vases. Let us first observe, that we must try to seize the general sense, the
moral thought of a subject before giving a name to the persons repre
sented ; the accessories here are of incontestable value, and may trans
form the most vulgar scene into a religious myth. Thus, wreaths of
beading, or branches of myrtle, will characterise the initiated shrine ; an
edicule, placed in the midst of a group of figures, will denote a funereal
composition ; the defunct is here represented by the monument, unless he
be figured himself under the form of an ephebus, or youth, holding a
horse, and ready to set out on his eternal journey. A mullet trigle
or other pelasgian fish, cuttle fish, dispersed in the field of a vase, will

GREECE. 207

announce the presence of marine divinities; the empire of Neptune,
again, will be indicated by the goat and the horse.
Birds have habitually the mission of representing the soul ; but
sirens, under the form of animals with human heads, are more certainly
the emblem of the immaterial truth which animates man. Yet, some
birds preserve a special signification ; the dove belongs to Venus
Astarte ; the crane, to Ceres ; swans, to Venus and Apollo ; the goose,
to the Capitohne Juno.
Flowers, generally, symbolise youth and spring ; the aplustrum, that
elegant palmette which terminates the upper part of the stern of a ship,
represents the air and wind ; the sphere, attribute of Venus, is also the
sign of fortune and love ; the tripod indicates fear, and gorgoneia, or
masks with Medusa's head, mourning and funereal ideas.
But whatever may be the thought of the painter, let him conduct
the spectator to Olympus or the dark regions ; whether he approaches
a graceful subject, like the marriage of Thetis, or a mournful, as the
war of the Titans, or Orpheus torn by the Erinnyes, his persons always
maintain a severe dignity, a tranquil beauty which renders their aspect
imposing, and gives to the picture a commanding grandeur, that supreme
charm which renders the Greeks the first among artists.
E. — Classification of the Greek Vases.
We have just seen what is the general system of decoration among
the Greeks. It remains for us to examine how it Has been successively
applied by artists, and what chronologic groups we can arrive at,
to form, with the vases various styles. We propose here following
the luminous w ork of Baron de Witte, the most experienced authority
on the subject.
I. Painted vases of primitive style. — Some specimens have been
found in the Etruscan tombs, but they have mostly come from the islands
of the Archipelago. Some have been found at Santorino (the ancient
Thera), at Milo, Corfu, Rhodes, and Cyprus; some, have even been
discovered in the plains of Troy. Of a white or yellowish earth, they
have in brown or reddish black, zones, Vandykes, chequers, and, more
rarely, fish, birds, and serpents drawn with a brush. Executed, some
in Greece, others in Asia, they go back to ten or twelve centuries
before the Christian era.
II. Asiatic vases with reliefs. — Asia, which has furnished the model
for this primitive pottery, has also yielded a number of rather coarse

208

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Fig. 61.

- -

pieces in red earth, relieved by mouldings and bas-reliefs on friezes'
representing animals,, processions, chariot races, and hunting subjects
of rudimentary execution. These vases were destined to contain wine
and oil. The museum of the Louvre possesses a rich series, of which
the great part come from the tumuli of the ancient Agylla.
III. Vases painted in the Asiatic style. — These vases, which were long
called Egyptian, are of the yellowish earth as those of the first section,
and adorned with the same dull brown and without lustre. On some the
figures and ornaments are graved, on others painted. We find
natural and fantastic animals, monsters, half men, half animals ; sphinxes,
sirens, birds with human heads, winged
goddesses, bearing in their hands animals,
geese or swans (Fig. 61). On the ground
rosettes, plants, or flowers are scattered,
as upon most of the Assyrian monuments.
Three classes are to be distinguished among
the vases in the Asiatic style, and each
corresponds to a different period. The
oldest vases have a dull aspect, and the
painting's are of an orange without lustre ;
the second class has its subjects upon
a dull black; on the third, the figures
are relieved by tints of a violet red and
an unglazed white. The vases of this kind
were imitated at the moment of the great
expansion of the art ; and the archaism
of the copies often renders it difficult
to determine them. In the primitive
works we have simply the superposition of zones of real or imaginary
animals ; later, mythological subjects are introduced between the zones.
It is a style of composition which, after the ingenious remarks of
M. Adrien de Longperier, was copied from tissues of 'various colours
or from rich tapestries, or embroideries of which Aristotle speaks when
describing the peplum made for Aleisthenes of Sybaris : " In the upper
part were represented the sacred animals of the Susians, in the lower
those of the Persians." Cups of precious metal with the same decora
tion have been brought from Citium in Cyprus, from Agylla, Prasneste,
Nineveh, etc. Dorian vases, decorated with mythological subjects and
with zones of animals, have been discovered in the island of Milo, and
appear to belong to the seventh century before our era. As we

ARYBALLOS IN THE ASIATIC
STYLE.

GREECE. 209

have already explained, the lapse of a century should separate the works
truly Oriental from the Greek imitations. Among the subjects preserved
at the Louvre may be instanced the birth of Minerva, Bacchus seated in
the midst of a troop of Mainads, a battle of Greeks and Amazons, etc.
IV. Corinthian vases. — This pottery, nearly allied to the preceding,
bears the first known inscriptions, and these inscriptions are in Greek
characters of tbe most ancient form. The excavations made at Cervetri,
the ancient Agylla or Caere, in Etruria, have brought to light a great
number of these vases, which enrich the museum of the Louvre. History
enables us to explain how works fabricated elsewhere have been found
in Etruria. Demaratus, of the Bacchiad race, the most powerful at
Corinth, had heaped up great riches; threatened by a sedition in
stigated by Cypselus, he quitted his native city and fled to Tarquinii,
then a flourishing Etruscan city; where he married a woman of the
first family in the country, wdio was the mother of Tarquin the Elder.
In his emigration, which took place in the thirty-first Olympiad
(b.c. 655), Demaratus was followed by potters, who introduced art and
taste into Italy. The finest Corinthian vases in the Louvre are a
celebe or crater with columnar handles, representing the family of
Priam ; Hector has taken leave of his parents and ascends his war
chariot ; further on are Priam and Hecuba ; afterwards follow women
and warriors, Hippomachos, Cebrionas, Xanthos, Daiphonos, a hoplite or
heavy-armed soldier, and two women, Polyxena and Cassandra.
A hydria depicts the parting of Hector and Andromache; a celebe,
the preparation for the procession of the Panathenaea ; Peleus, and the
Nereids ; the repast of Hercules ; Hercules and Cacus ; an amphora,
Tydeus and Ismene.
Also among the Corinthian works are found the most ancient
names of artists, Chares and Timonidas, both have represented heroes
in the Trojan war.
In the celebrated tomb of Caere, called the Lydian tomb, have been
discovered about fifteen vases of various styles and epochs ; some which
resemble in their painting the vases of Asiatic origin ; others with
black glaze have red, white, and brown paintings superposed upon the
glaze ; most of them have four and even six handles. These vases are of
great and special fabrication, and appear to go back to a remote period.
V. Black vases graved and in relief. — The vases found in the tombs
of Caere, Chiusi, Vulci, and Veii, are true Etruscan works ; of black
paste, and of forms varied and sometimes whimsical, some really ancient,
others aiming at archaism, the last showing art in its decline. p

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

'Fis. 62.

ETRUSCAN BRAZIER.

For some time, all ceramic productions with Greek or Oriental
paintings, had been called Etruscan. The Etruscan people only
approached this style of work at the last epoch, that is, almost on the
threshold of the Christian era. Their primitive conceptions have a
barbarism, a singukrity which resembles certain specimens of the
American savages. Generally the pottery
is ornamented in relief by means of stamps
and cylinders, which were passed over the
soft earth. The subjects thus obtained are in
the Oriental style; birds, lions, sphinxes,
stags, fish, centaurs, genii, and winged
goddesses, processions approaching seated
divinities. Certain figurative pieces have
the form of fishes with human faces ; others,
that of complicated furnaces and square
braziers (Fig. 62), decorated with strange
figures ; funeral urns, kinds of canopi
have for cover a human head; the arms
adapting themselves in the handles by means of pegs.
VI. Italo-Greek vases with black paintings. — This fabrication is the
development of the kind mentioned in the third section. Here upon
a yellow ground, or more often of an earthy red, are black designs
of the most brilliant enamel. The number of
these vases is considerable, and the period of
their fabrication appears to extend from the
fifth to the fourth century before the Christian
era (490 to about 340). They are generally de
signated as vases of ancient style to distinguish
them, from those with red paintings on black
ground, which belong to the highestdevelopment
of Greek art (Fig. 63). The forms become more
and more elegant, the outlines improve, the
peck, the foot, the handles are attached with
grace ; the outlines of the design are incised with
a pointed instrument; heightenings of white
and violet red enliven the painting ; the nude
parts of the bodies of the women are always
wdiite, as well as the beards and hair of the old men ; horses harnessed to
chariots, or ridden by the " ephebi," or youths, are alternately black and

HYDRIA WITH BLACK
PAINTINGS.

white ; the " aurigae," or chariot drivers, have long white tunics ; the

GREECE.

" episemes," or figured emblems in the centre of the shield, are generally
painted white. These conventional matters form a kind of rule, which
is perhaps not without some connection with the laws of polychrome
sculpture. All the heads in these ancient paintings are drawn in profile
and without grace ; the muscular projections are exaggerated, the forms
angular, and the development violent and forced. The exaggeration in
the drawing is often less the. result of inexperience than of an attempt
at archaism. The compositions are not studied, the figures' are ranged
in regular files, as in the primitive bas-reliefs; when they are grouped,
an ultra-parallelism of attitude and expression divides the scene into
two pictures ridiculously alike. Processions of divinities, battle scenes,
races, are treated with the same monotony ; two or three figures at
most are together ; the secondary personages are more or less numerous
according to the space to be decorated. Whatever may be the re
duced proportions of the subject, the details are given with remark
able rigour and precision ; the embroidery of the vestments, the details
of the armour, and the utensils, are scrupulously rendered.
The principal paintings in black represent meetings of divinities.
Apollo, Diana, and Latona, protectors of Delphi, meet each other often.
Bacchic scenes are more frequent still. Bacchus is in the centre,
bearded, attired in the tunic, and holding either the cantharus or
rhyton, and a branch of vine. Sometimes Ariadne accompanies him,
and satyrs, sileni, and maenads dance round with orgiac animation.
The wars of the giants against the gods of Olympus follow next. The
giants are to be recognised by their costume of " hoplitae," or heavy-
armed warriors. The birth of Minerva is a favourite subject, and shows
the influence of Athens over the arts, and the readiness of the painters
to multiply subjects borrowed from the religion of Attica.
In the heroic myths we find the labours of Hercules ; episodes in
the Trojan war; scenes from the Thebais; Theseus and the Minotaur ;
Triptolemus and his crew ; Perseus and the Gorgons ; the Calydonian
hunt, etc.
Generally the subjects are made known by the names of the persons
being written near them, for the composition alone would be insufficient
to guide the judgment of the observer. Carried away by the exigencies
of the space he had to decorate, the artist has often overcharged his
subject by secondary groups which play the part of spectators, and
which have been compared to the choruses in scenic representations.
There are also subjects identical in exterior form, which may receive
different denominations, and others of common composition, to which
p 2

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Fig. 64.

one would refuse willingly a mythic signification if the inscription did
not reveal their religious character.
The vases of ancient style have evidently preceded the epoch when
heroes were represented of beautiful form ; Achilles is a vigorous man,
bearded like the others ; the women are completely clothed, and rich
ness of costume distinguishes only those of superior rank. Never
theless, the paintings have a character of severity, not wanting in
grandeur. The cups have long shown the "gorgonium," or Medusa's head, in
the interior, and on the exterior two large eyes near the handles serve
as a framework to the painting.
Besides, the vases of ancient style with black figures have issued
from various fabrics, and differ from
each other in the make and period.
Some cups are covered with a white
engobe, upon which are black figures
heightened with red; in the Cabinet
of Medals at Paris, is one representing
Ulysses and his companions making
Polyphemus intoxicated, and putting
out his eye. The same cabinet also
contains a specimen no less valuable
— the cup of Arcesilaus, king of Cyre-
naica, who acquired great celebrity as
conqueror at the Pythian games in the
eightieth Olympiad (b.c. 458). He is
seated upon an ocladias (or X seat),
under a tent or pavilion, on the deck
of a ship, his head covered with a
petasus, or wide-brimmed cap, his long
hair descending upon his shoulders,
and he is bearded. He wears a white
tunic, with an embroidered mantle ; in his left hand he holds the sceptre.
Under the seat is a leopard with a necklace ; behind the king climbs
a lizard. What is this king doing, surrounded by the emblems of

AMPHORA OF NICOSTHENES.

power ? He presides over the operations of commerce. He extends his
right hand, pointing with his forefinger towards an ephebus, or young
man dressed only with an apron, who repeats the same gesture. Large
scales are there surrounded by men who weigh some irregular substance,
a heap of which is on the ground ; one on his knees near the plate of

GREECE.

:i3

the scales seems to be attending to the merchandise they are weighing;
the second bears on his shoulders a netted bag filled with the precious
material ; the third turns towards Arcesilaus. and raises a bag of the
same kind ; the fourth extends his arm to adjust the balance, and
holds in his right one of the irregular bodies of the same nature as those
placed in the scales. The Greek word placed near him explains the
whole scene ; this man is " he who prepares the silphium." Now the
silphium, celebrated product of Cyrenaica, sought throughout all Greece
and used as a condiment in the preparation of dishes, is the resin
asafoetida, of which the penetrating, garlic odour is well known. However
let us not dispute tastes, but return to Arcesilaus, the Greek druggist,
busied with his bargain. The principal group which occupies the centre
of the cup consists of an overseer with men laden with netted bags ; other
bags piled, show that these bales have been weighed and are taken out
of the warehouse to be embarked for exportation. Here is certainly a
scene of manners more than worth a mythological representation ; but we
must return to the form of the religious paintings, and instance the
celebrated crater known under the name of the Francois vase, which
may be placed at the fifth century before the Christian era.
Three zones of designs cover the body ; the neck has two, and the
feet one. The principal subject is a procession of divinities attending
the marriage of Thetis. The goddess is seated in the interior
of a Doric edifice, before which is an altar surmounted by a can-
tharus. Peleus, standing without, advances in front of Chiron and
Iris ; then follow Hestia, Ceres, Chariclo, and Bacchus, who bears upon
his shoulders a large amphora ; then follow seven quadrigae, on each of
which are two divinities, Jupiter and Juno ; Neptune and Amphitrite ;
Mars and Venus ; Mercury and Maia ; here the figures are wanting,
several pieces of the vase not having been found in the excavation.
The Hours, Muses, and Fates follow on foot, the great divinities in their
cars ; then appears Ocean, under the form of a marine monster, and
Vulcan mounted on a mule.
Below this first zone are two subjects. In the first is Achilles,
followed by Minerva, Mercury, and Thetis, rushing in pursuit of
Troilus and Polyxena; near a fountain are Apollo and Rhodia.
Priam and Antenor look with terror, while Hector and Polites come out
from the walls of Troy and hasten to oppose the enterprise of Achilles.
The second subject represents Vulcan upon the mule, brought back
to Olympus by Bacchus, Sileni, and Nymphs ; Venus standing in front
of the thrones upon which are seated Jupiter and Juno receiving the

214

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

procession, while Minerva, Diana, Apollo, and Mercury seek to console
Mars, who is confused and humiliated.
The third zone consists of fights of animals ; lions attacking bulls and
wild boars ; panthers slaughtering stags and bulls, etc.
Upon the neck of the vase are the funeral games, in honour of
Patroclus, and the battles of the Centaurs and the Lapithae at the
marriage of Pirithous and Laodamia.
The second zone shows on one side the hunt of the Calydonian boar,
and on the other Theseus and Ariadne, surrounded by a group of youths
and girls holding each other's hands to enjoy the pleasure of dancing.
These are the Athenians delivered by the hero,
Upon the foot is the battle of the pigmies and cranes.
Such are the principal subjects represented upon this wonderful
vase, the richest known, and which is signed by the two artists who pro
duced it : " Ergotimos has made me, Clitias has painted me." Borrowing-
its description from the learned M. de Witte, we give a general idea of
the pomp of the mythological and heroic scenes composed in these
remote epochs.
The Louvre possesses a large number of vases with black figures, by
the hands of Nicosthenes (Fig. 64), Amasis, Tima-
goras, and other artists not less renowned, such as
Tleson, son of Nearchus, Hermogenes, Panthaeus,
Phanphaios. The panathenaic vases with the names of
archons are the last expression of this form of art,
which appears specially adapted for pieces having
an official or religious character ; it is easy besides
to recognise, even under their archaism, paintings,
of which the style, and the spelling of the inscrip
tions, are modified according to the manners and
customs of the epoch, and are hence doubly dated.
VII. Italo-Greek vases with red paintings. —
This class is much more numerous than the pre
ceding ; the vases it includes produce to the eye
a more harmonious effect than the others ; some
have besides all the perfections of art (Fig. 65).
The design was first sketched on the vases with a
blunt tool, and the black glaze spread over the
ground, so as to reserve the figures and ornaments.
The interior details, the features of the face, the folds of the vestments

Fig. 65.

BLACK VASE POR LIBA
TIONS, WITH RED
PAINTINGS.

GREECE. 215

were next marked out by a brush with such delicacy and precision,
one might fancy it done with a cestum or style, and a rule. Violet red is
the only colour employed for heightening ; it serves to indicate the bands,
bracelets, embroidery, and other secondary details, and also to give the
inscriptions thrown upon the field of the subject ; some of these are
incised, as the signatures of the potters, Hieron and Andocides. White
has been also used on the pieces with red figures, for the ornaments,
details, and inscriptions, but its presence indicates a later period ;
towards the decline, a certain brightness was given to the painted vases
by introducing with the white, light yellow, dark red and brown. It is
very difficult to determine the period when the decoration, reserved in
red, replaced the black upon the bare earth; some rare pieces of
transition show the two systems united, such as the amphora of the
Louvre, where we see on one side Bacchus and Ariadne, accompanied
by satyrs ; and on the Other, Hercules chaining Cerberus. We find the
name of the same potter or of the same painter upon pieces, with
black figures, as well as with the red.
Among the number of the artists who, by their severity of style
and minuteness of detail, approach more the archaic style, is Ando
cides. We possess by him, in the Louvre, a cup of black ground,
ornamented with white figures heightened with violet red, quite an
exceptional decoration. The subjects are three Amazons putting on
their armour, and Nereids bathing.
Epictetus executes with care ; his style is elegant, though severe,
and so marked and personal, that one recognises even his unsigned
works. Upon the vases with red figures, we are able to follow the
progressive march of the art. By degrees, conventional forms dis
appear, individual talent takes place of the pouncing of the schools ; the
grace of the outlines, and the expression of the faces, begin to mark
the distinctions of sexes, and to render the passions indicated by
the movements of the figures. To this progress in art responds the
perfection of manual labour ; the clay is finer and better turned, the
form of the vases purer, their gloss marvellous ; delicate appendages
accompany them, elegant little wheels balance the more prolonged
curves ; the cenochoe' turns back its mouth in a • graceful trefoil, the
crater expands its bell-shaped opening.
The progress of ceramographic art can only offer a reflex of the
natural evolution of high art, and one can date the one by the
epoch of the other. The painters of the fifth century, Polygnotus and
Micon, modified monumental decoration. Cimon, of Cleones, who

216 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

lived towards the eightieth Olympiad, passed for having first rendered
three-quarter figures. After the defeat of the Persians, Hellenic
civilisation developed itself rapidly, and the appearance of Phidias
operated a revolution in the works of sculpture. Vases with red
figures of primitive style, were made from the beginning of the
fifth century to the first year of the fourth, a little after the age of
Pericles. When the influence of Phidias became manifest, when the
painters, Zeuxis and Parrhasius, began to treat scenes or isolated figures
which derived their interest from particular and individual expression,
or from the manifestation of the human passions, the ceramic art
entered into the same path. Heroes were no longer robust men with
tufted beards, but young men of elegant form. The nude took the place
of rich costumes, particularly among the women, and when even it was
required to envelop them with draperies, transparent textures were
chosen, and the folds adjusted so as to show the harmony of the
proportions and delicacy of outline. If the nude thus prevails at this
period of art, it is because a new education has been formed among the
people, a sort of worship of the beautiful. Thus in groups of young
girls pouring- out water for the ephebi or youths to drink ; of women
enjoying the pleasure of the bath, simple modesty and purity are
expressed in a charming manner.
As a specimen of this perfected style, connoisseurs may consult, at the
Louvre, the cup representing the young Musaeus taking a lesson of
grammar or singing of Linus. The poet, seated upon a high-backed
chair, unrolls and seems to read a papyrus,.; his pupil standing, his right
hand resting on his hip, and with his left raising his tablets, listens
with attention. Outside are gymnastic subjects.
To the fourth century belong the large amphorae of Nola, distinguished
by the fineness of the earth, the brilliancy of the black glaze, the elegance
of the drawing, and the simplicity of the subjects.
Later, towards the end of the same century, a taste for luxury
weakens the high sentiment of art; the graceful pleases more than
the beautiful ; the simple contrast of black and red is no longer sufficient
to the eye ; to the primitive tints, yellow, violet and gold are added
with white. Yet the magnificent groups discovered in the tombs of
Kertch, the ancient Panticapaeum, show this richness united to a pure style
and an admirable knowledge of drawing ; there especially abound, nude
figures, some full face, others three-quarters. These products may be
attributed to a period near the reign of Alexander the Great.
It is here we should allude to the vases of rich decoration combined

GREECE.

217

with sculptured reliefs; the finest among all of them is the celebrated
hydria discovered at Cumae, which now adorns the museum of the Her
mitage at St. Petersburg. The lower part of the piece is fluted ; above
is a bas-relief, coloured and gilt, composed often figures, five seated and
five standing. Triptolemus appears in his winged chariot drawn by two
serpents ; he holds a sceptre, and is surrounded by the divinities and
heroes of Eleusis. Raoul Rochette thus describes the vase : " It is a
piece of very large size, with three handles, and of the finest and most
lustrous glaze. It is ornamented at several heights with sculptured
friezes, in terra cotta and gilded, but that which gives it its priceless value
is a frieze of figures from four to five inches high, sculptured in bas-relief,
with the heads, feet, and hands gilded, and the vestments painted in bright
Colours, blue, red and green, in the finest Greek style imaginable. Several
heads, from which the gilding has become detached, show the modelling,
which is as fine and as finished as that of the finest ancient cameo."
An aryballos, or oil-flask, signed by Xenophantus the Athenian, is
ornamented with a mixture of paintings, gildings, and figures in relief;
a hunting subject in which is introduced the young Darius, son of
Artaxerxes Memnon. It must therefore have been made B.C. 380.
The taste which inspires these vases is doubtless the same which led
the potters of Asia Minor to create pottery
in relief, glazed with varied colours, as
already referred to. Other va«es in relief,
with black engobes, were made until a period
near the Christian era. On one are repre
sented Romulus and Remus suckled by the
wolf. VIII. Rhytons and vases of remarkable form.
— It is in periods of luxury that individual
genius is able to display itself by innumer
able inventions. It is necessary to satisfy
the thirst for novelty and the caprices of
the rich, who wish to be remarkable in
possessing works without equal ; and above
all the surfeited mind requires excitement by-
catering for it things curious, unknown, or
original. The collection of the Louvre offers,
in this respect, one of the rarest series that can be found. Vases with
double heads are numerous ; and one may remark that which represents
Alphaeus and Arethusa (Fig. 66), another with Hercules and Omphale,

Fig. 66.

3\,

VASE WITH TWO HEADS, ALPHAEUS
AND ARETHUSA.

2 IS HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
the great head of Silenus, a young satyr laughing, nymphs, negroes, all
show tbe versatility of talent of the Greek potters. The figure pieces
are still more varied : the young Hercules, kneeling, strangling the lion
of Mount Cithaeron ; a comic actor seated with his legs crossed ; a
crouching negro crowned with ivy ; a nurse seated, the robes that cover
her hood turned back upon the head, and having by her side a child in
the same costume ; lying at its feet is a pig, the victim offered by the
Lacedaemonians for the preservation of their children. But the series
of rhytons is particularly interesting. These curved pieces provided
with a handle resemble the pierced horns wdiich, in the first ages of society,
served for drinking wine; the pointed part of the recipient taking the
form of an animal, and the opening decorated with painted subjects or

Fig. 67.

richly composed ornaments ; here, the head of an eagle, there an ass or
mule with bridle, a lion, a ram, a cow, a hind or panther (Fig. 67), most
of them have no other opening than that of the top. They are real cups,
and not drinking vessels a la regalade, that is, with the head turned back
and the liquor poured down the throat, as certain ancient bas-reliefs show
it was the custom to make them, even at more distant times. A fine
coloured pink and white rhyton proves they acknowledged the inconve
nience of these unsteady recipients to contain liquids. An undraped
female upon one knee, embraces the vase and holds it upright. The
pieces, purely imitative, are essentially fanciful — such as a crocodile
devouring a man, a crouching panther, a hippocampus, ducks, cocks,

GREECE.

219

bunches of grapes, fir cones, almonds, etc. ; whatever fancy may
suggest, the artist is subject to no rule but that of his imagination,
and his creative genius ; by this characteristic alone, one sees that the
school has disappeared, and that decline is not far distant.
IX. Decline of Greek art in Italy. — Here the historian experiences a
singular embarrassment. If progress forms herself by such slow and
successive conquests, that we can note and follow it in its manifestations,
so the decline operates by irregular bounds proceeding from facts un
known, or from local circumstances ; in one place, a man of talent will en
deavour to maintain the doctrines of the past ; in another, the fabrication
fallen into unworthy hands, will slide rapidly down the incline to bad, so
that works made simultaneously may offer an apparent difference of
nearly a century. The vases of the fabrics of Sant' Agata de' Goti, of
Ruvo, Armento, and the products generally of Lucania and Apulia,
are regarded as types of the art in its decline. Yet some specimens
protest against decadence ; a magnificent oxybaphon (vinegar cup) of the
Louvre shows us a subject treated with rare elegance ; Orestes taking
refuge at the altar of Apollo at Delphi. Seated with his back resting
against the omphalos, the hero holds in his right hand his sword
still reeking with the blood of his mother. Behind him Apollo, attired
in a rich mantle, extends his right arm and shakes over the parricide
a little pig, expiatory victim, the purifying blood of which will restore
peace to the guilty one. Diana, attired as a huntress, stands behind
her brother at the foot of the steps of the altar. On the other side,
the shade of Clytemnestra, shrouded in a veil, arises to awaken two
sleeping furies, and orders them to torment Ore'stes. At the base of
the picture, a third fury, seen half-length, rises out of the earth. In
this piece are all the qualities of high Hellenic art.
The real characteristic of the decline consists in the exaggeration of the
proportions of the vases, and still more in superabundant ornamentation.
The handles have volutes, knots, wheels, scrolls of every description ;
the figures are multiplied, and groups of secondary order introduced,
which confuse the subject and deprive it of its imposing tranquillity.
The grounds are strewed with accessories; vegetable stalks wind
among the subjects, interlace themselves round the handles, and
often bear, instead of the flowers which should terminate their scrolls,
the heads of females or winged genii.
The subjects are mostly Bacchanalian, mystic, or funereal ; the drama
itself has a large share in these representations, and the burlesque is
not spared. Some inscriptions in the Oscan character prove that the

220 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Atellanae may have had their share in these inspirations, when we see
even sleight of hand and jugglery. The more we advance towards the
decline, the rarer become the names of the artists ; Asteas, Python, and
Lasimos close the series of ceramographs, and this last signs a comic
subject, a burlesque of the myth of Procrustes.
X. Black vases ornamented in white. — Among the last vases made in
Southern Italy must be classed the black vases with white and violet
red ornaments. Some represent scenic masks, heads accompanied by
inscriptions ; others have simple wreaths of vine and ivy. Paleographic
reasons assign their date to the fifth century of Rome (b.c. 300-
260). Etruria, at that period, was then quite Latinised, and it is to her
that we owe the last ceramic painted works, for it is proved that the
Romans never cultivated this branch of the art, and that a decree of
the senate, the year 568 of Rome (b.c. 186), proscribing Bacchanalia, was
the principal cause of the discontinuance of painted vases.
XI. We have now followed the chronological and progressive march
of Greek ceramic art with paintings generally monochrome, showing
its Oriental origin. It now remains to us to allude to another descrip
tion of monument, of equal if not superior pomp, where sculpture and
colour combine in harmonious concert. We speak of vases of religious
ornamentation in coloured terra cotta, found in Magna Graecia, and
particularly in Apulia (Fig. 68).
Some years since, these interesting works were represented by one
simple specimen given to the Louvre by Baron de Janze ; the acquisition
of the Campana collection, in multiplying examples, and showing a
variety of forms, has proved that M. de Janze's vase has not been
eclipsed by any others.
Most generally, the sculptured terra cottas affect the form of a
depressed hydria with lateral spout; the body, a kind of inflated
wine-skin is surmounted by an arched handle which from the back
rejoins the base of the neck. But this arrangement is lost in the
accumulation of accessory pieces of a nature to prove that the artist had
not to preoccupy himself with the necessity of usefulness. Thus, upon
the inclined neck of the vase, is planted a statuette of a draped divinity
placed standing ; at the two sides rise winged Tritons, whose eel-form
backs apply themselves upon the bag-shaped swelling, while their sea
horse feet beat the air almost at a level with the orifice of the tube ;
other divinities rise, upon the handle and upon the sides of the
vase, composing a group scientifically balanced, resembling more an
elegant pantheon than accessories to a ceramic work. Often pink or

GREECE.

sky-blue tints cover the draperies of the figures ; the body of the vase
itself is diapered with zones softly coloured with pink or blue, and with
imbrications bordered with blackish grey, so that the general aspect is
harmonious, and allows the outlines to prevail over the deep tints as it
should in all works of sculpture. As regards art, the vases of Magna
Fig. 68.

VASE OP APULIA (MUSEUM OP THE LOUVRE).
Graecia always display a grand style; in some, the figures are modelled
with a grace and perfection which show practised hands. We should be
even tempted to think where the sculpture is imperfect and clumsy there
has beeu on the part of the artist a sacrifice made to some special desti
nation, an elevated place distant from the spectators, requiring nothing
but general effect.

222 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

F. — Denomination of the Greek leases.
In the description of Greek vases will have been remarked the grace
ful and sonorous names serving to designate the form or use of the
recipients. It is not, then, without interest to pause a moment upon
this nomenclature, and study the system. Such is the march of human
science that, from the moment the mind attaches itself to a series of
facts or objects, in order to derive from them any teaching whatever,
we must place our theories upon a conventional basis, and create a
special language to avoid blunders or sterile discussions.
When intelligent excavations had brought to light the imposing mass
of ancient terra cottas, it was evident they afforded new elements
for history. The Greek writers were first questioned to discover
the subjects depicted on the vases, and the names which con
temporaries had imposed on them to express their form and use.
This arduous research produced a mass of information more for
midable than useful ; the difference of the dialects causing a multi
plicity of names to be recognised as belonging to the same thing ; facts
had often created new denominations for vases already provided with
a vulgar appellation. A work of Panofka, completed by Raoul Rochette,
Charles Lenormant, and Baron de Witte, laid down the true principles
of the science, and thenceforth established a nomenclature. In fact,
this nomenclature is the introduction into ceramics of the harmonious
language of the Greeks ; thus, the amphora, essentially variable in its
form and dimensions, owes its name to its general structure ; it is a vase
with two handles, which is expressed by the word " amphis " both sides ;
" pherein," to carry. There is therefore no difference of name between
the vase of coarse earth buried in the wine cellar, and the panathenaic
amphora clothed with the richest painting, the destined prize of the
conqueror in the games.
The amphoridion is the ainphora of reduced size ; the chous, another
amphora, a kind of measure of liquid capacity, the same as the Latin
" congius " containing twelve cotylae.
The hydria has a signification as wide as that of the amphora,
its name, derived from " udor," water, expresses its habitual contents
(Fig. 69). And yet how varied in its elegant forms ! sometimes furnished
with one handle, its opening bent into the form of a trefoil ; sometimes
to its principal handle are added two smaller at the side, which increase
its richness. Such is the hydria of Timagoras, in the Louvre, on which

GREECE.

223

Fig. 69.

the artist has represented the conflict of Hercules with Triton or
Nereus. The crater is a large, fine vase, with very wide mouth, in which the
wine and water were mixed for entertainments
or for sacrifice ; sometimes raised upon a foot,
spreading at the top like a campanula ; it has
two handles, attached to the rim of the cylinder
with the spheroidal base. An idea of the
richness of this form may be had from the crater
in the Louvre, signed Euphronios, having for
subject Apollo pursuing the giant Tityus, who is
about to carry off Latona.
There is an almost insensible transition from
the crater to the celebe, another cup of analogous
use ; the body of this is ovoid, surmounted by
an opening under which are inserted the two
handles. Certain of these vases are remarkable
for their elegance and the happy proportion of
their, handles, which sometimes extend beyond
the projecting edge of the vase. The word
crater is derived from "kerannumi," which
means to mix wine and water.
It is impossible to speak of the two above recipients without saying
a word on the vase which serves as an accom
paniment, called cenocho'e (Fig. 70). " Oinos '' is
Greek for wine ; " oinokon " is the earthen pot
which serves to take the wine out of the crater
to distribute in the cups. The name is charming,
and still more charming is the form it desig
nates. The hydria, in its general acceptation,
has massive proportions, indicative of the vulgar
liquor it contains ; the cenochoe, with its egg-
shaped body, its thin neck, its trefoiled mouth,
its light graceful handle bent like an S, rising
above the lip, has all the elegancies of style,
all the delicacy of luxury ; hence it is the vase
carried by the goddesses, introduced for libations
in all sacred or familiar compositions.
The cup which, before all others, should
receive the sacred liquid is the cantharus, bell-shaped, raised upon a

BLACK HYDRIA OR WATER-
JUG OF BLACK GLAZE.

Fig. 70.

OZNOCHOfi OR WINE-JUG OF
BLACK GLAZE.

224

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

tall stem ; it is provided with two light handles. It was one of the
special attributes of Bacchus. The amphotis also with two handles ;
the calyx or cylix, are cups of varied forms. The aryballos is another
drinking vessel, generally wide at its base, and drawn in at the top
like a purse half closed (Fig. 61, p. 208) ; the phiale, a kind of shallow
circular vessel, giving to us the word phial, sometimes figures in the
hands of divinities.
Let us next speak of another cup, connected with recollections of
ancient manners, the cotlabus. According to Harmodius, of Lepraeas,
the Phygalians made use of cottabes of earth to consecrate wine, of which
they gave a little to each one to drink ; he who presented the vase, saying,
" Sup well !" But in Sicily, they called cottabus a game, which consisted
in throwing wine out of a cup into a brazen basin producing a certain
sound, or, by the same means, to drown little bowls swimming upon the
surface of the water. The fashion spread, and according to Hegysander,
of Delphi, they conceived such a passion for the game that prizes were
proposed at entertainments for the conqueror. From that time, cups
were much appropriated for the game called cottabus.
But, to return to more serious matters. Here is a lecythus (Fig. 71),
charming cylindrical cruet, with narrow neck,
terminated by a cup-shaped mouth against which
rests a handle, which falls back upon the keel of
the body of the vase which is destined to contain
oil or perfumes ; this recipient often figures in
the hands of goddesses, or of females occupied
in the business of the toilet. Therefore the
lecythus is mostly ornamented with delicate
paintings and choice subjects.
The olpe, generally pear-shaped, with a
rounded handle from the body to the wide open
ing, is a vase of variable dimensions according
to its use. In high antiquity, the olpe served to
pour out the wine at table, as says Ion, of Chios,
in his ' Eurytides :' " You raise your voices very
proudly in taking the wine out of your little
casks with olpe." Later, this kind of vase
became of a religious use and no longer ap
peared at entertainments.
One of the most elegant of the Greek potteries is that which bears
the name of stamnos. Egg-shaped, surmounted by a wide throat sup-

ATHENIAN LECYTHUS WITH
PAINTINGS UPON ENGOBE.

ROME.

ill

porting a lid slightly convex and provided with two handles attached
below the hip ; this kind of recipient served to contain wine. . Most
of them show a rich ornament and interesting subjects, and must
have been placed upon sumptuous tables, conjointly with craters and
Celebes. The oxybaphon, in ordinary use, was a small and open cruet to
contain vinegar or sauce. In its reduced proportions, it bears some
analogy with the open bell-shaped crater, but its lateral handles are
inserted higher. Cratinus, in his 'Pytine,' ranges the oxybaphon
amongst the Bacchic utensils : " How then," he says, " to make him
leave off drinking ? Oh ! I know, I will break his conges, I will over
turn his wine barrels, and all the vessels which serve for drinking ; I
will not leave him an oxybaphon to pour out the wine."
Among the earthen vessels whose name lends itself to the most
varied interpretations is the urn, so called from "aryo," to draw. The
name does not designate any special form, but it is generally agreed
to apply it to a vessel destined to contain the ashes of the dead, yet
ancient writers have often departed from this usage. In the Iliad,
Patroclus desires his bones may be placed in the same urn with those
of Achilles; he wishes that this should be the golden amphora, the
present of Thetis ; ICO lines further, Achilles, in compliance with
this wish, causes the bones of his friend to be placed in a golden phial,
where his own will eventually be placed. To Homer, urn, amphora,
and phial have a like signification, implying neither difference of form
nor determination of use.
The pithos is a large earthen jar, wide, open-mouthed, and cask-
shaped, used like the domestic amphora, and often confounded with it.
There were also pithoi with narrow necks. It is in one of these, broken
and repaired, that the cynic Diogenes made his abode. No doubt
the pithos of Diogenes had been used to contain wine ; it is the sole
analogy one can establish between this vast terra cotta jar, in which a
man could extend himself his whole length or be seated, and the wooden
barrel in which we keep fermented liquors. Later, the pithoi, no
longer used, became the dwellings of the poor of Athens.

226 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Section 2. — Roman Ceeamics.
In principle, it might be said that there exists no Roman art. The
simplicity of manners of those who one day were to be masters of the
world excluded even the representation of the Deity. When under the
Republic the nation began to enlighten itself, the wants of luxury de
veloped, but the citizens of Rome were not yet among those who
contributed to progress ; the Etruscans, on the contrary, were then
strong in their own intelligence, and in that which contact with the
Greeks had taught them. The Romans had recourse to them for the
first plastic works, destined for the decoration of their temples.
Towards the end of the second Punic war, the Romans having found
themselves in relations with the Greeks, and having made an alliance
with them, began to feel a taste for true art. Claudius Marcellus,
after the taking of Syracuse, brought back the first Greek works
and employed these brilliant spoils in the decoration of the Capitol.
Capua, reduced by Q. Fulvius Flaccus, came to increase the sculptured
riches of the Eternal City. The introduction of the worship of the Greek
divinities into Rome rendered still closer the relations between the two
nations ; the Romans not only ordered idols from the Hellenes, but
made artists come over to Rome, to people the temples with their works.
All those whom the fate of war delivered over to the hands of the Roman
legions, were also brought to the metropolis, and their civilising influence
was such that patrician families made a point of their children being
instructed in the arts of painting and sculpture ; thus did the illustrious
Paulus jEniilius, as we learn from Plutarch.
The increase of public wealth would necessarily develop the instinct of
luxury and a taste for the beautiful. Lepidus, before he was consul,
possessed a house which was considered the most elegant in Rome ;
thirty years later, it was only the hundredth in the scale of beauty.
Caesar was about to appear ; a simple citizen, he soon classed himself
among the most magnificent by his passion for works of art ; when consul,
he built the Forum and spread monuments over the towns of Italy, Gaul,
Spain, and the Roman colonies. The victories of Lucullus, Pompey, and
Augustus, brought to Rome swarms of prisoner artists, who were soon
liberated and ranked with the eminent men, who, attracted from Greece
by the hope of gain, formed that intelligent cohort whose renown
flowed back to Rome herself, and made her fancy herself more advanced
in the liberal arts than she really was.

ROME. 227

Indeed, it is to be observed, that so long as there existed a mother
school whence the light was transmitted in all its purity, the taste was
able to sustain itself ; but when Greece, extinct and debased, was no
longer more than a Roman slave, when the last Grecian town asked
as a favour to substitute the Latin language for the harmonious
idiom of Homer and Sophocles, everything was said. This docile
army of freedmen had but one desire, that of flattering their masters;
no individual thought, no generous initiative came to raise the Hellenic
glory now about to disappear. The imitation of the masterpieces of art
was diminishing, so that there was, properly speaking, no national
school ; and the best productions due to Roman hands were the feeble
reminiscences of Hellenic excellence.
One can understand that, under such conditions, ceramics would
remain in a very secondary rank ; no more of those painted vases, where
the elegance of the compositions and the accuracy of drawing com
pensated for the inferiority of the material ; what the Romans wanted in
their marble palaces, paved with mosaics, adorned with pictures, was
gold and silver, cups of precious stones, murrhine vases, of which one
alone made the fortune of a family.
The red lustred wares, in relief, of Arezzo, in Etruria, are carefully
worked and imprinted with a taste approaching that of the Greeks.
On vases of this class are the names of the potters Antiochus, P.
Cornelius, Florentinus, C. Rufrenius Pictor, A. Fig 72_
Titus, and Victorianus. This red pottery of Arezzo
(Fig. 72) is, also, the prototype of a fabrication
carried by the Romans wherever they esta
blished their dominion, and of which numerous
specimens are found in France and England.
Some of these are signed by Agatopus, Amandus,
Diogenes, Enodus, Primus, Sabianus, Strobilus,
and Vibianus.
A deep earthen cup of black glaze has, in MD LUSTEED
the interior, a bust of Silenus, bearded and clothed VASE 0F AREZZ0-
in a sleeved tunic, playing the double flute. Around it we read,
calenus CANOLEius fecit ; a border of ivy leaves and flowers frames
the inscription, and above are waves and ovolos. This black ware
was made by the Romans concurrently with the red, but in smaller
quantities. Not but that common pottery was also made, numerous
fragments prove it, and amphorae, similar to those of the Greeks, are
found in the environs of Anzio, the ancient Antium. The ruins of
Q 2

228 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Carthage have furnished amphorae, inscribed with the names of Longinus
and Marius, consuls, B.C. 101.
But the really interesting branch of Roman plastics is its employment
in architectural decoration. Until the period wdien Rome, mistress of
Liguria, became possessed of the quarries of Luna (Carrara), marble was
excessively scarce, and terra cotta was employed for the antefixae or
bas-reliefs, which formed the interior and exterior decoration of a house,
the metopes and historic friezes.
We have no need to enlarge upon the merits of plastic sculpture ;
the unrivalled collection of the Louvre shows more eloquently than any
description to what perfection this branch of the art had attained, both
among the Greeks trading with Rome aud among the Hellenes settled
in Italy. We learn by a letter from Cicero to Atticus, that a number
of these bas-reliefs came from Athens, aud the great orator asks
his friend to procure models with which he desires to decorate his
atrium. Therefore, though the greater number of the works classed in
the Louvre came from Tusculum, or Roma Vecchia, localities of the
Campagna di Roma, where were situated the most magnificent villas,
we do not seek to distinguish in these works those evidently Greek
from their imitations.
What the observer will first notice is that the greater part of the
subjects treated relate to the heroic mythology of Greece. It is
Hercules, the Dorian hero, killing 1he Lernean hydra, taming the
Cretan bull (Fig. 73), or fighting the Nemean lion ; Theseus, the Ionian
Hercules, distinguishing himself by the defeat of robbers and monsters,
or fighting against the Amazons.
The Trojan cycle also furnishes its contingent. Paris, in Phrygian
attire, flees upon a quadriga, carrying off Helen shrouded in his drapery.
The companion to this subject shows us the wife brought back by her
husband ; triumphant in her beauty, she proudly displays herself to
all eyes, and quits the car of Menelaus, who stands behind her.
Penthesilea killed by Achilles, and inspiring with love her murderer,
is one of the favourite subjects of the Greek artists. Pancemus, brother
of Phidias, had painted it upon the barriers of the throne of Olympus ;
many sarcophagi represent it with a symbolic and sacred meaning, and
the Louvre shows it us upon a terra cotta found at Ardea ; the dyiDg
Amazon lets fall her double hatchet ; Achilles supports her after havin°-
taken off her helmet and her arms; thus despoiled, she shows her
features, at which, says Quintus of Smyrna, the Greeks were dazzled.
" The expression given by the artist to Achilles renders the thought

ROME.

229

of the poet; there is more than pity and sorrow in his noble
countenance." The history of Ulysses also occupies a large share in this series.
There is the king of Ithaca attached to the mast of his vessel fleeing
the seductions of the Sirens ; Penelope seated, lamenting in tears the
absence of her spouse ; then, returned to his palace, the prudent
monarch conceals his presence and imposes silence on his nurse who
recognises him. Ficr. 73.

71 * Ar<//f?.A
ROMAN BAS-RELIEF OF TERRA COTTA (MUSEUM OF THE LOUVRE).
But let us leave heroes for the gods. It is the infant Jupiter sur
rounded by the Curetes, who dance, striking their shields, to prevent
his cries from reaching the ears of Saturn ; Apollo and Victory ; Minerva
presiding at the building of the ship Argo; the goddess is seated,
teaching the pilot, Tiphys, how to fasten the sail to the mast ; while
Argus, himself seated, chisel and hammer in hand, works attentively
at this galley intended for the first nautical expedition of the Greeks.

230 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Bacchus with his thyrsus furnishes numerous subjects ; the god,
mounted upon a car, drawn by horses and panthers, guides the noisy
train of bacchantes, satyrs, fauns and maenads. What we have just
said is almost a digression, for in a book specially consecrated to the
history of vases, ought we to be allowed, under the pretext of terra
cotta, to enter into the domain of statuary ? Certainly, a just admi
ration has, perhaps, drawn us a little down this slippery slope, but we
could not stop at the exact limit where sculpture becomes a special art,
independent of the material which it has pleased the chisel to animate
with its supreme power.
Shall we keep silence upon that numerous series of earthen statuettes,
masterpieces of delicacy and taste, which from Greece have radiated to
all civilised countries? Certainly not, for a new fact, important in
ceramic history, proves the intimate relation between these images and
the vases themselves.
We have no occasion to remind the reader that these statuettes
represent, for the most part, the numerous divinities of Hellenic and
Roman worship. Our learned friend, M. Adrien Longperier, has
brought together at the Louvre an almost complete series of statuettes
of children, which are none other than the genii of these gods ;
but, in his profound sagacity, the eminent keeper of the antiques had
surmised that many of these statuettes, as well as some flowers or
detached emblems found in large quantities in the excavations, must be
complements of some monument, and combine to form an ornamental
whole. The vases with modelled figures of Magna Graecia demonstrate
the correctness of this supposition ; and the statuettes and applied
emblems, of which the wandering specimens encumber our museums,
stand up as so many points of interrogation before historians and
inquirers. We know therefore now what are these divinities, these flying
genii, provided with the means of affixing to another piece, these nereids,
these centaurs truncated through the middle ; and a broken vase may
now find its decoration by means of these incomplete fragments.
The most intimate connection existed between the modellers
of statuettes and the modellers of vases ; one might be able, perhaps,
even to identify the Graeco-Italian artists, who ornamented the vases
of Apulia, with the numerous sigillarii in the Rome of the Caesars
whose profession it would appear consisted, not in making seals, but
little earthen images destined to figure in the house of each citizen
as the lares or protectors of the domestic hearth.

MIDDLE AGES. 231

CHAPTER II.
MIDDLE AGES.
The luxury of the later times of the Roman Empire would have the
effect of reducing- to nothing ceramic industry; a people clothed in
purple and silk, and covered, even to their shoes, with embroidery,
pearls and precious stones, would not tolerate around them the rude
earthen pottery, even though enriched with the sombre decoration
of the Greeks. Vessels of gold, jasper, sardonyx and onyx, these
were the ornaments of the great and for the temples. The pavements
of the basilicas borrowed from marble their symmetric dispositions;
the dome shone with the splendour of its golden-grounded mosaics ;
the columns themselves were twisted into many coloured spirals, and
veils of silk were spread before the altar.
But as if to protest against the ingratitude and changeableness of
human nature, the humble terra cotta introduced itself into the midst
of this pomp ; the bold cupolas which the eye dared hardly measure
under their dazzling images, these cupolas which, if built of stone, would
have fallen in from their own weight, it is to ceramics they owed their
existing still to excite our admiration ; kinds of truncated bottles,
strung one into the other, and disposed in parallel curves, form the
ingenious masonry of these masterpieces of architecture. Certainly,
at a period when Italy employed her workshops in a production so
special and so limited, other works must have issued from the hands of
her potters, and the modest lamp of the countryman, culinary utensils
for the poor, vessels for carrying water, for keeping oil, wine, the
alimentary grains, all must have continued to be made, but without
character or artistic taste.
We must traverse the period of struggles between expiring civili-

232 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
sation and barbarian invaders, we must leave these last to seek, in
their turn, the light of a new civilisation, in order again to find ceramics
one of the first arts in the rude furrow of progress.
We will not here describe the kinds of transitions styled German
and Gaulish pottery, and which, rude as they are, were but a last reflex
of pagan art, henceforth condemned with the religion which had given it
birth. We are now in the Christian epoch ; the Northern aspirations
manifest themselves first by the dreamy tendencies of Gothic archi
tecture, and the free and immaterial conceptions of the statuary ; then
the men of the North, not content with having invaded temperate
countries, seem fatally impelled towards the East; they imagined the
Crusades in order to animate their hearts at the focus of religious
fervour, and to enrich their poetry with the glittering mirage of the
sun and of art.
A kind of intuition, besides, points out to these simple seekers that
in other places nature, lovingly questioned, has unveiled secrets from
wdiich ornamentation has made the happiest use — sculptors, painters
and potters, look around them, the vine, the eglantine, the clover of
the fields — appear to them worthy of being reproduced by the chisel,
the graver, and the pencil, and quite a fertile vein of art opens itself
to their intelligence.
From the porticoes of the temples, the complicated capitals of the
columns, this ingenious ornamentation descends upon the historic
tiles, at the same time penetrating into the interior to enrich the wares
in common use, and heighten the adornment of the high-backed side
boards or " dressoirs." Until the twelfth century, stones of various
colours, combined in mosaics, had satisfied the requirements of archi
tecture ; from this moment, a new idea applies itself everywhere at once,
bricks of red earth, of varied forms, are substituted for stone, their
surface is covered with a thin layer of white clay, in which are incrusted
patterns of a darker earth or vice versa; these glazed, baked bricks
are thus able to resist the effects of the reiterated steps of tlie faithful,
and replace at little expense the costly mosaics. Moreover, this combi
nation of pieces admitted of a concerted decoration, and the variation
of the ground tints introduced a relative variety in compositions con
demned to a kind of uniformity. Nothing is more curious than the
study of these tiles, in which, with rudimentary means, art already
begins to manifest its power. There, in a graceful chequer-work, the
fleur de lis of France heightens at intervals a seme of trefoils and
rosettes ; scrolls of notched leaves combine, in graceful borders ; circles

MIDDLE AGES. 233

divided crossways receive in their sections stars or heraldic suns ; here
are armour-clad warriors, mounted upon horses richly caparisoned,
running one after the other, their swords raised, their shields resting
on their breasts, then heads, busts, lions, eagles, all that picturesque
fancy, assisted by the resources of heraldry, could invent to animate the
cold compartments of the pavement, and give a meaning to the vast
naves trodden every day by the Christian multitude (Fig. 74).
The abbey of Voulton, near Provins, the hunting gallery of St.
Louis at Fontainebleau, a chateau near Quimperle, St. Etienne d'Agen,
the monuments of Crotoy, Rue, Cosne, of the departments of Ain and
Calvados, offer curious specimens of this ceramic fabrication, which was
not less spread or less brilliaut in England.

Fig. 74.

INCRUSTED TILE, FROM THE PAVEMENT OF A CHURCH OF THE MIDDLE AGES, NORMANDY.
Most of the ornamental combinations resemble the designs we are
accustomed to see in the textile fabrics of the East, and we ought to be
the less astonished at this, inasmuch as that from the ninth century
incrusted or enamelled tiles were in use in Egypt and Syria.
It were then idle to examine now if, as has been long advanced, the
art of covering earth with a plumbiferous glaze was invented by a potter
of Schlestadt, of unknown name, who died in 1283. Not only was the
use of glazed tiles very generally spread, but more, the fragment of a
vase preserved at Sevres, and brought from a tomb in the abbey of
Jumieges, which dates from 1120, proves that coloured coatings were
also applied to the pottery reserved for burning the incense at religious
ceremonies. The secret of the plumbiferous glaze had passed from

234 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
the Greeks of Asia Minor to the Romans, who undoubtedly transmitted
it to their numerous clients, especially to the intelligent Gauls.
In the twelfth century, the fabrication and commerce in pottery
took an enormous development. "Ceramic wares," says M. le Bas, "are
mentioned among the principal articles which appeared at the markets
and great fairs of the country."
The sands of our rivers have preserved through the course of centuries
fragments of pottery, which now reappear to reveal to the amateur the
state of the arts in these epochs so little known. Thus has been found, at
the eastern extremity of the Cite, at Paris, pots ornamented with fleurs de
lis in relief, or with the legend in Gothic letters — " Vive le Roi ! " It was
in these recipients that the citizens of the capital came to invigorate
their patriotism and their mirth ; the official tea-gardens resounded with
Bacchic songs, and the empty pots were thrown into the Seine, either to
express the height of their joy or to conceal the repetition of their votive
libations. But the innkeeper did not calculate his score by the number
of empty measures; the fatal chalk inscribed upon the wall its
unimpeachable hieroglyphics, as the barmaid refilled each earthen
hanap. We have just spoken of the inscription, " Vive le Roi ! " This custom
of making pottery speak is a sign both of the infancy of the art and of
its decline ; in the middle ages, legends formed the principal decoration
of vases. As soon as glaze is applied upon an earth of two layers, the
slip or engobe serves equally well to bring out the letters as the orna
ments. But let us first explain here what are the principal modes of
ornamenting coarse terra cotta. We have already stated that common
pottery has for basis a porous paste of loose texture, composed of potter's
clay, argillaceous marl and sand ; it always contains lime, and some
ferruginous element which imparts its red colour. The glaze, composed
in a great part of lead, is vitreous and transparent ; it therefore shows
the colour underneath, so that it requires to mix with the glaze,
metallic oxides more or less dark, such as copper green and manganese
brown. In improving these processes the idea arose of spreading over the
brown earth a thin layer of whitish clay, which enlivened the glaze ;
then in order to vary the colouring, to scratch in the upper layer,
or engobe, circles, zigzags, ornaments, and legends, which came out
in a bright tint upon the white earth, the ware was then covered with
a glaze, generally colourless, scattered over with green and brownish
blotches, which gave it a streaked appearance. This is the engobe;

MIDDLE AGES. 235

another mode even more primitive, has been used to decorate earthenware
with barbotine, or clays diluted with water, and sometimes tinted with
metallic oxides ; lines, scrolls, and figures are drawn upon the white paste,
or even upon the brown glaze ; flowers and beads are scattered over the
surface, which, after firing, preserves a sensible projection and forms
almost a " pastillage." The mode of execution is even more barbarous
than the execution itself. Ox-horns, pierced at the extremity, contain
the barbotine, and it is by moving the point of the horn up and down
with more or less rapidity that the finer strokes are obtained ; the masses
are formed by letting the decorating "bouillie" run longer. The
countries of the North-East, Switzerland in particular, preserve in their
coarse pottery this expeditious mode of decoration. We have no doubt
it was associated with the engobe in the Middle Ages ; it was, in fact, a
step towards pastillage, which itself led to sealed decoration. In pastil
lage, properly so called, ornaments are moulded separately, and attached
to the surface by means of the barbotine ; sigillation consists, on the con
trary, in impressing upon the vases, with special moulds, certain orna
ments which combine to form sometimes a very rich whole. The
transmission of moulds from generation to generation is often the cause
of anachronisms dangerous to the superficial observer, who should
carefully examine details which might lead to error.
This kind of fabrication which certainly goes back to the Middle
Ages, establishes a kind of transition between this epoch and the
Renaissance, as well as between glazed terra cotta and stoneware. It
appears to have been practised everywhere, both abroad and in France.
M. B. Fillon, mentioning it in his luminous researches upon the pottery
of Poitou, says: "From the second half of the thirteenth century,
date also the funereal vases in form of fir cones, completely overlaid with
a green glaze. ... In short, the decorative system of these various
potteries belongs, on one side, to that used from the fifth to the ninth
century, which had never been entirely given up ... . and contains
in germ that of the sealed faiences of the Renaissance." In a declaration
of property situated in the village of la Poterie, parish of Champ-Saint-
Pere, made in 1378, the same author finds that the potter, Jourdain
Beo-aud, acknowledges himself bound to the seigneurs of la Mothe-Freslon,
for the yearly payment " d'une buye verde godronnee et d'une poune
de bue"e (washing tub)." Now if. Poitou, a new world for ceramics
discovered by M. Fillon, furnishes such works, what would be the
products of manufactories so celebrated as those of Chapelle-des-Pots,
Beauvais and Savignies ? The inventory of Charles VI., dated 1399,

236 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
contains the valuation of a " godet de terre de Beauvais garni d'argent."
It must be a first-class pottery to have been deemed worthy of a mounting
in goldsmith's work. No doubt, the monarch had received this vase as a
present from the town. The archives inform us, that a similar offering was
made the 17th of October, 1434, to King Charles VII., on his passage
through Beauvais. In his turn, Francis I. traversed the town on his way to
Arras; this time the diocesan chapter decided, the 16th of May, 1520,
that it would present to the queen "des bougies et des vases de
Savignies." Another deliberation of the 4th of December, 1536, declares
that there shall be given to the king a " buffet de Savignies." Similar
homages are renewed the 6th of August, 1540, and the 16th of July, 1544.
Lastly when, the 3rd of January, 1689, the Queen of England, Mary of
Este, a fugitive, was taking the road from Calais to St. Germain, a
similar present was made to her ; three centuries, therefore, had not
weakened the reputation of the manufacture.
Different authors who have written upon the potteries of the
Beauvoisis, have discussed the question whether these choice specimens,
those which show a certain amount of elegance in form and decoration,
should be assimilated to stoneware or to glazed earth. This is a question
devoid of interest, and to which no value can be attached, when one has
seen, in both materials, pieces come out of the same mould and worked
with equal care. Certainly, one may infer, from the expressions used
in the sixteenth century to designate the vases of Savignies, that they
refer to a stoneware, since they call it a " poterio azuree," and most of
the stonewares are blue ; but we have seen frequently cruets and hanaps,
of brown or green ground, with reliefs heightened by a yellow and
purplish glaze, which, for the precision of the fleurs de lis, crowns, and
sealed scrolls, yielded in nothing to the finest blue pitchers, with greyish
reserves, heightened with manganese.
But we shall return more fully to the French stonewares when
speaking of the Renaissance, and of the reputed productions of Flanders
and Germany.
Here the true difficulty consists in pointing out the origin and in
determining the dates ; in fact, we must distinguish from the works of
Beauvais, those of Brittany and of Poitou, the glazed wares and stoves
of Alsace and Lorraine, long confounded among the German products,
and again find the works of " potherie de verderie," which were made at
Sadirac, some leagues from Bordeaux.
Of these remains of our ancient industries, some bear unmistakable
signs of the Renaissance, and will be spoken of in their proper place ;

MIDDLE AGES. 237

but others are of such ambiguous character, and adhere so closely to
the ancient periods, that we must be pardoned if we are not over
scrupulous in their classification.
One example will show the difficulty of a rigorous classification of
the potteries of transition, and the danger of the anachronisms to which
we have already alluded. Most of our readers will have seen either at
Sevres or at the Louvre, specimens of a large dish with green or brown
glaze, enriched with inscriptions, ornaments, and emblems in relief. These
inscriptions in Gothic characters have, with many other details, a religious
character. We read : " 0 vos ones qui trasitis per via, attendite et
videte si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus. Pax vobis -4- Fait en
decembre M.D.XI." Oh, all ye who pass by, behold, and see if there
be any sorrow like unto my sorrow. Peace be with you.
The instruments of the Passion, drawn in relief, the cypher of Jesus
surrounded by rays, that of the Virgin, and the words " Ave Maria,"
show that these kinds of dishes ornamented in churches one of the
stations of " the way of the cross ;" and hence, one understands from
what Divine lips came the sorrowful words above. Between each letter
of the Salutation is a shield crowned, enclosing alternately a fleur de lis,
and the letter K, initial of Charles VIII. Seven other large shields
have the arms of France, with an open crown; one bears France and
Dauphine, quartered ; another, per pale, France and Bretagne ; one
is argent, with ermines and sable ; and the last has a fancy emblazon
ment, in which, above two stars is a kind of mace, " figure parlante "
of the name of Masse, evidently that of the artist.
Now it is easy to remark a real contradiction between the date and
the emblems of the dish. Charles VIII., whose cypher it bears, was first
husband of Anne of Bretagne ; she was remarried, in 1499, to Louis XII.
The double L of Louis should, therefore, in 1511, have replaced the K,
if the artist had not unscrupulously and without reflection employed
the moulds long kept in the workshop.
But a particular interest attaches itself to the repeated reproduction
of the ermines of Brittany. Is it not a presumptive evidence of the
origin of the piece when we know that country to have been an im
portant ceramic centre ? The collection of M. Giraud de Savine offers,
in particular, several pieces with green glaze, specially decorated with
the ermines, or shield of Brittany, among which are those puzzle jugs,
with balanced lid and pierced sides, which formed the delight of our
simple ancestors.
One may see at Cluny several pots of the same description, with

238 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

brown glaze and white pastillages, which establish as it were a transition
between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. We find also an es-
cutcheoned biberon with the device, " TANT QVE IE VIVE AVLTRE
NAVRE," the motto adopted by Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy,
on his marriage, in 1429, with Isabella of Portugal. The blue glaze,
deadened by the subjacent earth, proves that we must not consider
absolutely the expression of azured pottery as signifying stoneware,
and that "vases azures " were made elsewhere than at Beauvais, as this
piece is evidently Burgundian.
But to return to things of an aspect more clearly Gothic, and in
which is revealed, perhaps, the same Oriental inspiration which produced
the Italian " graffiti." Let us pause before a dish "a engobe," of the
museum at Sevres (Fig. 75) ; in the centre is a tree with large flowers
resembling Persian tulips ; the border, intersected with ribbons, is simply
lozengy; then, upon the edge, intercepted by flowers, is this motto, "Je
cuis planter pour raverdir. Vive Truppet." This worthy potter,
attaching his name to an acclamation generally reserved for the
sovereign, was no doubt the author of the dish, and has consecrated
it to himself by a wish for good fortune. His work shows a man of
talent, and forms to our eyes the type of a style which we think we
may attribute to the south of France. Moreover, we consider the dish
of Truppet to be one of those 'prentice pieces it was the custom to exact
from artisans on their admittance to the company or trade of which they
desired to be a member. This obligation, and that still more onerous of
an annual offering to the lord of the property of certain fine pieces or
services, had the effect of keeping the industry in the way of progression.
M. Benjamin Fillon, in giving the figure of a fragment enriched with
. the shield of Argenton, supported by a mermaid, writes : " This piece
is part of a pot, no doubt, analogous to those mentioned in the
following extract from an acknowledgment rendered to the lord of
Villeneuve, parish of Plenee-Jugon, by the potters who had established
their ovens upon the Lande aux Brignons, a dependency of that manor :
" The said potters have acknowledged and do acknowdedge the said
seigneur for their landlord, and oblige themselves to assemble the
Sunday before the day of St. John the Baptist every year, and to ac
company and assist the last married among them, who is to have an
earthen vase ornamented with flowers, with the arms of the said lord ;
and each of the aforesaid potters shall have a flower in his hand, with a
ringer and player of instruments, and all the company shall enter the
parish church of Plenee, in the chapel of the said lord, who will be

MIDDLE AGES.

239

on his bench, and present to him the said vase, or to others of his
house, or to his officers, under the penalty to the aforesaid newly
married potter of sixty sous of money. Besides, each of these aforesaid
potters shall, the first day of each year, go to the said seigneur at Ville-
neuve, and, for a new year's gift, present him with a masterpiece of
their handicraft, on pain of fifteen sous forfeit. They shall, besides,
put the arms of the seigneur upon all the vases they make exceeding
the price of three sous, under a penalty of fifteen sous."
We do not pretend to generalise what may have been only an
individual exaction, yet if one could suppose that the seigneur of
Villeneuve had based this acknowledgment upon customs general in
Fig. 75.

DISH ENGRAVED UPON ENGOBE (MUSEUM OF SEVRES).
France, it would explain the frequency of heraldic bearings on the old
pottery, and the absence of factory marks ; the arms told all, and secured
to the tenant his landlord's protection against all competitors.
The countries of the West have furnished Fig< 76.
M. Fillon with only one emblematic figure, under
a vase, is the goose of the plain of Thouars

(Fig. 76), yet this sign may be simply an allu
sion to the power of the lords of Oiron.
Is this all ? are we to close the ceramic history
of the Middle Ages with glazed earthenware ? Such is not the opinion

240 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
of M. Houdoy, of Lille, who, in recent publications, has just proved from
authentic acts the existence at Hesdin of a ceramic oven belonging to
Jehan le Voleur, a painter attached to the service of Philip the Bold,
duke of Burgundy; this artist delivered, in 1392 and 1393, tiles
" peints a images, a devise et de pleine couleur," which served as decora
tion to the " court " of Arras, and to an apartment " gloriette " (very
decorated) of the castle of Hesdin. Now M. Houdoy observes, with
reason, that at the period when the fourth son of John II. granted a
privilege to Jehan le Voleur, it could not be for the making of
incrusted pavements, which were made everywhere, but for some new
and important thing as would be considered the invention of enamelled
ware, which the expressions of " carreaux paints et jolis, carreaux de
peinture, carreaux a ymaiges" would indicate. Nor must we lose
sight that Jehan le Voleur was a talented painter, and that his fabri
cation was under the supreme inspection of an artist still more
illustrious, Melchior Bourgogne, specially attached to the court of
Burgundy. And when it related to " ordener et drecher " the tiles, that
is, to put them in their place, the work was to be done expressly under
the eyes of the maker ; this implies the difficulty of perfect success,
which would not exist, if it only related to simple geometric com
binations or ordinary kinds. We are happy to be of the opinion of
M. Houdoy. We so often find in documents the expression poterie
blanche, when, according to received ideas, faience did not exist, that
it seems natural to refer the invention of a white enamel in France,
as in Italy, to a period very anterior to that which until now the
discovery has been attributed. Let us add, that since the publication
of the ingenious deductions of M. Houdoy, the works themselves have
spoken to show him in the right. Some of the enamelled tiles of Jehan
le Voleur have been found at Hesdin, fragments of enamelled drapery,
indicating a subject with figures.

RENAISSANCE— ITALY— MAJOLICA. 241

CHAPTER III.
renaissance.
'Section 1. — Italian Renaissance. — Its First Ceramic Works.
In civilised communities, ideas are continually advancing, progress
realising itself by the gradual modification of intellectual and manual
labour; then, at a given moment, under the impulse of a superior
intelligence, the masses perceive the ground that has been gained,
they cry, A miracle ! they do honour to him who has made manifest the
hidden thought, which is to shed such glory upon the century. It is
thus great epochs are formed. Such is the history of the Renaissance in
Italy as in France. Not that we wish to detract from the fame of Leo
X., of Louis XII., or of Francis I. Our intention is only to establish
that we must seek the origin of great social movements far beyond the
epoch of their brilliant manifestation.
As relates specially to ceramics, the Italian Renaissance is the
invention of the tin enamel, or " invetriatura " of common earthenware ;
it is the application of this enamel by Luca della Robbia upon terra cotta
sculpture, and the affixing it upon table wares which, skilfully decorated
with subjects taken from the great masters of these new schools of
painting, were to rival and even replace the works of the goldsmith.
It is superfluous in the present day to say that the beginnings of
this process are much anterior to the sixteenth century. In a con
scientious study made by Mr. Drury Fortnum, of the ancient disks
of earthenware incrusted in the churches of Italy, he has established,
contrary to the accredited fables of a more ancient date, that we must not
see in these disks, trophies brought by the Pisans from their excursions
against the Arabs, but a decoration invented in the country itself, a
R

242 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
consequence of the discovery of the processes of enamelling terra cotta.
One sole fragment in the church of Santa Cecilia, at Pisa, is of Persian
origin. Here then, from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, is Italian
pottery applied to monuments, first, with simple ornaments upon
" engobe," then with enamelled glaze, and lastly enriched with metallic
lustres, inspired, they say, by the sight of the golden wares produced
by the Moors of the Balearic Islands.
Scattered works of the fourteenth century, which cannot be attached
to any particular school, show the advanced state of enamelled
earthenware. In the Louvre, is a votive plaque representing St. Crispin
and St. Crispinian surrounded by shoemaker's tools, and making the
long pointed shoes (poulaines) of exaggerated length. This piece, by
its skilful make, the whiteness of its glaze, and the harmony of the
whole, resembles more a Persian tile than the rude attempts of a
manufacture in its infancy.
Another curious work is a dish or basin having at the bottom the
figure of a horseman wearing poulaines, the cap (bicoquet) and tight
vest (justaucorps) of the fifteenth century ; he raises a goblet to his lips ;
the two Gothic letters TE, placed beside the glass, sufficiently express the
meaning : " To thee," says the one who drinks ; it is his parting good
wishes or the stirrup cup. Round the principal subject are scrolls com
posed of foliage and kinds of tulips, of which the almost Persian style
shows that the potter derived his inspirations, as well as his processes,
from Oriental faiences. And, indeed, as we shall show later, when stating
the different centres of Italian enamelled wares, it is not from the
Balearic Islands they derived their processes and their taste, but from
the East, and this is the more true as concerns lustred pottery.
Another piece, an altar reredos (retable), representing the Entomb
ment, is composed of detached groups combining in one common action.
This sculpture, almost in detached relief (ronde bosse), shows the
transition from the ornaments of sculptured wood to the bas-reliefs of
enamelled terra cotta. The unknown artist has signed with a Gothic
G, and in a large cartouche, the chronogram 1486, which leaves no
doubt as to its date. But has this work a character corresponding with its
date ? should we not rather put it back at least thirty years ? We will try
to prove it. If, as we have just said, ideas and facts advance slowly and
progressively, centres and distances must have an incontestable action
upon the acceleration or slowness of the movement. Three or four
hundred years back, writing was scarce and accessible only to the few ;
travelling was onerous and difficult, the great centres alone dated

RENAISSANCE— ITALY— MAJOLICA. 243
facts ; elsewhere, they only caught the distant and feeble echo of the
proclamations of fame, so that those behind the central movement
continued in their course to cultivate traditions forgotten elsewhere.
Such, in our idea, is the history of this Entombment : made in 1486, it
shows us the gropings of the first half of the fifteenth century. These
long figures, of ascetic expression, clothed in drapery with deep folds,
are the last manifestation of the mystic feeling of the Gothic school ;
the richness of the textiles with polychrome embroidery, the almost
antique style of the ornaments sculptured upon the tomb of Christ, are
indeed indicative of Renaissance ideas; but these tendencies almost
insensibly disappear and efface themselves under the traditions of the
past. Hence the cause of the hesitation and even anachronisms so often
to be remarked in works of the epochs of transition, and which sometimes
baffle criticism.
As a work of art, the Entombment is of remarkable importance.
It presents all the technical perfection of the sculpture of the Della
Robbia without being an imitation; and therefore fully proves that the
Florentine statuary applied to the decorations of churches, processes
perfected and well known, the honour of which has been assigned to him
because he has used them with more brilliancy and study than his
predecessors. As we speak of the Della Robbia and of their works, let us give a
slight sketch of a family that has exercised, it cannot be denied, great
influence over the development of majolica.
Luca, head of the family, was born either in 1399 or 1400 ; like
most great Italian artists, he devoted his youth to the study of the
goldsmith's art, and then, feeling his instincts develop themselves, he
entered upon high sculpture, and, towards 1438, executed his celebrated
marble bas-relief, of the singing boys, placed on the tribune of the
organ in the church of Santa Maria de' Fiori at Florence. Overwhelmed
with the orders which attended his success, Luca sought, according to
Vasari, a more expeditious process than the chisel, or the multiplied
operations of casting. Now, as statuary, he was accustomed to first
render his idea in an earthen model, of which the finished marble was
only the reproduction, so it occurred to him to bake his clay model
and protect it from the pernicious influence of atmospheric changes by
covering it with a vitrifiable and impervious coating — the enamel of tin
and lead. His first works of this kind refer to a date perhaps anterior
to 1438 ; the oldest attributed to him by Vasari is the bas-relief of tbe
Resurrection, placed over the bronze door of the sacristy of Santa Maria
R 2

244 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
de' Fiori ; but there is no mention of them in building accounts preserved
from this epoch. The second bas-relief, the Ascension, placed in 1446,
shows certain modifications in the colours ; green, violet brown, and
yellow, appear. In the first group the white figures were detached
simply from a lapis blue ground. M. H. Barbet de Jouy, in his
excellent history of the Delia Robbia family, justly observes that Luca
was distinguished from his successors by the judicious use of the processes
of vitrifiable painting ; a statuary, he never swerved from the principles
of his art, often he reserves the flesh tints, and lays the white enamel
only on the accessories ; always a moderate colouring heightens the
draperies and frames of his soft compositions ; the mouldings are few,
and if he surrounds them with a vegetable wreath, the flowers are of a soft
relief and selected from among the most simple, as the wild briar or the
lily. The pure, often Raffaelesque, style of the works of Luca are not
the sole indications by which they may be recognised ; his j>rocesses are
all special ; the enamel he uses is thin, liquid, almost transparent ; the
blue of his grounds soft and pale. After this induction, we may attribute
to him the bas-relief of the Virgin adoring the Infant Jesus, in the
Louvre. Luca's works, spread over all the churches in Tuscany, cease
about 1471 ; he died in 1481, leaving his traditions and his inheritance
to Andrea, his nephew and assistant.
Andrea was born in 1457, and was therefore forty-four years old at
the death of his uncle. Doubtless many of his works were confounded
with those of Luca, but we know that to him we owe the figures of
children which decorate the hospice of the Innocents at Florence,
although they approach the style and taste of Luca. Wffere he
becomes himself is in the fabrication of medallions, altar pictures, and
tabernacles, easily transported to all places, and adapting themselves to
every want. In general, this fabrication is skilful, the composition
pleasing, the countenances expressive, but a little spoiled by the
mannerism of the style ; his figures short, the extremities slim, draperies
stiff, and the frames, made heavy by the abuse of heads of cherubs,
and by the substitution of fruit for flowers, appear more rich than
graceful. When he died, 1528, Andrea made his four sons depositaries
of his ceramic secrets. The eldest, Fra Ambrosio, had taken in 1495
the Dominican habit ; the three others Giovanni, Girolamo, and Luca,
had varied fortunes. A common work of the family decorates the
hospital of the Ceppo, at Pistoja, begun 1525, and finished 1586 bv
other hands.

RENAISSANCE— ITALY— MAJOLICA. 245
Generally of inferior merit, the works of Giovanni are signed, and
therefore can lead to no confusion. Those of Luca and Girolamo are
extolled by Vasari, yet it is to be believed that the greater number of
enamelled wares, of secondary value, attributed to Luca the elder,
proceeded from their workshops. Luca settled at Rome ; Girolamo went
to France to superintend the decoration of the chateau de Madrid, in
the Bois de Boulogne. After beginning the building in 1528, he was
obliged to give it up in 1550, through the jealous intrigues of Philibert
Delorme. In 1553 he returned to Italy ; but when, in 1 559, Primaticcio
replaced the disgraced Delorme, Girolamo was reinstated as director of
the works, in which post he remained till his death about 1567. The
chateau de Madrid, styled ironically by Delorme the "chateau de
faience," abounded in enamelled terra cottas. Unfortunately, little
remains to us of this brilliant decoration, so adapted to a climate like
ours. When the villa was demolished, in 1792, the terra cottas were set
aside and sold to a pavior, who converted them into cement.
Such was this family, whose name represents a special style and a
new phase in the potter's art. But we must not exaggerate ; the Della
Robbias had competitors and pupils. Luca the elder received in his
workshop a certain Agostino da Duccio, whom Vasari considers to be his
brother, but who had no relationship with him except that of talent.
Agostino's works bear great analogy to those of Luca, and he repro
duced the musical choirs of his master to decorate the front of the
church of San Bernardino, built in 1461.
In the first years of the sixteenth century, a Florentine artist carried
the majolica art into Spain, and several of his bas-reliefs decorate the front
of the church of Santa Paula, at Seville ; this artist is Niculoso Francesco
of Pisa, who by his style appears to have been reared in the primitive
workshops of Tuscany, and perhaps by the Delia Robbias themselves.
Nor should it be forgotten that Vasari considers Luca the elder to
have been the first to apply vitrifiable colours upon earthenware ; if the
contrary is now proved, it is not the less possible that Luca painted upon
pottery, and that the artists of his school may have been able thenceforth
to unite bas-reliefs to a decoration of enamelled tiles, as we find abun
dantly in Spain and Portugal. As to enamelling on flat surfaces or table
ware, its beginning is still concealed under an impenetrable veil, but,
from the moment that the secret of this kind of painting began to spread,
we find it divided into groups and specialise itself by localities. It is, in
fact, that the schools characterise themselves by the indelible sign of the
talents of their chiefs, and perpetuate themselves by the energy of local

246 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
patronage. To study majolicas to any useful purppse, we must take
them all in one general glance, seeking the physiognomy imprinted
upon each locality by the artists or inspiring prince, and throwing into
a second rank those pieces due to the individual industry of unknown
artists whose manner we can distinguish, and whose monograms we
collect, but whose works form no part in the general history of the art.
Before approaching the subject, let us remember that the Italian
enamelled wares are painted on the raw surface of the piece and fired
in the porcelain furnace ; they acquire thereby an extraordinary
freedom of tone, and a plumbiferous glaze laid over the painting gives it
a richness and brilliancy quite marvellous. We should observe there is
a distinction, difficult to establish, between true enamelled earthenware
and a very similar fabrication, which old authors, especially Passeri,
term " mezza-majolica." This last should belong to the class of glazed
(vernisse) pottery, because its whiteness is not due to oxide of tin, but
to a thin coating of white clay called " slip " or "¦ engobe," overlaid
upon the paste to conceal its colour; the painting being executed
upon this white earth, it was covered with a plumbiferous glaze of
mother-of-pearl lustre, which, according to Passeri, formed the reputation
of the manufactory at Pesaro.
The lustres, mother-of-pearl, gold, and ruby red of the wares, do not
depend upon the nature of the glaze, but are derived from the use of
certain metals revivified by a skilful manipulation in the furnace.
What proves it is that the white parts are never iridescent ; the yellow
and blue alone are lustred under the influence of the rays of light. As
to the question whether all the lustred pieces are of mezza-majolica,
it has long been settled by Passeri to the contrary ; the most brilliant
lustre heightens paintings applied upon a white enamel perfectly charac
terised ; while the mezza-majolicas, decorated with divers colours, have
none of their parts susceptible of being iridised or of affecting the
copper lustre. A. — Tuscany.
Chaffagiolo. — Nothing is more frequent, in ceramic history, than
manufactories of importance being destined to preserve the names of the
most obscure villages. Of these, Oiron and Sevres furnish us with ex
amples in France ; while, on the other hand, certain minds persist in
attaching the name of Henri II. to the fine faience of the Renaissance,
and qualify, as royal porcelain, the works executed by the company first
established at Vincennes.

RENAISSANCE— ITALY— MAJOLICA. 247
An analogous fact presents itself in Italy. It has long been a
matter of astonishment that Tuscany, the seat of light and civilisation,
should have remained a stranger to the movements which impelled all
the other provinces of Italy to the fabrication of painted faience ;
then, on seeking further, it appeared that it was not in Florence
itself that we should find the evidence of her having joined in the
general movement, but in a little centre scarcely inscribed on the map.
Situated on the road from Bologna to Florence, and in the neighbour
hood of the first of these cities, Chaffagiolo or Caffaggiolo (for the spelling
of the name varies on the pieces of its ware) is the place where Cosmo
the Great built his country house, and, according to the custom of
the times, established the artists whose works and discoveries he
wished to encourage. It is from there that has issued the first Tuscan
majolica. Let us first give the characteristics by which this ware may be
recognised, and then proceed to examine the chronological series of its
principal pieces. The blue in light strokes, in mass, or laid on as a
ground, is always dark, almost blackish; the strokes gone over again by
the brush are sufficiently visible to show that cobalt has been used in a
thick state ; a bright orange yellow still more opaque, and having nothing
analogous to it in other fabrics, harmonises with the blue, and comes
out the better from being laid upon a very white enamel. The other
colours are naturally lost in such company ; the copper green is peculiarly
liquid and semi-transparent.
Some pieces, characterised by these special enamels, bear the name
of the manufactory, usually accompanied by a monogram composed of a P
combined with an I or S, and accessory signs. These marks, therefore, are
those of the manufactory, and not a personal signature, for a considerable
interval in the dates and an absolute difference of style separate pieces
with the same mark.
If, as everything leads one to think, Luca della Robbia acquired
his knowledge of the stanniferous enamel at Chaffagiolo, we ought to
find works executed at the beginning of the manufacture among
pieces approaching to the Gothic style. To this period may some
pieces be assigned, enamelled only on one side, the coarse ware left un-
coated on the reverse; the orange-tinted borders relieved by white
and blue arabesques of archaic style; the central subjects of Gothic
designs (one explained by a legend in characters of the end of the
fourteenth century), exhibit in their heavy style of drawing, copies
from early wood engravings, the simple efforts of dawning industry. In

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Fig. 77.

the historic scenes, the costumes are those the painter had before his
eyes ; in sacred subjects, one still recognises the slim-bodied figures,
sculptured in wood or stone, and muffled up with exaggerated nimbi, the
draperies with deep folds arranged according to
routine. The picture is first outlined in blue
alone; the orange red serves barely to tint the
hair and lighten up the sacred nimbus ; later,
some yellow and green washes heighten the
ground and the costumes. At last, in the fifteenth
century, the masters appear, the churches are
covered with frescoes, and the public edifices are
peopled by the statuary. The style shows itself,
and schools are founded. The potters are sur
rounded with designs, which they transfer to the
white enamel ; wall tiles show us the figures of
angels with lilies in their hands ; escutcheons
encircled with graceful arabesques; all traced
with the fine blue of Chaffagiolo and sparingly
relieved by a few accessory colours (Fig. 77).
Next, with processes still imperfect, and with
colours of little brilliancy, the Chaffagiolo artists attempt high
art painting. In the Fountaine collection is a cup of coarse clay
" crazed," and rudely painted, representing the Virgin with the Infant
Jesus on her knees. The whole effect is grand, and already manifests
the powerful Florentine school. Underneath are letters, now unfor
tunately inexplicable, but which probably designate the name of the
author of this brilliant attempt (M. 1).

TILE OF CHAFFAGIOLO.

AccyHYA

M. 1.
Un the threshold of the sixteenth century, when majolica has taken
its place among the furniture of palaces ; when gigantic dishes and
vases of rich forms are paraded upon sculptured sideboards, " dressoirs,"
the Florentine potters boldly meet the greatest technical difficulties ;
their brilliant warm enamels are brought, like those of the Chinese, to
encounter audacious contacts, but, by dint of art, harmony comes out of
chaos ; the bright red, yellow, blue and white distribute themselves in

RENAISSANCE— ITAL Y— MAJOLICA.

249

partial grounds, in arabesques and borders, with the most marvellous
effect (Fig. 78). The escutcheons shine out in the midst of this pomp
of decoration and colour, and show their varied charges, their metals
clearly expressed ; " or " represented by a yellow as glittering as the
metal itself ; " argent " replaced by oxide of tin as shining as a medal
from the mint ; " gules " of flaming red, and " azure " equal in intensity
to and brilliant as lapis-lazuli. The dates of 1507 to 1509 are upon
these masterpieces of their style, with the characteristic monogram of
the manufactory.
Here arises a delicate question. According to old authors, Passeri
among others, the lustred pottery would be of the most ancient date.

Fig. 78.

CUP WITH GROTESQUES (A CANDELLIERl) CHAFFAGIOLO (COLL. SIR R. WALLACE).
We have already said that the polychrome pieces belonged to a much
earlier period than the golden works; but at what moment did the
taste for these metallic lustres invade Italy ? Why suddenly renounce a
pallet, furnished with such a variety of colour to fall back upon these
yellow and blue paintings, wdiich only attract the eye by a capricious
iridisation? Tuscany, notwithstanding its severe
taste, did not escape this passing aberration. In the
collection of Dr. Guerard is a large dish, with the
shield of the Medici, which might have been thought
to have issued from the workshop of Pesaro, if this

M. 2.

ICIOUS I

M. 3.

cypher (M. 2) did not appear in the centre of the reverse. Signs nearly

250 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
approaching to these, more cursive (M. 3), inscribed upon wares of golden
yellow and ruby red, prove that Chaffagiolo did not remain, on this point,
either beyond or behind the movement of the other Italian centres. It
would appear that this establishment had three styles almost simulta
neously : the rich arabesque decoration of which we have just been speak
ing ; the lustred ware which may be seen in the Louvre (No. 60 and 518,
Coll.Campana) ; and lastly, a fabrication most carefully executed, in which
art displays itself in all its power, showing the charming characteristics of
the transition from the simplicity of the Gothic to the elevated style of
the Renaissance. The most remarkable example of this last series is a
fine dish belonging to M. de Basilewski, the subject taken from Virgil's
Eclogues. One would think it by Botticelli, so much one recognises the
masterly freedom of the Florentine school. The borders consist of a
frieze of genii mounted on fantastic animals, terminating in scrolls on
a dark blue ground ; the general tone is soft and delicate, and were it
not for some touches of the characteristic bright red, one would not
recognise in these pieces the bold pallet of the Tuscan workshop. The
dish is marked with the P. S. of the lustred piece of the Medici. But
there are other pieces no less precious, aud signed differently, which are
evidently by the same hand; a conqueror on his throne, surrounded
by prisoners, to whom he appears to be addressing a speech, forms
the subject of a dish decorated with the same borders as the preceding,
executed with unequalled delicacy: the reverse, covered with blue
scrolls, has, for subject, a cupid holding a dolphin ; upon a ribbon is
inscribed the word GONELA. Another sweetmeat plate has the same
border, but the central medallion of yellow ground is covered with fan
tastic birds in reserve heightened with blue. It has (M. 4) the mark S. P.,

M. 4.
and the word Chaffagiuolo ; above is the trident, a maritime emblem,
which it is not without interest to associate with the dolphin of the
preceding piece, as it may bear an allusion to the name of the artist.
There are, then, two very marked divisions ; the one with bright,
almost violent, enamels satisfy the requirements of a rich and masterly
ornamentation. This division corresponds with the end of the fifteenth
and beginning of the sixteenth century, when the Florentine Republic,
governed by the Medici princes, was about to form an alliance with
Rome, and to furnish her with the two Medici pontiffs, Leo X. and

RENAISSANCE— ITALY— MAJOLICA. 251
Clement VII. ; hence we find cartouches inclosing the celebrated " palle,"
and the letters, S.P.Q.F., " Senatus populusque Florentinus," the senate
and people of Florence, with the old motto, S.P.Q.R., " Senatus populusque
Romanus." Two other legends, " Semper " and " Glovis," accompany
the above or the arms of Leo X., and appear, by their frequency, to offer
another character by which to recognise the products of Chaffagiolo.*
The second division comprises the works of art properly so called,
when, to give to the human figure all its importance, the painter avoids
the use of brilliant enamels and keeps himself within - a quiet scale of
colours, appropriate to refinement of drawing and finish of detail.
An intermediate style, which would appear rather an individual
manifestation than a particular phase of the workshop, exhibits some
interesting pieces. One of these, in the musee de Cluny, is a votive
plaque, the colours incorporated with the glaze, archaic ornaments,
and the monogram of Christ in Gothic characters; around is the
legend Nicolaus de Ragnolis ad honorem Dei et sancti Michaelis
fecit fieri ano 1475. The other represents a celestial warrior resting
upon his lance after having conquered the dragon ; is it St. George or
the archangel Michael, to whom the above plaque was consecrated ?
The tints, thin and transparent, of a warm colouring, spread themselves
upon these pieces without showing the white enamel. Some, less
ancient, show the ordinary barred P, and we have not the slightest
doubt that these are of Florentine fabrication.
The manufactory of Chaffagiolo lasted during the whole of the sixteenth
century, following the various changes of taste. M. Delange, in his
translation of Passeri, mentions a plate signed " lu Chaffaggiolo fato
adj 21 di junio 1590." The piece, No. 2106 of the musee de Cluny,
Diana and Actoeon, with the inscription, " In Gafagizotto," bears the
character of the decline ; and the cups with blue interlacings, like those
of the Louvre, Nos. 150 and 151, thus marked (M. 5), are
also of a later period, but their prototype, charged
with the arms and motto of Leo X., shows forth its
brilliancy in the musee de Cluny.
This manufactory had also branch workshops. In the M- 5-
collection of Mr. Drury Fortnum is a plate marked in addition to the
customary sign, with the initials A. F., and " In Galiano nell' ano 1547."
The subject is Mutius Scaevola.
* "Semper" is an old family motto of the Medicis. ''Glovis" reversed reads "SiVolg,"
a motto taken by Giuliano, son of Lorenzo, when appointed Gonfaloniere of the Church, and
meaning that Fortune, who had hitherto frowned upon him, had now turned in his favour.

a

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Siena. — Works of the best time of this fabric are rare, and we may
suppose some have been confounded with the products of Chaffagiolo.
The South Kensington -museum furnishes the type, a deep plate
of which the central medallion represents St. Jerome in the desert;
underneath we read : " Fata i Siena da M°. Benedetto." This Benedetto
was a distinguished painter ; his pure drawing, and masterly execution,
recommended him no less than the "porcellana" arabesques which
encircle the subject. We restore to him willingly another cup in the
collection of Baron Alphonse de Rothschild, where the same camaieu is
painted upon a yellow ground with medallions ; underneath are blue
arabesques surrounding a univalve shell of the genus Bulimus.
It appears to us that enamelled statuary was attempted at Siena ;
a bas-relief in the Louvre, representing the Entombment, is evidently
a deviation from the Delia Robbia school ; below, on a banderole, un
fortunately partly broken, we read: " FRE BERNARDINVS DE
SIENA— IN B. S.— Satus," the date is illegible. Has this Fra Ber
nardino made or simply offered the work? Whichever it may be,
there are few pieces in our collection of the Siena bottega ; we must
traverse two centuries to find it again in full activity.
Pisa. — This is a city, which has been only spoken of by authors, as
the centre of a considerable export of enamelled wares, in exchange for
which, Spain particularly, sent back her golden products. Certainly
the position of Pisa, near the mouth of the Arno, made it naturally an
emporium for the merchandises of Tuscany ; but this post, important as
it was, should not make us forget the share taken by the city in the
fabrication of majolica. A magnificent vase, belonging to Baron Gustave
de Rothschild, permits us to vindicate her rights. The decoration
is principally composed of grotesques upon a white ground. On the
two sides are persons sheltered under a canopy, the elegant handles
formed of interlaced serpents, and under them the word PISA is
inscribed on tablets reserved in ornamental frames. By its form and
manner of decoration, this work almost explains the forgetfulness of
writers of the sixteenth century ; it bears so strong a resemblance to the
renowned fabrications of Urbino, that they must have confounded it
with the last. Yet there exists a characteristic difference; the
grotesque vases of Urbino are overlaid with " Marzacotto,1' a lead and
glass glaze which gives the transparency of a varnished painting : at
Pisa, the decoration laid upon the unbaked clay preserves, after firing,
an almost rude vigour, and leaves the glaze of a dead white, peculiar
to the fabric.

RENAISSANCE— ITALY— MAJOLICA. 253
Florence. — Had the capital of Tuscany its furnaces? or did it
only use the products of Chaffagiolo ? These are questions impossible
now to resolve. Vincenzo Lazari, basing himself upon historic docu
ments, says that Flaminio Fontana, of Urbino, justly appreciated by the
grand-duke Francesco Maria, was brought to Florence and kept there
several years to decorate vases ; he adds, that the works of Flaminio
being much more imprinted with the style of Urbino than with that of
Tuscany, it would be very difficult to separate the pieces painted by
him in his own country from those executed in others. We shall not
seek to find if there exist Tuscan vases by the hand of Fontana, we
will only mention this, which has a great importance : if, from 1574 to
1587, Francesco Maria occupied himself still with the renown of his
fabrics, it is that the ceramic art had never been given up by the
Medici ; only the Florentine works, executed towards the middle of the
sixteenth century, became mixed up by their style and make with
those of other celebrated Italian manufactories, and it becomes im
possible now to distinguish them. So, by the side of tbe ordinary
productions affected by the exigencies of commerce, the Medici princes
sought to bring out an invention which would add to the glory of their
country. Cosmo the Great had had his laboratories at Chaffagiolo ; he
established in his castel of San Marco an experimental workshop,
where was to be produced, almost in a practical state, the first European
translucent porcelain.
According to Vasari, Bernardo Buontalenti was the agent of this
discovery ; it was not a pure kaolinic porcelain, but a composite paste,
having for basis, quartz and a vitreous frit, with a small quantity of the
kaolin of Vicenza ; it is what Brongniart has classed under the name of
hybrid or mixed porcelain, because it contains a part of the natural
elements of Chinese porcelain, and a part of those used in making soft
porcelain. In 1581, the experiments of the grand-duke had produced their
fruits, and he already sent presents of his translucent pottery to the
other sovereigns of Europe. Two pieces are preserved in the museum at
Sevres, bottles with rectangular sides and cylindrical neck, imitations of
the boxes for tea of the extreme East ; on one side is the rich escutcheon
of Philip II., of Spain, and among the decorations is a cartouche inscribed
with the date above mentioned. One would not dare to assert that the
works of Francesco Maria met with complete success : the products of his
laboratory leave more or less to be desired ; the paste is often greyish or
made yellow by the fire; the enamel is not always equally glazed; the

254

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

camaieu for the decoration is most often in cobalt, and sometimes
heightened by strokes of manganese ; the camaieu, we say, is rarely
intense and of equal tone, the excess of heat causing it to evaporate or
to run into the fluid glaze whenever it has been exposed to the direct
action of the fire. In short, the grand-ducal porcelain has all the
characters of trial pieces, more or less successful, and not those of a
regular fabrication. Yet the recipes preserved in the laboratory
book of San Marco, allow us to recognise that they might have given
regularity to the processes by operating on a larger scale. Such as
they are, and with the means employed, the results must cause sur
prise, and must secure to Francesco Maria an eminent rank among the
agents of progress in this century of intellectual movement. The
specimens preserved in collections show that the Medici porcelain
affected two forms corresponding to their several destinations. The
first is always in the pure Italian style ;
decoration " a groteschi," as in the faiences
of white ground, and often the Medici
arms with the palle, and their special crown
of trefoils and fleurs de lis alternating
with iron points, indicate a personal affec
tion to the grand-duke; this porcelain,
styled royal, is marked underneath with
six palle or balls (M. 6), five disposed round
m. 6. the torteau of France, and each inscribed
with a letter, to be read thus : F. M. M. E. D. II. Franciscus Medici
Magnus Etruriae dux secundus. '"
The other form more frequent, is that of the pieces distributed to
spread the fame of the discovery; there the ornaments
are more particularly borrowed from the East, and specially
from Persia ; bouquets of various flowers, interlacings, net
works of chrysanthemums, birds perched upon trees in
flower, furnish the surface of the dishes and the roundness
of the vases. The mark of these productions is no longer
the ducal arms, but the cupola of Santa Maria de' Fiori,
with the cypher of Francesco Maria. The prince thus
_^. gave a national character to the new pottery ; and by
\f introducing the masterpiece of Brunelleschi in connection
JL ^~ with one of the most modest of the arts, he affirmed
M. 7. the greatness of Florentine civilisation, and recalled the

solidarity of all the products of intelligence.

RENAISSANCE— ITALY— MAJOLICA. 255
Francesco Maria is not the only Italian prince, who, struck with the
purity of Oriental pottery, has sought to render its secrets accessible to
his own country. Vasari speaks of efforts made towards the same end
by Alfonso II., duke of Ferrara. The Marquis Giuseppe Campori, of
Modena, goes further : he proves that, at Venice, attempts made by an
unknown artist had excited the emulation of Alfonso I. ; this prince tried
to attach to him the inventor, and develop his discovery, but he failed
in his undertaking. As to Alfonso II., certain documents establish, as
we shall say in its proper place, what share belongs to him in this work
of progress. At all events, the Medici alone have left us their porcelain ;
the pieces are there appreciable for all, it is therefore but just to assign
to them the honour of having vulgarised a secret sought after by all
Europe, and which was not to pass into the industrial domain until a
century later, thanks to the perseverance of French genius.
In his travels in Italy, M. Eugene Piot has found the trace of
experimental works directed at Pesaro by Guidobaldo della Rovere,
with the assistance of the Maestri Jacopo da Sant' Agnolo, Oratio detto
Ciarfuglia, and Camillo del Pelliciaio; a Maestro Francesco Guagni
d'Urbino will also have preserved the great secret at the court of
Emanuel Philibert, of Savoy; but these attempts ought rather to
register themselves in the history of ideas than of facts.
Asciano. — Here is a ceramic centre no doubt of more importance
than may be supposed, and upon which Brongniart gives the following
information : " Luca found in this town a pottery with good kilns, which
enabled him to furnish on the spot a large altar-piece for the church of
the Minori Conventuali, representing the Virgin with the angel Raphael,
the young Tobias, and St. Anthony, all painted in most brilliant colours,
the size of life." An establishment where such works could be executed
should have left something more than a vague remembrance.
Monte Lupo. — Situated near Florence this bottega is less known for
its majolica than by its brown varnished ware, not that it ought to be
considered as only producing common objects for local consumption;
Monte Lupo, like Avignon, furnishes a proof that with the most simple
elements of art one can yet satisfy people of taste. The clay used is of
a bright red, generally glazed with manganese brown, and ornamented
with elegant raised work. In some pieces the relief ornaments
have been overlaid (engobes) with a white or yellow clay on the
brown ground. Elaborate forms, rosettes or acanthus, with mould
ings carefully outlined, relieve most of the large pieces. Some
times gilding has been judiciously laid upon borders on central bosses.

256 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
We have met with pieces in which light arabesques, intended to imitate
gilding, were traced in yellow enamel upon the glaze. To Monte Lupo
are also attributed moulded vases, glazed with brown, and marbled with
melted spots of white enamel. The bottega, besides, does not appear
to have been a stranger to the style which flourished around here ; in
the museum at Sevres is a cup on a stem, well worked, of a fine white
enamel and polychrome decoration ; a twisted cord round the edge.
Upon a yellow ground are ill-painted figures, surrounded with scrolls
and foliage of poor taste and hard tints ; under the edge is " Dipinta
Giovinale Tereni da Montelupo." This piece of the decline announces
already the transformation of majolicas ; it is to be supposed, therefore,
that Tereni had not been the importer of the style to
this important centre. Among the brown glazed pieces
M. 8.*°* is one marked thus (M. 8).
San Miniate llo. — This little locality of the bailiwick of Florence,
also fabricated towards the end of the sixteenth century. This is
the inscription on a piece which induces the belief: Si fece. questo
piatelCo : in. bottegha. di. Bechone. del. Nano. in. sa. Miniatelo.
chuesto. f. fato. Aghostino. di Mo. a. di cinqe. di. Gugnio. 1581.
" This little plate has been made in the shop of Becone del Nano at San
Miniatello, and it has been made by Agostino di Mo, the fifth day of
June, 1581."
Unknown Manufactory. — It would appear strange to mention here
a particular centre not determinable, of which the products might be
classed with more or less probability under one of the preceding
rubrics. But we prefer sowing doubt to error; the one impels to
research, the other leads to discouragement.
We not unfrequently meet with majolicas well made, white, of a
good style and ancient date, of which the decoration is simply tinted in
pale blue and yellow. This parsimony in the enamels certainly does not
proceed from economy of workmanship, for the most interesting piece we
have been permitted to observe formed part of a service destined for the
grand-duke of Tuscany. " Which ?" they will say ; that is what we are
going to try to establish. The object is a portable spezeria, or spice box,
of rectangular form, having behind a vertical partition cut out at the top
and furnished with a handle in the form of an S. This division is
attached to two others lateral, and descending in an ogee to the front
edge. On the top of the back one is soldered a shell inscribed
IZVCHER, sugar ; below are two places surrounded by a moulding in
relief, made to keep in two cruets; the words OLIO, ACETO, telling

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y.— MAJOLICA. 257

the contents of these recipients; in the middle of the front edge, is
another shell similar to that above, and meant to hold salt, SALES ;
then lastly, the two side divisions are prolonged by two spiral curves
inclosing the words PEPE, and I. BPEZIO, all written in the letters
generally used in the beginning of the sixteenth century ; the smallness
of the places reserved for sugar and the other condiments shows also
a period when these exotic products appeared parsimoniously, even
at the table of princes.
At the back of the box, and on each side of the handle, is the grand-
ducal crown traversed by two
branches of laurel (M. 9) ; now
one prince only could unite these
emblems — Cosmo de' Medici,
son of Giovanni, warrior like his
father, conqueror of the enemies
within and without, and created
grand-duke by the Pope in
1569. Doubtless this date would M. 9.
appear very advanced by the side of the characteristics given above ;
but it becomes incontestable from the evidence of history ; that is
why we would not assimilate the piece either to the works of
Chaffagiolo, more complicated and of more perfect art, or to those
of Pisa, generally "confounded with the works of Urbino. This spice
box is certainly come from a backward, unaffected centre, which followed
at its ease the. traditions of the century, and took its leisure for
progress. He whom a crown and sceptre came unexpectedly to seek
in his retreat, did not disdain to cause his> ensigns to be placed upon the
modest pottery of"this workshop. B.—The Marches.
Faenza. — Some writers consider this manufactory to be the most
ancient in Italy;- this is caused by their attributing to Faenza all
the products of Chaffagiolo, and the greater part of the mezze-majoliche
of hard tone and archaic design, which have since been restored to Deruta
and other primitive furnaces. To demonstrate the antiquity of the
Faentine workshop, they cite a pavement of tiles in the chapel of St.
Sebastian in the church of St. Petronio, at Bologna ; where, with the date
of 1487, we read : — " Bologniesus, Betini fecit ; — Xabeta. Be. faventicie ;
— Cornelia Be. faventicie ; — Zelita Be. faventicie ; — Petrus Andre de Fave.
s

258 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
It is evident that these names are those of a family of Bolognese donors,
who, in accordance with a custom frequent in ancient times, have held to
the honour of each signing the part of the pavement, the object of their
offering. There is therefore no inference to be drawn from these
inscriptions to establish the origin of the tilts, nor can one think of
making of the members of the Betini family, a colony of majolica
artists. There is no doubt that at the epoch when the Delia Rovere and the
Medici radiated from their centres the light of the Renaissance, we
must seek the first interesting products of Faenza. The study of
ancient works shows that true art was long in developing itself there,
while the science of ornament arrived rapidly at perfection.
In his 'Piazza Universale,' Garzoni writes in 1485: "The majolicas
of Faenza are white and polished, and one can no more confound them
with those of Treviso, than one would take puff balls for truffles."
Vincenzo Lazari repeats this description in almost identical terms,
and declares one can recognise the Faentine majolicas by the softness of
the tints, the correctness of the drawing, and the whiteness of the
enamel at the back. It is evident that the two writers do not speak
of the same thing, although each is right in his particular line.
All the pieces of Faenza are, in fact, " polished ;" that is, covered
over with a rich glazed marzacotto ; many, among the older pieces, are
enamelled in " berettino," pale blue or starch colour ; in the others, the
white is pretty pure ; often, a broad border of blue ground has, in a
paler camaieu or in various enamels, full-faced masks, with pear-
shaped heads, terminated below by a beard widened into acanthus leaves,
which expand and mix themselves with elegant scrolls. This style of
decoration is very characteristic ; we find it at the musee de Cluny upon
a very old piece, the subject, in camaieu, representing the death of Holo-
fernes (976). There, upon a coarse blackish-blue ground, are charming
scrolls in bright colours and of delicate drawing ; a medallion of St. Peter
and a shield complete the ornamentation of the border ; upon the
cavetto of the piece are rich black arabesques on a yellow ground. The
first remark that suggests itself upon this piece, is the timidity of the
drawing of the figures, the painful and infantine composition of the
modelling as contrasted with the scientific treatment of the accessories.
It is the same with the cup (No. 2082), also in Cluny ; in the centre,
upon a pure white ground, is a horseman outlined and lightly shaded
with blue ; armed with a lance, he pierces a heart, coloured with
manganese, which lies on the ground before him ; the horse is heavily

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y— MAJOLICA.

drawn; the forms of the figures which are round, and without expression,
are still more lost by the softness and indecision of the modelling. We
find the same characters in some valuable pieces in the Rothschild
collection, where the persons often wear the contemporary costume
though representing scenes of mythology or sacred history. A deep
plate having for the subject Decollation of a saint, and signed underneath,
F-A-T-O-IN- •FAVENZA , has the same faults opposed to the same perfection
1523-
of ornament. One may therefore ask, where Vincenzo Lazari has
discovered this correctness of drawing, which he makes one of the cha
racteristics of Faentine majolica. Doubtless, he has found it in the
pieces which, from 1525, have issued from theu Casa Pirota, a workshop
still indeterminate, but of which all the products are worthy of estima
tion. Baron Gustave de Rothschild possesses one of its oldest and finest
specimens; a numerous composition, well painted and carefully studied,
showing the officers of Joseph stopping the caravan of the sons of Jacob,
and discovering in Benjamin's sack the cup he is accused of having
stolen. The inscription on the back runs thus : 1525 FATE. IN. FAE.
IOXEF. ICA. PIROTE. Two years separate then this piece from
the Decollation mentioned above, and this short interval of time suffices
for a complete transformation; there in the products of this period
where decorators make timid attempts at approaching historic com
positions, an artist has risen up and majolica has revealed itself in full
perfection. An undated dish, in the museum of Bologna, representing
the coronation of Charles V., was probably made in 1530, when the
celebrated rival of Francis I. received the investiture of the kingdom
of Lombardy. On the reverse is written : FATO IN FAENZA IN
CAXA PIROTA.
About the same time, a Faentine artist arrived at celebrity, Baldasara
Manara, of whom the Marquis d'Azeglio possesses a plate representing
Pyramus and Thisbe. Is it really at Faenza that he acquired his
reputation? It is doubtful, as another work of his appears to have
been made at Ferrara; it bears the effigy and name of Batistone
Castellino, standard bearer of Ercole II., and herewith we read :
"Mille cinque cento trentaseia djtri de luje Baldasara Manara faentin
faciebat." Now this formula, the Faentine, or of Faenza, is far from
having the same meaning as " in Faenza." The last indicates the
actual seat of residence ; the other the origin, the place whence it came.
The example of a similar ambiguity is immediately under our eyes :
s 2

260 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
on the reverse of a piece where the artist has painted the oft repeated
fable of Apollo and Marsyas is written, Apollo e Marsio fatto in la botega
di Maestro Vergillio da Faenza, 1558, Nicolo da Fano. Has the piece been
painted at Fano by a potter of Faenza, or at Faenza by an artist of
Fano ? The latter supposition is generally received, and is rendered
probable by a document found in the archives of the house of Este ; in
1556, Alfonso, duke of Ferrara, was buying majoliche of' one Nicolo, of
Faenza, who is certainly the artist who came originally from Fano ; it
is to him we attribute the -magnificent cup belonging to M. Basilewski,
where under an architectural portico is the figure of Charles V. dressed
in the ancient style, and wearing the radiated crown. The curious mono
gram (M. 10) gives us the name of the artist ; the legend,
" Charles V., emperor 1521," would prove that Nicolo
rendered illustrious the bottega of Faenza, even before the
M. io. establishment of the Casa Pirota, if this last had produced
nothing before 1525 ; the dish of the museum of Bologna, cited by
V. Lazari, also representing the coronation of Charles V., would lead to
the idea that the Pirota establishment and the painter Nicolo worked
in opposition. A German museum is said to possess a piece with the name of
Giovano Brama, of Palermo, with the date 1546, and the
I'M mention " in Faenza " with a cypher, which only appears upon
Y some pieces classed as of unknown locality. This cypher,
/ without any relation to the place of production, and the signa-
M- n- ture of the painter, inspires us with no confidence (M. 11).
In 1559, Maestro Pietro Paolo Stanghi received from the ducal
chamber of Ferrara a sum in part payment of a service executed for
the prince. Perhaps to this master may be attributed the plate of the
1561
Louvre, dated, IN FAEN. The whole surface is covered with a battle
CA
of ancient cavalry, and if the colours are less bright than that of the
Urbino, still there is a readiness of drawing and boldness in the attitudes
of the men and horses which show a masterly and practised hand.
It is also from an artist of Faenza of the name of Baldassar (is it again
Manara?) that Duke Alfonso of Ferrara ordered, in 1574, vases for his
pharmacy of Isola, and the cardinals sent in embassy carried Faentine
majolica to Rome and France. Henry III. was so, taken with this
pottery that, in November 1580, he ordered a large quantity, desiring
"that it might be sent to him with the quickness of enchantment."

RENAISSANCE— ITALY.— MAJOLICA. -61
The great fashion for this ware easily explains itself by the pure and
delicate style of its " istoriato " pieces, and the elegance and brightness of
those with arabesque decorations. • Yet we must reject the attributing
to Faenza the plaque formerly belonging to M. Pourtales, and which
reproduces with incredible delicacy of outline and perfect truthfulness
of style, the Resurrection of Christ, after a cartoon of Albert Diirer.
The flesh lightly tinted, certain pink tones in the draperies, and a
bright red in rare touches, carry back our thoughts more naturally to
the prized works of Tuscany, and particularly to those of Siena. This
plaque is marked with. the flourished (paraphe) (M. 12) cypher. We

<*j3

a

M. 12. M. 13.
again find the letters without the paraphe (M. 13) under a " confettiera"
ornamented with a landscape in the centre, and figures playing the
violin round the edge ; English writers describe this piece as of peculiar
delicacy and beauty of style. At the period when these specimens
were made, the art of drawing was still in its infancy at Faenza.
The progression of ornamental majolica may be thus laid down.
The first works are very simple, consisting of interlacings, successive
zones of varied colours relieved by zigzag ornaments, scrolls, or bands of
" sopra bianco," the last being designs of white enamel upon a pinkish
ground; all these encircle or frame portraits of hasty execution or
shields of difficult blazoning. The reverse of the piece is also very
characteristic; concentric lines alternately blue and yellow, whorls
coarsely painted, scrolls, zigzags, and imbrications are more or less orna
mented. In the centre of these secondary ornaments, closely resembling
those on the pieces of Chaffagiolo, are inscribed the marks of the various
w orkshops. One of frequent occurrence consists of a crossed circle, with a

»

M. 14. M. 15. M, 16.
crescent or pellet in one of its segments, or with the crossed crescent only
(M. 14, M. 15, and M. 16) ; almost all the pieces in " berettino," on plain
blue enamel, with the border formed by masks united by acanthus scrolls,
on a bright blue ground, are thus marked. Among the most remarkable

262 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
of these is a cup ornamented interiorly with an historic subject, and a
copy of the Parnassus of Raffaelle, both in the cabinet of M. Gustave de
'• Rothschild. We have also found the "crescent accompanied
«/ €j ^y a dot in conjunction with the letter Y, on a piece of
' 7 i Chaffagiolo (M. 17), easily to be recognised by the character
M. 17. °i" its enamels and the mottoes " Semper " and " Glovis."
The ornamental style in which this fabric excels is in the composition
of dishes on low stems (coupes) of thin paste, and divided by gadroons or
spiral flutings, rivalling in elegance the works of the goldsmith ; the com
partments of various grounds, bright blue, pure- yellow, green or black,
are relieved with arabesques reserved, or painted in brilliant colours.
Baron Dejean possesses a specimen black with the white arabesques
reserved ; this exceptional piece, which probably was ordered on some
occasion of mourning, has succeeded remarkably in its execution.
Vases and cups in quarters " a quartiere " in relief are rarely signed ;
but there is no difficulty in recognising their origin. We have found
, . / these marks (M. 18) upon a piece belonging to a
**K ' r*f good period. If the success of these dishes with
M. 18. harlequin compartments had led most of the
Italian manufacturers to seize upon this style of decoration, the Faentine
bottega always shows its superiority by its delicacy of drawing, originality
of conception, and the vigour and purity of its enamels. Castel
Durante is the centre wdiich most aspired to compete with the Marches,
and if the form of the piece and the general effect recalls at first sight
the original, a closer observation of the details detects the counterfeit ;
the ornaments are more feeble and less correct ; the prevailing colour of
the grounds is a rusty yellow, and a cold washy green, which one can
never mistake for the strong-bodied enamels of Faenza.
All the wares issued from this city do not participate in the richness
of the pieces with harlequin compartments ; documents, supported by
j^ *h»» numerous examples, establish that, as at Ferrara, the piece
SjTvVfv was often merely relieved by a fine white enamel. In
M- 1 ' 1567, the ship 'PenseV took to Rouen three chests filled
"CtV 7C« w**k "vaisse^e blanche et peinte de Faenza." Of this
Vv JlX white ware, Sevres possesses a baptismal cup marked, also
'"'.„' an escutcheoned centre-piece (surtout de table), with the
Tt38_ same cypher, accompanied by the customary crescent.
M. 21. Yet very much hesitation has been shown in assigning
these marks (M. 19 and M. 20), some giving them to Ferrara or Urbino,
others to Pesaro, or with this variation (M. 21) even to Germany.

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y.— MAJOLICA. 263
Now all these doubts have disappeared ; we have found a charming
gadrooned cup, of blue ground with white arabesques, charged in the
centre with a shield, bearing underneath this
legend (M. 22). The contracted cypher which it
surmounts, explains all the others ; the A and F SZ.
conjoined are the marks of the locality, the other ^<U A\T"r K/T'JF'
the signature of the artist. ,— *
ToFaenza have been generally assigned marks J&L
traced outside certain pharmacy jars, such as an M. 22.
archiepiscopal cross, a christme " devie," evidently signs adopted by
conventual establishments. It may be interesting to study these signs,
and specialise the regions to which they belong; it would lead to
conjectures as to their origin, but one cannot see in them, as we shall
say, referring to Gubbio, either the ^mark of a fabric, or the signature
of a majolica artist. They will be found classed in alphabetical order,
in a general table given further on.
ForlI. — Here again is one of these workshops little known, of which
the reputation has been absorbed by neighbouring centres ; the great
manufacture of Faenza had, no doubt, imposed its processes and its
style upon Forli, and unsigned pieces issued from this locality are now
classed as Faentine. Yet Forli early possessed the secret of the
ceramic manufacture. Passari cites an act of 1396, to which becomes a
party a certain "Pedrinus Joannis (a bocalibus) of the Potteries, formerly
at Forli, now settled at Pesaro." Now this John of the potteries would
not have quitted a country where his talents gained him a maintenance,
if he had not left behind him a sufficient number of potters to satisfy
the requirements of commerce. Be this as it may, a hundred and forty
years elapse before we see Forlivian art manifest itself by an important
specimen. There is in the Louvre (No. 92) a plate enamelled in " beret-
tino," forming part of the Campana collection, representing the Massacre
of the Innocents, after Baccio Bandinelli ; the bold strokes, the broad,
firm touch, amounting almost to roughness, announce a well-practised
hand in the rendering of the great masters ; hence notwithstanding its
greenish hue, resulting from the superposition of yellow and lustre tints
over the blue, this work has a severe and grand aspect which captivates
the eye. On the reverse, with the date and mention, " Fata in Forli,"
is this singular inscription : " Let thy wearied heart, so difficult to move,
consider this ; see and comprehend, what a yiolent and heavy blow
love and cruelty have inflicted upon me." So this scene of carnage is
the pretext for a madrigal, a " patito," a rejected lover, making by these

264 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
means an appeal to soften his lady. We shall soon see other singularities
of this extraordinary epoch ; but what women must those have been
whose sublime intelligence could be stirred by the vigorous conceptions
of the masters of the Renaissance !
Another piece of the Louvre, less energetic in execution, also bears
mention — FATA IN FORLI; it is a cup upon which is represented
Crassus, prisoner of the Parthians ; seated bound upon a bench, the
barbarians are pouring- molten gold down his throat, pronouncing the
cruel words which the painter has inscribed in the subject: Aurum
sitis ; aurum bibe : " Thou thirstest for gold, drink gold." This piece is
of remarkable execution, the drawing is not wanting in breadth, and the
aspect of the tints is harmonious.
The museum of South Kensington possesses a very deserving work,
signed, I la botega d. m" Iero da Forli. Maestro leronimo keeping a
bottega has certainly produced others than this work, and they are yet
to find ; some preserved in England are already described by Mr. Chaffers.
Mr. Marryat mentions a plate, belonging to Mr. A. Barker, on which is
the inscription, Leochadius Solobrinus picsit Forolivium ece MDLV.
A bottega where so many names occur, must have been of great im
portance; and if it were permitted to hazard a conjecture upon the
proclivities of a workshop whose productions are so rare, we should say
that Forli had a partiality for the style " porcellana." Under the plate of
Crassus is a frieze of blue subjects finely composed ; the reverse of many
other pieces also bear scrolls inspired by Oriental pottery. But these
tendencies are also common at Siena, Ravenna, and Fabriano, and we
only speak of them here to warn the inquirer against dangerous special
isations ; better to remain undecided upon the origin of a piece than to
attribute to it a false one.
Rimini. — The potteries of this city, cited by Piccolpasso in 1548, and
which had then a notoriety, are now only known by a small number of
pieces, all dated 1535. One in the musee de Cluny (No. 2098), inscribed
de Adam ed Eva in Rimino, manifests an easy pencil and experienced
composition ; the design not very correct is relieved by hatches, of a
reddish yellow in the shades, and white in the lights ; the landscape is
more elaborate than in other contemporary products ; in a word, though
the aspect is a little pale, it is nevertheless harmonious. But what
specialises the products of this manufactory is a marvellous glaze, giving
to the colouring quite an. exceptional freshness. These qualities are again
to be found in the Fall of Phaeton, in the British Museum, " 1535 in
Arimin," and in certain pieces of the Louvre without indication of origin,

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y.— MAJOLICA. 265
but which Mr. Alfred Darcel has been able, by ingenious comparisons,
to determine most clearly. The cup, No. 96, offers the peculiarity of an
initial and an emblematic sign added to the argument of the subject :
next to the name Noe is a Z, and a twisted and branched stalk, maybe
a branch of vine deprived of its leaves. Is it here a rebus? Did
the artist either bear the name of Zampillo, indicated by the
buds or shoots of the vine, or that of Zuccaia applied to a species of
vine ?
It is also to Rimini that is restored the cup No. 105, bearing at the
back Guido Selvaggio. This inscription was long taken to be the
signature of Guido Selvaggio or di Savino, an artist, who, according to
Piccolpasso, will have, in 1548, carried the art to Antwerp. In ex
amining the subject, and comparing it with the legend, it is impossible
not to recognise in it the subject of the painting. The youth repre
sented is Guidone il Selvaggio in the Isola delle Donne ; the pretended
signature is merely a reference to the Orlando Furioso.
Ravenna. — In Mr. Chaffers' interesting work upon the marks and
monograms of the different potteries, he attributes, under reservation, to
Ravenna, a majolica bearing the chronogram 1552 and the letters R. V. A.,
which might be taken as a contraction of the name of the city. Now, one
is no longer reduced to conjectures as to whether the country of the
engraver, Marc Antonio, has had its majolica : a plate belonging to Baron
Charles Davillier solves the question. The name "Ravena" is written
underneath between two flourishes. The subject, in blue camaieu, is
Amphion borne upon the waves by three dolphins, which he charms by
the sound of his lyre. This composition appears to be borrowed from
some master of the fifteenth century ; it is executed upon a bluish grey
enamel, and surrounded by a porcellana border of very delicate pattern.
Ornaments in the same style are also on the exterior circumference. It
is certainly one of the most interesting ceramic works discovered by our
learned colleagues.
Bologna. — This town has also had its potteries, we cannot doubt it,
since Piccolpasso indicates what kind of earth the potters worked there,
yet up to the present time no document reveals either the name of the
artists attached to the establishment or the style of their works ; they
are all lost in the great unknown which each names according to his
fancy. Bologna was, besides, the centre of an important trade in majolicas.
M. Giuseppe Campori announces that the Urbino vases found there a
ready sale ; from the taste of the buyers we may infer in what style
the artists of the place worked.

266 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Imola. — According to certain writers, this place would have pro
duced, not majolica, but fine terra cottas in relief, like those of Bernard
Palissy. We have no certainty upon this point. One sometimes meets
with Italian specimens quite foreign to the customary processes of the
known centres; pieces in relief more or less important, enamelled
or engraved stonewares, but they are such exceptions, it would appear
venturesome to attach these rare specimens to any one of the celebrated
manufactories. Let us wait patiently the discoveries that time and labour
prepare for us, and let us hazard nothing at a moment when the taste for
serious inquiry will no doubt throw light upon many delicate questions.
C. — Duchy of Urbino.
Pesaro. — If we are to believe the learned author of the history of the
Pesarese faiences, this manufacture would be the most ancient in Italy.
But Passeri wrote probably about 1750 (his first edition is dated Venice,
1752), and then the traditions of the art were completely lost, and the
notions of a past of two centuries were darkened. Hence, interesting as
it is, the treatise of the eminent archaeologist swarms with erroneous
indications, and leaves chasms much to be regretted.
After having spoken of this Pedrinus Joannes of the potteries, wdio
came in 1396 from Forli to Pesaro, he gathers from the archives a
decree of the 1st of April, 1486, issued by Giovanni Sforza, of Aragon,
count of Pesaro, prohibiting- the introduction of foreign potteries into the
town and the district.
He points out, besides, without too clearly denning the character, two
potteries of metallic lustre, which divided between them the first epochs of
the art; towards 1450, the earth covered only on one side with a white
engobe, received designs traced in manganese, and of which certain parts
were filled with this yellow colour which the firing rendered glittering
like gold ; this is the mezza-majolica. Later, the same colours were
applied upon a tin enamel, and this is what constitutes "fine" majolica.
We do not know if this technical distinction exists in the Pesarese
wares of the fifteenth century ; we attach to it, besides, very little im
portance since it has been shown that Pesaro has no pretension to the
invention of the stanniferous enamel. It is besides difficult to determine
whether a piece is painted upon a coating of well-purified earth or
upon an imperfect enamel. What we remark in the primitive works
of the Metaurian province is a direct inspiration of Persian art; it

Plate VII.— ITALY.
Renaissance — Majolica of Urbino — Hunting Bottle with Historic Subjects, Collection
Bakonne Salomon de Rothschild.

FeT,ipnapr1T-mp.

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y.— MAJOLICA. 267
manifests itself in the stiffness of certain figures riding on horse
back, surrounded by dogs and animals, similar to those traced upon
the potteries of Iran. These subjects have not only the mother-of-pearl
metallic lustre, cobalt blue is mixed with it, copper green, and some
times they are entirely executed with these colours, a practice which
Passeri carries back to 1300.
It is therefore evident that at Pesaro, as elsewhere, the polychrome
essays have preceded the application of lustred colours, and that we
must give up seeing in the importation of Hispano-Moresque wares from
Majorca, the first idea of Italian pottery, and the origin of its name.
Passeri himself acknowledges it when, finding the trace of important
sums borrowed in 1462 by Ventura di Siena and Matteo da Cagli, for
the enlargement of a manufactory, and for the purchase of sand from
Perugia, he has inferred that these traders are the importers of the
ceramic art into the duchy in the fifteenth century, and that they brought
it from Tuscany.
An invention to which Pesaro might lay claim, is that of pieces
ornamented with portraits and mottoes. This is a trait of manners too
curious to be passed over in silence. In the elegant and half pagan
society which contributedj to the great movement of the Renaissance,
all developments manifested themselves freely, and the passions were
unrepressed if clothed in pompous attire. One knows what crimes
public rivalries caused to be committed, what scandals were produced
by the outbreaks of the great. Garzoni deplores these errors, and, in
his ' Piazza Universale,' sends forth this reproach : " See how much the art
of gallantry shows itself, and spreads in infinite ways. Slaves to its
enchantments, simple men are no longer warned against the cunning
and malignity it devises to lead them astray. To what end do
vou think they adopt the names of Ginevra, Virginia, Isabella,
Olympia, Helena, Diana, Lydia, Vittoria, Laura, Domitia, Lavinia,
Lucretia, Stella, or Flora, if not to captivate by their grace, young hearts
which madly inscribe, in letters of gold, these harmonious names, and
please themselves by singing their praises in sonnets and madrigals?"
Of these madrigals the enamelled wares have preserved to us the
trace ; female busts with a name, and the simple epithet " bella," show
what were the presents that the innamorato offered to his "donna
amata." Sometimes a discreet suitor kept the name in his heart, and
near a portrait, more or less to be recognised, inscribed an allegoric or
sententious legend : Sola speranza el mio cor tiene ; " Hope alone
sustains my heart." Chi semina virtu fama recoglia ; " Who sows virtue

268 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
reaps fame." S'el dono e picolo e di pocco valore, basta la fede, el povero
se vede ; " If the gift is small and of no value, the intention suffices and
its poverty disappears."
These effigies, a little stiff in their figure, and dry in execution, have
yet a masterly appearance ; long veils and the dress in broad folds, recall
the magnificent medals of the Florentine and Pisan artists; foliated
scrolls cover the ground ; the borders, divided into compartments by
broad bands, are filled with scroll-work or palmettes after the antique,
which add to the severity of the whole.
The plates with lustred or polychrome colours must have been made
for a century at least ; we find at Baron Gustave de Rothschild's the
portrait of Louis of Armagnac, duke de Nemours (1477-1503) ; others
have princes of the house of Sforza, and among those where figures are
replaced by escutcheons, we see a piece with the ancient shield of
France, surrounded with the blazons of Dauphiny and Burgundy, and
others with the arms of Leo X. and Clement VII.
Some vases of elaborate form are decorated after the same manner as
the primitive productions of Pesaro ; these are particularly elegant ewersj
on which we sometimes meet with the " donne amate " of harmonious
names so dreaded by Garzoni. A fine vase (buire), in the collection
of Baron Gustave de Rothschild, even has upon its sides the portraits
of two betrothed. Most of the old works are destitute of marks; one
lustred specimen alone has " de Pisauro ed Chamillo ;" it represents, in
gold and red, a man on horseback.
Fio. 79 The particular characteristic of the
mother-of-pearl majolica of Pesaro is a
pale, limpid yellow, associated with a pure
blue: under the effects of luminous rays
these colours become auimated and shoot
out in pencils of red, golden yellow, green
and blue, of remarkable intensity (Fig.
79) ; this is not so with the works of
Deruta, of which we shall speak later.
The old polychrome pieces are distin
guished by a vigorous drawing, and a
more harmonious colouring than those of
VASE OF PESARO "WITH METALLIC DerUta
lustre (museum or the louvre). So much for products anterior to the
first years of the sixteenth century. From the time that Guidobaldo II.
became duke of Urbino (1538), the taste for " istoriato " pieces, as Passeri

RENAISSANCE.— ITALY— MAJOLICA. 269
calls them, spread itself everywhere, and Pesaro entered upon figure
compositions after the great masters, introducing, according to the fashion
of the time, brilliant heightenings in gold and ruby red. From 1541, a
plate representing Horatius Codes defending alone the bridge against all
Tuscany, is signed Fatto in Pesaro ; another with the same mention, and
the date 1543, has In bottega di Maestro Gironimo Vasaro I. P. A fine
piece decorated with scenes from the history of Judith, is inscribed Fatto
in Pesaro in bottega de Maestro Gironino, 1542 ; other plates of the same
date representing Julius Caesar and Cicero bear, In la botega di Maestro
Girolamo da le Gabice, in Pesaro. This Girolamo de' Gabice, a chateau
of Pesaro, is pointed out to us by Passeri as the same as Gironimo. He
was father of Jacomo, of whom more further on, who in his turn had
two sons, Girolamo and Lodovico. In 1545, we have Samson killing the
Philistines; in 1566, Mutius Scaevola, with the simple indication, de
Pisauro on a plate brilliantly heightened, representing Brennus throw
ing his sword into the balance, a subject known as Vse victis I
Girolamo or Gironimo was not the only potter having a bottega at
Pesaro towards the middle of the sixteenth century ; there is question
of another upon a piece with trophies and musical instruments, inscribed :
Fatto nella bottega di Maestro Baldasar Vasaro da Pesaro per la mano
di Terenzio figl. di maestro Matteo boccalaro. Terenzio fece 1550.
Some years later, 1st June, 1567, Guidobaldo II. granted an edict
in favour of Jacomo Lanfranco, a Pesarese artist, who had discovered the
secret of laying real gold on earthenware. Mr. Chaffers mentions as
the work of this master a plate in the Montferrand collection, represent
ing the Martyrdom of St. Maurice, and ornamented with the arms
of Cardinal Giustiniani ; this work is heightened with gold. We have
seen no " istoriato " piece gilded prior to the pieces of Castelli of the
eighteenth century, but there exists in the Louvre a baptismal shell,
ribbed and supported by a bird's foot capriciously rolled at its extremity,
and formed towards its spout into a chimerical head; dipped in an
enamel of an intense blue, it is relieved with broad touches of brilliant
gold. Another piece in the same museum, of a paler enamel, is an
elegant cruet with trilobed opening, and handle formed of twisted snakes ;
in this the gold is arranged in zones of arabesques, and describes upon
the body of the vase a rich escutcheon, being, we believe, that of the
Melgi family, surmounted by a helmet painted in white enamel. Some
other pieces of analogous colour and decoration, have the Papal and
Farnese arms, surmounted by broad borders and Vitruvian scrolls;
lastly, the collection of Baron Gustave de Rothschild contains a fine

270 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

bottle with its stand (plateau), where arabesques in gold and white are
drawn round a complicated escutcheon, of which the quarterings indicate
the union of Italo-French families. These, to our notions, are the faiences
for which Jacomo Lanfranco obtained his privilege : the shell of the
Louvre would represent the oldest epoch; the other vases less solid, of
choicer decoration, would range step by step from 1567 to the last year
of the century.
The vase of Terenzio, of which mention has been made above,
deserves some attention ; it is again one of those inventions of gallantry
against which rose the ' Piazza Universale.' Its form, one of frequent
occurrence, is this : in the centre is a deep cavity, almost hemispherical,
and flattened only sufficiently to stand firm, round it is a very broad
rim, highly decorated with instruments, written music, verses in
scribed upon open books, and appearing to invite to the pleasures
of the dance ; these cups were called " ballate," and often offered at
balls by young people to their partners, who, after having eaten the
sugar-plums and preserved fruits which filled the cavity, found at the
bottom an amorino, a pierced heart or such like emblem, which the
offering alone led her to anticipate ; hence the name of coppe amatorie
given to these pieces. Whatever Garzoni may say, the custom was
useful, inasmuch as it has been the means of preserving to us a number
of works of first-class merit.
Castel- Durante. — Here is a city which has supplied potters and
painters to the greater part of the workshops of Italy, which has
sent ceramic colonies to Flanders and Corfu, and yet we are scarcely
acquainted with its works except those of its decline. This is easily
explained, for contemporaries did not trouble themselves about manu
factories, the protector alone personified the art. They said " the wares
of Urbino," because such was the name of the duchy, and it was the
duke of Urbino who inspired alike the vases made at Castel Durante,
Gubbio, or Pesaro, as much as at Urbino itself.
From the year 1361, we find mention in the Durantine archives
of a certain Giovanni dei Bistugi, John of the biscuits ; now the earth
is fired twice when a first fire is necessary to render it fit to receive
the enamel coating; Giovanni therefore made faience, and one may.
infer that a certain Maestro Gentile, who was supplying the ducal court
with table ware in 1363, was also a maker of faience.
Signor G. Raffaelli, in a curious memoir upon the Durantine workshop
enumerates a certain number of artists whose wares supplied the local
consumption up to 1508. Where are these works ? we no doubt see with-

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y.—MA JOLICA. i7 1
out being able to identify them. In 1 508 appeared a bowl with this
inscription: Adi 12 de Set'eb. facta fu i Castel Durat Zoua Maria Vro,
"The 1 2th of September was made at Castel-Durante, Giovana Maria
Urbino." Is it Urbino that is to be read in the last abbreviation ? We
would not affirm it ; but it appears impossible not to see a female name
in the preceding signature, and we are surprised the two terminations
being feminine, it should have been read Giovanni Maria. The piece,
intended for Pope Julius IL, whose arms it bears, is one of the most re
markable ; let us not refuse to a woman the honour of having made it.
The style of decoration which also characterises the first ornamental
compositions of the duchy of Urbino, is that which is called " groteschi,"
or rather " candellieri," according to the expression of Piccolpasso ; these
are large and symmetric scrolls with capricious convolutions termina
ting in the bodies of sirens, winged monsters, sea-horses, or masks of
ancient form, quite a different thing from the grotesques on white
ground, which will appear later at Urbino and elsewhere, and which
seem to have originated at Ferrara.
We already find " candellieri " grotesques at Castel Durante upon
pharmacy vases dating from the 11th October, 1519, and made nella
bottega di Sebastiano di Marforio ; dating from this period, works of the
same class succeed each other uninterruptedly to the seventeenth
century, with the modifications consequent on the state of the arts.
The general character of the Castel Durante majolica is a good fabri
cation and freedom of painting announcing a practised execution ; the
colours are highly glazed, perhaps a little pale, but harmonious and
broadly laid on. The arabesques are at first in greenish gray camaieu
upon a blue ground, then in compartments of various colours. Towards
the second half of the sixteenth century, the grotesques and trophies
assume a lustred orange tint, crude and disagreeable to the eye ; the
interest in the art is lost in the excess of execution.
With regard to subjects, the same practised skilfulness may again
be made a reproach to them ; but, we repeat, we scarcely know any but
commercial pieces, the produce of the trade ; the beginnings, always
more cramped, since they emanate from the teachers, still escape us.
Yet names worthy of being preserved appear upon certain pieces, such
as that of Sebastiano di Marforio, wdiose fine pharmacy vases we have
already mentioned.
In 1525 the cups of the Louvre (Nos. 236, 237) show us Apollo
and Marsyas (Fig. 80) the carrying away of Ganymede, treated by a
practised hand : the Bacchanal of 1530 (No. 238) is also very remarkable.

272

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

About 1550, the Cavaliere Piccolpasso, head of an important bottega,
gave to his contemporaries all the secrets of his art, contained in
a substantial treatise. The types drawn by him show a man of skill,
but more preoccupied with the ornamentation than with the painting of
the " istoriato." Thanks to this treatise, we have the current names
given in the manufactories to the different kinds delivered over in
commerce, and we are able to find kinds long unknown. In 1562,
the 5th of June, Maestro Simone signs a table service (stoviglia) with
escutcheons, of which eight pieces are preserved at Fermo.
Fi2. 80.

CUP OF CASTEL DURANTE, 1525. APOLLO AND MARSYAS (MUSEUM OF THE LOUVRE).
We only allude to Guido Durantino, who has illustrated himself,
with all his family, at Urbino, and Guido di Savino, whose works may
some day be found at Antwerp, but whose name has nothing to do with
the plate of the Louvre, signed Guido Selvaggio.
Giovanni, Tesio, and Lucio Gatti, expatriated to Corfu about 1530,
have not left behind them any certain work; lastly, Francesco del
Vasaro, established in 1545 at Venice, must have executed there the
greater part of his works. Let us stop here and take up further the
history of Durantine faience at the time when Pope Urban VIII.
desired, not only to restore majolica, but render illustrious his native
city thenceforth called Urbania.
Urbino. — The importance of this Italian city need not be demon
strated ; its name tells all. One can understand with what eao-erness
artists ambitious of glory and fortune flocked to this centre, the
country of Raffaelle, and the residence of an enlightened prince ready
to encourage talent in every form. We will not repeat what we have

RENAISSANCE— ITALY— MAJOLICA. 273

already said upon the general sense attributed by old authors to the
name of Urbino, we will content ourselves with repeating the opinion
of Passeri, who places the seat of the workshops not in the city itself,
but at Fermignano, a chateau situated on the banks of the Metauro,
in a place favourable for collecting the argillaceous deposits of the
river. In his notice upon the majolica paintings executed at Urbino,
Pungileone cites, in 1477, a certain Giovanni di Donino Garducci,
figulo (potter) ; in 1501, Francesco Garducci received an order for
several vases for Cardinal Carpaccio. Ascanio del fu Guido is men
tioned in 1502 ; but it is not until about 1530 that we see a serious
school with artists of the highest order manifest itself. Let us first speak
of him who for eleven years was associated with the first-class works
produced at Urbino. Francesco Xanto Avelli, originally of Rovigo,
appears to have accomplished his whole artistic career in the service of
Francesco Maria and Guidobaldo II. It is most extraordinary that
Passeri scarcely knew him, and casually mentions him under the name
of his country, Rovigo. Arrived at his full reputation at a time when
the taste for metallic lustres was in high effervescence, Xanto sacrificed
to fashion, and embellished (if the word is not an antithesis) most of his
works with this resplendent dress, yet he was particularly inclined to
purity of drawing and to grand compositions. He borrowed from
Raffaelle, if not entire scenes, figures and groups which he applied
most happily to the subjects he had to represent. His drawing has
breadth, and, if sometimes wanting in correctness, he always preserves a
great style — in a word one sees the artist has imbued himself with
healthy doctrines. His painting is luminous and brilliant; he never
falls into exaggerated modelling; and if his flesh, tinted generally with
bistred ochre have a relative coldness, it is relieved by the contrast
of an intense black, and a bright green thrown into the grounds. With
regard to his metallic heightenings, they are laid on in bold, free
strokes, which distinguish them from the school of Gubbio.
If Passeri has been pleased to exhibit tbe learning of the Pesaro
painters, whose subjects are derived from historic sources and accom
panied by explanatory legends, there is a wide distance between them
and Xanto. Himself a poet, he pompously comments upon passages in
Virgil and Ovid, from whom he borrows the subjects of his compositions ;
his pencil illustrates Ariosto and contemporary writers. Nay more,
passing events do not escape his notice; in a group of two persons
lamenting over a woman, half clothed and wounded, he personifies the

274 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
misery of civil war, and writes underneath, Di tua discordia, Italia, il
premio hor hail " Of thy dissensions, Italy, thou hast now the reward."
On another, taking a group from the Massacre of the Innocents of Baccio
Bandinelli, he makes it the representation of Florence weeping over her
children killed by the plague ; he even dares to trace a satire against
Rome for accepting the outrageous victory of the Constable Bourbon.
Under a plate representing St. Mark he writes, Nel anno de le tribu-
lationi d'ltalia adi 26 de luglio i Urbino.
All the authentic works of this master are signed, and one may thus
judge of his prodigious fecundity. In 1530, we find his initials only
• }Cif« F. X.A. R. Upon seven pieces we know, of 1531, two
e "V* A -Q. have the same initials : one has this mark (M. 23) ; the
'T?/-JL- * others, Fracesco Xanto A. Rovigiesepi i Urbino — Fran.
M. 23. ' Xant. Avello Rovigniese in Urbino — Fra. Xat. A. D.
Rovigo. P. Urbino — Fra. Xato Avello Rovigiese i Urbino pise.
Eight grand compositions of 1532 have similar inscriptions.
In 1533, the Esacus of the Louvre takes up the signs F. X. A. R. i
Urbino, while the flight of Camilla and Ulysses asking back his com
panions, have inscriptions analogous to the above.
.ajggfr-^ffiy In 1534, three works are inscribed with four initials,
T| ~ /^*jf* F. X. A. R., with the mention in Urbino ; four others are
M. 24. reduced to the letters F X, often arranged thus : (M. 24).
The contingent of 1535 is rather interesting, and gives us a F. X. R.
accompanied by the letter N in lustre ; the same letters upon an
elegant ewer, painted with the Parnassus ; two F. X. and Fra. X. R.
The only piece known of 1536 is marked F X ; the three of
1537 have F X R, Ffa. Xatho da Rovigo, and Fra. Xanto Rovigiese.
1538, 1539, and 1544 give the most simple monogram.
^t\C0 V '. Some other works with signatures more or less complete
V. ^ ' like this (M. 25) are without date.
T? 0"U. '. Many others add to the luggage of Xanto, attributing
M. 25. to him pieces of 1538, 1539, 1540, and 1541, upon which
is an X only. We do not deny that some of these pieces may be by
the painter of Rovigo, but we must reject others whose feeble drawing
and heavy pencil evidently emanate from unskilled copyists. The X
exists besides upon works prior to Xanto (see Fabriano) ; and we find it
again at Urbino, on a majolica issued from the w orkshop of Maestro
Guido di Castel Durante, who would be the rival of Xanto.
This name brings us to cite other potters no less celebrated than
Xanto ; the Foutaua. What we know of the family is this : Nicolo

RENAISSANCE— ITAL Y— MAJOLICA. 275

Pellipario, majolica artist of Castel Durante, who died about 1547, had
a son named Guido, who, before 1520, established himself at Urbino, to
carry on his father's profession; called at first Guido Durantino, on
account of his origin, he adopted the surname of Fontana, which he
transmitted to his descendants, and which his son Orazio specially
rendered illustrious.
Why has not Guido been more spoken of? Why are his works
scarcely known ? It is because, far from imitating the poetic vein of
Xanto, he has never indicated by a legend the subjects that he treated,
and ^to which he never affixed his name. A dish, a true masterpiece,
now pasped from the cabinet of the Comtesse de Cam bis into that of
Baron Sellieres, has happily enabled us to recognise the drawing and
touch of the master. This dish, representing the Muses and Pierides,
after a composition of Pierino del Vaga, bears on the reverse : Fatto in
Urbino in botega di M" Guido da Castel Durante. X. What one remarks
in this work is a careful drawing, seeking to follow as nearly as possible
the style of Raffaelle ; the features of his figures are delicate, and well
defined, the proportions elegant though a little short. His modelling
of the flesh is entirely new. A large preparation in blue produces a
ground which harmonises wonderfully with the tints of the flesh, gives
them a remarkable delicacy and lightness, and allows of the introduction
in the groups, of chiaroscuro, and an aerial perspective unknown to the
other painters in enamelled earthenware. These characters will become
the privilege of the Fontana School, and, as we shall see later, Orazio,
by consummate experience, will arrive at firing his works to the point
of perfect fluidity of the enamels, so that the work of the brush dis
appears, leaving a charming melting of colour bathed in an irreproachable
glaze, rendering his productions unrivalled.
Among the great pieces not signed by Guido, let us cite a plate
representing Moses striking the rock, belonging to M. Beurdeley, the
Martyrdom of St. Lawrence, after the engraving of Marc Antonio, the
Triumph of Galatea, etc.
The works of Orazio Fontana, although mostly anonymous, are
specialised by boldness and breadth of drawing, as well as by their
admirable fusion and their brilliant glaze (Fig. 81). It is also to be
remarked that the period of his great activity is after 1540, that is, at
the moment when the taste changed under the impulse of Guidobaldo II.
This prince, we know, had called near him Raffaelle dal Colle, Battista
Franco, and Federigo Zucchero ; the easy compositions, the loose
drawing of these masters were soon reflected upon the majoliche, and
T 2

276

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

especially upon those of the great Fontana. We want only as proofs the
grand scene of the Public repast at Rome, executed upon a dish in" the
Louvre, and repeated inside a vase in the splendid collection of Baron
Alphonse de Rothschild ; it is a cup of which the oval vasque, sup
ported by a pedestal ornamented with reliefs, masks, and other subjects
powerfully modelled, is painted externally with grotesques on a white
ground. Underneath one reads : Fatto in Urbino in bottega de Orazio
Fontana. This specimen, compared with those of G uido mentioned above, with
those of 1533 and 1535 beariug : In botega di M° Guido Durantino in
Urbino, and that signed Fatte in Urbino in botega de M° Guido Fontana
Fig. 81.

TLATE OF URIHNO BY" ORAZIO FONTANA. THE CARRYING OFF OF EUROPA
(MUSEUM OF THE LOUVRE).

vasaio, permit us to distinguish between the works of the father and of
the son, and to make two divisions even in that great pharmacy of
Loreto, of which the whole could not belong to one artist.
If the signed pieces of Orazio are rare, they have the merit of
characterising, by their varied forms, his successive manners (Plate VII.).
The plate with the Massacre of the Innocents in the Louvre wrould be of
the first ; still cramped in drawing, a little hard in the
modelling, the execution is most painfully laboured.
It has only the letter 0 in a cartouche (M. 26).
M. 26. Another old and very remarkable piece, representing
Nero causing his mother to be assassinated, bears this exceptional

"¦¦ ¦" ¦¦  mn art I— 1TTT

RENAISSANCE— ITALY— MAJOLICA. 277

mark (M. 27). Some majoliche copied from Marc Antonio or masters of
the same school, and habitually dated from 1544, bear
a cypher in which the word Orazio is given entirely
(M. 28). They mark the transition to the second style, M. 27.
that is to say, from the correct and laboured drawing
to the free, clever manner definitively adopted when
the master opened his own workshop in 1565, and
which continued until his death in 1571 (Plate VIII).
It is to that period that belong, in addition to the M. 28.
magnificent cup of Baron de Rothschild, rather ordinary pieces inscribed,
FATE— IN— BOTEGA— DE— ORATIO— FONTANA.
The memoir of Passeri states after the indications of local archives,
that the mark of Orazio Fontana was composed of the letters 0. F. V. F.
(M. 29), inclosed in a circle : this mark has never been seen. ^-""x
Mr. Chaffers, deceived by an attractive analogy, has thought to | O Fl
find the monogram of the master upon a plate ornamented with \^^^y
a bust of Pompey, and bearing in the middle, on two tablets, the M- 29-
date 1519, and the initials O. F., and, on the reverse, the three letters
0. F. V., signifying Orazio Fontana Urbinate. It had not escaped
this laborious writer that the date 1519 cannot be applied to the
painter of the Loreto spezierie vases, therefore he supposes that Nicolo
Pellipario may have had a brother of the name of Orazio who would
have founded the Fontana family at Urbino. There is nothing in
history to warrant this supposition; and one knows, on the contrary,
that the fame of Urbino scarcely began before 1538, date of the
accession of Guidobaldo II. It is not at a moment when Francesco
Maria, taking advantage of the death of Leo X. to reconquer his
states, and expel Lorenzo II. de' Medici, that either one or other of
these princes would have thought of inviting a colony of artists to
his capital. The beginnings of Guido must have been very humble,
since he has signed no work earlier than 1532. We shall therefore
continue to think the induction of Passeri upon the legend Oraizo
Fontana Urbinate fece the result of an error, and we shall class the
signature of this plate with the bust of Pompey, among the monograms
of unknown masters.
Public and private collections abound in pieces attributed to Orazio
Fontana ; we repeat that a part of these belongings should be restored to
Guido, and we think we have sufficiently developed the characteristics
of this master ; another share, more considerable still, belongs certainly
to the pupils that went out from the bottega of the father and son;

278 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
the processes by which these had transformed the painting on majolica
were not difficult to seize, and many of them, at Urbino especially, have
sought in appropriating them to themselves, to gain a share of the
success which rewarded their merit.
But let us not forget that by the side of the glorious masters whose
works are known, worked several artists worthy of being cited in history.
From 1530, there is Federico di Giannantonio, Nicolo di Gabriele, and
Gianmaria Mariani; we think we may attribute to this last a plate,
representing the Baptism of Christ, and which is thus signed in the
A/j decoration (M. 30). Simone di Antonio Mariani painted in 1542 ;
yPV* in 1545 an unknown artist signs, Ptt0. Fco. ; Luca del fu Barto-
M. 30. lommeo dates from 1544 ; Cesare Cari, of Faenza, painted in 1536
in the bottega of Guido Merlino ; but this last signed, in 1542, a magni
ficent dish, in the collection of Baron Gustave de Rothschild, where
all the riches of ornamentation appeared to be accumulated. Upon the
edge are semes of Amorini sporting in the clouds, drawing the bow, or
bearing crowns; below, under a wreath of laurels, marine divinities
float upon the waves ; a second wreath of leaves and fruits, painted upon
a moulding in relief, and broken by four medallions with yellow grounds,
frames a central reserve in which the artist has represented Orpheus
charming the beasts to the sound of his violin. The bottega of the
potters was then situated at San Polo, as is indicated by a plaque
representing the signs of the zodiac, and dated, Adj 30 di Marzio 1542 ;
he was still working in 1551. An important piece of 1541, representing
the siege of Goleta, is the product of another establishment ; we read,
In Urbino nella botega di Francesco de Silvano. In 1555, we find a cup
Fwith stem, having in the interior the Judgment of Paris, after
Raffaelle ; we feel in it a vague influence of the Fontana school,
^^^ but the drawing is heavy and the tints hard ; the letters F S
* O * are placed under the foot, the one above, the other below the
M. 31. legend explaining the subject (M. 31).
To return to the family of Orazio Fontana, his descendants con
sisted of a daughter whom he had by his wife Agnese Franchetti, of
Venice. Of his brothers, Nicolo, father of Flaminio, died before 1576 ;
Camillo will have had a son named Guido, whom Pungileone says was
born at Castel Durante, and who died in 1605, after having belonged
fourteen years to the brethren of Santa Croce, at Urbino. It is this
same Guido who, according to Raffaelle, will have retaken the paternal
bottega at Urbino, when Camillo went to Ferrara, in 1567, in order to
assist Alfonso II. to set up again the works created by his grand-

RENAISSANCE— ITALY— MAJOLICA. 279
father. Flaminio, nephew of Orazio, was able on his part to raise up
the Florentine manufacture, and perhaps to contribute to the invention
of the porcelain of the Medici.
A precious fragment of the Parnassus of Raffaelle, bequeathed to
the Louvre by Sauvageot, bears this signature
(M. 32). This Nicola, of whom one finds the com
plete name, would he be the brother of Orazio, and .— .
the father of Flaminio ? We think not. In the jf* VTVlttO
first place the name of Orazio's brother was Nicolo, "" 51. 32.
and also the serious style and delicacy of the pieces would cause it to be
placed among works of the first third of the sixteenth century.
A majolica artist, who painted grotesques particularly upon a white
Fig. 82.

SALT-CELLAR OF URBINO, A GROTESCHI (COLL. BARON GUSTAVE DE ROTHSCHILD).
ground, signs, Gironimo Urbin feccie, 1585 ; his loose style indicates
the degeneracy of the art.
A vase, representing the Israelites gathering manna in the Wilderness
has Fatto in Urbino, 1587. T. R. F.
We should stop here and refer to the modern fabrications, the
products of Urbino imitated from Oriental pottery ; but the expiring
breath of the Renaissance still animated a whole family — the Patanazzi.
Alfonso signed, in 1584, a piece serving as a writing-desk, ALF. P. F.
and representing Parnassus. His name is thus abridged on VRBINI
the reverse of a plateau (M. 33), subject, Romulus receiving 1606
the Sabine women (South Kensington Museum). He often M- 33-
confined himself to his initials only. A piece, dated 1607 shows us

280 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
that he worked in the shop of Jos. Batista Boccione. In 1608, the
family had its bottega, as proves a large cup inscribed, Urbini ex figlina
Francisci Patanatii; the letters F. P. show at the same time that
Francesco was himself a painter, and decorated his potteries. The last
of the Patanazzi is the young Vincenzio, who, from the age of twelve
years, marked his works with the .double seal of weakness. Passeri cites
a piece of 1620 with this mention : Vicenzio Patanazzi da Urbino di eta
d'anni tredici. Thirteen years ! Poor child, instead of parading it tri
umphantly upon your wretched paintings, run to the school where your
predecessors received their instruction.
Gubbio. — This is certainly one of the manufactories on which criticism
has most erred, yet its history is entirely in Passeri ; but commenting
upon it, each in his own manner, writers have so modified the text,
that its history is now reduced to a cypher. What is there, then,
in particular in the workshop of Gubbio? Nothing but a misunder
standing. There, as in many other workshops, one great name sums up
all. Giorgio Andreoli, a gentleman of Pavia, after having received in
his own country the honours due to his merit as statuary and ceramic
artist, came to Gubbio to establish himself, with his two brothers,
Salimbene and Giovanni ; he obtained there, in 1498, the right of citizen
ship, and later, he was even named Gonfalonier. So much for his civil
state. Let us pass to his artistic titles. Giorgio, as we have said, was
a statuary, the style of the Delia Robbia was familiar to him ; in 1511
he executed two altar reredos, one for the private chapel of the
Bentivoglio family, the other for the chapel of San Antonio Abbate,
in the church of St. Domenico ; in 1515, he built in the same church the
altar of Madonna del Rosario, and that of the church of the Osservanti,
near Bevagna. They cite again, as his work, six angels in the basilica
of Portiuncula, near Assisi, and a Madonna in the Minor Canons of
Gubbio. In these works the flesh was not coated over, which of itself
would indicate an artist of taste, sufficiently strong in his own powers to
fear to attenuate, under the thickness and hardness of lustred colours,
the delicacy of expression and modelling.
As regards majolica, the beginnings of the master can only belong
to Gubbio ; but no doubt at Pavia he first tried himself, and in searching
collections we find a work bearing his name, and stamped with many
characters of authenticity. At Sevres, there is a dish of coarse make
and of hard colours, having at the same time the imperfection of trial,
and the vigour of execution, partly taken from the early works of
Chaffagiolo; the subject is the Ecce Homo. Tlie outline of a bright

RENAISSANCE— ITALY— MAJOLICA. 281
violet blue is tolerably correct, a pale blue models the flesh, the hair
of the Christ, as well as the cross set up behind him, are of a metallic
yellow, lightly iridised ; round the border, in Gothic characters, upon a
lapis blue ground, is the legend, Don Giorgio, 1489. Two things are
here to be remarked, the iridescence foreign to the Tuscan products of
the corresponding period ; the letters raised from the surface by a kind
of scratching, a practice we shall find again in certain pieces of Gubbio.
They have since endeavoured to bring together some other specimens
with this of Sevres, one among others in which, in the orna- ¦
mentation, is repeated the monogram M. G, surmounted \^rS)r^
by a globe and cross (M. 34); but this would appear to '']vj« Q
signify Mater gloriosa, and not Maestro Giorgio. M. 34.
The first work where we see this denomination is a plate with
projecting bosses in the circumference, a half:length figure of St. John
in the centre, truthfully modelled, and heightened with a blue correct
outline ; gold and cloudy ruby-red lustres, and of a brilliancy very
inferior to that of the fine pieces of Gubbio, would seem to indicate the
first gropings of a beginner. Under the border of the piece is (M. 35).
M. 35.
This valuable specimen from the collection of M. Leroy Ladurie
appears to us perfectly characteristic of the beginning of the bottega of
Gubbio, and brings a new element into the history of Andreoli. Here
appears that epithet of " Maestro," of which Passeri explains the value,
seeking to prove that the " gentleman " of Pavia, the " noble citizen "
of Gubbio had no cause to blush at his profession of a majolica artist.
The writer thus expresses himself : " I ought to say two things to justify
him from all suspicion of having demeaned himself. The first is ... .
that painting, exercised on account of great lords, passed for a noble
profession ; the idea had not then introduced itself that nobility con
sisted in proving four quarterings of idle and incapable persons. The
other thing is, that the title of maestro was, in those times, a title given
only to those who professed the noble and liberal arts like painting ;
here is a conclusive example : Raffaelle of Urbino had, in the time of
Leo X., the rank of a Roman baron .... and yet, in public acts, he
took the title of maestro."
These explanations are conclusive for the assigning of the Sevres
pieces ; Don, abbreviation of donno, which we in French translate Dom,

282 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
is synonymous with maestro; this difference of using it adds to the
presumption of difference of place, and comes to the support of attri
buting to Pavia the plate of the Ecce Homo. The cup of M. Leroy
Ladurie also leads to a series of works that long remained doubtful, and
which ought to date from the beginning of the fabrication at Gubbio.
The reliefs show clearly a workshop founded by a statuary, and these
lustres, uncertain in their success, prove that they were not yet com
pletely masters of the process.
It is in 1519 that appear the first pieces signed in metallic colours
with the customary mark of the master, that is, the initials M° G°, which
we shall find perpetuated so long as the bottega is directed by Giorgio
Andreoli. We give some of its variations (M. 36 and M. 37).

*» o

*¥

M. 36. M. 37.
We only know, at the date of 1519, more than four pieces entirely
ornamented. In 1520, is a curious specimen from the Dutuit collectiou.
The subject, the Judgment of Paris, is drawn with wonderful care, and
modelled in sober tones, the influence of the school of Raffaelle is
evident ; preoccupied with form and style, the artist makes the metallic
lustres quite of secondary importance. At the back is written, in blue,
M° Giorgio, 1520, adi 2 de Otober B. D. S. R. in Ugubio. What signify
these initials which follow the date ? It is a problem to resolve. Of
the same date is a plate in the Barker collection, representing the Car
of Aurora. 1521 gives us an important work, this time clothed with all
the luxury of iridescent colours, the Tomb of St. Ubaldo, surrounded
by persons who come to seek a miraculous cure; this cup is in the
possession of Baron Gustave de Rothschild.
In the Amherst collection is a piece bearing an heraldic griffin,
dated 1522, and also another, representing the Death of Dido.
Escutcheoned cups and plates mark the year 1524.
In 1525, the works are numerous and varied ; escutcheons, masks
and figures, arabesque ornaments, mixed with complicated subjects. The
surface of a " ballata " plate gives the Triumph of Galatea ; a charming
plate, in the Fountaine collection, affords the Three Graces, after

RENAISSANCE— ITAL Y— MAJOLICA . 283

Raffaelle ; but the grand piece is a large dish, the border enriched with
elegant grotesque scrolls, alternating with trophies. In one of these, is
a tablet inscribed with the date 1525 ; on another, upon a scroll, we
read, Ama la virtu. The whole centre is filled with Diana and her
nymphs bathing, and, united in graceful groups, they are standing up
to the knees in a kind of basin ornamented in front with three masks,
which pour out water upon the foreground. The masses of tufted trees
indicate a shady forest. The figures, artistically traced in blue, are of a
soft modelling, which partly effaces the unfitness of the lustre tint with
which it is obtained ; a few slight touches of gold and ruby red intro
duced into the hair, indicating necklaces, or tinting scanty draperies,
scarcely disturb the harmony of this fine composition. It is only on the
reverse that the gold bursts forth in large scrolls encircling this in
scription : Mastr" Giorgio da Ugubio adj 6 d'Aprile 1525.
1526 presents us with a variety of works, and three times the
monogram of the master is accompanied by the mention, da Ugubio.
In 1527, escutcheons, surrounded by arabesques, offer this same
peculiarity (M. 38), while a St. Catherine is signed ; 1 l O *7
and the Self-devotion of Curtius, M° G° da Ugubio. \* /
Out of four pieces of 1528, two bear da] Ugubio. y\i\j *0\ OTQli
The same indication of origin accompanies two _ ? (J.
subjects of 1529, and two other works of the year \\(A\A\jiO
1530. M. 38.
1531 supplies busts, amorini, allegories, and historical subjects. The
Louvre possesses, a Diana and Actaeon of 1532. The same subjects,
the Climbers of Michael Angelo, Perseus and Andromeda, mark 1533.
1534 offers a singular subject, Love lamenting over a woman submitting
to a surgical operation ; below we read : " Birth of iEsculapius, and
discourse of the Crow and the Raven." In 1536, we find a young man
playing the viol, and, in 1537, a child mentioned by Passeri.
Some of the marks of Giorgio are accompanied by signs (M. 39 and M.
40), which

*f zr

iK Uqu6v0
1M^

M. 39. M. 40.
Mr. Chaffers and other English writers have considered as merchants'

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

#

marks. These marks, accompanied by crosses, would rather appear to
us to indicate their owners as dignitaries of the Church, or the pieces
as belonging to large pharmacies attached to religious establishments.
We range in the same class, separating it from the list of artists'
signatures, the sign (M. 41) we often find repeated under plates generally
^ ornamented with palmettes and scrolls in the ancient taste,
> J on a bright blue ground, and afterwards heightened with
.* \ metallic tints. For a moment this sign was attributed to
Salimbene Andreoli, but this supposition does not support a
critical examination. Other vases of similar execution bear,
on the reverse, the initial of Maestro Giorgio, and one,
M. 41. amongst others, the date 1531.
Certainly, nothing is more difficult than to find the personal works
of masters in Italian centres subjected to a powerful and renowned
individual ityr. Various hands have combined in the current fabrication ;
the style has modified itself, besides, with the prevailing taste. The
oldest ornamental pieces of Gubbio are generally of the style
" a candellieri," large scrolls terminated by heads of birds, sea horses,
etc., combined with the heads of winged cherubs. This decoration,
pretty bright in tone, is detached from a pale blue ground worked up
(rechampi) with a brush. Later appears the bright ground, laid on
by the lathe, and decorated by taking out (enlevage) ; trophies with
mottoes, surrounding busts, appear from 1519, in the middle of these
varied styles, as well as open cups with low feet; the whole
surface occupied by the bust of a man or woman. Of vigorous
drawing, modelled in polychrome colours, dexterously laid on, these
plates, sometimes heightened with metallic colours, sometimes soft and
sober in tone, are always elevated in style ; the men are heroes of the
epoch, scarcely veiled under the name and attributes of the gods, or
heroes of antiquity : as to the women, their poetic denominations,
coupled with the epithet of " bella," sufficiently explain they are the
ladies whose gallant artifices Garzoni fears for the youths of his time.
The breadth ©f drawing, the skilful colouring makes us think that
some of these works may be by the hand of Andreoli ; a piece in the
Louvre (Fig. 83) bears upon a fillet this indication, ex o Giorg., " of the
fabric of Giorgio."
As regards subjects, how could we hesitate to attribute to him the
best ? This sculptor, this eminent artist, rewarded by his merit with
the first honours, would he. be inferior to many majolica painters whose
works we know? In specialising himself for "stoviglie" he would

RENAISSANCE— ITAL Y— MAJOLICA.

285

have become incapable even of copying the cartoons of the masters,
and one would go to seek in other workshops those to whom to do honour
for the estimable pieces signed by him. But this is senseless, contrary
to all the data of history, and in opposition to the manners of this loyal
society of the sixteenth century.
The idea, enounced by Vincenzo Lazari, and propagated by several
English authors that Giorgio, inventor of the secret of metallic lustres,
would have reduced himself to becoming the itinerant vendor of a sleight-
of-hand secret, and have put his process up to auction in every workshop,
is impossible to believe now. In the first place, Andreoli was not the
inventor of the lustres ; next, painters respected themselves too much

Fig. 83.

GUBBIO CUP (MUSEUM OF THE LOUVRE).
to obliterate their art in the possession of a chemical mixture, and allow
an arcanist to substitute his name for theirs, after having spread some
golden ground or disfigured certain compositions by speckling them with
touches of mother-of-pearl or ruby red. 0 Passeri, it was well worth
your while to teach us the value of the word " maestro," and to prove
that Andreoli remained noble when exercising the ceramic art, that our
modern writers might reserve to him this humiliation !
Maestro Giorgio had certainly assistants ; first his brothers Salimbene
and Giovanni, of whom nothing remains to point out their gfi/\\ /~y
works, then his son Vicentio or Cencio, whose signature f V X ^TS
is thought to be found on a piece in the late Monville ICiQ
collection which bears this monogram (M. 42). A mag- M ^
nificent work "a candelieri," dated in the decoration 15 1§7 and signed

286 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
1519, proves that the first is decidedly of Maestro Giorgio (M. 43) — a
Q stroke wanting to the G has led to the doubt. Besides, in
|»*1519, Cencio then unknown would not have placed his
V^jl/ cypher where his father was still obliged to sign his name
in full. Another opinion accredited in England, consists in
J C" \ Q seeing the mark of Cencio in an N, which is often found
M. 43. alone on the reverse of lustred pieces, and which is seen
accompanied by the name of Maestro Giorgio under a piece of 1537
« j 5» 0 (M. 44). We cannot admit that there is a group composed
1 ** ^r °f *ne letters VIN in the shapeless mark iu which Marryat
Nhad read with much appearance of reason, the initial of the
name of a bottega which had existed at Nocera, Via
M. 44. Flaminia. Where had this eminent writer found the trace
q of this manufactory ? We ourselves are ignorant, but the
^f/\^ indication will certainly not have fallen by chance from his
learned pen. In order to establish that the letter N was an
Tfk d artist's initial, they have rested upon a piece iu the museum
Jk \g— at Sevres which bears M" N. (M. 45). It does not require a
M. 45. great acquaintance with marks to recognise that there is no
tie between the two signs, written in different characters, one above the
other ; the N does not resemble the one attributed to Cencio ; besides,
M. Darcel has long since exposed the senselessness of this explanation
by asking if it could be applied to the piece in the Louvre, No. 527,
inscribed with the letters N. C.
Let us await some happy discovery to help us to recognise the works
of Cencio. Besides, he has not been the only pupil of his father, and
the renown of this last must have raised him up rivals : it is to one of
these we would assign the cypher of an A and a G (M. 46). The following
are posterior to Giorgio, and one can understand with what views the
greatest possible resemblance has been given to the signature of the
master (M. 47). The last (M. 48) has been attributed to a Maestro Gileo,
whose existence appears to us to be more than doubtful.

M. 46. M. 47. M. 48.

Among the undoubted pupils of Maestro Giorgio, is Prestino.
The principal piece of this artist is a bas-relief in the Louvre, represent-

RENAISSANCE-ITALY— MAJOLICA. 287

ing the Virgin supporting the Infant Jesus ; the flesh tints are of a
pinkish white, the draperies, tinted with a soft iridescence of yellow
and ruby red, are upon a blue ground. On the reverse, 1536. PERES-
TINVS ; the date is repeated on the brim. This work, the last mani
festation of the art inaugurated by the Delia Robbia, is not wanting in
grace or style, and would prove the worth of the bottega in which Pres-
tino had trained himself. Like Andreoli, the pupil made bas-reliefs
and stoviglie (plates and table wares). Only one signed piece of
his is known, a plate signed : 1557 di 28 di magio. In Gubbio per
mano di Mastro Prestino. This piece, representing Venus and Cupid,
is in the collection of Mr. I. Falcke.
Gualdo. — This is a locality unknown before the acquisition of the
Campana collection, and which is perhaps, in truth, only one of the
branches of the Gubbian stock. There is little or no art, except in
the laying on of the metallic lustres, the most brilliant application
that can be imagined of this manipulation with which all minds were
so possessed in the sixteenth century. The ruby of Gualdo is so
resplendent that it effaces the deep blues ; therefore, any one who has
seen a piece tinted with this red will everywhere recognise the works of
this bottega.
Castello. — Citta di Castello, situated not far from Gubbio, is the
seat of an ancient and quite peculiar manufactory, in this sense that it
has never modified its processes, and appears to have been specialised for
wares of general use. Is it at Castello that the style has commenced ?
We do not know; but in the sixteenth century, when Piccolpasso
divulged the secrets of his art, the manufactory had processes so well
understood, and possessed so well, as he says, the harmony of colours,
that he gives the name of Castellane to the method of decoration which,
from this centre, radiated everywhere.
This "castellane" method is very simple, and we have already
described it when speaking of certain French works of the middle ages ;
it is the decoration upon engobe, the design being scratched with an iron
point, and covered over with lead glaze, coloured by a few clouded tints.
Piccolpasso" names this style Gratfto, by analogy with certain frescoes
shaded with black strokes upon white ; the object so decorated is called
Graffito or Sgraffiato.
Piccolpasso thus explains the fabrication : " The Castellane colours are
a separate process, no tin is mixed with them ; and, to use them, it is
necessary to procure a kind of earth which comes from Vicenza, and to
which I know no other name to give than white or Vicentine earth. It

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

can be ground like enamel, and when well crushed, the raw red earth is
covered with it, and it is slightly baked, leaving as little as possible of
the crude red earth ; the white earth is scratched through with an iron
point ; then it is glazed with the above white spread very lightly." One
sees it is the engobe or slip with its incised ornamentation ; they not only
engrave upon the white ground, but it is partially removed to bring
out certain ornamental masses. A yellowish marzacotto, bright yellow,
copper green much diluted, and laid on in clouded spots, a little blue,
rarely black ; these are the colours applied upon this kind of glazed
(vernisse) ware.
The graffiti are not here in their technical order, probably they
ought to have preceded enamelled wares, and lead to them by an
insensible descent; this is at least what one may infer from Passeri :
"About a.d. 1300, they began to cover the unbaked wares with a layer
of white earth called ' terra di San Giovanni,' which best served as a
ground for the colours used. These were yellow, green, black and
blue." Here evidently is some confusion. San Giovanni furnished
an excellent white sand, basis of the transparent glaze; the engobe
earth is that of Vicenza. Passeri and Piccolpasso are on this subject
agreed, except that the first only mentions the paintings on engobe,
while the second attaches himself to the graved decoration.
Fig. 84.
m - - m
It? .... .. ..V*1 .^r.. *^+- 1 -.^'v-VT-T-v^.r--:. -¦—v^=r^--™?/

IE- ~, m
smmMW

Jfrl-

CUP WITH GRAFFITI (MUSEUM OF THE

LOUVRE).

We do not think it would now be possible to specialise the works of
Castello ; those of Foligno and Lombardy must resemble them in so

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y.— MAJOLICA.

many points, that it would be rash to attempt to distinguish them.
What concerns us is to point out to the collector the finest types of
the kind. A cup on stem in the Louvre (Fig. 84), the decoration of
which dates from the fifteenth century, is as remarkable for the
costume and style of the persons (Fig. 85) as for the wonderful crown of

Fig. 85.

*'*l.#'*^^f
1K||||PI
lllfoHli
Ii
E
IjiSH
H
9DBJECT IN THE INTERIOR OF FKi. 84.
foliage (Fig. 86) which surrounds them ; the lion supporters have an
archaic barbarism which recalls those between which they administered
justice in the middle ages, " inter leones." Cluny possesses another cup
(No. 2076) and a dish (2075) in which the escutcheons go to prove that
BORDER IN THE INTERIOR OF FIG. 84.
before majolica, the nobility did not disdain to make use of this primitive
simple ware. It is even to be presumed that the enamelled faience
did not arrive at dethroning it entirely, for we find graffiti of the
sixteenth century, and there was an amateur at Pavia who continued
the fabrication to the end of the seventeenth. u
2qo HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

The decoration h la Castellane has not always been entirely incised ;
certain pieces have received a true painting upon the white earth of
Vicenza ; such is the Wolf in the Yvon collection, and we could multiply
examples. Thus a sort of passage established itself between the engobe
decoration and the mezza majolica of Passeri, which united itself closely
with the early tin-glazed faiences.
D. — States of the Church.
Deruta or Diruta. — This manufactory, among the most important,
appears to have begun with masterpieces to finish indifferently, follow
ing a decreasing progression. A dependancy of Perugia. Vincenzo
Lazari attributes its foundation to Agostino di Antonio di Duccio,
a pupil of Luca della Robbia ; in 1461, this artist worked, they say, at
Perugia, and decorated there the front of the church of San Bernardino
with a frieze. We accept willingly this illustrious origin, for it explains
the elevated tendencies of the first artists in majolica, and the simul
taneous employment in their works of drawing and relief. Thus elegant
plates of the style of the first years of the sixteenth century have, upon
a blue ground, arabesques and trophies supported by heads of cherubims ;
in low relief, slightly embossed, but resplendent in the yellow lustre
which covers them. On the inner circle large scrolls, issuing from a Me
dusa's head, detach themselves in relief from the white, enamel, and enclose
in their folds winged hippocampi, chimeras of ancient style, and even birds
and gilded snails. In the raised centre, on a blue ground, is a charming
female head in profile, lightly modelled, but drawn with masterly
decision. Besides the golden yellow lustre, more fawn colour and less " oriente "
in the pieces of Deruta than in those of Pesaro, the beauty of the
drawing may, we repeat, characterise the works of the first of these
manufactories. Any one would be convinced after having observed at
the Louvre the dish we have just described, and also at Cluny the cup
with the Metamorphosis of Actaeon, after Mantegna, signed at the back
with a capital C barred, or paraphe (M. 49). None of the
specimens of these old dates bear the name of the place ; the
first chronogram appears in 1501 upon a bas-relief, representing
St. Sebastian standing in an imaginary niche, the modelling in
blue, and the arrangement of the lines strengthening the relief;
the drapery, the ground, and the architecture shine with the lustre
chamois coating ; upon a plinth is the inscription A DI 14 DI LUGLIO

RENAISSANCE— ITAL Y.— MAJOLICA. 291

1501. We must next descend to 1528 to find the mention of Fatto in
Deruta ; it exists upon a cup of blue ground with grotesques, in the
Fountaine collection. The piece which follows next is a magnificent
plate, belonging to the Baronne Salomon
de Rothschild, representing Daphne pur*
sued by Apollo. By a simplicity common
in the old Italian w orks, the persons have
a physiognomy quite vulgar, and without
any divine illumination ; their costume
differs little from that in use at the
period the artist worked. At the back of m. so.
the piece the indication of the subject is traced in blue, surrounded by
a decoration in golden yellow lustre, on which is the initial of the author
(M. 50). An interesting point to observe is the monogrammatic dis
position of certain parts of this legend ; we remark the same tendency
in the Cluny piece, where the name ATEON is contracted upon the
bandeau of the indiscreet hunter. As to the letter P, it evidently
resembles the form of certain signatures of Chaffagiolo.
Previous to 1544, and long after, important works are signed el Frate,
" the Brother." This singular painter, is he an individual, or an entity ?
is he a private monk, or a religious body consecrated to the ceramic
art? Whichever it may be, this monk or monks appear to have
adopted for their works subjects taken from fable, and particularly
from the Metamorphoses of Ovid. From 1541 to 1554 these works
succeed, each more unpleasing than the other in aspect, more feeble and
inaccurate in drawing, with visible differences in the manipulation which
leads to the belief of the intervention of different hands. In the
beginning the compositions are borrowed from the old masters ; but
far from seeing an evidence of simplicity and archaism in the coarse
ness and heaviness of the outline, and in the hasty execution of the
modelling, we only see in them the evidence of weakness and ignorance.
When the painter desires to depart from the monotony of the lustred
effigies to approach polychrome colours, his inexperience and awkward
ness manifest themselves to the highest pitch ; sometimes his works
are absolutely bad.
What confirms the belief that there were several boteghe in Deruta,
is that, on one part, there is no connection between the mode of fabri
cation of pieces of skilful and masterly decoration, as the tazza, or
drageoir (Fig. 87), and the thick and coarse make of the works
sent out from the workshops confided to "el Frate." On the other
u 2

292

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

side, the moulds of the primitive workshops have certainly remained in
the hands of potters less artistic than their predecessors, but more
experienced than this same " frate." Thus, Messrs. de Rothschild possess
proofs of the plate " a candelieri," in relief, where the ornaments are
coloured in bright lustred tints, and the central boss has a subject
treated hastily, with the same colours skilfully applied upon a good
design. To gather together as much as possible in one group the works which
appear to us to have one common origin, let us speak of the numerous
series of plates, lustred or in colours, which have been often confounded
with those of Pesaro. The surest guide to distinguish them is the
delicacy, almost amounting to meagreness of the drawing, and a littleness
relative to the details ; the necks of the busts are very long, the features
slender, and when the borders are imbricated, the scales are always small.
Fig. 87.

TAZZA OF DERUTA WITH HEAD OF "ROME." — MUSEUM OF THE LOUVRE.

It is the same with moulded vases easily to be recognised by their
character ; one vase is quite special to this manufactory, and is directly
imitated from the extreme East, and from Asia Minor. It affects the
form of a fir cone upon a stem ; the point of the cone forming the
top. This is, we believe, one of the oldest works of Deruta, and the
collection of the Louvre proves that they applied to these vases the
lustred glaze and the white enamel; in fact, one of these cones is white,
with light blue heightenings upon the scales of the fruit ; another has
received the same heightenings previously to the iridised glaze ; the
others are entirely gilded, and of an uniform tint. This form of vase
was so completely in the practice of Deruta, that we find in the

RENAISSANCE— ITAL Y.— MAJOLICA. 293

M

collection of Baron Salomon de Rothschild a charming vase decorated
with scrolls and arabesques, surrounding the arms of the Lando family
of Venice. The very ancient use of the white enamel in the manufac
ture is again evidenced by a piece belonging to Baron Gustave de
Rothschild — a magnificent specimen of a plate in relief. The dead white
of the enamel is heightened by partially blue grounds, and the central
medallion has a female bust similar to those on the lustred specimens.
The back is ornamented with a green, notched border in the Persian
style, a fresh proof of the disposition of the Italian artists to draw their
inspirations from Oriental sources.
At Deruta, as at Pesaro, monograms are scarce. We have cited the
barred C of the Cluny cup ; here is a D combined with a C, or flourish
(paraphe), upon a piece belonging to Mrs. Bury
Palliser (M. 51). Is it an initial, or the name of a • •*£)
botega? The mark taken from a plate in the *l 11^ XJ39
South Kensington Museum which, with the date of ^v^ G*S>
1539, bears the cyphers of a decorator (M. 52), M- 51- M- 52-
will be of a nature to support the latter conclusion. Two other letters,
G V, observed under a piece belonging to Count Baglioni, of Perugia,
are attributed by Mr. Chaffers to one Giorgio Vasajo, of whom we find
no mention elsewhere.
A cup, in the collection of the Comtesse de Cambis, supplies us with
another name ; in the centre, in a circle, ornamented in " sopra bianco,"
Cupid and Apollo; armed, are facing each other; round the edge are
several episodes in the life of the god of day ; there, he stands before
the laurel which was once Daphne ; there, he kills the serpent Python.
All this, treated upon a pale berettino in crude tints, is drawn without
art, and is of common execution ; the whole is not wanting in effect,
and the painter has inscribed under the piece his name and a date :
FRANCESCO URBINI I DERUTA, 1537. Who was this Francesco
d'Urbino, who came there at the same time as the Frate to bring an
execution so inferior to those of his own country ? How, a still more in
explicable thing, came he to put himself in competition without any
other resource but a hard, dry pallet, with these majolica painters, who
still traced so delicately their busts with golden lustre ?
Another signature occurring upon a piece in the late Campana
collection, is that of Antonio. Lafreri; it accompanies an historic
subject, dated 1554. Lafreri was a Frenchman settled at Rome, and
became one of the most important publishers of engravings at the end
of the sixteenth century. An engraver himself, we have hazarded the

294 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
idea that he may, by the caprice of an artist, have tried to paint the
majolica upon which we read his name. M. Darcel, on the contrary,
thinks tliat this name was the " excudit " of the publisher, innocently
copied by the painter after the engraving which had served him as a
model. This is not impossible ; yet M. Darcel himself has instanced
examples of the substitution of the mark of the ceramist for that of the
engraver whose works he copied. The piece does not possess sufficient
interest to be worth the trouble of going into the question.
Monte Bagnolo. — This ceramic locality is made known by an oldish
piece bearing the inscription Francesco Durdtino, vasaro Amote Bagnolo
d, Peroscia. 1553.
Fabriano. — This forgotten botega has been revealed to collectors at
the Universal Exhibition by a magnificent cup belonging to Signore
Castellani. The whole surface of the piece is covered with a composi
tion of Raffaelle, preserved to us by an engraving of Marc Antonio. In
the midst of a holy assemblage, the Virgin and St. Anne ascend the steps
of a temple, and advance towards Christ, seated under a portico. The
ilesh, boldly drawn, is lightly shaded with blue; the draperies and
accessories borrow from the polychrome pallet a sober colouring,
which recalls the tendencies of Faenza. On the whole, the style
is grand, the execution masterly and firm, and we do not doubt
but this type will help to recognise products until now unnamed.
Under the foot is written, FABRIANO. 1527 ; below is a kind of X,
which, in this instance, cannot be attributed to Xanto. Here then is a
botega of the states of the Church, which has nothing to envy in elevation
of style and scientific drawing with the most renowned workshops of Italy.
Foligno. — This town should be the centre of a considerable produc
tion, since Piccolpasso mentions and figures the water-mill used to grind
the colours. In giving, also, the composition of these colours, the author
tells us that they were used upon the white earth of Vicenza and
a la Castellane.
Viteebo. — The manufactory of Viterbo is nowhere mentioned, but its
existence is established by unimpeachable evidence. In the South
Kensington Museum is a piece bordered with trophies, and representing
the oft-repeated subject of Diana and Actaeon. Below, a figure holds a
scroll, inscribed I VITERBO. DIOMEO. 1554. What means this name
of Diomeo ? It does not relate to the subject, and seems unlike Italian ;
but it matters little, the word Viterbo is here, although partly written
backwards. How many secondary workshops are there which the great
centres have effaced !

RENAISSANCE.— TTAL Y— MAJOLICA. 295
E. — Northern Duchies.
Ferrara. — The Este family of Ferrara have a claim to our interest
upon more than one title. In an enlightened age we see its members
constantly ready to second the work of progress at any personal sacrifice.
Alfonso I., particularly sympathetic with France, had to support in her
cause vicissitudes without number. Although he had married Lucrezia
Borgia, daughter of the terrible Alexander VI., he was courageous
enough to keep faithful to us by remaining in the League of Cambrai,
and to fight against the Papal authority. While warring for France
and defendmg his duchy, he found time and means to organise one of
the most brilliant manufactories in Italy.
Until these last few years, collectors scarcely consented to inscribe
the name of Ferrara in the archives of majolica ; it required our own
persevering efforts, combined with the luminous works of the Marquis
Giuseppe Campori, to render justice to this Mecaenas worthy of taking
rank near the Medici.
It is then by the assistance of the learned Modenese, and in support
ing ourselves upon the works preserved in the most important collections,
that we are going to rebuild the history of the products of Ferrara.
We will remark here, for the Marquis Campori, as for all the learned
accustomed to examine archives, there is no evidence here beyond written
documents ; their absence implies a suspension in the order of facts. We
do not completely partake in this view ; in great social commotions
people are apt to neglect making a note of private expenses of a secondary
order, such as those relating to the furnishing materials for the work of
a manufacture, or the salary of the workmen; one also knows how
ruinous is the stoppage of an establishment, even limited and protected.
We admit then the slackening and resumption, but not the total giving
up and rebuilding, of the manufacture of Ferrara.
Let us establish, first, one important fact : the majolica art was
imported into Ferrara by artists from Faenza. The first of whom we
find the trace is a Fra Melchiorre, " maestro dei lavori di terra," in 1495.
In 1501, payments are made to Maestro Biagio da Faenza, keeping a
botega at the Castel Nuovo, for works furnished to a convent, and the
ornaments of a stove constructed in this same Castel Nuovo. At this
period Alfonso was not yet supporting the weight of government;
Ercole, his father, governed the duchy ; nothing, therefore, prevented
the young prince from following the experiments of his pottery, and to
discover that fine milky white, "bianco allattato," of which Piccol-

296 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
passo attributes the invention to him, establishing the falseness of the
nomination of Faenza white given to this colour.
In 1505, Alfonso became duke of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio,
and, until 1506, mention is made of Biagio as being in his service.
From this date till 1522, there is no longer question of majolica in
the ducal annals; M. Campori infers hence there must have been a
break in the manufacture. In 1510, Alfonso was at war with Pope
Julius IL, whose army, reinforced by that of the Spaniards, took Modena
and Reggio. Thus despoiled of his states, and pressed for money, the
prince, says Paolo Giovio, " not wishing to impose new taxes upon his
subjects, pawned the most valuable objects he held from his ancestors,
and even the jewels of his wife Lucrezia Borgia. Deprived of what was
the ornament of his buffets and his table, he began to make use of
earthen vases and plates, which appeared to him more dignified and
proper to do him honour, inasmuch that "they came out of his hands,
and were the product of his industry." This evidence suffices to prove
the continuation of the works; we can understand that at this critical
moment, they may have neglected to keep an account of the lead or tin
bought for them.
In 1522, if the acquisition of these materials reappears in the
accounts, it is that at the same time, it is question, of a change in the
staff of the workshop ; Antonio da Faenza, is attached to it with twelve
livres a month, food and lodging; another Faentine, Catto, succeeded
him in 1528, and died in 1535. These new men, simple potters, are of
secondary importance in point of art ; of the distinguished painters to
whose talent the Ferrarese majolica owed its reputation, we scarcely find
but one vague mention ; the payment of twelve sols made, in 1524, to one
named Camillo, " because he had painted some vases for the potter."
Besides, the brothers Dossi superintended the workshop ; employed by
Alfonso of Este to decorate his palaces with frescoes and paintings, they
did not disdain to descend to more humble works ; in 1528, two livres
are granted to Dossi for having employed two days in tracing designs
for the potter ; Battista, his brother, receives one livre as the price of
models for the handles of vases.
M. Campori does not define the kind of influence the Dossi may
have exercised upon the ornamentation of majolica, but Giuseppe
Boschini puts us in the way by recalling how much these artists
decorated the palaces with the light grotesques adopted by Raffaelle:
there appears therefore reason to extend the terms of the protest of
Piccolpasso ; one ought to say, " they have falsely attributed to other

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y.—MA JOLICA . 297
manufactories the fine milky white and the grotesques inaugurated at
Ferrara." With respect to figure pieces, they are less rare than is supposed.
The rich cabinets of the Rothschild family are amply provided with
specimens belonging to a service made at the beginning of the manu
facture, and of which an armorial shield indicates the origin and
destination. The shield, per pale, Gonzaga and Este, can only be
that of Gian-Francesco II., marquis of Mantua, who married, in 1490, the
celebrated Elisabetta or Isabella, daughter of Ercole I., duke of Ferrara,
and sister of Alfonso, founder of the workshop of the Castello. Isabella
died in 1539 ; she had therefore seen her brother's majolicas at the time
they shone with the greatest lustre. An enlightened woman, sung by the
poets, protectress of letters and the arts, it was natural she should desire
to decorate her palaces with such remarkable wares as those of Biagio
da Faenza ; and, as if to give his products a more solemn consecration,
she caused to be painted on them, not only the united arms of Gonzaga
and Este, but cyphers, and devices now inexplicable, but which give to
the service (credenza). a peculiar character of familiar intimacy. Among
the symbolic figures are to be remarked a crucible upon the fire, in
which a bundle of metallic bars are melting ; the seven-branched
candlestick ; bands inscribed with notes of music. The ciphers are the
alpha and omega, united by a flourish (M. 53), a ^jtmffw n^
Y interlaced with an S (M. 54), and several others _jf\jfei-^ U>
which have been taken for painters' marks. Fran- M- 53- M- 54-
cesco Xanto, to whom some have been attributed, only appears upon the
scene at a period subsequent to the death of Isabella, and also of that
of her husband, in 1519. Yet he himself has scattered Greek cha
racters in his compositions, and that is why the Ferrara pieces have
been attributed to him.
We have yet only spoken of the official botega called of the Castello,
in the pay of Alfonso I. M. Campori makes known another, protected
by Don Sigismund, of Este, brother of the duke of Ferrara. Installed
in the Schifanoia palace, under the direction of a master workman,
Biagio Biasini da Faenza, we find mention of it in the archives of 1515
to 1524 ; in 1525, we find three painters resided there, of whom the
principal was El Frate, and the two others Grosso and Zaffarin'o. Is it
from this workshop that came a marvellous cup in the museum of
Sevres, bearing the name of Frederic II., marquis of Mantua, son and
successor of Gian Francesco II. ? Made between 1519 and 1530, epoch
when Frederic was named duke by Charles. V.; it has nothing in common

298 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
in style with the products of the Castello. Its decoration is composed
of " candelieri," borrowed from the compositions of Nicoletto da Modena,
i.e., executed in light blue upon a yellow ground, bordered on each side
by fragments of landscapes. The delicacy of execution is remarkable.
M. Campori does not find this share of labour sufficient for the glory
of Ferrara during the first half of the sixteenth century ; he wishes to
enlarge the circle of fortunate experiments made by Alfonso I. Accord
ing to the learned author, this prince would be the real inventor of
European porcelain, and he gives in support of his assertion the
following letter written to the duke by Giacomo Tebaldi, his ambassador
at Venice :
" I send your excellency a little plate and bowl of false (ficta)
porcelain, which the master of whom you have ordered it sends you.
And the said master says the work has not succeeded as he hoped, by
reason that he gave it too much fire. The magnificent Signore
Catharino Zeno, who was present, sends many compliments to your
excellency, and T myself have begged the master to make us some more
plates, seeking to animate him by the hope of success. We have not
succeeded ; he has told me this in proper terms. ' I make a present of
the bowl to your duke ; I send him a little plate, that he may not doubt
my wish to serve him, but I will in no way continue thus to throw away
my time and my money. If he wishes to go to the expense, I would
consent to give my time, but I will make no more attempts at my own
cost.' I have proposed to him to come and live at Ferrara, and have
told him that your excellency will furnish all the conveniences desired,
and that he could work and earn a great deal at it. He replied he was
too old, and will not go from here." — Venice, 17th May, 1519.
This appears to us to prove an attempt made at Venice by an
unknown artist, whose works had been pointed out to Alfonso I. ; but
the prince understood he should derive no honour from a discovery
made at a distance, even at his own expense, and the artist not being
able to go to him, the enterprise was given up.
In 1534 to 1539, that is, during the reign of Ercole IL, son and
successor of Alfonso, majolica was little encouraged ; the archives of the
period lead M. Campori to infer that Pietro Paolo Stanghi, of Faenza,
was the sole artist who occupied himself with the manufacture.
Alfonso II. inspired himself with the traditions of his grandfather,
and gave a new impulse to ceramic works. Vasari bears witness to it
when he speaks of " the marvellous earthen vases of various kinds, and
others in porcelain of a very beautiful form," which are made at Ferrara.

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y.— MAJOLICA. 299
Here the Marquis Campori places a very judicious remark, which will
permit us to establish with precision the two schools which divided the
Ferrarese majolicas. Alfonso I. employed none but Faentine artists,
and it is among the pieces attributed to the Marches that we must seek
their works. Alfonso IL, arriving at a moment when the workshop
of Urbino was predominant over all the others, sought to imitate its
productions, and attached to himself painters broken in to the habits and
style of this manufacture. We certainly agree with the learned Modenese
how difficult is the apportionment between the various centres of works
proceeding from the same thought and obtained by the same processes ;
but if, in high painting, the vulgar is satisfied in recognising nation
alities, the more refined distinguish the schools, recognise the touch of the
master, and do not confound an original with the copy of a contemporary
pupil ; it is the same in ceramics for those whom an intelligent study
will direct to the serious analysis of things analogous in appearance.
The two names which most often repeat themselves in the archives
of Este are those of Camillo da Urbino and of Battista, his brother, both
painters in majolica. M. Campori establishes, from excellent reasons,
that this Camillo was not a member of the Fontana family ; he died
accidentally in 1567, the'period at which, according to Raffaelli, Camillo
Fontana was called to the service of the duke of Ferrara. There is,
perhaps, no contradiction between the two documents ; and one might
admit that a Camillo came to replace the other in the majolica works,
which would only explain the better the close analogy of certain pieces
of Ferrara, with the work of the great painter of Urbino. The first
Camillo was already in the service of the duke in 1561, receiving a
salary of six ducats of gold, and everything lends itself to the supposition
that he was specially occupied with the experiments directed by
Alfonso IL, with a view to obtaining a translucent pottery or porcelain.
Indeed, the details gathered of his tragical death leave the fact nearly
beyond doubt. The 21st of August, 1567, Camillo took some gentle
men of Urbino to the celebrated foundry, where was the ducal artillery ;
the master founder, forgetting that a piece was loaded, took a match,
attached to the end of a spear, in order they should admire the interior
polish of the metal ; an explosion followed, and the ball killed three of the
gentlemen, and severely wounded the master founder and Camillo himself
mortally. Great pains were then taken to obtain from the dying man the
revelation of his secret ; he promised to make it known if his state became
worse, the duke himself being assured that Battista possessed the
receipts for porcelain, except the process for applying the gilding. The

300 "HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

accident caused a great sensation ; Bernardo Canigiani, ambassador from
the grand duke of Florence, wrote to his court to announce the event,
and mentioned, among the victims, " Camillo da Urbino, maker of vases
and painter, and in some sort chemist to your Excellency, who is the
real Modena inventor of porcelain."
In comparing this with what we have said, concerning the Medici
porcelain, it is difficult not to grant to the duke of Ferrara, Alfonso
IL, the priority of attempts to make this new pottery, only no one has
yet identified a piece produced at Ferrara, while specimens of the
Florentine porcelain are to be found in all choice collections.
To return to earthenware, M. Campori finds no mention relative to
it beyond 1570, a period when earthquakes desolated the town for
nine consecutive months; similar phenomena having been continued
until 1574, the author thinks the fabrication of works of art was sus
pended if not abandoned. Certainly, in times of public calamities, the
arts experience a momentary check ; all the living forces of the nation
concentrate themselves in remedies to oppose to the evil. But the
disaster repaired, it belongs to the heads of the. people to remount the
slackened springs, and to give a new impulse to the intellectual powers.
Thus it became Alfonso II. ; he restored vigour to the cultivation of
the arts, and to set an example, reanimated the works of his ceramic
manufacture ; so when, in 1579, he married Margaret of Gonzaga, it is
not of foreign artists he orders the service, where his love expresses
itself by the emblem of a burning altar, surrounded by the motto,
Ardet seternum ; with the primitive forms, he takes up again the
grotesques on white ground invented by his grandfather ;. it is this deco
ration which surrounds the "stemma," symbol of fidelity, mark of his
personal service. In this respect, we partake of the opinion of Giuseppe
Boschini, and we are confirmed in our belief by two trilobed pieces of
the Louvre, one of which is certainly of ancient date, and the other,
proceeding from the same mould, bears the amorous legend of tlie
marriage service of Alfonso II. All generally agree in attributing to
Ferrara pieces in relief, almost white,, of which the fabrication was
continued during the reign of Caesar of Este, and perhaps after his
deposition in 1598.
Modena.— Expelled from their capital by Pope Clement VIII., and
despoiled of their principality, the dukes of Ferrara retired to Modena.
Nevertheless majolica did not appear there before the beginning of the
eighteenth century, and in a path strange to the ways of the Renais
sance. We only therefore inscribe this name in its order.

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y.— MAJOLICA. 301
F. — Venetian Stales.
Venice. — Is it the high position of Venice, its political importance,
its maritime power, that have caused the history of various industries to
be neglected ? Its archives overflow with unpublished correspondence,
with precious manuscripts, with diplomatic deeds interesting to most of
the European powers ; they are dumb upon things connected with the
private life of the city, and, like Florence, Venice has long seen the
produce of its manufactures swell the contingent of works less ancient
and less remarkable.
It is at Modena that the Marquis Campori has found documents
which permit of putting an end to this denial of justice, and to restore
to Venice the rank which belongs to her among the most industrial
cities of Italy.
In 1520, Titian, whose intimate relations with Alfonso I., duke of
Fesrara, had never been interrupted, was charged by that prince to have
a quantity of glasses made at Murano, and some vases of earth and of
majolica destined for the ducal pharmacy. Tebaldo, Alfonso's agent,
had an interview with the painter, who desired to superintend himself
the execution of the order, and verify its success.
On the first of June, Tebaldo writes to his patron : " By the boatman,
Giovanni Tressa, I send your Excellency eleven large vases and eleven
middle sized, and twenty little in majolica with lids, ordered by Titian
for the pharmacy of your Excellency."
The fabrication was then in its full perfection at Venice, since the
inventor of the finest white known, the founder of one of the most
important manufactories in Italy, showed himself anxious to possess
works which, on his side, a man of the worth of Titian had pronounced
to have " succeeded wonderfully'." Not only must majolica have been
current at Venice in 1520, but the potters sought even more, they
worked at the discovery of porcelain. We have given the documents
relative to the negotiations entered into between the ambassador of
Ferrara and a certain Venetian maestro of name unknown, who sent
his trial pieces of porcelain to duke Alfonso I. This master potter, too
old, he said, to leave his country and go to Ferrara, must be one of the
elders of pottery. For ourselves, we do not hesitate to think that the
Venetian workshops worked in the second half of the fifteenth century ;
we have the proof in a fine albarello or drug pot belonging to M. Fayet ;
we see on it one of those characteristic effigies of the primitive Italians,
long hair cut straight on the forehead, energetic and strongly marked

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

features, and the ornaments which surround it of good style ; in the
decoration runs a legend in Venetian patois. This detail, added to
the character of the painter, leaves no doubt as to the date and origin
of the vase. This distant epoch will assuredly have representations
among the specimens of mezza-majolica of our museums, only one dare
not fix to whom to attribute them, by reason even of their rarity and of
their almost foreign type. As to the vases of the beginning of the sixteenth
century, how to define their character ? Must they not be confounded in
the mass of contemporary works? In 1501, Venice took the city of
Faenza from Caesar Borgia, and kept it till 1508, notwithstanding the
complaints of Julius II. ; the republic also acquired Rimini from
Pandolfo Malatesta ; thus she found herself in possession of two important
centres of ceramic fabrication, and was able to improve and modify the
first manner of her artists by placing herself on a level with the more
advanced manufactures.
When, in 1515, Francesco Pieragnolo came, as relates Piccolpasso,
and set up a faiencerie with the help of his father, Gianantonio de
Pesaro, this castel-durantin was able to introduce a new style into Venice,
but he did not erect an unknown industry. If Vincenzo Lazari,
adopting a contrary opinion, considers the potteries dispersed in Venice
anterior to 1545 as the result of importations made from Faenza and
Castel-Durante, it is that he has not been able to discover in the
Venetian archives any document of more ancient date than the narra
tive of Piccolpasso, concerning the workshop of Pieragnolo, and that he
has set out from this indication to build up the history of Venetian
majolica. Now we can no longer hesitate, we must restore to the artists
of the queen of the seas, the majolica pavement in the sacristy of Santa
Elena, made at the expense of the Giustiniani family, who had their arms
painted there in 1450 to 1480 ; and that decorated with the shield of
the Lando family in the chapel of the Annunziata at the church of St.
Sebastian ; this last bears, with the date 1570, the monogram T. L. V. B.
enclosed in the letter Q in large capitals.
The 25th of May, 1567, a certain Battista di Francesco wrote this
singular epistle to the duke of Ferrara :
" The very faithful and special servant of your Excellency, Maestro
Battista (son) of Francesco, master in majolica, and maker of vases
noble, rare, beautiful, and of different qualities, notifies, by this ill
compiled letter to your Excellency, that he now inhabits Murano, in the
district of Venice, with his wife and children, and that he keeps there a
shop well stored with vases and other productions of the same kind.

REN A ISS A NCE.—ITA L Y.—MA JO LLC A. 303

Having heard the magnanimity and the reputation of your Excellency
exalted by several Venetian lords and gentlemen, he has taken a desire to
serve you with works of his art, which will please you, he hopes, considering
the love you bear for all productions of art, and of these particularly.
But, being unable to abandon his shop and his processes without the
help of Heaven and your Excellency, he asks him for the loan of three
hundred crowns to arrange his affairs and come and fix his residence at
Ferrara, with the view of working there at the request of your Excellency
and his subjects. And if it pleases him to grant him the three hundred
crowns he asks, he will bind himself, his heirs, and all his goods in the
best way he is able, to secure the repayment. He begs he will give him
an answer to the address of Maestro Battista di Francesco, of the
majoliche and vases, at Murano, rio delli Verrieri, and he offers and
recommends himself to your Excellency."
We have now exhausted written information ; we must next ask of
the, wares themselves the indications necessary to confirm or complete
the ceramic history of Venice.
The most ancient dates are in the South Kensington Museum and in
the Fortnum collection ; upon one piece we read, Adi 13 Aprille 1543 ;
upon the other, 1540 Adi 16 del Mex de Otubre. Upon. pieces in England,
and in the Brunswick Museum, are these indications on a plate repre
senting the destruction of Troy : Fatto in Venezia in Ghastello 1 546 ; then,
1568, Zener Domenico da Venetia feci in la botega al ponte sito del
andar a san Polo. This botega is probably that belonging to Maestro
Ludovico, and Domenico would be one of the painters attached to the
establishment; in fact, Ludovico is named upon a plate of the South
Kensington Museum with these details : In Venetia, in cotrada di santo
Polo, in botega dj M". Ludovico. Beneath the inscription a shield,
charged with a cross "coupe," leads to no further induction beyond
the indication of the enamels.
At the time he published his catalogue of the Correr Museum,
Venetian works were so rare or so completely misunderstood, that
Vincenzo Lazari attributed to the competition of continental faiences
the speedy destruction of a factitious industry inconsiderately implanted
upon a soil without either clay or combustibles. But Venice was not
accustomed to bargain her glory ; one of the first to cause the noble
effigies invented by her painters, to be transferred to the enamelled terra
cotta, she never gave up the majolica industry ; the book of Piccolpasso
furnishes of itself the proof to those who know how to understand him.
One has not sufficiently observed that this ceramic writer is more a

304 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
manufacturer and decorator than an historic painter ; he speaks little or
not at all of subjects borrowed from the old masters, and if he describes
the style of a workshop, it is in arabesques, scrolls, and symmetrical
compositions that he seeks its characteristics. He has done this for
Venice, of which he cites the landscapes, flowers, and fruits, arabesques
sold by the dozen (alia dozzena), that is, wholesale for extensive
commercial exportation.
The practical indications of Piccolpasso carry with them this
valuable information; tbe further we are from the beginning of the
Renaissance, so in proportion industry overrules art, and we arrive by
an insensible transition from estimable artistic works to those things of
routine, where one no longer seeks to recognise the individual touch or
even a trace of the taste peculiar to the period. Such are in Venetian
wares the pieces in blue camaieu, heightened with white upon berettino,
whether the decoration is of figures or foliage ; such again are those
with architectural ruins, of two colours, sometimes surrounded by reliefs,
as if repousse upon a thin earth of metallic sound.
A mark which we meet with upon the oldest pieces with ruins, and
which has perpetuated itself, consists in a cypher, probably symbolical,
composed of the letters ARGG or AFGG, combined with a double
anchor, or rather a grappling-iron, as in these figures (M. 55 & 56).

M. 55. M. 56. M. 57.
Mark 57 is at Sevres upon a magnificent escutcheoned cistern (vasque),
which certainly belongs to the fine time of the Renaissance. Then we
find it again upon very ordinary plates of which some of the service
have often the foregoing signs.
A piece decorated with reliefs round the border, and in the centre
the subject of Judith and Holofernes, is signed with this
cypher (M. 58), which is not without analogy to the
customary one of landscapes and ruins, since we find in
it the letters CRG ; the mark with the cross crowned
contains the initials AF (M. 57) ; and lastly, we some
times find a C formed with a kind of fish-hook (M.
59), and which no doubt is closely allied with the pre
ceding marks. It may be seen at the musee de Cluny, upon a large

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y.— MAJOLICA. 3o5

fountain, decorated with marks and wreaths in relief; some bouquets
scattered in the ground, and a painted shield add to its richness.
The mark is repeated in the wreaths. The same mark is upon a
plate representing the Salutation, dated 1571. What is this in
strument of fishing affecting the figure of a letter ? Is it an enigma,
a kind of calembour ? Hook in Italian is amo ; is there some connection
between this name and that of the painter or the workshop ? Is it, like
the mark of the grapnel, a letter deformed appropriate to the taste for
nautical emblems natural among the inhabitants of a city emerging
from the lagunes where there is scarcely ground to build upon ? We
have not met with any document of a nature to throw light upon
these questions. But we shall see later the anchor mark the porcelain
of England as that of Venice, and thus show the same assumption to the
empire of the seas. We shall also see the fish-hook reappear upon a
faience of the seventeenth century. This last leads us to believe that
these nautical or fishing instruments are rather the mark of a workshop
than an individual sign emanating from a workman or a painter.
Cornaro or Cornari. — This locality which borrows its illustration
from the name of one of the most important Venetian families has also
had its ceramic works, at least towards the decline. Count de Liesville
possesses two plates with lions and birds round the border, while the
centre has rather singular mythological subjects, among which are
harpies and syrens. The proprietor of it has seen other
pieces with festive scenes. Incorrect in drawing, of a greyish
blue decoration, the name of the workshop is expressed by
the shield of the Cornari (M. 60), per pale or and azure,
rendered in natural enamels. M.'eo.
Treviso. — -This town possessed a ceramic manufactory in the
fifteenth century, since Garzoni speaks of it in the Piazza Universale.
The mention is certainly not flattering, it is all to the advantage of
Faenza, whose products he declares to be as superior to those of Treviso
as truffles to puff-balls. But in those times of intellectual exuberance,
progress was rapid, and a piece in the collection of Mr. Addington
goes to prove that they had arrived swiftly at remarkable results
where Garzoni had only found subject for blame. Let us describe, after
Mr. Chaffers, this interesting majolica ; its form is that of a deep
plate, or bowd, in the circumference are arabesques detached upon a
blue ground, the central subject is the Sermon on the Mount, beneath,
is a portrait supported by Amorini, and surrounded by this circular
legend; D. 0. N. P. A. R. I. S. I. 0. E- D. A. T. R. A. V. I.-S. I. 0.

306 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
A label contains the date MDXXX8 ; the singularity of the mixture
of Roman and Arabic numbers adds to that of the inscription,
divided by points, and by a group difficult to explain. Don Parisi of
Treviso, was he the author of the work, or the person for whom it was
destined ? We dare not affirm anything on this point, but what
remains beyond a doubt is the existence at Treviso of a ceramic workshop
in the sixteenth century. This piece existing in England will no doubt
assist in finding others, and in re-establishing the share of a town which
has never ceased its ceramic labours since we shall again find it working
in later times.
Padua. — This manufactory is also very ancient, and this is what Lazari
states as to its origin : " In the street which still preserves the name of
the Via delle Boccalarie is a house lately restored, in which was
found some years back, the trace of ovens, which had been established
there. The walls towrards the street were overlaid with triangular tiles
alternately white and blue, among which was let in a majolica disk
of about twenty inches in diameter, now in the museum of the
city. The Virgin and Child are represented upon a throne between
St. Roch and Santa Lucia, and surrounded by cherubs; below is a
shield, the bottom is slightly hollowed, the figures in relief are white, ex
cept the hair which is of a yellowish tint, and the robe of the Virgin, which
is pale blue. The enamel is scanty and the earth coarse. This precious
disk is known to have been executed after a cartoon of Nicolo Pizzolo, a
pupil of Squarcione, and the rival of Mantegna ; his name, NICOLETI,
is on the top of the throne." Evidently works which had produced
this ancient and remarkable piece would not have stopped suddenly ; we
ought, at least, to find some intermediate works between the bas relief
of Pizzolo and the rare plates, inferior in design and execution, which,
from 1548 to 1565, show us there was a workshop. The Paduan
painters of this period are to be recognised by a certain povertv of
pallet, the flesh is of a bistre yellow, not agreeable, the grounds rough,
and the distinctness of outline does not compensate for the other
faults. The oldest specimen, at South Kensington, represents Myrrha
fleeing from her father, and is dated 1548; another (Musee de Cluny)
with Adam and Eve under the Tree of Knowledge, is rather com
plicated on the reverse. The circumference is ornamented with a
succession of Gothic arches intersecting each other, under the legend,
Adamo Eva, is an interlacing surmounting two crossed strokes in the
form of an X, then, 1563 a padoa. The third piece, Polyphemus and
Galatea, is dated 1564; the last, dated 1565, has the same subject

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y.— MAJOLICA. 307
as that of 1563, viz., the Fall of Man, and also bears A Padova. The
comparison of these cups with others not signed, would admit of increas
ing the products of a manufactory which can never have ceased working.
We know that certain pharmacy vases with two handles of a pearl grey
ground, relieved by flowers, arabesques, and sometimes grotesques, were
known under the name of vasi alia padovana. These vases must have
been of a poor workmanship, if one judges by those continued in the
same style in the seventeenth century.
Bassano. — Towards 1540, a certain Simone Marinoni founded the
works at Bassano, in the suburb called the Marchesane ; but it does not
appear that its products were of great value ; a piece of 1555, represent
ing St. Francis, St. Anthony, and St. Bonaventura, is ill painted and a
failure in colour and glaze. At the end of the sixteenth century, the
establishment produced with perfect success, cups, saucers, and other
objects of smaller dimensions, with landscapes and works in the Venetian
style. This production continued during the following century under
the impulse of the Terchi, of whom we shall speak later.
Verona. — The name of this manufactory has been long unknown to
collectors, but a magnificent istoriato piece, exhibited at South
Kensington, has revealed the importance of the furnace and the merit
of the artists who worked there in 1563. The. subject represents the
family of Darius before Alexander ; under the plate is written, 1563
adi 15 genaro Iio Giovani Batista da Faenza in Verona. Mr. Chaffers
calls this painter Francesco Giovan Battista, but we read with Mr. J.
C. Robinson, Iosef-Giovan-Battista ; a native of Faenza or elsewhere,
we have found no other work of bis. Is it in passing through Verona
he has left an earnest of his talent, or had he founded himself the botega
which is indicated by the piece preserved in England ? It is hardly
possible to know, and a monogram (M. 61) inscribed under
the legend does not bring any element useful to solve the
question ; partly destroyed by a large piece of the enamel
having scaled off, it appears to have been composed M- 61-
of a I, an M, and a V joined ; these are certainly not the initials of the
painter ; would it be those of the city or of the master of the botega
where Josef Giovan Battista worked ? Some other piece will inform us.
Chandiana. — This workshop situated near Padua, has specialised
itself by its imitations of Persian ware. Upon a tolerably white faience are
thrown polychrome bouquets, in which the hyacinth, tulips, and African
marigolds expand themselves like so many girandoles of fireworks. Some
cups with low stems, and pharmacy jars, seem to announce an ancient
x "I

308 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
epoch, but plates and certain swelling jars (potiches) cannot be referred
beyond the seventeenth century, and we will speak of them in their
place. G. — States of Genoa.
Genoa. — A great obscurity is still spread over the ceramic history
of this city ; most writers elude the difficulty of research by generalis
ing what they have been able to gather under such heads as, workshops
of the State or Riviera of Genoa ; then they cite Savona, and all is said.
But Savona is an establishment of the decline, and Genoa is a centre
whose activity goes back to the first years of the sixteenth century.
Does not Picolpasso indicate that they used the clay dug at the place
itself? does he not describe the decorations employed; elegant
arabesques, leaves in large .scrolls, landscapes with scattered buildings
separated by water, partaking of those of Venice ?
Evidently, most of the works of Genoa like those of Venice are con
founded in the crowd, from the want of a distinctive mark. Later,
towards the beginning of the seventeenth century, when the manufactory
sought to distinguish its pottery from that of Savona, with which it is
identical in make and decoration, it marked with the figure of its light-

M. 62. M. 63.
house (M. 62 & 63), which does not prevent most authors from ad
vancing that this figure is one of the signatures of Savona. There
may be a close resemblance between the works of the Genoese decline
and those of Savona, but they may yet be distinguished, and we must
seek the early majolicas of Genoa, of which the enamel and the colours
are remarkable.
Savona. — This town, situated upon the coast, eight leagues west of
Genoa, manufactured enormously, towards the end of the sixteenth
and the beginning of the seventeenth century, but we must admit it was
essentially a commercial fabric, in which blue camaieu pervades, and
where the traditions of high art rarely show themselves. The customary
mark of Savona (M. 64) is a shield gules, with a pale argent and
chief of the same, charged with an eagle nascent sable, the mural

4^

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL K— MAJOLICA. 309
crown is that of the town. Sometimes the shield is accompanied by
cyphers (M. 65), such as GS, GJG, or with emblems. The letters GS
appear to refer to a Girolamo Salomoni, who flourished about 1650;
but the principal mark is Solomon's knot, a cabalistic figure composed
of two triangles crossed and forming a star.
9 BgfC
M. 64. M. 65.
The signature GAG. is attributed to Gian Antonio Guidobono. This
artist had two sons, Bartolommeo and Domenico, who continued the
fabrication concurrently with Gian Tommaso Torteroli and Agostino
Ratti, whom we shall again find later.
Towards the last epoch of its works, the manufactory
appears to have varied its marks, this among others (M. 66) :
Some have pretended to see the work of a Salomoni in
some polychrome wares peculiar in style and bearing on the m.
back a cursive S surmounting a star (M. 67). We remark
that the figure is a star of five rays without any symbolic
connection with the name of the ancient artists of Savona.
Albissola. — A village situated at a league from the M- 67-
town had a branch establishment, and the Conrade, principal founders
of the manufactory at Nevers, came from it. There appears to be no
difference between the products of Albissola and those of the last period
of Savona. Yet a painting formed of plaques united and representing
the Nativity, bears, with the date, the name of the place, Arbissola : that
of the potter, Agostino : and the signature of the painter Gerolamo of
Urbino. H. — Kingdom of Naples.
Naples. — There is yet much to clear up as regards the products
of the ancient kingdom of Naples ; Castelli is, according to some, the
only manufactory known ; others speak of Naples, attributing to it the
works of Castelli, and also a part of those of the Italian decline.
From the first years of the sixteenth century, the majolicas of the
kingdom of Naples were celebrated, since Antonio Beuter, in his
' Cronica generale di Spagna,' cites the wares of Castelli, in the
Abruzzi ; and those of Pisa and Pesaro, as rivalling the ancient vases
of Corinth — a comparison more ambitious than true, and which would

3'o

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

seem to prove the author spoke of things he had never seen. But one
may infer from the date of the book (1510), and the bringing together
the names of Castelli and Pesaro, there was a kind of resemblance
between the produce of the two establishments, which would both have
begun with lustred ware. It is to the future that we must leave the
task of throwing light on these questions. We find the name of
Naples, upon works of the end of the sixteenth century, stamped with
the style of the epoch, and which would easily be confounded with the
potteries of Northern Italy7. These are vases of colossal size, and
evidently composed for grand decoration, being painted only on one
side ; the handles formed of caryatides. The subjects are religious,
the Miraculous Draught of Fishes, Christ in the
Garden of Olives, etc., represented in blue camaieu
pricked with black ; the drawing is free and
elegant though a little concise, and the touch bold
and spirited. Upon one we read Fran00 Brand 
Napoli . . . Gesu novo ; below is mark 68. The second
bears the same monogram, also crowned (M. 69)>
the names Paulus Francus Brandi Pinx. 68+ ; the figures seem to
indicate the year 1568. A vase, dated, has been made
\Citi*V anteriorly by an artist of the same workshop, whose sig-
Y% /V nature is: P. il sig. Francho Nepita. 1532. Here the closed,
«£5 vf radiated crown (the iron crown), is of the greatest import
ance; it specialises a whole series of works attributed some
times to Castelli, sometimes to le Nove, near Bassano. This crown is
often surmounted by a star, and is accompanied with various monograms
(M. 70 & 71).

M. 68.

M. 70. M. 71. M. 72.
It is rare to find the monogram under the crown traversed with the
palm branch (M. 72) ; the appearance of pieces thus marked is that
of the faiences of Northern Italy. Upon a blueish and very fluid
enamel are subjects incorrectly drawn, but thrown with a certain
freedom on landscape grounds. Some specimens are evidently posterior
to the sixteenth century, as is evidenced by the costume of the figures.

RENAISSANCE.— ITAL Y— MAJOLICA. 311
The iron crown must not be confounded with that of the grand
duke of Tuscany ; this, already figured at page 257, exists upon a
special style of majolica, mentioned in its place.
It is also to be observed that the Neapolitan iron crown is always
closed, while that of Bassano is open, and simply radiated ; this difference
will help to distinguish the wares produced at the two ^AA^r
extremities of Italy, supposing their characteristics of make m. 73.
and decoration are not in themselves sufficient to separate them.
Castelli. — What has preceded will show the collector how difficult
it is to determine the works of Castelli. Where are those of the first
epoch, so highly vaunted by Beuter ? What is their style ? Under
what name do they pass under our eyes ? These are so many problems
for future solution. The learned work of Gabriello Cherubini will doubt
less throw some light upon the modern period, of which we shall have to
speak later, and upon the efforts made to revive an art fallen into decay.
But what we find in it relative to the Renaissance is confined to the
mention of a Nardo di Castelli, a painter mentioned in a document of
1484, and of Antonio Lolli, author of a piece representing the Judgment
of Paris, and signed Antonius Lollus a Castellis inventor.
Grotaglia. — This town, situated not far from Tarento, has had its.
workshop, the products of which have the general character of the
Neapolitan wares, if we may judge from a charming little plate of the
end of the sixteenth century, belonging to the Duke de Martina, and
which bears as principal subject of decoration the arms of the family of
this distinguished amateur.
Sicily. — It is impossible to separate Sicily from the ancient kingdom
of Naples ; but what to say of this unknown country ? It certainly
has had its brilliant page in history, although events which occurred
elsewhere have almost made it forgotten. We have already explained
that the Arabs, exiled from Spain, founded in Sicily workshops in which
the processes of Malaga were applied in a lesser degree of perfection, but
with identical forms. Perhaps also, the vases of North Africa served as mo
dels to the potters of the country. The brilliant metallic lustres which
later spread over Italy, first illumined the vases of Calata Girone,
and, according to the testimony of the learned of that city, when chance
brought about the discovery of the ancient furnaces, they found there
helter skelter both fragments of golden works, and remains of majolica,
similar to those which the peninsula produced in the sixteenth century.
Elsewhere, no doubt, these precious witnesses would have been
preserved to serve as types, and facilitate the determination of works

312 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
confounded in the crowd of unknown. Let us hope that with these
simple records, the collectors and the learned of Sicily may one day
recognize and make known the majolica of their country.
I. — Sardinia.
Turin. — In order to explain the oblivion to which have been con
signed the manufactories of the ancient duchy of Savoy, and of the
kingdom of Sardinia, it suffices to quote this passage of Lanzi : " If Pied
mont has the merit of having secured, by its protection, the leisure which
Italy wanted to devote herself to the fine arts, she has had the misfortune
never to have been able to secure it for herself in a durable manner."
Under the reign of Charles III. the duchy of Savoy was in some sort
the battle field upon which Charles V. and Francis I. settled their
differences. It required that Emanuel Philibert, called Tete-de-Fer,
should carry terror into France by the victory of St. Quentin, in order
that the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis should put him again in possession
of his states in 1559, and enable him to give repose to people crushed
with foreign servitude and incessant wars. We should believe that one
of the first preoccupations of the prince would be to call about him, with
the learned and the literate, some of the artists who illustrated the
ceramic art in Italy. We find proof of it in the documents extracted
from the royal archives at Turin by the Marquis Campori, and derived
from the ' Register of the accounts of the general Treasury.'
"More, for two hundred crowns of three livres each, paid to Maestro
Orazio Fontana and to Maestro Antonio da Urbino, as price of certain
earthenware vases brought to His Highness, in pursuance of the order of
His Highness given at Nice the 6th of January 1564, which is remitted
in the same time as the receipt, the 7th of the said month and year.
L. 600.
"More, the 15th of August, paid to Antonio, potter of Urbino, twenty
crowns of three livres, on account of the expeuses made to accompany the
majolicas sent to His Highness in France. L. 60.
" More, for two hundred crowns of three livres each, paid to the Rev.
Signore Hieronimo della Rovere, archbishop of Turin, which are on
account of an order of His Highness for 800 like crowns, which the said
Monsignore has answered for his Highness towards Maestro Orazio of
Urbino, chief of the potters of his Highness, for the cost of the two
earthenware credenze, which the maestro has sent to his Highness, as
it appears from the said order given at Turin the 23 April 1564, which,
duly signed and sealed, is joined to the present (and deposited) in the

REN A ISSANCE.— ITALY.— MA J OLICA . 313
chamber, with the receipt of the aforesaid Monsignore, of the aforesaid
200 crowns, written and- signed the 20th of August 1564. I say L. 600."
The learned Modenese infers from these pieces, and above all from the
title given to Fontana of " chief of the potters of the Duke of Savoy,"
that this illustrious artist had entered into the service of Emanuel
Philibert; we do not think so. To satisfy his numerous customers,
Orazio had, in 1565, opened a botega at Urbino, in which he worked
until his death, in 1571 ; we have already seen the activity of his work
shop. It is therefore impossible that he could have been able to leave,
even momentarily, an establishment in full work to run the chance of
new fortunes in Savoy. To our idea, the title of chief potter is purely
honorary, and intended to mark the high esteem in which he was held
by the prince, who thus morally placed him at the head of the potters
called to inaugurate the fabrication at Turin. This also shows after
what style Emanuel Philibert proposed to work his manufactory, which,
according to Pungileoni, will have had among its principal artists a certain
Francesco Guagni. The marquis Campori considers this man to have been
a military engineer ; but he is mentioned besides among the arcanists
who sought the secret of porcelain at the court of Savoy, about 1567.
Unfortunately Piedmontese majolica is rare, or rather remains con
founded with the others, from the absence of characteristic indications.
A piece, in the Reynolds collection, is the only example inscribed ; it
reads, Fatta in Torino adi 12 de setebre 1577. We have seen another
where, in a landscape resembling those of Venice, rises a cherub's head
inferring its religious destination. The escutcheon (M. 74),
curiously traced in blue, and not crowned, may assign the
work, if not to the reign of Emanuel Philibert, at least to
that of Charles Emanuel the Great. m. 74.
Some other majolicas united in collections or spread in commerce,
are specialised by a blue decoration, neighbouring on that
applied at Savona; persons in the costume of Louis XIII.
ornaments already inspired by Chinese porcelain, alone
would indicate a late date, if the traditional cross, sur
mounted by the closed crown (M. 75), did not precisely mark
the reign of Victor Amadeus IL, who first took the title of m. 75.
king of Sardinia in 1713.
These fabrications are the stock of those we find again in full force
in the nineteenth century, sometimes with the same escutcheon, at others,
as in the collection of His Excellency the Marquis d'Azeglio, with
the mention, fabrica veale di Torino, or Gratapaglia, fe. Taur.

W

W

3 14 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Laforest.- — To the same period appears to belong another workshop
made known to us by a fine specimen signed laforest en Savoye,
1752. Yet it may not be impossible that the origin of this centre
may be referred to an earlier period.
Section 2. — French Renaissance.
It is more difficult to mark in France the period and the nice
distinctions which separate the ceramics of the Middle Ages from
those of the Renaissance, than it has been to note the transition in Italy.
There at least one fact is predominant, the refinement or rather the
expansion of the art of enamelled pottery; it is the invasion of the
humble workshop of the " boccalaj.o" by artists versed in the elevated
style of painting. In France, a new ornamentation was gradually intro
duced upon the ordinary potteries ; and the same men must have ap
plied on the same materials, to-day the decoration practised by their an
cestors ; to-morrow that which was destined to illustrate their children.
This is to be explained. The Italian Renaissance was an almost
forced event ; new societies risen up from the intestine commotions
of the Middle Ages, sought to establish themselves by strength and
intelligence ; they remembered the ancient glory of their country, and
the excavated earth rendered up to them after centuries the long
admired masterpieces of art. Impelled by a like enthusiasm the great
encouraged research, and the learned examined manuscripts buried in
the cloisters, in order to find in them the history of that enlightened
epoch which had left such imposing traces of its existence.
In France, the echo of this great movement reached only through
the din of arms. Charles VIII. had taken Rome and Naples, and opened
a road which Louis XII. and Francis I. subsequently followed. After
alternate successes and reverses, Pavia closed to the French the barrier of
the Alps. But in the contact with the strong races of the Medici,
Montefeltri, Rovere and Malatesta, at the sight of these Italian cities
furnished with objects of every description of art, the taste of the
French warriors was awakened. They carried back to their country
aspirations for progress, a fertile germ more than sufficient to raise the
emulation of the artisans. Some types introduced in the baggage, a
suit of armour from Milan, a vase from Chaffagiolo, an enamel from
Venice, it required no more to awaken the idea. Then upon the green
glazed wares on which the potters of Saintes, Beauvais, Sadirac and
Rennes were wont to impress their Gothic ornaments, religious

RENAISSANCE— FRANCE. 315
seals and moral devices ; we soon see appear acanthus scrolls, antique
masks, arabesques and interlacings of supreme elegance.
And as if the new thought bad been communicated with the
rapidity of the electric flash, it disclosed itself everywhere at the same
time ; but only in applying itself to the forms, without substituting
enamelled faience for their own simple glazed wares. It would even
appear there was between the known processes and the new inventions
a strife the more fierce and more prolonged, inasmuch as in the eyes of
French artisans, majolica was a foreign importation brought in to the
detriment of a material they had so long known how to decorate by
means of their own ingenious processes. What difference is there in
fact, except for the technica of the art, between certain Italian vases
in relief and the ingenious products of Normandy and Beauvoisis, where
green, a warm brown and the earth of the " engobe" balance themselves
in masses judiciously poised, as may be seen in the puzzle jug (pot a sur
prise) of the Louvre (Fig. 88). and in a host
of other products with which we shall occupy Fis- 88-
ourselves more when studying the works of
Palissy ?
It is therefore very difficult, we repeat,
to determine the date and origin of many
of the glazed wares of the Renaissance.
-r, . , .. . , , . . PUZZLE VASE. — MUSEUM OF -THE
By an attentive comparison and bringing lodvre.
together certain pieces ranged in succession,
we have been able to fix the leading characters of certain workshops.
The wares glazed in pale green, of a perfectly uniform tone, proceed from
the manufactories of Beauvoisis, and succeed each other from the Middle
Ages to the period of Louis XIII. without other change than the style, as
is shown by a charming perforated night lamp (veilleuseajour) with the
figures reposing side by side on the same bed.
The vases of a bright green, jaspered with little flames of a deeper
tint, come from the West, that is, from Saintes, la Chapelle-des-Pots,
or Rennes. A piece exhibited at Rennes, by Dr. Aussant, when
showing us the characters of the workmanship of this locality, furnished
us also with a date and a monogram. The application of this specimen
is curious; it is a kind of twisted handled basket, used to present
the consecrated bread to the faithful. The back of the basket, which is
slightly raised, represents the Last Supper; the front, lower and
arched, is adorned with angel's heads and roses ; behind are inscribed
the date and the monogram, 1 593. H.B. This work is closely allied to the

3i6

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

sealed vases ornamented with the ermine arms and has an evident
relation with the works of Poitou.
By what signs are we to recognise the pottery of Sadirac, near
Bordeaux, the importance of which is established by authentic
documents ? In 1520, two ceramic artists worked there, Pey Boneau and
Papon, and furnished the greater part of the consumption of Bordeaux,
for, in 1521, Philippe Petit, dealer in that city, bought at Sadirac :
"six gross of green pottery (potherie de verderie) good and saleable,
as chafing pans (chauffetes) dishes, bowls and other works" at the price
of eight bordelais francs for the whole. Each of these pieces then cost,
without duty, about seven sols, equivalent to nearly ten francs.
We have spoken of the difficulties of assigning a precise date to the
French wares of the Renaissance, of which the following is a proof. There

Fig. 83.

HUNTING FLASK OF JASPERED EARTH, WITH THE MONTMORENCY ARMS. —
MUSEUM OF THE LOUVRE.
are at the Louvre and at the Chateau de Brienne, the residence of the
prince de Bauffremont-Courtenay, two hunting flasks glazed in green and
diapered with little flames of a deeper shade (Fig. 89). Upon the body
is in relief the Montmorency escutcheon, or, a cross gules, cantoned with
sixteen alerions azure ; round it, the collar of S. Michael and on each
side set in pale, the Constable's sword supported by a mailed arm and
the motto of his house A.PLANOS. "Without change or shadow
of turning." These are the arms and emblems of the celebrated Anne

RENAISSANCE— FRANCE. 317
de Montmorency, named constable in 1538. A mask of Italian style,
and rayonnated suns complete the decoration of this curious sealed
earthenware. Now, if we seek its date, we should find itbetween 1554 ;
epoch of the disgrace of the constable and of his sojourn in Poitou, and
1563, moment when the wars of religion replaced him at the head of
the army. It hence becomes probable that the piece has come out
of the workshops of the west, at the precise period when the
efforts of Palissy, seconded by Montmorency himself, were directed
to the substituting enamelled faience for the lead glazed earthenware.
But, it is not in France alone that we see this conflict between the two
products ; at Nuremberg, the green pottery in relief which may be
recognised by its bright uniform and deep glaze, like an enamel upon
metal, continued to be made even when polychrome colours were in full
fashion. But let that pass, there is an historic question to approach,
of much more importance, that is, the direct part the Italian majolica
artists took in the transformation of the French taste at the time of the
Renaissance. As soon as the rumour of the discovery of the tin enamel had reached
France, Italian artists hastened to seek their fortunes by founding new
workshops. From 1 494 to 1502, a certain Jerome Solobrin settled at
Amboise ; brother no doubt of Leochadius Solobrinus of Forli, of whom
we possess a signed work. At Lyons, under Henry III. Jehan Francisque,
of Pesaro, Julien Gambyn, of Faenza, and Sebastian Griffo, of Genoa,
made majolica. In 1588,_Jehan Ferro, of the Altare in Montserrat,
opens at Nantes a manufactory of white ware; Jacques and Loys
Ridolfi, of Chaffagiolo found in 1509, a faiencerie at Machecoul ;
lastly at le Croisic, it is again an Italian, Horacio Borniola, who takes
up the workshop of the potter Gerard Demigennes. This curious
immigration, mentioned by Messrs. Benjamin Fillon and Laferriere
Percy, might lead to the supposition that a prompt and complete trans
formation had operated itself in the French industry. What could
oppose to the invading torrent, in 1547, Jacques Regnier; in 1552,
Re°-nault and Jehan Potier ; in 1595, the widow Huguet, these makers
of terraglia, inhabitants of Troyes ? Abraham Valloyre, established at
Fontenay-le-Comte in 1581, and even Palissy himself, had they the
strength to resist this new fashion, and the passion with which the great
were carried away for Italian majolica ?
Yet, such' is in France the vitality of national ideas that the taste for
foreign vases was a passing fashion, a luxury of the collector; the
foreign artists quickly gave in to French manners, and modified so com-

3 1 8 HIS TOR Y OF THE CERA MIC ART.
pletely their processes, that now historians, as well as curiosity seekers
have difficulty in discovering the evidence of their passage.
Besides, with that pliancy wdiich is one of the characteristics of their
national character, the French artists did not wait for the introduction
of the foreign secrets, they went before them.
We know that, for a long time, special writers have desired to
ascribe to Italy, the remarkable paving of the chateau of Ecouen ; they
attributed them sometimes to a member of the Della Robbia family ;
at others to a fugitive from the majolica manufactories ; they were
even assigned to Bernard Palissy, although there was no question as
to their origin ; for among the arabesques is inscribed this indication,
A ROUEN-1542. M. Andre Potier was the first to bring together,
with this mention, the name Macutus Abaquesne Figulus, cited in the
' Chronologie de l'illustre ville de Rouen.'
Now, thanks to the discoveries of M. E. Gosselin, we are able to
appreciate the importance of the manufactory of Rouen, aud of the
works executed for the Constable, from the following document :
"Masseot Abaquesne, enameller in earth, living in the parish of
Notre Dame de Sotteville-lez-Rouen, acknowledges hereby having
had and received in cash of Master Andre Rageau, notary and
secretary of the king, receiver of his excise and taxes in the city of
Rouen, the sum of one hundred golden crowns of the sun. Upon and
so much diminishing or lessening the price and sums due in what the said
Abaquesne states to have reduced to the high and mighty Seigneur
Messire the Constable, grand master of France, for a certain number of
tiles of enamelled earth, which the said Abaquesne had agreed and
obliged himself to make for the same Constable, with which sum of one
hundred golden crowns of the sun the same Abaquesne had held himself
satisfied, and has discharged the Sieur Constable, the said receiver and all
others ; present Marion Durand, wife of the said Abaquesne, and Laurens
Abaquesne, son of the aforesaid Masseot and of the said Marion, affirming
to be of the age of 21 years and more, as it has been attested by the said
father and mother, the which after the said wife has authorised them for
this end, have submitted themselves to the said Sieur receiver, who, by
reason of the said sum thus received by the said Abaquesne, this receiver
having made no damage or inconvenience, and this sum in case as above
stated, have pledged and guaranteed the said Masseot, and have constituted
themselves pledges, payers, accountable debtors and Tenderers with him
together, and one alone for all without division, and it is to be known that
they release to this end of the said sum of one hundred golden crowns of

RENAISSANCE— FRANCE. 319

the sun received by the said Masseot before this day, and security for him
contracted this sum of Guillaume de Liez as it appears by the said letter
of security for this sum of one hundred crowns of gold of the sun ; passed
before the notaries of Rouen, Wednesday 20th day of February last, the
which and this present are only valued for one only, and by this holding
obliges Masseot and witnesses, to give as security all their goods."
Thus signed, '¦ M. Abaquesne, the cross of Marion Durand, and a
shield, mark of Laurens Abaquesne."
This discharge is dated, Thursday seventh day of March, 1548, and
it proves the price which the Constable, great appreciator of works of
art, attached to the works of the Norman potter.
Besides, the reputation of Abaquesne was made at the time he was
working for the Constable ; in 1535 he had decorated a " salle faiencee "
at the hotel de ville of Havre, known as the "Logis du Roi," and one
knows in the manor house of Bevilliers, near Harfleur, a pavement
almost similar, inscribed 1536. His reputation was not confined to the
making of wall tiles, the documents published by M. Gosselin, show the
potter charged in 1543 or 1545, with the making of 346 dozens of pots " in
enamelled earth " for the use of apothecaries. These pharmacy vases,
then were of the wares in common use, the plates and dishes on the
table being still generally of pewter. The making of these numerous
pots did not prevent the continuation of the tiles ; in 1553, Abaquesne
had occasion to absent himself from Rouen, and he leaves to his wife
authority to pursue his debtors, but at the same time, he borrows forty
livres which he requires for the tiles he is engaged to give in and
furnish to decorate the doorways and other buildings of Messire the
constable of France.
Shortly afterwards, he extends his relations; the 22 September
1557, he gives a receipt to Andre Rageau, secretary of the finances of the
king, for 559 livres tournois for the making and furnishing of a certain
number of enamelled tiles, that he had formerly engaged to make and
complete for the Sieur Durfe, as governor of Monseigneur the Dauphin
(later Francis II.) according to the portraits and devices that the said
Durfe had given over to him for that purpose, in this is comprised
twelve livres tournois to reimburse him of a similar sum he has paid
for the makino- of wooden boxes and for mats, into which the said tiles
have been packed.
In wdiat constructions were these wall tiles employed ? is it at Madrid,
this Chateau de la faience, as Philibert Delorme ironically styled it?
In 1557, it was precisely Delorme who directed the works, and it is

320 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
not impossible he may have allowed" the employment of the enamelled
wares, at least for pavements.
Since this period, we find no further mention of Abaquesne in the
archives of Rouen, but we see that he had successors and that his art
did not perish with him ; here, for instance, is an act passed by his
widow in presence of the notaries of Rouen : " Present Marion Durand,
widow of the deceased Masseot Abaquesne, in his lifetime enameller of
earth, living in the parish of Saint Pierre du Chastel de Rouen, who of
her own wish has submitted and bound herself, and by these presents
submits and binds herself before the noble man, Maistre Bernabe Barat,
special lieutenant to the King, in the county and bailiwick of Montfort
Lamaury, present in the name and as attorney and covenanting for the
reverend father in God, Messire Martin de Beauluc (or de Beaulieu)
abbot of Coullomby and of Vailasse, master of requests in ordinary to
the King, our Sire, and Chancellor of the Queen mother of the King,
promising that the said lord abbot will be agreeable to these presents
and wdiich he will ratify all times.
" To furnish (they had first written ' furnish ' but added ' make and
furnish ') to the said abbot within the day and fete of St. John the Baptist
next coming, in this city of Rouen, the number and quantity of four
thousand tiles enamelled in the colours blue, white, yellow and green,
good, loyal and saleable goods, all containing in each way three inches
exactly and according to the picture the said Durand has given into the
hands of the said Sieur Barat, among which pictures, is figured
a tile with four peacocks in square, (en carre) in which is also two XX
crossed, and an F in the middle, and round the said tile four other tiles
joining to that of the middle in the form of lozenges, which picture has
been at this time marked (paraphe) by the said notaries. This submis
sion and obligation thus made in consideration of the price and sum of
thirty-six livres for each thousand of the said tiles, upon which the
said Barat has presently paid in advance to the said widow in
current coin, the sum of eighteen livres for a half-thousand of the said
tiles. And besides, the aforesaid Sieur Barat has promised to pay and
advance to the said widow, namely, a similar sum of eighteen livres
for each half thousand of tiles, until the end of the total payment;
and also that the said widow gives over to the said Barat half a
thousand of the aforesaid tiles until the whole and entire delivery
of this number of four thousand tiles." " Signed, the cross of the
widow Abaquesne and Barat."
Abaquesne, it is to be remembered, had his workshop at Sotteville-

RENAISSANCE.— FRANCE. 321
les-Rouen, although he lived in the city itself, parish of St. Vincent ; his
widow remained in the parish of Saint Pierre du Chastel ; Lorenzo
his son, had formed another establishment in the parish of St.
Pierre l'Honore, where without doubt he continued the exercise of
his art, although the archives preserve no document to prove it.
So much for Rouen ; elsewhere the movement was the same ; at
Narbonne, Baron Charles Davillier was almost witness to the discovery
of a furnace for golden pottery upon the elevation called "lou
Moulinasses " (the Mills) ; may one suppose that the Moors, refugees from
Spanish persecution, would have tried to found there their industry?
It is much more probable that it is a question of a national creation,
having for object to compete against the introduction, then so consider
able in France, of the works of Manises.
In Poitou, one often meets with fragments of those pharmacy vases,
beaker shaped, a little compressed in the middle, which the Italians call
"albarelli;" some are ornamented with parsley leaves of metallic lustre,
which are very likely of Italian or Moorish origin, many others less
fine and simply decorated in blue, green and violet brown, appear to have
been of local fabrication, as M. Benjamin Fillon had expressed the opinion
before authentic documents changed his assumption into certainty.
Thus, as soon as the movement produced by this discovery of the tin
enamel showed itself in France, the potters set to the work and were
ready at the same time as the artists arrived from Italy to form a school.
As to the " istoriato " works which we may suppose were those of
Amboise and Lyons, amateurs scarcely dare to seek these rare specimens
among the anonymous potteries, departing from the ordinary form of
Italian majolica. M. Alfred Darcel is the first who has faced the
difficulty in his 'Catalogue des faiences peintes du musee du
Louvre.' Classing among the national objects, a certain number of
pieces of a same service, long possessed by the museum, he gives this
curious description of it : " These pieces show all- the characters of the
Italian faience of the second half of the sixteenth century, but are
marked by a certain hardness of colouring, by a certain air of relation
ship in the heads, by a certain search after the real in the painting of
the buildings in pieces where they are represented, and by the use of a
particular yellow to lighten up their facades ; lastly French inscriptions
traced on the back in black bistre, often bubbled (bouillonnes) by
fire, explain the subject represented ; this French writing is nevertheless
Jtalian by its form, such as foreign workmen established some time
in France would write." Y

322 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
In a luminous discussion on the work of the Comte de Lafferiere-
Percy upon the manufactories of Lyons, M. Darcel establishes that
Sebastian Griffo, a Genoese, created in 1555-56, the " new faience in
this town and in the kingdom of France ;" that Jehan Francisque of
Pesaro, will have set up his about 1558-60, and lastly that Julien Gambyn
and Domenge Tardessir, natives of Faenza, have worked between 1574
and 1588, after the fashion of Venice. Hence the author concludes
that the service with French inscriptions, decorated in the style of the
Urbino majolica, must have proceeded from the hands of Jehan-Frau-
cisque of Pesaro, who had made his fortune in exercising his art at the
moment he was seeking to prevent the two Faentins from entering into
competition with him.
We willingly admit this theory, there exists in commerce a good
number of undetermined majolicas, neglected perhaps, because they
offer neither perfection of design, nor harmony of colour; and which
must be the work of the other Italians who came to France. Upon
certain plates, a bright red destructive of all harmony by its very vigour,
is an evident sign of the processes of Chaffagiolo ; others modelled in
blue, and rather illuminated than painted, announce Faentine influence.
The weakness of these products one can comprehend, for the Italian
exiles were not the skilful artists, but. the inferior hands of the cele
brated workshops ; therefore, their feeble attempts at historic decoration
were quickly obliterated. The majolica protected by the Italian princes,
furnishing " vasi da pompa," destined to the ornamentation of the tables
and dressoirs, had its success assured ; but in France, with its democratic
tendency, where industry could only subsist by satisfying the wants of
the public, painted faience would perish or change its condition ; it
modified itself in the hands even of those who had imported it.
So the question has changed ground ; it is no longer towards
pretended imitators that we must turn our eyes to seek the origin of
our modern pottery ; a more interesting spectacle calls for the investi
gation of the historian, the struggle is no longer confined within the
narrow circle of tbe interests of a few men, the struggle is that of ideas.
And if, in the conflict of a moment, between national works and those
of the foreigner, between glazed earth and enamelled faience, we at
last see a school arise and definitively establish itself; there are neither
conquerors nor conquered, but a fact of moral order ; the inevitable
obedience to satisfying the new wants of the masses.

RENAISSANCE.— FRANCE.— PALISSY. 323

A. — Bernard Palissy.
One imposing figure commands the French ceramics of the sixteenth
century ; that is Bernard Palissy. Exalted at first to excess, later
disparaged, this great man demands to be seriously studied, in order
to resume his true place ; it is glorious in every point of view, for to our
idea, Bernard is not only an inventor, but also the eloquent personifi
cation of the French taste. One may in vain seek, even after his own
confessions, to what works he owes his inspirations, and what con
temporary writings impelled him to the imitation of the lowest beings of
creation, he will always remain the judicious observer, the indefatig
able enquirer, who has desired to find around him the material and
model of his works, and who, disdaining to appropriate to himself the
ideas put in fashion by the vulgar leaning to all that is foreign,
knew how to make a new pottery without borrowing of others.
Some of his biographers place his birth in 1506 or 1510, at la
Chapelle-Biron, in Perigord ; by his language, M. B. Fillon declares
he is of Saintonge. What is certain is, that the banks of the Charente
were witnesses of his labours, his miseries, and his triumphs.
The son of an artisan, his education was limited, simply the notions
indispensable for the education of a common workman. Early given
over to the work of the glazier which comprised the preparation, the
arranging of glass windows, and the painting upon glass, properly so
called, he felt the instincts of the artist develop within himself, and
while painting "images" for his subsistence, he studied the masters
of the great Italian school, and exercised himself at the same time in
geometry. His laborious disposition made him soon find the career offered to
him by his native country too confined; he embraced the wandering
life of the artisans of his time, and directed his steps first towards the
Pyrenees. After a stay at Tarbes, he went through the provinces
of the South and the East, visited Lower Germany, Luxemburg,
Flanders, the Low Countries, and the Ardennes, In these various
courses, he observed much, and the great book of nature revealed to
him secrets he had in vain searched elsewhere. " Science manifests
herself to him who seeks her, he recognises it, and it is in dissecting
during forty years, the matrix of the earth," that he rises above the
ideas and knowledge of his century. When, later, this extraordinary
man put in various writings the results of his researches ;. by dint of
y 2

324 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
rectitude of mind and true simplicity of style, he arrived at making of
his book a model of persuasive eloquence. Inventor in the sciences as
well as in art, we owe to him the first elements of geological study ;
and we are surprised to find in his simple pages, the best system
of agriculture, the theory of artesian wells and of the expansive force of
steam. But let us leave the writer, the naturalist, the natural philosopher,
to occupy ourselves with the potter. Bernard Palissy had finished his
travels in 1539, when he returned to establish himself at Saintes, where
he married, living on the produce of his works as glassmaker, and
some operations in land-measuring. His vocation manifested itself by the
most singular chance. " Know," says he to Theorique, " that an earthen
cup was shown to me, turned and enamelled, of such beauty, that
thenceforth I entered into dispute with my own thoughts, bringing to
my memory several jesting proposals that some had made me, when I
was painting images. Now, seeing they were beginning to give them
up in the country where I lived, and also that glazing was not in great
request, I thought that if I could discover the invention of making
enamels, I should be able to make vessels of earth and other things of
beautiful arrangement, because Heaven had given me to understand
something of painting ; and thenceforth without considering that I had
no knowledge of argillaceous earth, I set about seeking enamels like a
man who gropes in the dark."
Ceramic writers have all been curious to know which could have
been the work that had put the painter-artist " in dispute with his
thoughts." Some have thought it an Oriental porcelain, others an
early German faience, the Nuremberg pottery bearing a certain resem
blance to that of Palissy. M. B. Fillon, after having advanced that the
piece in question was one of the products of Oiron, goes from this opinion
and is convinced that it refers to a piece in relief, and of the white
enamel of Ferrara. Antoine de Pons departed in 1533 for this duchy,
where he went to marry Anne de Parthenay, daughter of the duchess
dowager of Soubise, Michelle de Saubonne, first lady of honour of Renee
of France, wife of Hercules of Este. He returned in 1 539, and became
the protector of Palissy, whom he had previously known. It is
probable that among the presents offered to the bride, and among
the curiosities brought back by her husband would be majolica, then
so esteemed, and the product of the botega of the duke of Este ; and
equally so that Palissy may have admired them. Another circumstance
confirms M. Fillon in the conclusion that the potter of Saintes derived

RENAISSANCE.— FRANCE.— PALISS Y. 325
his inspirations from Italian faience. Towards the beginning of the
year 1543, at the time Francis I. was at la Rochelle, some corsairs of
that city took a Spanish vessel laden with pottery. " There was in it a
great quantity of earthenware of Valencia, and several cups of Venice.
The king commanded they should be brought to him, which being done,
to the amount of several large chests full, he gave some to the ladies
of his court, and for the great beauty he found in them, retained
the whole of the said ware for himself."
Here then is our artist attached unremittingly to his labours,
grinding endless materials, building furnaces, firing at great expense
potsherds coated or overlaid with substances, which, under these
conditions, could neither equally fuse at the given time, nor serve as
solid bases to subsequent experiments. Attempts no less fruitless made
in the ovens of the potters of la Chapelle-des-Pots, rendered Palissy
indifferent (en non chaloir) to seek any longer the secret of enamels.
In 1543, the salt-tax had just been established in Saintonge, and the
commissaries employed Palissy to map the islands and districts bordering
on the salt marshes of the country. This mission gave him some repose,
and having brought him in money encouraged him to resume his re
searches. This time tbe idea came into his head to take his enamels to
the furnaces of the glass-makers, and a'beginning of fusion proved to him
he was in the right path. " Heaven willed so," said he, " that thus I
began to take courage . . . one of the trial pieces was melted in four
hours after having been put into the furnace, and came out white and
polished, so that it caused me so much joy, I thought myself become a
new creature."
He then began to construct an oven of the same form as those of the
glassmakers, himself carrying the bricks, drawing the water, mixing the
mortar, doing mason's work, accomplishing by himself more labour
than three workmen. The furnace having been constructed, and the
earths prepared, it was necessary for more than a month, night and
day to grind the materials to produce the white enamel ; this time the
flux was wanting, and a firing of six days and six nights did not end in
glazing the pieces.' In despair, Palissy began again grinding without
letting the furnace cool ; he breaks pots, prepares trial pieces, but wood
fails him. " I was obliged, he writes, to burn the props which supported
the trees of my garden, which, being burned, I was obliged to burn the
tables and floors of my house to make the second composition melt ; I
was in an agony that I cannot describe, for I was all dried up and parched
from the work, and the heat of the furnace. My shirt had not been dry

326 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
for more than a, month, and also to console me they laughed at me, and
even those wdio ought to have helped me, went crying about the town
that I was burning my floor ; and by these means made me lose my
credit, and they thought me mad." After having rested for some time
meditating on his slender resources, and on the time necessary to prepare
a new" furnace, Palissy engaged the help of a common potter, and fed
him on credit at a tavern, but at the end of six months he was obliged to
dismiss him, giving him his clothes by way of salary. After almost
supernatural labour, he succeeded in reconstructing his furnace, put in
his pieces, and increased the fire ; but new misfortunes awaited him.
" The mortar with which I had built my oven was full of pebbles, which,
feeling the vehemence of the fire when my^ enamels began to liquefy,
split themselves in several pieces, making noises in the oven. Now, as
the splinters of the said pebbles flew about against my work, the
enamels which had already liquefied aud been reduced to a sticky
matter, took these said pebbles, and they attached themselves in every
part of my vases and medallions, which without that would have been
thought beautiful." He showed this new damage to his creditors, who
had hastened in the hope of obtaining payment in goods, and who
even wished to obtain at a low price the pieces least injured ; but, adds
he, " because this would have been a discredit and lowering of my honour,
I broke to pieces the whole of the said batch, and laid myself down for
melancholy, not without cause, for I had no longer the means of sup
porting my family. I met with nothing in my house but reproaches,
and instead of consolations I only received maledictions."
Revived by bis rare energy, after a short time, Palissy resumed his
labours; this time the ashes produced an effect no less disastrous than
the pebbles. He invented seggars which protected him against the
recurrence of similar accidents, but his furnaces heated unequally, the
enamels, fusible at different temperatures, were never all perfect on the
same piece." After having " thus battled for the space of fifteen or
sixteen years, he succeeded in making some enamels, mixed after the
manner of jasper, which procured him the means to attempt rustic
pieces. Before arriving at complete success, he had yet to support such
severe grief, that " he thought/' as he relates, " of entering the door of
the sepulchre." But the enamels were discovered, the rustic pottery,
" rustiques figulines " invented, and the protectors of the savant and the
artist, had only to produce him and place him at shelter from the per
secutions he had to endure, as one of the most zealous promoters of the
Reformed religion at Saintonge.

RENAISSANCE.— FRANCE.— PALISSY. - 327
Palissy had adopted with enthusiasm the new ideas, he even
owed, it must be said, his connection with some of his eminent pro
tectors, to their common attempt to spread and secure the Protestant
faith, in spite of the resistance of the Catholics. Poitou and Saintonge,
stained with the blood of religious dissension, were far from offering to
the artist and inventor the repose necessary for the development of his
daily experiments ; but it was known that Palissy worked usefully for
his country, and his workshop was declared inviolate. Yet the moment
arrived in which the belligerents rushed upon his asylum, Palissy him
self was arrested, threatened with condemnation as a heretic, and placed
within an inch of his ruin. The Constable Montmorency obtained from
the king an order to set him free, and gave him through Catherine de
Medicis the title of " Inventor of rustic potteries (rustiques figulines) to
the King and Queen Mother ;" he thus found himself withdrawn from
ordinary jurisdictions. In order better to escape the persecutions of
fanaticism, he first left Saintes for la Rochelle, and at length fixed him
self at Paris, where his greatest and most legitimate success awaited
him. Let us now turn from the biography of the potter to the considera
tion of his works. It appears from his writings that his constant pre
occupation was the search after white enamel, which he first used to
cover the pieces ornamented with medallions in relief. M. Benjamin
Fillon remarks that potteries of this style were made at la Chapelle-des-
Pots, and that it is by the help of this workshop, that Palissy produced
bis first attempts, which are now lost.
His second pottery was those of the jasper glaze, which enabled him
to subsist " tellement quellement " while he pursued his researches ;
we know the jaspers, and their effect was sufficiently attractive for
them to find favour, hanaps in relief, dishes with little wells (a
salieres) and ornamental borders, show ns a mixture of warm tints,
brown, white, blue, thrown in splashes largely and equally incorporated
into each other (grassement parfondu) and undefined in form, which
admits of distinguishing the works of Palissy from the dry, cold jaspers
of other potters.
The third style, quite special to the potter of Saintes, is that rustic
pottery (rustiques figulines) to which he owed his reputation and his
claims to the protection of the powerful. These rustics, which every one
has seen, are dishes or vases where upon a rough ground, strewn with
fossil shells, lizards and salamanders are running, frogs jumping, snakes
crawling or sleeping, or more still, in a streamlet of water wriggling eels,

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

pointed nosed pikes, trout with spotted scales, and a thousand others of
our fresh water fishes are swimming (Fig. 90).
M. B. Fillon considers, and it may be possible, that the idea of the
rustic pottery was suggested to Palissy by a book which had in its time
a great reputation, called the 'Songe de Polyphile.' It contains
passages which would seem to forestall the compositions of the master.
" The pavement of the ground underneath the water was of mosaic com
posed of little, fine stones in which were shown all sorts of fishes. The
water was so clear that in looking at it, you would judge these fish to
move and wriggle along the edge where they were pourtrayed to the life,
viz., carp, pike, eels, tench, lampreys, shads, perch, turbots, soles, rays,
Fig. 90.

PALISSl' DISH, REPTILES AND ORNAMENTS. — COLL. BARON G. DE ROTHSCHILD.

trout, salmon, mullet, plaice, crayfish, and an infinity of others, which
appeared to stir at the movement of the water, so nearly it approached
the work of nature. Then there was a little space, and afterwards
another curtain of leaves and flowers, more pretty than the first, diver
sified by all sorts of colours, and by all manner of beasts, plants, herbs
and flowers. A vine filled the whole concavity of the vault with
beautiful knots and twisted branches, leaves and grapes, among which
were placed little children as if to gather them, and birds flyino- round,
with lizards and small snakes moulded after nature."
These are just the grottoes that Palissy desired to scatter in the
picturesque gardens of his dreams, those grottoes which he executed

REN A ISS A NCE.—FRA NCE.—PA LISS Y. 329
at the Chateau of Ecouen for the Constable de Montmorency, and at
the Tuileries for the Queen Mother. We know nothing about them ex
cept what he has written, but his other works with reptiles may give an
adequate idea of what they were.
At any rate, from the first conception to the execution there is a wide
distance ; and what would prove the estimation in which the invention of
Palissy was held, is the reputation it brought to him and which fur
nished to the obscure potter of Saintes, the opportunity of displaying his
talents at Paris.
Those who would wish to lessen the glory of Palissy, assert that these
rustic pieces had no influence upon the general taste, and that we see no
imitation of them in any other branch of art. The Louvre alone bears
witness to the contrary ; an admired piece of goldsmith's work is entirely
inspired by the rustic pottery, and the "bestioles" are imitated with
marvellous talent. But if the goldsmith adopted the rustic style, one
can understand why the greater part of his works have disappeared ;
such is the fate of precious materials — things without intrinsic value
alone can be preserved.
When he arrived in the capital, Palissy found himself as potter
and savant in relation with all the celebrities of his age ; he saw the
masterpieces of art, all that taste and fashion could assemble round the
Sovereign and his Court. This must have acted powerfully on an
imagination such as his. It did not appear to him that he should give
up his rustic compositions, he desired to mix with them the human
figure, and place his pottery in a road conformable with that of other
industrial arts. This new phase of his talent manifests itself in the
Louvre, by an admirable Magdalen kneeling in the midst of shells and
wild plants, and by the composition of Charity, framed round with fossils,
symmetrically disposed. True, it has been asserted that these works were
not by Palissy, and the name of Barthelemi Prieur, gathered from a list
of the hearers of his lectures on geology, has sufficed to advance that
the chisel of the celebrated sculptor had modelled the Magdalen. No,
Palissy never borrowed the assistance of another without admitting it.
The works of Prieur, Germain Pilon, and Jean Goujon especially, have
had a manifest influence over him, but this man who had " pourtrait "
all his life, was not for that reason reduced to the simple part of moul
der of " bestioles " or of reproducing the works of another. There is an
identity of style in all his figures and compositions which may be at
tributed to him ; such as the Diana, Plenty, and so many others
framed round with delicate and ingenious ornaments drawn in the taste

33o

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

of the period, Fragments of them have, besides, been found in the
rubbish of his furnace in the Tuileries.
With respect to the ornamented dish, with compartments relieved by
subjects evidently moulded upon the pewter piece, known by everybody
and attributed to Francois Briot, whose signature and portrait it bears,
we do not think we can assign it to the worker in pewter. It is not
likely he would have set up a ceramic workshop, to bring out from it
some trial pieces of one solitary model. It appears more natural to
think there had been an understanding between the two artists, and that

Fig. 91

PALISSY JUO, ORNAMENTS AND FIGURES. — COLL. BARON GUSTAVE DE ROTHSCHILD,

Palissy to satisfy some caprice, has clothed with enamelled colours a work
already remarkable for its composition alone. Though we find on one of
these pieces the monogram F. B., we see in it only one proof more of
tho probity of Palissy, whose intention it could not have been to appro
priate to himself the the work of another. Generally speaking, the dishes
reproduced of Briot have all the characters of the enamels and earth of
the potter of the Tuileries.
Certainly, Palissy had imitators, pupils perhaps, as we have been the
first to say. While he worked in his obscure shop unknown, miserable,
and persecuted, other potters employed with success the tin or lead glaze,
to coat faiences in relief; Normandy in particular, placed upon her
wooden gables spikes (epis) whose elegant form, aud well applied colours

RENAISSANCE.— FRANCE— PALISSY. 331
relieved a picturesque architecture ; other pieces of ridging formed
upon the roofs a kind of animated crest, which appeared more brilliant
still, against the tiles made brown by moss and mould. In the
department of the Eure, InfreviUe, Armentieres, Chatel-la-Lune, and
Malicorne, united this fabrication to that of glazed earths; but it is
more particularly in Calvados, at Manerbe and especially at Pre'-d'Auge,
that the faiences in relief attained a perfection approaching the works of
Palissy ; some spikes belonging to M. d'Yvon, and MM. de Rothschild
are distinguished by their studied and graceful composition; cherubs
cleverly modelled, project towards the base; shafts finely jaspered,
relieved with white rosettes in half relief, supporting oval vases sur
rounded by draperies ; stems with foliage, knots superposing each other
to raise to the pinnacle the pelican surrounded by her little ones,
symbolic terminal of the greater part of these capricious conceptions.
What strikes in the whole, is a sound workmanship, a perfect knowledge
of enamels, and harmonious agreement of colour.
Doubtless, the productions of Pre-d'Auge date at least from the
sixteenth century, many are contemporary with the researches of Palissy
to whom they were first attributed, and they continued to the seven
teenth century. WTe have rejected once for all the idea there could
have been imitation between the works issued almost simultaneously
from very distant localities. The most we would admit is that the
Norman artists had applied themselves to plaster casting, after having
seen the subject pieces executed by the master of Poitou during his resi
dence at Paris. What would give credence to this supposition is a fine
dish belonging to Baron Gustave de Rothschild, of which the central
medallion representing the Virgin and the Infant Jesus surrounded by a
rosary, is modelled with exquisite delicacy and taste, and we find in the
circumference some of the applied ornaments used upon the spikes.
The same subject, smaller, surrounded by a flatter border and of posterior
date to the first, has been confounded with what they called the works of
the successors of Palissy.
What permits one at first sight to distinguish the works of Pre-d'Auge
from those of Palissy, is that in the first the enamels are colder, laid on
with hardness and less glazed ; wherever one meets with jasper, the
spots are small, confined (arrete) not melted in ; we have- ascertained
this character even in the ground of the fine oval dish, ornamented in
the centre with bas-reliefs representing the Virgin and the Infant Jesus.
The application of pottery to buildings was probably widely spread
in the sixteenth century, for Malicorne and Pontvalain in Sarthe also

332 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
fabricated spikes; but there the former are less pure, the enamels
less finished ; it is only a transformation of the old glazed wares. We
have seen the top of a door composed of a globe surmounted by a
crescent, and appearing to belong to the period of Henry IL; the dead
blue enamel was neither that of Palissy, nor those that Prd-d'Auge and
Manerbe spread upon their faiences. But this almost universality of the
application of the stanniferous glaze upon French potteries in relief
sufficiently proves what we advanced in the beginning ; that Bernard
Palissy remained French in all his compositions, and that one cannot
detect in any of his works the processes or the taste of the Italian or
German school.
We see even from his writings what care he took to secure his future
reputation by destroying, among his first attempts, every piece that had
any blemish whatever. It is a first indication to distinguish his works
from a host of rude outlines too long attributed to him. The earth of
his dishes is always excessively hard, compact, sonorous, pinkish white
rather than red, and the colours adhere to it perfectly, without any
appreciable thickness, preserving a remarkable warmth and unctuous-
ness ; these indications are those of the firing at a very high tempera
ture ; the reliefs are modelled with infinite care, without hardness, and
so well united, that one never sees the joinings of the different stamps
(poincons) repeated in a composition.
Palissy appears never to have signed his works, and that may be
conceived ; as inventor he had no occasion to distinguish his produc
tions from analogous pottery of the existence of which he was
ignorant. From the moment he went to Paris and became artist to
the Court, he executed the orders of the King and of the Queen Mother,
and may, after the example of the Limoges enamellers, have affixed the
official stamp of the fleur de lis upon certain pieces ; yet the examples
cited are so rare, that we must look at them as exceptions rather than
as a rule. Yet one remarks, as a proof of what we have said above, that
the fleur de lis marks the bas relief of " Water " (Coll. Fountaine) the
dish of "Plenty " (Coll. Rattier) a rustic basin and dish in the Louvre
(No. 862. Coll. Sauvaegeot). These then are types of the style and
make of the master in figures, rustics, and ornaments, and it is easy to
compare them with other pieces in museums and private collections.
Did Palissy ever execute detached figures ? Some have been
attributed to him, specially the Nurse, although the costume indicates
a later date than all the certified works of the master. Accord
ing to us, one piece alone of mixed style, the beautiful female head

RENAISSANCE.— FRANCE.— PALISSY. 333
applied upon a medallion, the flesh left in the biscuit state (Museum
of the Louvre) can be restored to the author of the Rustiques
Figulines. As regards the Nurse, an example signed proves a special
origin ; we find on it two B.'s graved in the paste, which letters also
occur on other works of secondary merit, as the group of the Samaritan
woman at the well, two, dogs without character or style, and lastly on a
snail in the Museum of Sevres.
We also know that a manufactory at Avon, near Fontainebleau,
furnished about 1608, sealed potteries, and especially a Nurse, and some
small animals. This is what Herouard, physician to the Dauphin
(Louis XIIL) says in his manuscript journal :
" The 24th April 1608, the Duchesse de Montpensier came to Fon
tainebleau to see the little Duke of Orleans, second son of Henry IV.,
and brought with her her daughter, a girl about three years old. The
little . prince kissed her and gave her a little nurse in pottery which
he was holding.
" Wednesday 8th of May, 1608, the Dauphin being at Fontainebleau,
the Princesse de Conti was to dance a ballet at the Queen's, and then go
to the chamber of the Dauphin. It is proposed to him to prepare a
small collation with the little pieces he had bought at the pottery,
and he consents. After the ballet, which is danced at half-past nine
in the evening, the Dauphin leads Madame de Guise to his collation,
they are followed by all those who had danced in the ballet, with
laughter and exclamations; there were dogs, foxes, badgers, oxen,
cows, squirrels, angels playing the bagpipe and flute, hurdy gurdy
players, clogs lying down, sheep, a larger dog in the middle of the table,
a dolphin at the upper end, and a capucin friar at the lower."
We recognise by this description a crowd of pieces attributed to
Palissy, and those especially marked with the two B.'s.
Palissy had then, it must be admitted, imitators as well as pupils.
M. Riocreux and ourselves have first published the deed establishing
that Nicolas and Mathurin Palissis, doubtless nephews of the master,
contributed with him in the decoration of the grottoes of the Tuileries ;
the Marquis de Laborde, in the list of the domestic officers of the king
from 1599 to 1609, has met with three enamellers upon earth, Jehan
Chipault and his son, and Jehan Biot, called Mercure. L'Etoile relates in
his Journal that Friday, 5th of January 1607, "Fonteny had given
him for New Year's gift, a dish of chestnuts of his making, in a little
earthenware dish so well made, that there is no one but who would take
them for real chestnuts, so much do they resemble nature." Who was

334 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
this Fonteny le Boiteux, poet and brother of the fraternity of the
Passion, so clever at deception, who also composed an artificial dish of
baked pears? Is it he whose signature was formed of a great F,
and who will also have made one of those dishes of Briot and
another piece no less remarkable ?
An unknown artist, author of agatised pottery, and of a dish represent
ing the Infancy of Bacchus, signed with the monogram VAB.O. As to
Clerici, worker in sealed earth, who obtained in March 1640, letters
patent to found a royal glass manufactory at Fontainebleau, he was no
doubt one of the principal workmen at the works frequented by the
Court at Avon.
We must say that an examination of the works of Palissy
and of his successors permits us to establish the share of each; the
subjects of the last, besides often showing costumes and persons equal in
value to a date, are ill arranged, of a pale doubtful colour and of a soft
dull aspect, far removed from the vigorous productions of the inventor of
rustic pottery. Nor did Palissy make either the piece in which we see
Henry IV. and his family, since he died before the accession of the
Bearnais, or those candelabra (torcheres) with deformed arms, coarsely
modelled, or those bad caricatures of monks introducing fraudu
lently into the community, among the provisions, prohibited articles
from which brother Philip is endeavouring to turn aside his pupil.
As regards the works which have no reference to Palissy, it is
difficult to assign them to their several centres of fabrication. M. B.
Fillon fairly claims for the successors of the workshop of Oiron, some
intermediate pieces between the style of the fine and the rustic faiences,
chafing dishes of a fluid violet jasper, architectural compositions with
large reptiles, would belong to this manufactory. But had not Paris also
its workshop? Excavations made in the Rue de la Calandre, have
brought to light a crowd of fragments and some whole vases of the
greatest interest ; a pharmacy vase collected by Mr. Ed. Pascal is of
coarse earth, coated with a blueish grey enamel seme with bright jaspers
in blue and manganese ; a hunting bottle with screw stopper has the
same enamel upon a compact paste approaching to stoneware; in the
ornamentation in relief is a medallion enclosing a sphere surrounded
with this double inscription :
RELICTA OBLIVIO AETERNUM SPERAT AMOREM.
A l'Espervier par bonne aventure.
With respect to foreign countries, faience in relief has been culti-

RENAISSANCE.— GERMANY.

335

Fig. 92.

vated with real talent, particularly in the city of Nuremberg. Figure 92
is one of the gems issued from Nuremberg, a vase with portraits
heightened with enamels and gold, now in the Louvre. Every one
knows, having seen them at the Louvre or Cluny, those magnifi
cent stove tiles, sometimes of a fine uniform green, sometimes mixed
with bright tints of various enamels of a warm brown orange yellow, or
whitish cast. Mythological figures of a
grand style, historical personages, come
out in relief from a rich architectural
composition. It may not be uninteresting to
give the description of a German stove,
taken from the most complete and most
remarkable among those which dealers
in curiosities have brought to Paris.
The stove is a colossal mass which, rises
in the centre of the principal apartment
usually occupied by the family, the
upper area, plain and out of sight, serves
at night to receive a bed where they
sleep ; on the side, three steps lead to
an arm-chair attached to the wall, where
the master of the house seats himself,
overlooking the rest of the assembly;
the seat, arms, everything in this
presidential chair is of earthenware. The cubic mass of the edifice,
is divided by pilasters in relief, of charming ornamentation, which
separate it in vertical divisions, cut horizontally by other projecting
arabesque bands, the rectangular compartments resulting from this
disposition are filled with plaques containing subjects from the Old
and New Testament, the principal are polychrome, the others green.
To give more richness to his compositions, the artist has modelled them
on two planes, a part in bas relief forms the ground, and groups entirely
detached stand out from the first plane. In a corner of the monument the
author has happily inscribed a name and a date ; HANS KRAUT 1578.
We do not pretend that one can place much earlier the German
impressed wares, we think, on the contrary, that under the influence of
the great masters, and particularly of Albert Diirer, the school beyond
the Rhine must have had its Renaissance almost at the same time as in
France ; but what is certain, is that the march of ideas has been very slow

NUREMBERG VASE, ENAMELLED IN
RELIEF.— MUSEUM OF THE LOUVRE.

336 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
in the country of Hans Kraut, for at the time he executed a work with
all the purity of style of the fifteenth century, taste had experienced in
France as well as in Italy, a sensible depression ; the fine days of art
had passed away.
Among the most ancient and most remarkable works of Germany
should be mentioned a vase made to be given as a prize by a company
of archers. This pot has the form of an owl standing on its velvet
paws, the head forming the lid ; the ground is a white enamel relieved
with touches of blue, which trace the spots of the plumage ; but, in the
middle of the body, the enamel is interrupted, and a fine bas relief
modelled by hand represents the dignitaries of the corporation arrayed
in those splendid costumes we find in the triumph of Maximilian.
Certainly, if it were permitted to hazard a name relative to an excep
tional work, we would say the celebrated Hirschvogel was the author
of this ; it shows more than the talent of the potter, there is the science
of the tasteful statuary ; this piece . is one of the pearls of the collec
tion of M. de la Herche of Beauvais.
It has been asserted, it is true, that a pot with handles, fabricated by
Veit Hirschvogel, the elder, in 1470, already presented the richly
enamelled reliefs which characterise the pottery of Nuremberg of the
sixteenth century ; we should be astonished if it were so, as there is
nothing to indicate in Germany, as elsewhere, the gropings of a new
taste. One fact is certain, that stability is the characteristic of German
art ; we find many a piece dated from the last years of the sixteenth
century exactly conformable to the style of these first works ; majolicas
approaching those of Italy, and which our writers think contemporary
with the fine times of Urbino and Castel Durante, often bear inscriptions
which fix their date at the first years of the seventeenth century.
The history of German ceramic art is yet to create; nothing
serious has been written on the subject, and when their learned — so
conscientious and so profoundly instructed in that country — will set
themselves to the work, most unexpected revelations will astonish the
collector. A fine plate in the museum at Sevres, proves that majolica
was held in honour on the banks of the Rhine, as well as on the shores
of the Adriatic ; rich escutcheons, elegant arabesques are there mixed
with Latin and German legends, and the cypher on the
,Yt*I /V reverse, formed of Gothic letters, announces sufficiently
*¦ /\ the country of the artist (Fig .76). We have seen other
M. 76. works signed with marks evidently German, which
analogy of style had caused to be classed among Italian majolicas.

RENAISSANCE.— FRANCE.— OIRON. »3/

B. — Faience of Oiron.
Before Palissy thought of creating his rustic pottery, the magnetic
current of the Renaissance had already penetrated the country which was
the scene of his laborious essays. If we have spoken of the potter of
Saintonge, before mentioning the fine faiences of Oiron, usually called
Faiences Henri deux, it is that these last are apart from the habitual
character of " poteries de luxe," and that also, it is to a recent discovery
of M. Benjamin Fillon that we owe the knowledge of their origin.
First, what is this town of Oiron, hitherto unknown, and whose name
henceforth will shine with such lustre ? A small locality of the depen
dency of Thouars, become a lordship, because it pleased the Sieurs
de Gouffier to establish their residence, and build a chateau there.
The lordship consists of a considerable plain, visited in winter by flocks
of web-footed birds whose habit it is to wheel in a circle before alighting
on the ground — hence the name of Oi-rond, goose circle, as inscribed
in the charter-house of the chateau.
Guided by a happy conformity of facts, and by that intuition
peculiar to true archaeologists, M. Fillon repaired to Oiron, persuaded
beforehand that he should find there the real and irrefragable elements
of the history of the pottery of Henry II. , and, as he anticipated,
proofs of every kind accumulated before him, and the discovery was

Let us, however, pause before this new denomination of " fine faience,"
for we must not allow an interest of art to make us pass over an im
portant industrial conquest. The composition of fine faience, generally
known under the name of pipeclay, has been already described.
But its invention in Europe scarcely deserved mention. Now, here is
France, in the sixteenth century, in possession of a pottery, the dis
covery of which is attributed two hundred years later to England ; and
not only had the material been found, but the refinement of the pro
cesses had been carried to a degree, of which later manipulators had no
conception. This requires explanation ; the faiences made at Oiron are
generally of a fine paste, worked with the hand and very thin ; upon the
first nucleus, the potter spread a still thinner layer of a purer and whiter
earth, in which he graved the principal ornaments and next filled them
with a coloured clay which he made level with the surface ; it is therefore
a decoration by incrustation rather than a painting, and the idea of so
minute a process would never have suggested itself to its authors, had
z

338 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
they not seen the wall-tiles of two tints so frequent in Poitou and
Brittany. The authors of these fine, incrusted faiences, are now known to be
Francois Cherpentier, potter in the service of Helene de Hangest,
dame de Boisy, aud Jehan Bernart, secretary and librarian to the same
lady. Helene de Hangest, widow of Artur Gouffier, formerly governor of
Francis I., and grand master of France, was a remarkable woman,
learned and well versed in the arts. We have of her execution a collection
of drawings in crayon, consisting of the portraits of many of her
contemporaries. Francis I. had amused himself in composing mot
toes in verse for each portrait, and had even traced some of them with
his own hand.
Since 1524, she passed every summer at the chateau of Oiron, which
her husband had projected rebuilding, and which she enlarged and em
bellished with the assistance of her eldest son, Claude Gouffier. How
came pottery to become one of her undertakings ? This is impossible
to explain, even taking into consideration the wonders of ceramic art
she would have admired at the French court. Yet, a letter, published
by M. Fillon, proves that in 1529, she had already rewarded Cherpentier
and Bernart, with a grant of the house and orchard, where their oven
and workshops were situated. Helene de Hangest died in 1537 ; the
following year, Bernart still figures in the household books of Oiron, with
two painters and a labourer.
Here then is again one of those accidental, ephemeral products, like
the porcelain of the Medicis and so many other works of the Renais
sance, which owe their creation to a caprice, and their divulgation to the
chance of events. Rich, the friend of refined luxury and art, Madame de
Boisy caused to be made for herself and her friends, vases which bore
the impress of the sentiments which animated her, or her son, when she
had been removed by death, and the manufacture was so entirely an
individual enterprise, that at the moment when protection ceased,
and circumstances separated the two principal instruments of the
discovery, all fell to nothing; the remembrance of the men and of
their products effaced themselves so quickly, that it required labours
without number, efforts of intelligence and circumstances particularly
favourable, to lead us back at the present time into the path of
truth. Oiron faience divides itself into three distinct periods, deter
mined by the influence of its inspirers. In the first the pure taste

RENAISSANCE.— FRANCE.— OIRON.

339

Fig. 93.

of Helene de Hangest manifests itself by the simplicity of the forms and
details, and by a mournful style dictated by her widowhood.
Evidently accustomed to see, among the wonders of Fontainebleau,
the rare products of oriental art, she borrows its forms and spirit, and
thus imposes a picturesque stamp upon the pottery ; on the ivoried
surface of a vessel (buire) of Persian form, she would arrange zones
of arabesques, or of heraldic eglets accompanying the shield of Gilles
de Laval, companion in arms, and particular friend of Artur Gouffier.
Upon other pieces, alike intended for the adherents of his family, such
as the la Tremouille, suzerains of Oiron ; Guillaume Bodin, lord of la
Martiniere, maitre d' hotel of the sire
de Boisy ; Guillaume Gouffier, knight
of Malta, and third son of admiral de
Bonnivet, she would surround the arms
with a fine incrusted ornamentation of
a dark brown. In this first period, we
scarcely see any other colours but
black, brown, and carnation red ; and
cordelieres with pierced hearts are
mixed with delicate interlacings, and
arabesque designs dictated by the
special taste of Bernart, evidently
borrowed from the rich bookbindings
of the period. Besides, the primitive
idea was still so untouched at this
period, there was such a perfect in
telligence between the inspirer, the
draughtsman and the potter, that a
singular harmony of conception, a
grandiose unity pervade all their works and assure their perfection.
The second period comprises the works posterior to the death of
Helene de Hangest, and executed under the influence of her son. The
forms are generally architectural ; the chateau had been enlarged, and
Claude Gouffier introduced into the additions the loaded ornamentation
we find in buildings of the Renaissance. A man of luxury, rather than
of taste, richness appeared to him preferable to simple, severe beauty ;
there is consequently, as remarks M. Fillon, an enormous difference
between the fine faiences copied from this blustering architecture, and
the delicate inspirations of the highly-gifted woman who had inaugu
rated the manufacture.

FINE FAIENCE OF OIRON (MUSEUM OF
THE LOUVRE).

340 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Salt-cellars, either triangular or square, give us the Gothic windows
of the collegiate chapel of Oiron, supported by buttresses having the
form of the symbolic Termini supporting the chimney piece of the great
gallery of the chateau. We again find among them the subjects of the
great windows of the chapel, there the rosaries, the crowns of fruit
and the pilasters of the high altar of the church. Royal emblems,
cyphers and shields, also multiply themselves; the salamander of
Francis I., the interlaced crescents, the initial H of the Dauphin Henry,
accompanied by a frieze of dolphins, the escutcheon of France, or that
of the Montmorency, all serve to heighten an ornamentation in which
the personality of Jehan Bernart still reveals itself by the application of
subjects borrowed from bibliography. Thus in the well of a saltcellar
appears the pelican, mark of Jean de Marnef, Poitevin bookseller ; under
another, is the head of an old woman, taken from the illustrations of a book.
During the first period, Cherpentier proceeded, after the manner of book
binders, to incise and inlay his arabesques by means of small stamps ;
in the second period he has found means of hollowing with a single
punch upon large surfaces, the interlacings he fills with coloured
earth, and which serve as framework to the most delicate subjects.
The technica has therefore modified itself at the same time as the taste,
and as regards complication of processes, difficulties of execution, we
may say that this period is that of the greatest development of the
fabrication ; the potter has reached the height of his practice.
The third period is that of the decline, brought about by
various causes ; first from the want of a director, the workshop left to
itself, employs the same stamps and moulds, accumulating them without
taste; it would appear that at a certain period, the designer Ber
nart disappeared, removed doubtlessly by death, for the compli
cated pieces appear to be rather an assemblage of pieces put in
juxtaposition than the result of a concerted composition. Cherpentier
himself is missing ; and then upon an earth ill prepared, the old reliefs
project without art, badly put together, and added to coarse details
which tell into what hands the fabrication had fallen.
Yet the pieces of this period have a great historic interest, for they
mark several curious dates. The cup of the Louvre, ornamented with
dolphins interwoven with the three crescents, was made before the
accession of Henry II. to the throne ; another cup, belonging to
Baron James de Rothschild, has the same dolphins encircling the
shield of France, and also, four little lizards modelled after nature, the
first manifestation of the taste for rustic pottery, and as if this piece

RENAISSANCE.— FRANCE.— OIRON. 34I
should unite every variety of interest, we see round the fleurs de lis,
the geese, characteristic of the locality, the customary denizens of the
great plain of Oiron. After the 31st of March 1547, date of the
accession of Henry IL, the colours become less pure, and less har
monious, the details do not show the firmness of touch, the skilful mani
pulation before apparent. In the last works the influence of Palissy
becomes manifest, and the stamps, applied by unskilful hands, no
longer allow us to recognise the elegance of the works to which
Cherpentier and Bernart devoted their study.
A creation of this period, important in every point of view, comes
to throw a striking light upon the history of fine faience and unite
it with contemporary fabrications ; this is the enamelled pavement
of the private chapel of the Chateau of Oiron. The tiles are formed
of an earth less purified, but in every respect similar to that of the
vases ; in the vases a first mass forms the basis of the work, and a finer
earth is spread over the surface. It is upon this subjectile that artists
have painted in stannic colours a ground with pale blue arabesques in
niello upon which are letters, monograms and escutcheons in bright
colours ; the characters, in violet brown, form the Gouffier motto
HIC TERMINUS H/ERET. The monograms are those of Claude
Gouffier and of Henry II., and emblazonments, those of the Gouffier,
Montmorency and Hangest-Genlis, that is, the family alliances, com
plete the decoration. This pavement, drawn by Bernart, made with
the earth of Oiron, and still iu its place, would of itself alone, demon
strate the real origin of these fine faiences due to the munificence of
a powerful lord, and which have never had any other destination than
that of being employed for his own use, or offered to his superior and his
friends. It proves besides, that the idea of enamelling upon earth was
in a latent state, and only awaiting favourable circumstances for its
development. Here we have a little departed from the learned and luminous work
of M. Fillon, we have made a third period, of that which forms with him
only a section of the second. His third period, become the fourth with
us, comprises potteries so coarse, so different from the others in style and
workmanship, that we absolutely refuse to see in them works executed
under enlightened patronage ; true they bear the motto and emblems
of the Gouffier, and the ancient stamps show themselves here and there
to prove that the materials of the princely manufacture had passed into
new hands. But the permanence of these emblems appears to us an
evidence of the gratitude of those who had obtained tliese spoils when

342 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
religious wars had compelled the Gouffier to leave their chateau, which
was soon after sacked. In this last period, the jaspers have so well
replaced the fine incrustations, the heavy reliefs, the delicate chasing,
that many authors have attributed to the sequel of Palissy what is
only the end of the manufacture of Oiron.

RENAISSANCE.— STONEWARE. 343

APPENDIX.

Stoneware.
Hitherto we have studied the various phases of ceramic history
without taking any special account of the nature of the products, and
contenting ourselves with distinguishing, in a same epoch and among a
same people, the various kinds of pottery.
We depart from this plan in order to speak of stoneware, a singular
group as clearly defined in a technical point of view, as it is obscure
with respect to its origin and progress.
The making of stoneware possessing artistic interest, has been
generally limited to the fifteenth century, but we think there is error in
this respect, and that hard paste pottery has been made in some parts
of France concurrently with ancient glazed wares approaching nearly
to it in aspect and decoration. This we have demonstrated in speaking
of the pottery of the Beauvoisis. The stoneware clays are sufficiently
common in France for them to have been easily made use of.
According to the generally admitted notions, Germany will
have been the cradle of this branch of ceramic art, writers have gone
further and have cited Jacqueline of Bavaria as the first person, at
least of eminent rank, who has kneaded silicious pottery. Shut up in
the fortress of Teylingen, in 1424, she would according to them have
solaced her leisure hours by making pots and pitchers which she
afterwards threw into the moat, in order to leave to future ages the
remembrance of her imprisonment. A special treatise has been
printed in Holland upon the " Vrouw Jacoba's Kannetjes." One of
these pots is in the Museum of the Hague, and another at Sevres
both proving that the Countess Jacqueline was not an artist of the first
order.

344

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

GERMAN CANETTE OF
WHITE STONEWARE.

In the sixteenth century, the art had established itself upon settled
bases, and nothing can be more beautiful, in
Fig. 94. . . .
workmanship and taste than the pitchers, hunting
bottles and "canettes" issued from the hands of
the potters of Cologne and of some other localities
in Germany. Upon a surface of an almost pure
white or of a warm grey brown, are reliefs of
rare perfection, accompanied by mouldings which
relieve the effect; in general form, these stone
wares with their masks, and their handles judi
ciously balanced have a severe and elegant aspect
conformable to the material of which they are
made. The canette of conic form (Fig. 94) gives
an example of the richness of the white stoneware.
Its principal ornamentation is an escutcheon of
the arms of the Germanic Empire with those of
France and Spain, the shield of the archbishop
elector of Mentz placed in a second line of the prin
cipal arms, would indicate the piece was intended
for this high dignitary ; all is bold in style, perfect in execution, although
the date, 1574, already removes it from the best period of the Renaissance.
Fig. 95. We see a remarkable example of Ger
man workmanship in a crouching lion
(Fig. 95) with his head turned round and
with his forepaws supporting a cup made
Wi^^^y^' to receive sand, the companion holding
an oval vase serving as inkstand. These
heraldic pieces show great spirit of ex
ecution and an elevated character in
the rendering of the heads and the
extremities. Similar menacing supporters
defend the escutcheons of the old German
nobility. Some brown pieces have no other
merit than the delicacy of their reliefs;
yet at Bunzlau these reliefs have been
executed with a dull yellow paste which has a strong effect upon the
vigorous ground.
But, it is in Bavaria, at Creussen, that the plan of using colours to
brighten the sombre tint of the stoneware has been employed ; figures

GERMAN STONEWARE.

RENAISSANCE.— STONEWARE. 345
and moulded ornaments have been covered over with bright enamels and
gold, and a harmonious whole has been thereby produced ; specimens of
this kind are common in our museums. One of the favourite subjects
among the potters of Creussen is a jug, called the Apostles' mug, on which
these figure with the evangelists. Forgers have sometimes applied
painting and cold gilding upon potteries not enamelled of this manu
facture, the fraud is easily recognised, and consequently not dangerous.
Independently of these brilliant pieces, Germany has manufactured
stonewares partially coloured, less glaring; these last we will stop to
consider because they bear a close analogy with the blue potteries of
Beauvais from which we must try to distinguish them.
The German stonewares with grey paste, colder than the brown, less
flattering to the eyes than the white, required a heightening to bring
out their elegance ; it was imagined to apply as backgrounds, zones of a
beautiful azure blue or of a violet manganese brown, of the most
harmonious effect; the reliefs, imprisoning the colour in a kind of en
closure permitted the introduction of flowers and scrolls of a decided tone
upon the paste or the adjacent enamel. Every one has seen pieces of this
style and it would be superfluous to extend the description. Any attempt
to distinguish their origin would be vain, it can only be the result of
an attentive study of the style of each epoch and each country.
In the old language of collectors, all stonewares were confounded
under the name of "gres de Flandres;" this implied nothing, and
nobody doubted most of these potteries being of German origin, for they
bore, either arms of the princes, or legends in the divers idioms of
Germany. Now, to arrive at fixing the boundaries of these workshops, we must
be well imbued with this fact : the German stonewares are generally
of an architectural structure, judicious mouldings, complicated forms
here act an important part, the style for a long while, remained
faithful to the pure traditions of the Renaissance. In Flanders, the
art lowers itself more rapidly and the ornamentation, more capricious
and more floriated, conforms itself nearer to the modifications introduced
in the other arts.
In France, stoneware follows step by step the progress of the various
potteries, its yielding forms resemble the glazed earthenware ; fleurs de
lis abound, sometimes accompanying the royal emblazonment, the arms
of cities (those of Paris are frequent) sometimes scattered among flowers
purely conventional. There are no inscriptions, few cyphers, fewer still
of subjects with figures. Made chiefly for use and for ornamentation, the

346

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Fig. 96.

French stoneware vases consist of ewers, hanaps, long-necked bottles or
flower pots, like the charming specimen we give here (Fig. 96.) The
artist rarely neglects to employ the two
tints at his disposal, and often these
enamels attain an exceptional vigour.
The history of stoneware is still very
obscure but we do not doubt but that the
interest attached to it will give birth,
from the different countries which pro
duced it, to the monographs so earnestly
desired.

STONEWARE OF BEAUVAIS.

We pause, for rapidly as the ground
has been run over in this chapter, it
has taken fearful developments. What
remains to us besides to work out ? We
have followed step by step the awakening
of intelligence ; we have shown the inces
sant efforts of Europe, to render pliant the
baked clay, to clothe it with elegant
forms, to embellish it by the resources of
art ; the active rivalry of nations seeking to attain intellectual and
commercial supremacy.
After having seen the Greeks immortalise the heroes of their history,
the songs of their poets, taking them as subjects for their ceramic
paintings ; after the gropings of the Middle Ages whose works preserve
the arms of illustrious men, was it not curious to see, at the Renaissance,
glaze and enamel make themselves rivals of engraved copper, of fresco
and painted panels, and the works of the great masters appear again
before our eyes by this new road ? The times, the manners, the passions,
reflect themselves in these works, so modest in appearance, to this
degree, that the philosopher and the historian disdain no longer
to consult a baked earth equally with a chart or a passage in the
memoirs of an obscure epoch.
This rehabilitation of the products of art will certainly be one of the
proofs of the sagacity of present enquirers, and public taste, by en
couraging ceramic studies, will have given to modern industry the most
powerful means of progress, for the glorification of the past contains the
promise of a durable fame to those who will know how to equal or
surpass the merit of their forerunners.

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE. 347

CHAPTER IV.
modern times.
Section 1.— Faience.
A. — French Faience.
In beginning this chapter, a certain emotion seizes us, we understand
its immense interest, and consequently the difficulty of making the
reader appreciate in a short and rapid sketch, the high teachings that
it admits of. It concerns intimately our history and our manners ; what
it recapitulates are the efforts of yesterday, the achievements of to-day,
foreshadowing those of the morrow. It should demonstrate, by means
of facts logically grouped, in what way in France, as in the rest of Europe,
the Ceramic industry and the arts which depend upon it, have advanced
and improved by extensive co-operation, their existence having no
longer for end the satisfying of the taste and luxury of the few, but the
providing for the wants of the many.
But history does not proceed, any more than nature, by violent
shocks, facts follow a rational evolution, one progress links itself to
another, until they lead, as nearly as possible, to perfection, the ideal
of all human conception. To seek the cause of this progress, some
times in facts and in institutions, sometimes in individuahties, is the
difficult point.
The Middle Ages among its struggles, and in spite of them, had
manifested, as we have seen, some flashes of artistic genius, the
Renaissance in the middle of its ambitious enterprises, had made this
glorious genius the object of the powerful and the great, their encourage"
ment was bestowed in moments of effervescence, when brave indivi-

348 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
dualities rose on every side and formed that brilliant pleiad whose
works elevated the taste even to the hearts of the galvanised populations,
and thus contributed to enlarge the circle of intellectual wants.
It was reserved to modern times to complete the work of centuries,
by generalising the cultivation of the mind, and substituting the masses
for the small number which appreciated the good and the beautiful.
The artist no longer dependant on the chance protection of a solitary
patron, but on the encouragement of society at large, had no other pre
occupation than his own improvement, and the search after that which
would materially satisfy the powerful clients, to wdiom he consecrated
his works.
Such is now the state of things ; but, we repeat it, the transformation
has been slow and progressive, each has taken his part in it, and the
great difficulty for the earnest historian, is to seek the elements of
this co-operation, without allowing himself to be turned away from the
truth by interested declamations, erroneous judgments, dictated by
passion, and, above all, by documents, stamped with inanity byr the
ignorance of those from whom they emanate.
How often has one not raised one's voice against privileges long
time conceded by princes, the natural protectors of all high enterprises
attempted in their States ? What has not been said against the inter
ference of the nobility and clergy in the patronage of manufactories ?
The organisation of industries into corporations has been considered an
odious trammel, even when it brought a wise and salutary code of regu
lations, in the various branches of art. One has also pretended ignorance
of the large amount of protection taken against the abuse of privileges,
by parliaments and municipal institutions ; so that one would have
believed in the constant persecution of that which the authorities were
seeking on the contrary to favour by all the means at their disposal.
In fact, it was necessary to direct, and overlook the first essays of
these new industries, as a mother directs and protects the first steps of
her child, even when he is impatient of the trammels which prevent
his fall. Writers would see nothing of this, and yet when the revolution
came, it is thanks to that slow and constantly progressive march of facts
that it found minds ripe for a complete emancipation and that it was
able to place under the protection of a law equal for all, the work already
prepared by the tacit agreement of all .those who possessed power and
influence. To show the march of this co-operation of conflicting interests,
formerly opposed, towards the accomplishment of the universal destinies

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE. 349

is a vast framework of which though it is not given to us to fill, we hope
at least by dint of good faith, of patient research and simplicity in the
expression of our personal sentiments, to supply an interesting sketch.
To give to the series of facts a logical succession, we must neces
sarily abandon technical classification and substitute for the order of pro
gression of ceramic matters, that of events, viewing them above all in
their local manifestation, and following for each description of pottery,
its gradual progress round the centre whence it derived its impulse.
Thus, to speak only of France with which by right of patriotism we
should first occupy ourselves, its ancient organisation by provinces, each
governed by an intendant, made of it, as it were, a union of federative
states each a stranger to the movements of the others, separated by
customhouse lines, and scarcely kept together by the common tie of
royal authority. Hence, the various influences which might modify their
industries were quite special and became sometimes of considerable
importance. It has resulted from this fact, happy for our national
genius, that local efforts have produced different results, and that France
alone has created more decorative styles than any other country in
Europe. These styles having even become sufficiently typical as to
form schools, variously imitated in France as elsewhere. It becomes
then necessary to well define their characters and thus to mark out
the limits of the principal French ceramic styles.
Italian Style.
What we mean to qualify as French faiences of Italian style are not
the true Majolicas made among us by eminent ultramontane emigrants,
we have seen before, when speaking of the French Renaissance, how
ephemeral had been the productions attempted by workmen away
from home and distant from the schools, whence they derived their
models, and who were speedily absorbed in the active and moving centre
into which they had ventured themselves.
One workshop alone, that of Nevers, cultivated for some time
a style of painting originally of Urbino ; its subjects, as in Italian
faience, mythological, the ground formed by the waves of the sea, the
personages most often marine divinities, Tritons, Nereids, and Cupids.
It is a singular circumstance, to which we shall return in its place, that
writers have attributed to the princes of the house of Gonzaga, the
creation of this school as, " entirely of importation," and they see the
true authors of these fine vases, in the various members of a family

350 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
named Conrade, who came from Albissola, near Savona, to direct the
Nivernais establishment. Now the first thing which is clear to any
one who has the slightest knowledge of majolica is that the style of
Savona, and of all the Genoese coast has nothing in common with the
Italo-French. A second remark still more decisive and suggested by
the examination of Conrade's signed pieces, is that these potters, expert
perhaps in their trade, were poor draughtsmen, without style, and un
worthy of claiming any relationship with the Italian ceramic artists of the
sixteenth century ; besides, these men were much more occupied in seeking
to imitate the Chinese style than to reproduce the pompous "istoriato"
pottery of Italy. The Nivernais style therefore, imitated from the Italian
faiences of Urbino, can only be the work of French artists impelled in
this line by the encouragements of a prince the lover of high art. We
will also show how this accidental school was superior, for its time, to the
last adepts of Italian art, and how much it contributed to maintain
the Nivernais manufactory at a respectable level, notwithstanding
the debasing influence of the Conrades.
Rouennais Style.
The Italian style being, as we have just said, an accident, an
ephemeral caprice, we place the Norman school at the head of art,
purely French ; two reasons induce us so to do ; on one side, the
certainty that Rouen had, long before Nevers, applied the enamel to
terra-cotta ; on the other, the conviction acquired by a profound study
of its first essays, that Norman ceramic art has derived its inspirations
from national sources. Among us, as in Italy, it is in the workshops
where rich artistic pieces were made, that the general taste of
ornamentation was formed ; the goldsmith's work, enamelling, mar
quetry, textiles even, have imposed their conceptions upon the secon
dary objects of art ; and this may be readily conceived, for a complete
harmony should exist between furniture in general and architecture, in
the same manner as between these last and the pomp of costume.
All these keep in unison at this epoch, and he who would seek to with
draw his works from this law of good taste, would only arrive at throw
ing a false note in the universal concert, and make a blot in the happy
uniformity of the picture.
If we consider Rouen pottery in this elevated point of view, we can
soon account for its first beginnings ; the exceptional pieces in the
Rouen museum, where enamelled landscapes, upon a white ground, are

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE. 351
encircled with wreaths of large flowers, a little hard in tone, and with
scattered bouquets accompanied by lines twisted into tendrils, are they not
the exact reproduction of what we find upon the metallic sides of the jewel
caskets, of the jewels themselves and more still upon the textile fabrics
called chintzes (perses), of the beginning of the seventeenth century ?
These faiences, accidentally issued from the hands of an enameller on
metals, do not constitute a commercial style, a mercantile fabrication, but,
when in 1647, Poirel, Sieur de Grandval, works the first official privilege
and tries himself at the current pottery, we see the comfit-box (drageoir)
called " a la centauresse," reproduce the same flowers, the same tendrils,
in a word, conform itself to a taste which, far from coming from Nevers,
was to implant itself there in its turn, by an identical influence.
Nevertheless, the sight of Oriental porcelain, soon modified these
tendencies and suggested to the Rouennais painters the true type which
was to make their renown and that of the whole of French faience, this
Fig. 97.

SLIPPER OF ROUEN FAIENCE.

is the decoration of "lambrequins" (mantlings) and " dentelles" (lace).
This style of ornamentation, first executed in blue camaieu or in blue
and iron red is a sort of compromise between the Oriental and the French.
We see in it the oriental influence mixed with the delicate combinations
invented by Be'rain, Boule, and other French masters of the ornamental
school, but the borrowing is so disguised, there is such a powerful origin
ality in the arabesque borders surrounding the dishes with a wide guipure,
in the central roses, rich without being overcharged and sometimes
with radiating columns uniting the middle subject with the circum
ference, that one asks oneself if there is not in it an ingenious invention
(Fig 97). Contemporaries must have so considered it, since the Rouennais
wares have been the object of universal imitation. Belgium, Holland,
even Italy have multiplied the varieties of a style which Lille, Paris,
Saint Cloud, Marseilles, &c. executed readily to meet the taste of the
consumer.

352

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

A direct influence of the literary publications modified for a moment
the compositions " a dentelles." Baskets of flowers supported by
scrolls with wreaths form subjects for the centre, or place themselves
in the recesses of the mantlings, this rich and graceful style is evidently
borrowed from the tail pieces or culs-de-lampe of the splendid editions
of Cramoisy and other publishers of the seventeenth century.
What superabundantly proves the persistance of the Rouennais
school in the wish of remaining French, is that from its beginnings it was

Fig. 98.

ROUEN PLATE, A LA CORNE DECORATION.

able to imitate Chinese porcelain, with a fidelity and talent, equal at
least to what one admires in the works of the Dutch potters ; lozengy
borders with green grounds, intersected by reserves, surrounding- a floral
composition of pure oriental style, or a Chinese landscape with figures
and shops. But the painters soon enfranchised themselves from these
too servile imitations by creating the style " a la corne." There the
subjects will be larger than the Chinese type itself; a cornucopia?
whence escape branches of paeonies, open pomegranates, Chinese pinks
will form the principal subjects, and will be encircled by birds, butter
flies, and insects, and sometimes with capricious "rocailles" (Fig. 98).
This pottery, less pure in fabrication and taste than the blue ware with
mantlings and lace, redeems by the brilliancy of its bright enamels,
the heaviness of its paste, and its blueish enamel subject to " crazino- "
or cracks.

MODERN FA IENCE.—FRA NCE. 3 5 3
Nivernais Style.
Besides the faiences imitated from Urbino, Nevers has worked after
decided types,- the first, borrowed from enamellers manifests itself, as
at Rouen, by subjects mythological, heroic or Fig. 99.
familiar, surrounded by wreaths of large flowers.
In these, blue and manganese pervade; for the
Nivernais pottery, firing at a very high tempera
ture, is prescribed in the use of its enamels. It
has never been able to fix the fine Rouennais iron
red, and has replaced it with an orange yellow,
marvellously rich, especially when introduced
upon partial grounds.
The oriental type is equally easy to distin
guish. Normandy specially inspired herself JAE> nevers,
with the blue imperial porcelain of King-te- PEESI^N STYLE'
tchin. Nevers preferred the oriental porcelain, described at page 62,
and particularly the Persian style. Flowers with deflexed pointed
leaves, scrolls, birds and insects are therefore more frequent than
ornamental combinations, in a word, the oriental style of Nevers is
less original, less created than that of Rouen.
In the oriental type are classed the faiences of bright lapis lazuli
grounds, relieved with enamelled patterns in pure white, associated with
pale or orange yellow. The Persians have, it is true, enamelled with
bright blue their terracottas, and; especially their wall tiles, they have
applied to it a white damascene work of delicate scrolls, with
inscriptions in relief gilded without firing (a froid) ; but this decoration
has nothing in common with the Nivernais composition, in which
tulips, pinks and anemones resemble on the contrary the rich and
redundant bouquets of enamel work, and of contemporary tissues. We
therefore claim for our own school these products, which must be
ranged among the most remarkable, issued from French furnaces.
Southern Style.
The south of France was one of the most active of its intellectual
centres, Marseilles, the city of commerce, had opened relations with
every country of the globe ; Provence had not forgotten the remem
brance of the light the good king Rene had shed upon the province.
Therefore one is not astonished to see appear there, towards the end of
2 A

35-l

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Fig. 100.

the seventeenth century, works more polished, than even in con
temporaneous Italy. At Saint- Jean-du-Desert and Marseilles, the
dishes are surrounded with splendid arabesques, relieved by lions'
heads, hunting subjects of masterly
execution, scenes from scripture or
history filling the central space, while
Moustiers concurrently with the same
subjects, places upon an admirable
enamel, the ornamental compositions
of Berain and the other French " petits
maitres." By its taste, Moustiers forms
a school of itself, and goes to plant
in Spain a fertile branch, which brings
us back in exchange for the soft blue
camaieu, a polychrome style with
bouquets and wreaths, already less
pure than the original type, and
which, associating itself with grotesques
of bad taste, the responsibility of which
we are pleased to throw upon a neighbouring nation, soon produced
a melancholy decadence.

POT OF SOUTHERN FAIENCE.

Style of Strasburg.
It was reserved to this city to give its name to an intermediate
style of deooration, between that of the high class of faience and the
painting of porcelain, and which formed in some sort the hyphen or
line of union between the two processes ; the firing by the porcelain and
the enamel furnace. The decoration of Strasburg is simple in ordinary
specimens; the flowers are surrounded with a deep black outline
(chatironne) and hastily modelled, yet the red (derived from gold)
appears brilliant and characteristic, and the copper green shines with
unique intensity. The rendering of this style oould not have been
done better; hence the Strasburg pottery had numerous imitations.
The oldest pieces are decorated with flowers and insects; later,
Chinese figures, of the grotesque kind invented in Europe, were
introduced. Porcelain Style.
This style is a continuation of the other, and does not require descrip
tion, its object accounts for its perfection. At Strasburg already, the

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE. 355

beauty of the enamel, the elegance and skilfulness of the workmanship
had rendered certain pieces rivals of translucent pottery. In the centres
where imitation sought to be perfect, we find paintings which the
decorators of Saxony and Sevres might envy.
The porcelain style has been the ruin of faience, what was the use of
placing upon a fragile ware of secondary use, an elaborate painting of
high price ? Faience has only its success concurrently with porcelain
inasmuch as it continues accessible to all, and that it preserves a broad,
rapid and tasteful decoration appropriate to its nature.
History of French Manufactories.
Every day, the researches of collectors, the learned investigations
of the keepers of local archives, the happy chances of active and
enterprising commerce, come to reveal the existence of manufactories
long unknown, so that the list, already very long, of establishments
more or less celebrated, extends and complicates itself without its
being possible to foresee the moment when we can close it. It is
therefore important even with a view to facilitate research, to open
from the present time, a list in which the conquests of the future will
subsequently take their place, and to present in logical order, the table
of manufactories authorised by letters patent, or whose names we find
inscribed in works worthy of attention. We give this table in geo
graphical order, uniting, under the head of the old provinces, the de
partments which divide them ; these provinces formed formerly a
governmental whole ; it was before the intendant, that the declarations
of the establishment of a pottery had to be made, this functionary
received the deposit of the mark, had to watch over the furnaces being
set up and put in activity, the genuine quality of the wares, and to
prevent any disloyal competition which might injure the authorised
establishments. He had the direction of the police belonging to com
merce, the supervision of the trades corporations, and conjointly with
the inspectors of manufactories, he watched over the progress of art.
We have elsewhere pointed out the inconvenience of this organisa
tion ; we should also recal its advantages in point of study ; the styles of
which we have just described the principal characteristics, group them
selves naturally round their principal centre, and it is already a means
of attaching to a region, unknown works which may awaken the studies
of collectors ; the nature of the earth, that of the enamels, the general
style of decoration, have always a family air in the same province.
2 a 2

356 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

GEOGRAPHY OF FRENCH FAIENCE MANUFACTOKIES.
REGION OF THE NORTH.
Normandie.
Seine Infe'rieure. Rouen.— Saint-Adrien. — Forges-les-Eaux. — Le Havre. — Sainte-Foy.
Eure. Armentieres. — Chatel-la-Lnne. — InfreviUe. — Malicorne. — Dangu. — Verneuil.
Calvados. Caen. — Manerbe.-Pre-dA.uge. — La Bauqueterie.
Manclie ?
Orne. Saint-Denis-sur-Sarthon. Picardie.
Somme 1 Artois.
Pas-de-Calais. Aire. — Boulogne. — Desvres.— Hesdin. — Montreuil.— Saint-Omer.
Flandre.
Nord. Bailleul. — Cambrai.— Douai. — Dunkerque. — Lille. — Saint- Amand.— Valenciennes.
Ile-de-France.
Seine. Paris. — Vincennes. — Sceaux. — Bourg-la-Reine., — He Saint-Denis. — Gros-Oaillou.
— Mont-Louis. Seine-et-Oise. Saint-Cloud. — Sevres. — Meudon. — Mantes.
Seine-et-Marne. Avon. — Boissette. — Melun. — Montereau.
Aixite. Sinceny. — Rouy. — Ognes. — Villers-Cotterets.
Vise. ChantiUy.— Beauvais. — Savignies. Champagne.
Aube. Troycs. — Mathault.
Haute- Name. Aprey. — Langres.
Mame. Epernay. — Bois-d'Espence.
Ardennes 1 REGION OF THE EAST.
Lorraine.
Meurthe. Niederviller. — Luneville. — Nancy. — Bellevue. — Toul. — Moyen. — Montenoy. 
Saint-Cle'ment. Vosges. Epinal. — Ramberviller.
Meuse. Vaucouleurs. — Montigny. — Clermont-en-Argonne. — Waly. — Les Islettes.
Moselle. Thionville. — La'Grange. — Sarreguemines. Alsace.
Bas-Rhin. Strasburg.— Haguenau.
Haut- Bliin. Saint-Blaise. Franche-Gomte.
Doubs. Besancon. — Rioz.
Haute-Saoue ?
¦hira. Arbois.

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE. 357
Bourgogne.
C6te d'Or. Dijon. — Pontaillier. — Mirebeau. — Premieres.
Yonne. Auxerre. — Aney-le-Franc.
8adne-et-Loire. Macon. — Digoin.
Ain. Meillonas. — Pont-de-Vaux. — Bourg. Lyonnais.
Rh6ne. Lyon.
Loire. Roanne. Dauphine.
Isere. Grenoble.
Diome. Saint-Vallier. — Dieu-le-Fit.
Hautes-Alpes 1
REGION OF THE SOUTH.
Provence.
Basses-Alpes. Moustiers.
Var. Taverne. — Varage. — Les Poupres.— Faience.
Bouches-du-Rhdne. Marseille. — Aubagne. Languedoc.
Haute-Garonne. Toulouse. — Martres. — Mones. — Marignac. — -Terrebasse.
Tam. A gen.
Aude. Narbonne.
Serault. Montpellier.
Gard. Anduze. — Castilhon. — Nimes. — Vauvert.
Lozere ?
Haute-Loire. Le Puy.
Ardeche 1

Pyre'ne'es-Orientalee ?

Arrieq

Roussillon.
Comte de Foix.
Beam.

Basses-PyrenCes. Espelelle. — Lescar.— Guyenne.
Gironde. Bordeaux. — Sadirac. — Bazas.
Dordogne. Bergerac.
Lot-et-Garonne. La Plume. — Port-Sainte-Marie.
Lot?
Aveyron 1
Tam-et-Garonne. Montauban.
Landes. Samadet.
Gers. Auch.
Hautes-Pyre'nies.
REGION OF THE WEST.
Aunis and Saintonge.
Charente-Inferieure. Saintes. — Brizambourg. — La Chapelle-rles-Pots. — La Rocholle.-
Marans.

358 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Angoumois.
Charente. Angouleme. Poitou.
Vienne. Poitiers. — Montbernage. — Chatellerault.
Deux-Sevres. Oiron. — Thouars. — Rigne. — Cbef-Boutonne. — Saint-Porchaire.
Vende'e. Fontenay. — Ule-d'EUe. — Montaigu. — Apremont. — Mallievre.
Bretagne.
llle-et-Vilaine. Rennes. — Re'nac.
Loire- Infe'rieure. Nantes. — Le Croisic. — Machecoul.
Morbihan. Rohu.
Finistere. Quimper. — Quimperle'.
Cvtes-du-Nord 1 Anjou.
Maine-el-Loire f Maine.
Sarthe. Malicorne. — Ligron. — Courcelles. — Pontvalain .
Mayenne ? CENTRAL REGION.
Orleanais.
Loiret. Orleans. — Gien. — Saint-Marceau.
Loir-e.l-Cher. Saint-Die'. — Chaumont,
Enre-et-Loir. Chateaudun. Nivernais.
Nievre. Nevers. — La Cliarite'. — La Node. — Bois-le-Comte. — Saint- Ve'rain. — Varzy,
Bourbonnais.
AUier. Moulins. Auvergne.

Puy-de-Ddme. Clermont.-

— Ardcs.

Cantal?

Limousin.

Haute-Vienne. Limoges.

Correze ?
Marclie.
Crease 1
Berry.
Cher'?
Indre '! Touraine.
Imlre-et-I.oire. Tours. — Amboise. Comtat d' Avignon.
Ynvrhise. — Avignon. — Apt. — Goult. — La Tour-d'Aigues. — C'arpentras.
MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— ROUEN. 359

REGION QF THE NORTH.
Normandy.
We have already seen the remarkable part taken by Normandy, at
the Renaissance, in the vulgarisation of the secret of enamelled
earthenwares ; without being able to trace precisely through what means
this secret was improved, we have mentioned the real masterpieces,
that issued from the Rouennais workshop of Masseot Abaquesne and
his successors.How has it happened that a process which had reached perfection
should suddenly be lost to reappear after an interval of ten years, in the
form of timid attempts ? This is what the present state of our social
constitution and manners precludes us from understanding; and yet
this is what took place in Normandy at the modern epoch, that is, at
the beginning of the seventeenth century. It would appear that at a
moment when industries were about to transform themselves, a complete
rupture took place between the past and the present, and that this
transformation inaugurated itself everywhere, without taking account of
the experience acquired by the ancient adepts in art. Let us then
follow facts in the state in which they have manifested themselves, and
open new annals to the new art.
ROUEN.— We find, in the seventeenth century, in this city two
classes of workmen to work the " invention " of faience, the enamellers
and the potters. If we are to believe old documents, the Rouennais
enamels on copper enjoyed a just reputation, and in 1786, a Hungarian
artist named Oppenheim applied for letters patent to establish himself
in the Norman capital.
Readers will remember the bottles, and pear shaped pots sent to
the Universal Exhibition by the Museum of Rouen ; upon their
opaque white enamel were subjects and landscapes framed with a
figured moulding, round which were wreaths and bouquets of large
flowers painted in bright enamels, and which appeared to reproduce,
with the exaggeration of a magnifying glass, the subjects so frequently
applied, under the reign of Louis XIIL, upon smelling bottles,
medallions, watches and other jewels enamelled upon metal. On
seeing these exceptional and singular products, no one would hesitate in
considering them as the attempts of an industry seeking to make its
way. M. Andre" Pottier alone, attributes to these pieces the date 1708,

360 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
and considers them to be the work of an innovator, Denis Dorio, wh o
pretending to be the inventor of a red for painting on fa'fence and
porcelain, thus writes to the Controller General.
Monseigneur, Denis Dorio has the secret and the process for making a particular red for painting
upon porcelain and faience, and which resists the fire with its red colour, he humbly begs
Your Grace to be pleased to grant him permission to establish furnaces in the city of Rouen
to work them, and he will continue his wishes for the prosperity and health of Your
Grace. The answer, says M. Pottier, was not long coming, it appears to be
addressed to the Intendant of the Generality of Rouen, and runs thus :
Sir, I send you the petition of an individual who pretends to possess the secret of
applying the red colour upon porcelain and fuyence in a singular manner, and which would
make an ornament to the fine faiences which are made at Rouen, which would render them
more beautiful, and would increase their sale. You will, therefore, if you please, take the
trouble of hearing him on this subject, with the master-potters. You will then send me your
opinion upon the demands contained in his petition, and will try to procure him work if the
potters agree that what he has done may contribute in any way to the embellishment of
their works and the increase of the manufacture.
I am, Sir, your very humble and very affectionate servant, Desmarets.
Versailles, 2G August, 1708.
There appears to be here some confusion; the trial pieces of the
Rouen Museum, belonging, by their style and make, to a period very
anterior to 1708, emanate from a man, a stranger to the processes of
pottery, and who, accustomed to lay his colours upon a white enamei
spread upon metal, has not even understood that in changing subjectile,
and in firing several times and at a low temperature, he inaugurated a
process unknown to potters, aud which was only to reappear much
later and in other countries.
This Dorio, who, in 1708, announced the possession of the secret of a
particular red, could not have had pieces to exhibit of the importance of
those of wdiich it has been just question, since, far from thinking of
allowing him to set up furnaces, he was subjected to the examination of
potters in exercise of their trade to know if there was any profit to be
derived from his pretended discovery, and recommending them to try to
procure him some work.
Evidently if M. Andre* Pottier has conferred upon Denis Dorio
tliese vases which we attribute to an unknown enameller seekino-
to make himself a place in the rising industry, it is that the learned
writer has yielded to the very natural desire of placing a fact by the
«ide of a written document, But the fact and the documents cannot be

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE.— ROUEN. 361
reconciled, and we must give the attempts of bringing them together
as more attractive than rational. Discoverer or discovered, Denis
Dorio, if he had been capable of making the vases in question, would not
have failed to work on a grand scale, and it would have been at Rouen
that the fa'lences of the enamel furnaces had had their birth. But the
author of these trial pieces cared little for obtaining a privilege for the
red, green or yellow which he painted indifferently in polychrome or
camaieu. The rich and interesting collection of M. Gustave Gouellain
which contained already one of the six pieces of the Rouen enameller,
has just been increased by a seventh specimen, a vase, having a land
scape framed in an ornamental medallion with wreaths, still recalling the
Renaissance, and confirming the date of the other specimens ; only here
the artist has resisted the attraction of brilliant enamels, and has
modelled in grisaille the elaborate details of his composition. These
vases evidently are the work of an explorer hoping to open a path to
himself in ceramics, and perhaps disgusted with the cost entailed by
his work. The share of the potters in this path of research is more easy to
follow. From the beginning, they possessed the secret of the material,
and to judge from the form of their first pieces, it is Italy who
had taught it them. In proof, we see two of those plates with broad
border, and deeply hollowed in the middle, called drageoirs, evidently
issuing from a workshop sure of its processes; where the beginner
shows himself, is in the decoration; one of the pieces is painted in
shades of greyish blue, the central subject, badly drawn, represents a
female Centaur; in the border, between the rectangular panels, are
the large flowers and' tendrils employed by enamellers; this curious
specimen, dated 1647, belougs to M. Gustave Gouellain; a second
cup, of the same date, has for sole decoration upon its white ground a
shield executed in blue and citron yellow, in the Italo-Flemish taste, and
which is said to be the arms of Poterat, notwithstanding some
difference in the heraldic colours.
It is not difficult, in presence of so exact a date to find the author of
these essays. On the third of September 1646, Nicholas Poirel, Sieur
de Grandval, usher of the chambers of the Queen, had delivered to him
a privilege for the making of faience, and notwithstanding the
resistance of the parliament of Rouen, he had caused the duration
to be fixed at fifty years. Poirel, a stranger to the processes of
the art which he professed to exercise, hastened to sign the cession of his
rights to Edme or Esmon Poterat, a potter established from 1644, at

362

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Saint-Sever, and who is no doubt, author of the pieces we have just
described. Probably, he was not long in finding the true processes of
faience, and to him may be attributed the first specimens of the
magnificent lambrequin and lace decorations in blue camaieu en
circling the shields of the Norman nobility.
But, before proceeding further, let us explain what we understand
by lambrequins, dentelles and style rayonnant, for, in presence of the
Fig. 101.

HELMET- SHAPED CUP, ROUEN. "LAMBREQUIN" DECORATION.

undecided value of these denominations, in the descriptions of M. Andre
Pottier, it appears to us indispensable to define, or at least, to determine
the limits to which the signification of these words should extend. The
decoration "a, lambrequins" is, we think, that divided in pendent masses,
alternately irregular, that is to say with large designs, often with a blue
ground floriated in reserves, between which are inserted smaller
indentations charged with grounds dotted, lozengy or striated, with

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— ROUEN. ; 363

roses, (rosaces), stems, (culots), or other ornaments and sometimes
supporting wreaths, draperies, &c. The " dentelle" decoration differs
from the lambrequin in that its subjects, more equal as a whole,
more refined in their details, imitate the lightness of the delicate
tissue whose name they borrow. We think that we should denominate
" broderie" (embroidery) the lace of which the designs are in white upon
a blue ground, which gives them a heavier appearance.
As to the " style rayonnant" (radiating style,) we can only under
stand it in one manner ; it is when it expresses a decoration in which
the centre and the circumference are united by ribbons or ornamental
columns forming true rays ¦ which divide as it were in slices, (par
tranches) the circular pieces; or cut cylindrical vases into distinct
medallions by attaching themselves to the two borders. Taken in
any other sense, the word loses all signification, for if one would call
radiating, a circular pattern of which the points all direct towards the
centre, no dish, no plate, will have any other decoration than this.
Let us add, among the lambrequin and lace patterns, we should dis
tinguish very different styles which serve as so many dates. Architecture,
marquetry and pique upon tortoiseshell, have first furnished the designs
which mark out the masses ; the arabesques attach themselves always to
mouldings (moulures) volutes and other solid framework accompanied
by stems, flowers and draperies. An intermediate style is with large
floriated scrolls, indentations, arabesques, baskets, draperies fluted like
the pipes of an organ, copied from rich compositions of tapestry and
textiles ; the last, perfectly to be recognised, is directly inspired by the
blue Chinese porcelain.
Let us return to Esmon Poterat, initiator of these magnificent
decorations ; his workshop rapidly increased, in 1656, he bought the
freehold where it was situated, and later, he associated his son, Louis
Poterat, who assisted in giving the establishment all the development it
admitted of.
Free possessor of a prosperous iudustry, Edme Poterat, sheltered by
his privilege, allowed several workshops to be established around him
among which may be instanced that of Etienne Bouttin ; he had done
rightly to summon this last, in 1650, to discontinue his works, but this
penal measure had not been followed by any effect; and other potters,
imitating Bouttin, had set up ovens of fa'fence at Saint-Sever.
Yet the privilege granted to Poirel de Grandval was to expire in
1698, and those who worked it sought to prolong it in assuring to
themselves the advantage of a kind of a monopoly. Louis Poterat had

364 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
worked in concert with his father ; he bad discovered the secret of an
artificial, translucent pottery, true soft porcelain, and, basing himself
upon this result, he solicited and obtained, the 31 October 1673, letters
patent of which on account of their importance, we give the terms.
Louis, by the grace of God, etc.
Our well-beloved Louis Poterat has humbly made known to us that, by travels in
foreign countries and by continual application, he has found the secret of making true
Chinese porcelain and that of the faience of Holland ; but, it being impossible for him to work
the said porcelain except conjointly with the faience of Holland, because porcelain cannot fire
unless it be completely covered with it not to receive the violence of the fire, which should
be moderated for its baking, it is necessary for him to have our permission to work and make
work the one and the other, and to this effect, to cause great furnaces to be constructed,
mills and workshops in proper places for such works ; and those which appear to him most
commodious are in one of the faubourgs of Rouen, called Saint Sever, where may be
established a manufactory of the said works, to make all kinds of table- ware (vaisselle), pots
and vases of porcelain similar to that of China and of violet faience, painted with white and
blue, and other colours in the form of that of Holland, for the time it will please us, during
which he will be able to sell and retail the said porcelain and faience, without being hindered ;
aud to this effect he has very humbly petitioned us to grant him the necessary letters.
From these causes, desiring to treat favourably the said petitioner, to oblige him to
work better and better to the perfection of the said works, We, of our special grace, full
power and royal authority, have, by these presents signed by our hand, permitted, granted,
and agreed, we permit, grant, and agree to the said petitioner to establish in the faubourg
of Saint Sever, and in all places of the kingdom that he will see good to be, a manufactory
of all kinds of table-ware, pots, and vases of porcelain similar to that of China and of violet
faience painted with white and blue, and other colours, in the manner of that of Holland,
to make work such numbers of persons as he will judge necessary, and to this effect, cause
to be constructed furnaces, mills, and workshops proper for the said porcelain and afore
said faience, that the said petitioner and those who have his rights may sell and retail
through all our kingdom, territories and lordships under our obedience, during the term of
thirty years, during which we have made and make express prohibitions to all persons to
trouble him in the establishment and manufacture of the said works and sales of these
under pain of one thousand livres fine, all expenses, damage, and interest, notwithstanding
the prohibitions borne by our letters granted to Nicolas de Poirel, sieur de Grandval, the
3rd September, 1646, to which we have derogated and do derogate, and wish not to injure
the said petitioner, for the execution of these presents.
We give it in command, etc., for such is our pleasure.
Given at Versailles, the last day of October, XVI0 LXXIII. (1673), and of our reign the
thirty-first. Signed Louis, and on the fold, on the part of the King, Colbert.
We will show elsewhere the interest of the discovery of Louis
Poterat ; what it is necessary to point out here is the tenor and bearing
of the privilege, excluding every kind of competition, and assuring a
true monopoly to him to whom it is given. Therefore, the six potters of
Saint-Sever (such was their number according to M. Pottier) whose
industry had developed itself notwithstanding the menacing acts of
Edme Poterat, moved themselves strongly this time, they implored the
king and his council, thus stating the motives for their request.
In that it has been represented to the King by Ihe master manufacturers of faience at
Rouen, that having been established twenty years, not without considerable expense, in the
faubourg of Saint Sever in the said town, where they gave employment to more than two

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— ROUEN. 365
thousand workmen, they would soon see themselves reduced and these workmen, to
extreme misery if the sieur de Saint-Etienne obtained the privilege that they have learned,
he was soliciting, to work alone and to their exclusion, at works of faience. . . . The king has
maintained and kept, keeps and maintains the master manufacturers of faience established
or who will eventually establish themselves in the faubourg of Saint Sever de Rouen, in
the right and faculty of working and causing to work at works of faience, conforming
themselves to the rules of the police of the said city.
As always happens in similar cases the effect of the request was the
suspension of all proceedings on the part of Poterat until the royal
decision, and the six establishments quietly continued their works. A
curious fact, and one which paints the manners of the epoch, is that it
was only at the moment, when the decision was no longer required, in
consequence of the death of Louis Poterat, Sieur de Saint Etienne, his
privilege expiring with him, that the council examined the question and
gave their judgment under the date of 23rd January 1717.
This decision was not only favourable, as we have seen, to the potters
concerned, but it contained a general authority for future contractors,
for ideas, modified by experience, were then tending to free industry
from the trammels which hindered its progress.
This incident has made us lose sight of the 'doings of Louis Poterat,
we take up the facts where we have left them. Master of so important a
privilege, Louis separated from his father, to open, in 1674, a special
workshop where he produced almost solely faience, for we shall see
further that the production of porcelain had all the characteristics
of an essay and acquired no industrial development. But, the stimulus
once given, the aspirations of all the potters turned towards this new
branch of the art, and as soon as the privilege of Poterat had expired,
manufactories rapidly multiplied themselves. Before describing their
various works, we will sketch a table, not of the establishments, but
of the undertakers who have worked them ; deriving our information
from the documents published by the Abbe Colas, MM. Gustave
Gouellain and Raymond Bordeaux from the papers left by M. Andre
Pottier. Rue d'Elbeuf.
Edme or Esmon Poterat, 1644; replaced by M. de Villeray; veuve de Villeray, in
1722 ; then Dionis, in 1740.
Charles Thomas Antoine Mouchard, 1749.
Pierre Dumont, 1774.
Guillaume Heugue, 1774 ; associated with his mother in 1775.
Michel Antoine Guillaume Heugue.
Seraphine Heugue.
Hubert le Tellier, 1781.
Louis Jean Baptiste Picquet de la Houssictte, 1788.

366 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Pierre Charles Le Page, 1798.
Guillaume Tharel, 1798.
Anne Jeanne Le Boullenger.
Nicolas L'Homme.
Rue du Pre.
Louis Poterat, sieur de Saint Etienne, 1673 ; Madeleine de Laval, veuve de Saint
Etienne, 1710.
Jean Bertin, 1720 ; veuve Huet Bertin, 1740.
Nicolas Fouquay, 1720 ; successor Girard de Raincourt, 1742.
Guillaume Francois Heugue, 1720 ; moves to Rue Saint Julien.
Michel Mathieu Vallet pere et fils ; Mathieu Vallet ; Mathieu Amable Vallet ; Pierre
Alphonse Vallet, partners, 1756.
Jean Baptiste Francois Augustin Heugue, 1774.
Marie Adelaide Julie Heugue, 1788.
Pierre Paul Jourdain, 1788.
Claude Legrip, 1798. Rue Tous Vents.
Jean Guillibaud, 1720 ; veuve Loue Guillibaud, 1740.
Jacques Nicolas Levavasseur, 1743 ; veuve Levavasseur, 1755.
Marie Thomas Philemon Levavasseur.
Amede'e Lambert.
Adrien Heugue. Rue Saint Sever.
Cauchois, 1712 ; Andre Pottier, successor; Jacques Nicolas de la Mettairie, 1719,
Pierre Jacques de la Mettairie.
Pierre Paul Caussy, 1720.
Pierre Guillaume Abraham Heugue, 1722.
Faupoint, 1722.
Carre', 1722.
Jean Baptiste Antoine Flandain, 1740.
Antoine Flandain.
Pierre Mouchard, 1746; associated. in 1757 with Dcbarc de la Croisille; Gabriel S;is,
successor. Jean Baptiste Francois Heugue, 1774.
Charles Framboisier and veuve Framboisier, 1774.
Jean Nicolas Bellenger fils.
Louis Cornu.
Jacques Charles Noel Dubois.
Charles Guillaume Dubois.
Jean Baptiste Dupray.
Jean Mathieu Vallet. Rue Saint Julien.
Pinon, 1722.
Maugard or Maugras, 1722.
Guillaume Francois Heugue, 1740 ; come from Rue du Pit
Francois Henri Heugue.
Francois Philippe Heugue.
Nicolas Louis Francois Macarel, 1740.
Pierre Michel Macarel, 1749.
Nicolas Roch Macarel, 1774.
Pierre Nicolas Robert Macarel.
Nicholas Maletra, 1740 ; veuve Maletra, 1749.
Robert Thomas Pavie, 1754 ; died, 1777.
William Sturgeon, 1770.

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE.— ROUEN. 367
This list is not complete for we have not known where to place
Gabriel Fosse, established in 1739, to whom his widow succeeded, nor
Breard, of whom we find traces from 1720. It is evident besides,
that several names should be grouped round one workshop and that
each does not represent a new undertaking. Thus, to cite only one
example, Nicolas Fouquay appears to have retaken, in 1720, the es
tablishment founded by Louis Poterat rue du Pre-, and afterwards worked
by his widow. Guillaume Heugue the father, mentioned for the
first time in a shop of 1774, appears, after other documents, to have
founded his establishment in 1722 ; they obliged him even, in 1734, to
demolish a furnace he had erected of a larger size than allowed by
the regulations.
An order in council of the 7th of July, 1781, authorises the sieurs
Macnemara, William Sturgeon, Simon de Suzay and Letellier to
set up a royal manufactory on condition of employing coal, (houille) for
firing instead of wood ; experiments were made in 1783, but the protests
of the other potters stopped the development of this enterprise.
Lastly, whatever may be the number of names given above, we
know that the workshops never exceeded the number of eighteen, Some
of which had as many as three furnaces; if we calculate how many
turners, sculptors and painters it required to satisfy the necessities of
this enormous production, we can well understand how few names
of this host have acquired sufficient celebrity to come down to us. We
will mention those who have formed a kind of school.
The first in date is Pierre Chapelle, he signed, in 1725, the two
monumental spheres, that were to be seen at the Universal Exhibition,
and which had originally decorated the vestibule of the chateau of
Choisy-le-Roy. Masterpieces of the establishment of Madame de
Villeray, these spheres are supported by elegant pedestals upon which
are represented the Four Elements and the Four Seasons surrounded by
wreaths of flowers and emblems skilfully composed and painted in
harmonious, warm enamels. These specimens show the art at its
apogee ; as draughtsman, Pierre Chapelle, is at least equal to the last
adepts of majolica. He died in 1760, at the age of 75 ; he had a
brother, a son and a nephew who also painted on faience without raising
themselves to his level.
About the same period, issued from the workshops of Levavasseur or,
according to M. Thaurin, from those of one Lambert, five terminal busts
representing Time and the Four Seasons, of colossal size, and the sheaths
of the richest ornamentation, the complete series belongs to the Duke

368 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
of Hamilton. Another series, less important by its proportions and
less perfect in execution, is still at Paris decorating the front of a
china shop in the Faubourg St. Germain. We know not to which artist
to assign them.
In 1736-1738, Claude Borne signed large dishes with borders of
flowers in the style of enamels, which cover the whole edge, the
ground is occupied by the group of the Four Seasons and a mythological
subject, Venus asleep ; in this piece blue camaieu predominates ; the
accessories alone have yellow and green tints spread over the blue
outline. In 1743, Claude Borne worked with Dionis ; from 1756 to
1757, we find him again at Francois Heugue, the elder.
Another painter, Leleu, was attached in 1742 to the works of
Fouquay, we know by him two dishes representing Judith with the
head of Holofernes, and Jesus and the Samaritan woman ; the subjects
surrounded by a border of flowers and arabesques upon a dotted
ground. We think we may attribute to the same artist, a plateau
belonging to M. Gustave Gouellain, representing Achilles at the
court of the king of Scyros, putting on his helmet and seizing his
sword ; the learned owner, in telling us he had met a common engraving
of this subject by L. Surugue, after M. Vleughels, made us remark that
the engraving had the exact proportions of the dish and all seemed to
prove it had been reproduced by pricking.
Such then is the short duration of the impotent attempts of our
ceramic artists at designing subject pieces; they generally gave to the
draughtsman models without value, cheaply purchased, and these
pictures pricked by apprentices, were transferred such as they were upon
the glaze, and coloured without emulation by painters who soon lost the
little they had learned, and more distressing still, the desire of learning
more. Let us compare this condition of our manufactories with that
which was going on in Italy, in the sixteenth century, when the greatest
artists prepared cartoons which painters electrified by their models and
impelled by a lively emulation, transferred to majolica, and we shall
form a sound and indulgent judgment on the subject pieces issued from
the schools of Rouen, Nevers and Moustiers.
The leaning to camaieu, manifested by the pieces we have just
quoted, proves also how subordinate figures were to decoration, we
find an instance in the decoration of a kind of basket (bannette) anterior
to the paintings of Borne and Leleu, and which represents one of the
scenes of the work of Charity, after Abraham Bosse ; there the flesh is
modelled in red and all the rest is blue with rare tints of green

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— ROUEN. 369
scattered here and there ; one only finds polychrome decoration in all
its splendour in a border of blue ground with flowers aud fruits in the
Franco-oriental style of chintz patterns. After the same manner is
executed a beautiful dish representing in the centre Ceres, personifying
Summer, and also the top or slab of a commode, above three feet long,
belonging to M. Lericque de la Bouille, on which is an exuberant orna
mental composition, representing the Baptism in the Jordan, after
Nicholas Poussin. It is also in blue camaieu that Hilaire, in 1759, Fosse
and some others at the end of the century, executed pastoral subjects
surrounded by brilliant rocailles, and " cornes d' abondance."
Yet camaieu found itself early in competiti»n with polychrome
decoration ; we must not lose sight of Louis Poterat being authorised
to paint faiences of every colour " a la fapon d' Hollande ;" a deep cup
of 1699 bearing the name of Brument is bordered with lace of varied
though sombre tints, surrounding a landscape and buildings in the
Chinese style. The brilliant decoration inspired by oriental porcelain
seems to date only from the first year of the eighteenth century ;
M. Guillibeaux, as he signs himself, inaugurates it worthily in a
splendid service with the arms of Montmorency-Luxemburg, M. Gustave
Gouellain partaking the opinion expressed by M. Andre Pottier,
thinks that this service had been offered by the city to Charles Francois
Frederic IL, appointed governor of Normandy in 1728, after the death of
his father. Of the same epoch appears to be the fine piece of the Dutuit
collection, bearing upon a peer's mantle the conjoined escutcheon of
the duke de Rouvroy Saint Simon, and of his wife, a Durfort de Lorges.
Another lobed ".surtout," or centre piece, belonging to M. Leroux, is
charged with the shield of M. de Forbin de Jan son, surmounted by a
bishop's hat and encircled by the order of the St. Esprit.
In seeing all this efflorescence, one enquires if the cause should not
be sought in a political rather than in a commercial fact ; the disasters
of the latter years of the reign of Louis XIV. had ruined the State,
the king, at the end of his resources, surrounded by foreign armies,
according to the expression of Saint Simon, deliberated upon putting him
self into faience (delibe"ra de se mettre en faience) ; the nobles carried
their silver to the mint and substituted painted ware. It required then
that faience should be in keeping with the splendor of the other objects of
furniture, and the refinement of its colour and design were not unequal
to encountering the vicinity of the furniture of Boule, the tapestry
of the Gobelins, and the bronzes of high art.
The " mise en faience" contributed perhaps to the development of
2 B

370 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
ceramic art, but one cannot consider it to be the primary cause of the
movement; anterior to 1715, we already find a quantity of escut-
cheoned services, and we should remark that these services as well as
those made for the nobility at later epochs, did not differ in decoration
from the wares destined for general use ; the luxury of ceramic objects
gradually percolated among the rich bourgeoisie and even among the
Classes of the people ; no emblazonment specialises the ownership of
one of the most brilliant of the Rouennais services, in which chamois or
deep yellow grounds damascened with charming black arabesques serve
as a set off to circles of children in blue camaieu ; no pieces are more
richly relieved with arabesques and flowers than the cider jugs (pichets),
or the marriage vases upon which, near their patron saint, the persons
for whom they are intended, citizens of the towns, or cultivators of the
fields, caused to be inscribed their names and date.
Marguerite Litbau, 1736.
Pierre Gause, 1738.
Marie Caillot, 1775.
Julie Le Roux, 1778.
In the centuries which have preceded ours, industry was subjected
to special conditions ; the relations between the consumer and the
producer were almost direct, the intermediary seemed scarcely to have
existed. It is therefore particularly in things of popular use, that
we meet with the exact expression of the tendencies of the moment ; a
great lord ordering his service might, by paying well, impose a
decoration to his choice ; the citizen or mechanic who desired to see his
name or the popular air of the day in the middle of his plate, who
wished that his patron should have the place of honour on his sideboard,
accepted, as regarded the rest, the habitual decoration of the workshops.
We attach therefore great value to those pieces in which canopies
(baldachins), rockwork (rocailles), chinoiseries,or compositions a carquois,
or a cornes, admit of following, step by step, the fluctuations of taste.
An attempt to reconstitute a list of the painters by means of
their monograms, in a locality like Rouen, would be a senseless
undertaking. The number of individuals of the same family, the
migrations from workshop to workshop, from province to province,
would make of this attempt an infallible source of confusion, where
already reigns an obscurity to be regretted. We have cited, for im
portant figure decorations, the most eminent artists, let us add some of
those who have worked in the ornamental style. Gardin, employed at
the brothers Vallet, in 1757, has signed, with his name in full, works

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— ROUEN. 371
" a la come," and " au carquois," all carefully finished : but^ some are
executed in bright warm colours, while others are in pale and glassy
colours, as if drowned in the fluid enamel. Why this difference ? is it
a change of method, the sign of a period? Were there two Gardins
who worked each in his special manner ? One sees how delicate these
questions are. Dieul, attached in 1756 and 1757 to this workshop of
the Vallet, also cultivated the cornucopia style with remarkable vigour.
M. Pottier makes only one and the same category of the Rouennais
decorators ; it is the same hand which traces the bold arabesques,
the patient lacework, and those fumbling figures, sometimes deformed,
due to the want of practice and to bad models. Thus among the pieces
executed to order, with the figures of patron saints, we see the names
of painters multiply: in 1777 a pitcher (broc) with rock work, flowers,
and birds surrounding the figure of St. John, inscribed with the name
of Jean de Haie, bears underneath : " Fecit Petrus Masse, etc. . . anno
1777 ;" Simon Ancel fils signs, in 1782, another jug with the name of
Julie Le Roux, where the ornaments "a corne" encircle a saint in
ecstasy, kneeling near a stone upon which is written : " Mon cceur
voile verre le ciel." St. Francis, with a decoration of flowers, has the
name of Francois Goujon upon a pichet thus inscribed : " Fait par moi
Gabriel-Antoine Delisle, 1783." A canette with simple bouquets has
been " faitte par Louis Cornu, le 6 aout 1779, a Rouen, chez
M. Levavasseur."But, with the exception of nominal legends and some objurgations
like that of St. Julia, the Rouennais faiences are little "parlantes,"
some joyous couplets,- invitations to drink, often of the most fantastic
orthography are all. This verse, written upon a pitcher (broc), dated
1731, is an exception :
Je suis un antidotte, et je suis un poison,
Je reveille les sens et j'endors la raison,
J'avance le trepas et prolonge la vie,
Et je seme la guerre oil la paix me convie.
The signatures of the modellers and turners are more rare than
those of the painters. There is one of those hydraulic pieces with
intermittent jets, called "Hero's fountain." Under the foot the author
has graved, " Fecit anno 1744, par moi Marsollet ;" Noyon, in 1 761,
signs a pitcher destined for Catherine Catel, with rocailles surrounding
St. Catherine ; is it only the turner, or may one suppose that like
Pierre Masse, he is the author of the piece, paste, and decoration?
J. Guillaume graves his name under a rocaille " cartel," or watch-case,
2 B 2

372 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
of which the making implies a certain difSculty. Underneath a1
large stand for a crucifix (pied de croix) we read, " Modele par Henry
— 1779." The clay, finely worked, is covered with a transparent >
glaze, decorated with coloured emblems of the Passion and a royal shield.:
"Morlait le jeune" signs, in 1781, a Christ, tolerably executed, which
he has made the mistake of attempting to enamel, notwithstanding his
inexperience in the use of colours ; lastly, we read the name of " Pierre
Omon — 1789," under a stand for a crucifix painted, in 1790, by a
decorator whose cypher is composed of two P's and a C interlaced.
1735 A milk-pot, in fine faience or pipe-clay, with vitreous glaze,
Rouen is inscribed underneath (M. 77). From this period, attempts
L. C. were made to introduce into the Norman city the style of
M- 77- pottery which was later to cause the ruin of its faience industry.
Thus, from the works themselves, one arrives at collecting the names
of from fifteen to twenty artists, but what are these compared with the
voluminous chronologies gathered in the parish archives by M. Andre
Pottier ? To attempt to go further, in seeking to explain the signs in
scribed under some faiences would, we repeat, be senseless ; one cannot
agree even on some which have an official character. In a work
lately published under the auspices of M. Riocreux, M. Jules Greslou
writes, " It is on this occasion (the mise en faience) that was founded at
Rouen the privileged fabric which marked its products with a fleur de
lis" . . . and further, "the fleur de lis is the only very certain mark."
Now, M. Andre Pottier establishes that Louis XIV., at the period of his
disasters, consented to descend from gold to silver plate, and that the
nobility only, reduced itself to the use of faience. Where then would
be the use of the pretended privilege, what workshop, new or old, would
have obtained it ? One scarcely knows any authentic pieces of Rouen
marked with the fleur de lis, and they are of very common make.
(M. 78) is one of these marks ; others are
attributed to Rouen without great certainty,
particularly M. 79. The fleur de lis derived
J$ J-~* from the royal arms is, besides, claimed by the
city of Lille as its special emblazonment ; Mar
seilles lays claim to it by a particular privileo-e,
and we find fleurs de lis under pottery of otlier countries, and upon
French faiences of the eighteenth century, having nothing in common
with the Norman style. What to do in this chaos, but wait until order
comes out of it ?
So with the ciphers ; and if, to satisfy the curiosity of amateurs,

¦o J— «

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— ROUEN. 373
we ought to give those of most frequent occurrence, they must be
grouped by styles, without pronouncing an opinion upon their real
origin, and in remembering that Rouen has made of its decoration a
type, imitated everywhere, either to satisfy the general taste, or for the
benefit of an established fashion. Here are some of the monograms :
Rouennais radiating style, with mantlings and- baskets, wreaths of
flowers, etc.; blue, blue and red, and simple polychrome (M. 80).
M. 80.
A *£ j& **- ? |
&L {?«*' Gp fy 05 GW
o S* *^P ^B

•tf -f

32.

Rouennais style with mantlings, wreaths, and baskets in blue,
heightened with black (M. 81-85).
M 81—85
3D DV M) 32^. m> J&s
Rouennais style, same polychrome decoration, with copper green
evaporated by heat (M. 86-89).
M. 86-89.
I? -M- A10 Jta A

374 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Oriental Rouennais style, a la come, bright polychrome (M. 90). v
M. 90.
CO B<*o '¦25' "a^Hf oieufl I>ii
il gb Hi /is* em. cun
G5 GS »] He H^L Hf TVD
/S'ame sfr/fe, decoration in which citron yellow predominates, and where
the products of Rouen and Sinceny become confounded (M. 91).

M. 91.

BB PB J^5 £31 GD 6-3
A il iff iM, ^V PtA-T
£& #>x3 jed 3,p Ju S3
This last mark is upon a plaque, with mask in relief, well modelled,
supporting the arm of a branched candlestick (torchere).
To complete tliese statements we give a list of the centres which
have imitated, more or less, the Norman decoration: Dangu, Lille,
Paris, Sinceny, Desvres, Bailleul, la Node, Marans, Nantes, Marseilles,
Moustiers, and Nevers, in some specimens very difficult to determine.
The foreign localities are Brussels, Anspach, etc.
We will seek, in speaking of each of these manufactories, the
characters which distinguish their products.

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— ROUEN. 375
Towards the end of the last century, a manufactory was established
at Rouen, specially destined to produce wares painted in the muffle fur
nace (au moufle), in coarse imitation of porcelain, two very curious pieces
were shown at the Universal Exhibition, both jardinieres of rocaille
form, with a longitudinal division. The paste was thin and well
worked, the enamel much whiter than in the old specimens, chequered
borders, blue or bright red, surrounded a decoration of landscapes and
figures, badly drawn, and painted in raw colours, in which a brownish
golden red predominated, resembling that of the vases of Vaucouleurs and
some other Lorraine centres ; small red arabesques upon the divisions,
with light heightenings of gold completed the decoration. Behind
is inscribed " Vavasseur a Rouan." Another jardiniere, evidently by the
same hand, is in the Musee de Cluny. No one would pretend to refer
these vases beyond the epoch we have assigned to them ; the style and
the subjects seek to imitate the works of Sceaux or rather of porcelain.
The discovery of Dorio had not then, as we have said, any effect in
1708; and it is at the moment of the decline that it was reserved to
Vavasseur to oppose his false style to the expiring efforts of the most
illustrious of the French earthenware manufactories.
Saint Adeien. — We find in the ' Annonces et Affiches de Nor-
mandie, 1783,' p. 183, that there will be sold, by order of the bailiwick
of Rouen, a manufactory of faience at Saint Adrien, parish of Belbeuf . . .
distrained upon the widow Druault. In quoting this passage, M. Andre
Pottier gives no information relative to the date of the foundation of
these works, or to the nature of its products.
Foeges-les-Baux. — This establishment, founded about 1798, had for
object the making of faience like the English.
Le Havee. — This town had works of which the products are still
unknown, doubtless because they were confounded with those of Rouen.
In 1788, Gournay mentions them in his 'Almanach General du
Commerce,' and two heads of establishments signed in 1791 the
vehement remonstrance against the commercial treaty with England.
Sainte Foy. — Is it in Normandy that it becomes us to place this
manufactory of which the existence is revealed to us by a solitary piece ?
There are in France many localities of this name, and consequently it
is difficult to decide. Upon a pilgrim's flask, with figures in the
costume of the period of Louis XV. w;e read, " Fait par moi Laroze fils,
a Sainte- Foy." This form of bottle is more diffused in the south of
France than in the north, but the painter's name is so common in
Normandv, that one may, without boldness, suppose that the oven from

376 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
which it has issued was situated in the district of Dieppe. When it
relates to the placing a solitary specimen of not very determinate style,
the embarrassment is always great, and a note of interrogation should
always be placed as an earnest of prudence, and an appeal to future
researches. Danqu, near Gisors. From the documents gathered by M. Andre
Pottier, this faiencerie of the department of the Eure belonged to
Baron Dangu, who, on 11th July 1753, let it to Dominique Pelvee, dealer
and painter of earthenware, Adrien Levesque, modeller, and Jacques
Vivien, citizen of Rouen. In default of payment of the rent of the
fixtures, executions took place on the 24th January 1755 and the
26th April 1757, and the goods were publicly sold at the door of the
shop, at the request and profit of Baron de Dangu and several other
creditors. Did Pelvee, or rather Pelleve, recover from this catastrophe? did
the works pass into other hands ? We cannot tell, but what is certain is
that the manufactory continued. M. Paul Gasnault has a charming
cider jug (pichet) decorated with the figure of St. James, surrounded by
rocailles and bouquets, in the cornucopise style ; the drawing is good
and the enamels pure, although rather pale ; citron yellow predominates.
Under the figure of the patron saint is the name of the person for
whom it is intended, "Jacques Vaillaux;" underneath the handle is,
" 1759. Dangu." This piece helps us to class many others about which
we should hesitate between Rouen and Sinceny.
Vekneuil. — " The Sieur Gabriel Violette pere, of Verneuil, offers
to let a manufactory of faience; to furnish all the earths required
and the wood cheaper than at Rouen." This mention is found by M.
Pottier in the 'Annonces et AfficheR de Normandie,' for 1775. The
difficulty of working these secondary establishments explains itself
by the competition of the principal centre, and one understands, from
the same reason, that their products remained unknown from the
absence of indicative inscriptions.
Caen. — According to the "Tableau general du commerce de la
Normandie,' there was here a manufactory of earthenware, which later
produced hard porcelain under the care of Desmare and Company. We
do not know the ware.
Saint-Denis-Suk-Saethon. — By a, decree, dated December 1749,
and letters patent of 23rd September, 1750, the Sieur Jean Ruel, coun
cillor of the king and ordinary controller of War, obtained a privilege
of twenty years for the establishment of a manufactory at St. Denis sur

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— AIRE. 377
Sarthon, in the generality of Alencon. M. Pottier who gives the infor
mation announces he never saw any7 of its pieces.
The other localities of Normandy, of which we have given the
names in the preceding table, have been mentioned at the period o£ the
Renaissance for remarkable products, but we do not, think they took
any part in the modern movement; many no longer make anything
but common pottery. Picardy—Artois.
Had the department of the Somme its manufactories ? we do not
know. But, in the Pas-de-Calais, the workshops were pretty numerous
and not without importance, although the fame of Rouen may have
injured their development.
Aiee. — Founded in 1730 by a sieur Preud'homme, who held it
till 1755, this manufactory appears to have passed through different
hands, since Gournay announces, in 1788, that it is the property of a
M. Dumez ; it was still working in 1791. M. Riocreux has classed in the
museum of Sevres as the certain product of Aire, an oval and framed
medallion bust of Christ, in relief. The blueish enamel is smooth,
the flesh colourless ; the beard and hair simply heightened with blue
strokes, manganese violet and a bubbled blue, tint the draperies. In
short, this specimen announces an inferior make, let us await the dis
covery of other specimens which may allow us to form a better opinion
of the Aire products.
Boulogne. — This town was, in 1788, the centre of a production of
enamelled pottery which continued later than 1791 .
Desvees. — Pipes were first made here, then, in 1764, Jean Francois
Sta established a manufactory of faience, its rather ordinary products
seeking to imitate Rouen. Almost all its works were made for local
consumption, in Artois, Flanders and the adjacent provinces where they
were carried by traders who exchanged them for rags, old hats, tin, lead,
shot, &c. M. de Boyer de Sainte-Suzanne, to whom we owe this informa
tion, does not point out any particular type of this faience and hence it
would be difficult to distinguish from the common wares of Rouen, a
counterpart without individual characteristics or artistic merit. Collec
tors rank as of Picardy, without designation of origin, some thick pieces,
tolerably well made, ornamented with green chequered borders and red
flowers, and often also seme with bouquets of a bright iron red. Some
cider jugs of similar derivation are not wanting in brightness. A piece
in the Sevres museum, classed as Desvres, has however, a special

378 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

character ; it is a kind of salad bowl, with a horseman in a turban and
oriental costume; two colours only, serve to decorate the piece, a
pure blue and citron yellow, the mantle of the horseman is of the last
tint. It is a style evidently originating in Flanders. From information
collected by Mr. Reynolds, the manufactory will have an origin
much anterior to 1764 ; it will have been founded towards the middle
of the seventeenth century, as is proved by the portrait of a bishop, with
mitre and crosier, executed in blue, and bearing the inscription : S.
NICOLAS P. P. N. More recent pieces with Chinese subjects, flowers
and birds, the reverse brown will have come from an establishment
directed from 1732 by Dupre Poulaine, who marked with the initials
D. P. or the name of the town. Mr. Reynolds obtained this information
from some descendants of the family, who gave him several specimens
of the old manufacture.
Hesdin. — This is a locality to which M. Houdoy has restored a
deserved celebrity, since, as we have said, at page 240, it is there that
Jehan le Voleur produced, to all appearance, the first French enamelled
pottery. What became of his furnaces from the fourteenth to the
eighteenth century? Tradition affirms there were faiences made at
Hesdin in the last century, but this is all that can be said at present
in the absence of direct evidence.
Monteeuil-sue-Mee.— In the sixteenth century, there were made
here openwork vases of brown earth, fragments of which often occur ;
it is not impossible that this manufactory may have been continued in
the succeeding century.
Saint-Omer. — After having attempted to found at Dunkirk, a
pottery, which the intrigues of the Lille potters compelled him to close,
a Sieur Saladin obtained permission to establish himself at Saint-Omer,
these are the principal conditions of the decree concerning him.
Louis, etc. . . . Our well beloved Louis Saladin, merchant of Dunkirk, having shown to
us that he has found the secret of making faience, as good and as beautiful as that of
Holland, which has also the advantage of withstanding the fire, and a stoneware which
exactly resembles that of England ; that having been informed that there is no pottery in
the generality of Amiens, he would project to establish in tlie town of Saint-Omer a manu
factory to make these kinds of faience and stoneware, the said town being the most fitting
place for such an undertaking, on account of its canal aud of its proximity to seaport towns
. . . that on account of the quality of the earths which he requires, and of the soft white
woods which are found there in abundauce . . . The aldermen, after a trial, having recog
nised that this manufactory would be very useful to their town ... we have been pleased to
decree by an ordinance rendered by our council, the 14th April, 1750 . . . that we have
permitted, and do permit, the said Sieur Louis Saladin to set up in the town of Saint-Omer,
and at the Faubourg of the said Haut-Pont, a, manufactory to make, for twenty consecutive
years, to the exclusion of all others, faience, after the fashion of Holland, proper to resist
the fire, and stonewares after the fashion of England, on condition he shall form the said

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— DUNKIRK. 379
establishment within a year, counting from the date of this said ordinance, and to have
always at least one furnace at work . . . Prohibition to form any other establishment within
three leagues of the environs of Saint-Omer, etc. Given the 9th January 1751.
This decree was registered the 9th of July following ; it received
its execution, for in the Universal Exhibition was a piece signed a
Saint Omer, 1759 ; a handsome soup tureen in the form of an expanded
cabbage ; on the top climbs a snail with yellow stripes, which forms the
knot to raise the cover; the colouring of the leaves is perfect and the
modelling correct ; from the circumference to the centre, they are
shaded off from a glaucous to a yellowish green marked with pink
veins. The whole shows the care, intelligence, and talent of the maker.
Vases have been made everywhere, in the form of animals and vegetables,
in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, we doubt if any have been
produced superior to that which we have just described, and we are
convinced there are many among those attributed to Brussels and Delft,
which should be restored to Saint-Omer.
As regards the stonewares of Saladin, where shall we look for them ?
Evidently among those various products classed in the chaos styled
Flemish or English stoneware. The list of the petitioners -against the
commercial treaty with England, proves that in 1791, the establishment
of Saint-Omer was still in activity ; from 1750 to that date, that is to
say during forty years, how many remarkable pieces may have issued
from Haut Pont ? Unfortunately, it is probable that Saladin only
marked by exception, and, that it is only by means of an authentic type
and an attentive comparison that one would be able to reconstitute his
share in the works of S. Omer ; thus a serious study of the fine cabbage
at Cluny, has convinced us we can place it near the one signed and
dated.

Flanders.
This is a province whose political destinies, its vicinity to the Low
Countries, and its commercial and industrial activity render particularly
interesting. Long neglected as regards ceramic history, it has since
had its special writers, and now its rank may be assigned to it by the
side of Normandy and the Nivernais. Not to lose ourselves in long
digressions, we reserve historic observations, to the special description of
each manufactory, and proceed to study them, descending from north
to south. Dunkiek. — In 1749, the Sieurs Douisbourg and Saladin were

380 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
authorised to open a faience manufactory in this town, but protests
were immediately made on the part of the Lille potters who, while
asserting their own potteries were sufficient to supply the country and
the colonies, desired it should be observed that Dunkirk, by its position
as a free port, was not suited to be the seat of a manufactory ; they
insinuated that Douisbourg could sell "as coming from his works,
products" of Holland fraudulently entered, and which would be a great
loss to the revenue." In less than a year after its establishment, Douis
bourg and Saladin were compelled to give up the enterprise. The works
of Dunkirk must hence be of great rarity. We have seen a clock
rocaille with endive leaves curled and jaspered in various colours', sur
mounted by a figure of Time between Genii, of heavy, inferior execution ;
this faience bore a close resemblance to certain Dutch products; but
the dial, decorated in the centre with small flowers outlined in black,
bore this double inscription ; above, Dickhoof below, A. Duisburg. The
first name is evidently Flemish ; the second, preceded by the initial
of a christian name, should be read Douisbourg, as indicated in the
letters patent, according to French pronunciation. True, there exists a
town of Duisburg in Prussia, in the district of Cleves ; but if one would
explain the inscription as geographical, the preceding initial would
have no meaning. The two stops which accompany it take away from
it the character of a preposition, and even if they did not exist, one
could not admit the presence of a French preposition before a foreign
name ; if it were German it should be aus, if Flemish tot. It is there
fore probable that Duisburg is the name of a man, and one may infer
it to be that of Saladin's partner, only when he produced this piece, he
perhaps was working with another artist, or rather one may suppose,
that in executing a clock case, he has given the name of the clock-
maker Dickhoof, as well as his own.
Bailleul. — Gournay, in his 'Almanach general du commerce,'
says, " The wares of this locality equal in beauty those of Rouen; they
have the advantage of resisting the strongest fire, are of low price,
labour being very cheap." We have not met with this ware in the
Rouen style, so we cannot give its characteristics ; but the Musee de
Cluny has a piece inscribed in Flemish with the name of Bailleul, which
has so peculiar a character one might place it with the German works
equally with the French. It is a soup tureen in relief; the cover,
which alone is painted, bears a remote resemblance to Nuremberg
decoration. Franciscus Wynneel and Mary Johanna Noel, whose arms,
accompanied by German eagles, project upon the body of the piece,

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— LILLE. 38 r

appear to have consecrated this tureen to thp expression of their anger
against Louis XIV., in half mystical inscriptions, they address praises
to Charles (VI.) their " true emperor " and to their invincible general
Francois Eugene de Savoie. Villars had nevertheless come, and in
consequence of his victories, had negociated with Prince Eugene the
peace of Rastadt. In fact, the piece is dated 1717, but the death of the
king had not sufficed to satiate the hatred of these determined Germans.
It is the potter Jacobus Hennekens who had made this soup tureen,
adding to his name : " Ghemaecke tot Belle," made at Bailleul.
Lille. — The ceramic history of this city goes back to a very ancient
period, and is closely united with the political changes consequent on
the wars of Louis XIV. After the death of Philip IV. differences
having arisen between France and Spain relative to the succession to
the throne of that country, the king declared war, and in 1667, his
Victorious armies entered the Low Countries. The peace of Aix-la-
Chapelle, in 1668, put an end to the conflict, and secured to Louis XIV.
his conquest of Flanders, which he retained until 1708 and 1709.
During this period of tranquillity, that is, in 1696, the magistrate of
Lille called from Tournay, Jacques Febvrier, maker and turner of
faience, and Jean Bossu, a Ghent painter, to establish a local manu
factory of faience, and thus avoid obtaining this product from other
towns, or rather from foreign countries. Febvrier pretended he
possessed the secret of certain earths fitted to produce a pottery as
beautiful as that of Holland and finer than that of Tournay. One may
judge how eminent was his pottery, by two portable altars dated
1716, one discovered by us aud belonging now to the Museum of Sevres,
the other in the collection of the Comte de Liesville, bearing the name
of the maker and those of the two painters. Upon the first we read
Fecit Jacobus Feburier Insulis in Flandria anno 1716. Pinxit Maria
Stephanus Borne : upon the other ; Jacobus Feburier fecit et dedit vedasto
Ludouico Lejeune prsesbitero et vicario Santi-Andreee. Insulis in
Flandria 1716. Johannes Franciscus Jacque pinxit. In these pieces,
Rouen tradition shows itself in arabesques, scrolls and baskets of flowers,
through which we trace a Flemish rendering ; and this French style,
the city will adopt without alteration, even during the period of Dutch
occupation, and it will identify itself, so much with the style of the
" petits maitres " and of the national, industrial schools, that many
will hesitate to recognise its works either in faience or porcelain.
In 1729, Jacques Febvrier died, leaving in a most prosperous condi
tion his magnificent establishment which was carried on by his widow,

382 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Marie Barbe Vandepopeliere, in conjunction with her son-in-law
Frangois Boussemart ; these, basing their pretensions upon the favour
enjoyed by their manufactory, which they declared to be the most im
portant in the kingdom, since its works were preferred to those of
Holland, not only in Flanders, but even by the dealers in Paris, asked
to have it erected into a royal manufactory. (Houdoy ' Recherches sur
les manufactures lilloises.')
About 1778, a sieur Petit succeeded Boussemart and maintained
the industry in the eminence his predecessor had placed it. In reference
to this first establishment, M. Houdoy asks if Febvrier during the
thirty-three years he worked there, only marked the two altars above
mentioned, and if his son-in-law, during a practice of forty-nine years
neglected to sign any of his works. Thinking that impossible, the learned
_^«j author proposes to attribute to Boussemart the cipher F.B. which
~TO he had met several times under this form (M. 92). We have been
M. 92. j^jg t0 find a striking confirmation of this conjecture ; under a
magnificent dish of the Musee de Cluny, where arabesque borders and
wreaths of fruit in blue camaieu, recal in a softer
tone, the rich compositions of Rouen, appears the
cipher F.B. (M. 93) of which the analogous one,
with " Lille " underneath (M. 93a), is in the collection
of Patrice Salin, inscribed on splendid plates of Rouen
decoration upon an enamel of irreproachable whiteness
M. 93. M. 93a. l r
and purity, under one of the marks the artist has
painted, as if trying his brush, some notched leaves. In the same
collection is another plate in the Rouen style, but of more
"JD flowing design, and well characterised as Lillois, here the
T*~ signature approaches more the commercial marks of Flanders
/TP and Holland (M. 94).
—^ Here arises an interesting question ; one would suppose
*-3 that Boussemart, son-in-law of Febvrier and the partner
of his widow from the time of his death, had worked
for a certain time in the manufactory. Could not we so explain
the double cipher used by Febvrier-Boussemart and thus refer it
to a date anterior to 1729? The perfection of certain of the signed
works suggests the idea, which may besides strengthen itself upon a
reasonable consideration ; associated with his father or his mother-in-
law, Boussemart would rather insert their initial on the mark of the
manufactory than cause his own christian name to appear. Another
observation relative to this cipher; amateurs should guard against

&UL

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— LILLE.

383

confusion ; they will find further on the mark F.B., on Swedish
pieces. Febvrier and his successors have not only treated the blue camaieu in
a masterly manner, but magnificent polychrome specimens in the
collections -of Sevres and of Messrs. Perilleux-Michelez, Davillier,
de Senevas, Vaisse, Patrice Salin and Fetis of Brussels, show their
versatility of talent ; plates with undulating borders, the form of metal
work, where upon an enamel rivalling that of Moustiers, are first a crown
of elegant detached rocaille designs, separated by insects, and executed
in very bright iron red, pale blue, lilac, yellow and green shaded,
Fie;. 102.

LILLE l'LATE, 1767.

obtained by a mixture of blue and yellow ; at the bottom and above, two
Cupids, support a ribbon upon which is written Maitbe D aligns ;
no doubt the name of the person for whom it was destined; rocailles,
baskets, groups of fruits and flowers enclose the principal subject and
decorate the rim. The richness and harmony of the tints surpass the
best specimen of what Moustiers has done in fine painting. On the
reverse, in a medallion formed of green and blue palms tied together by
a bouquet, and surmounted by the royal crown, we read LILLE, 1767,
(Fig. 102). The only establishment honoured with the title of " Royal
manufactory " and which could allow itself to use this ensign, being that

384 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
founded by Febvrier, one may recognise, in the plates described, the
work of Boussemart.
M. Vaisse basing himself upon the decoration of a piece of Sinceny
belonging to him, and which has a banderole, inscribed with the name
of a " maitre Dubourjal" conqueror in a public archery match, supposes
that the plates of Daligne will have been ordered after a success of the
same kind and given as a prize to perpetuate the remembrance ; a
supposition in accordance with the manners of the age, and then the
plates of the royal manufactory would take a public and official character
which would explain their perfection and the unusual luxury displayed
in the mark at the back.
A teapot of similar decoration to that of the plates, is in the Muse'e
de Cluny; and is inscribed underneath: Lille, 1786 ; it proceeds there
fore from the Sieur Petit, Boussemart's successor.
Let us return to the second Lillois manufactory, that which
Barthelemi Dorez and his nephew Pellissier founded, it is said, when the
city had fallen into the hands of the Dutch. We possess no document
relative to the nature and style of the products obtained from 1712 to
1750 or 1755, the period when a sieur Hereng succeeded the Dorez, to be
replaced in his turn, in 1786, by Hubert Francois Lefebvre. M. Houdoy
thinks we should seek for the faiences of Barthelemi Dorez among the
finest and most perfect of the Flanders' products. We partake of his
opinion, for it is demonstrated that, in all the establishments where they
have produced at the same time porcelain and faience, this last has been
very beautiful. But if one has longer hesitated in recognising the works
of the Dorez than those of Febvrier and Boussemart, it is that the first
approach more the Dutch than the French style. The letter D,
.—^ accompanied by the number of a series (M. 95) is in our
T) 2. - idea, the mark of the manufactory at its beginning,
• ^ and we consider as one of its masterpieces of the kind,
a pot for water decorated in blue camaieu and mounted
in silver, belonging to Dr. Gue'rard. We shall see further this same
letter D mark the soft porcelains issued from the same manufactory
concurrently with its faiences. One may also attribute to the Dorez a
dish in the collection of Patrice Salin, simply signed. (M. 96.)
/ 1 1 / 0 Upon the smooth white enamel is an elaborate border in
M 96 wdiich a pure blue, a rust tint and some black heightenings
describe a delicate arabesque broken by a shield of arms ;
the centre is filled in with a bouquet of flowers in the style of the south
of France.

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— LILLE. 385
Towards 1720, Barthelemi Dorez, having become undertaker for the
king of the manufactory of saltpetre, bequeathed his pottery to his
three sons Rene Barthelemi, Francois Louis and Martin Claude. Francois
Louis left his brothers to settle at Valenciennes, and in 1742 Claude,
the youngest, took the works.
In 1748, Nicolas Alexis Dorez, grandson of Barthelemi, directed the
establishment, and there was a work signed by him at the Universal
Exhibition, a pot for water decorated in blue, with a medallion
representing a woman seated, making lace on a pillow ; below was
written, N.A.DOREZ, 1748. This piece had no longer the delicacy of
the old products. Lefebvre, appears to have sought to imitate porcelain
with flowers and birds.
A third important manufactory was set up in 1740, by a sieur Wamps,
who made tiles after the manner of the Dutch ; on his death, Jacques
Masquelier was charged with the direction of the works, and became
proprietor in 1752. He then applied for and obtained, 20th of May 1755,
the licence, to add to his fabrication, works after the manner of
Rouen and foreign countries.
If we are to believe the book of Gournay, in 1788 Lille pos
sessed two establishments directed by Lefebvre and Petit. Ought
one to assign to this last the mark (97) found on a fine dish of Y)
Rouen style decorated in blue ? **"
We have also to mention some other ceramic establishments of
Lille, ephemeral no doubt, but which may have left their products ; in
1758, a sieur Heringle, native of Strasburg and coming from the manu
factory of " terre d'Angleterre," at Paris, obtained permission to make
stoves (etuves) of faience ; later, William Clarke was authorised, 10th of
March, 1773, " to create a fabric of a kind of faience which is only
made in England " — evidently pipeclay ; but it appears the enterprise
was unsuccessful, for two years later, we find the same individual
soliciting letters patent to establish himself at Montereau.
And as if Flanders were to unite every kind of pottery, a potter
named Chanon obtained licence to put into activity at Lille furnaces
to bake a brown earth with a tortoiseshell glaze " called terre de Saint-
Esprit a, la facon d'Angleterre et du Languedoc," resisting fire and
adapted to furnish every kind of ware, from German stoves, to
tea and coffee services.
DOUAI. — These works, authorised by letters patent of the 9th of June
1784, were set up in the rue des Carmes-Dechaussees, and were directed by
the sieurs Houze, de l'Aulnoit and company, who, it appears soon sold
2 c

386 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
them to a sieur Halsfort. Gournay mentions him as director in 1788 ;
his nationality explains the nature of his works, and in 1790, it was to
the competition of his stonewares and " cailloutages" that the potters
of Saint- Amand attributed the decline of their manufactories.
According to documents gathered in the departmental statistics by
Dr. Warmont, the establishments of Douai would date from 1782,
and have been founded by the Brothers Leach, invited from England
by George Bris, who constructed vast buildings for them in the rue
des Cannes. No official piece permits us to choose between the two
versions. Cambeai. — After information communicated byM. de Boyer de Sainte
Suzanne, Cambresian ceramics would go back to the sixteenth century ;
a manuscript entitled ' Livre aux bans ' preserved in the town library,
contains five regulations of the magistrate relative to the corporation of
potters of earth, dated 1540, 1641 and 1646. In that of 1641, it is
recommended to cleanse the earth intended for " poterie blance" from
the pebbles and alum glaze it generally contains. This denomination
of "white pottery" again found in several localities of France,
evidently refers to enamelled faience. M. Houdoy has met with a
piece of faience signed: " Cambray;" but he thinks it to be only the
name of a decorator attached to the Lillois works and not that of a
town. Valenciennes.— About 1735, Francois Louis Dorez, son of Bar
thelemi, founder of the Lille works, left his two brothers, with whom
he was in partnership, to work the paternal manufactory, and came to
open at Valenciennes an establishment which he directed till
his death in 1739, by means of subsidies and encouragements from
the magistrates administrators of the city. Thanks to their encou
ragement, the widow Dorez was able to continue the works of her
husband. Yet, in 1742, the manufactory passed into the hands of Charles
Joseph Bernard, whose incapacity must have been notorious, since in
1743, the municipal subsidies were paid to the assignees of Bernard
and the manufactory continued to Claude Dorez brother of Louis. But
he was scarcely more prosperous than his predecessor, for in 1757, it is
to sieur Stievenard, the assignee of his creditors, that the payments are
made. The faience works of Valenciennes appear then to have had some
trouble in establishing themselves, notwithstanding the wishes of the
local authorities, and Dr. Lejeal, the conscientious historian of the

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE. 387

ceramics of the arrondissement of Valenciennes, even hesitates to
determine its products ; he observes with great reason that close
analogies would exist between the wares of Lille, Valenciennes, Rouen
and even of Holland : if he xentures to give the cypher DL ^r\
(M.98) applied under pieces of Rouennais decoration as being M 9g
perhaps that of Louis Dorez, he does not dare to assign a rather
coarse D (M.99) to either of the brothers, because he finds it ©c/
under pieces without character, and inscribed with various M.99.
initials, that we can only explain as painters' marks.
A second establishment was set up in 1755 to 1757 by Picard, who also
received subsidies, but he had no better success than his predecessors.
A third and last attempt was made about 1772, by Becar; his
beginnings were no doubt difficult as he had recourse to partners ; the
5th of June 1776, an agreement was made between Gaspard-Joseph
Becar, manufacturer of earthen pottery and faience, Jean Baptiste
Delacambe de Mairival, councillor of the king, syndic attorney of
Valenciennes, and Jean Philippe Dehaut, secretary to the intendant of
Hainault, for the working of the establishment ; it is expressly stated in
the act : " The sieur Bdcar will make all the compositions and give all
his care to ameliorate and bring the manufacture to perfection ; he will
be charged to watch the workmen and direct them. The sieur Dehaut
will have charge of the payments."
The first implements were bought of a sieur Flescher de Saint
Amand, who, himself, had also failed in a similar undertaking. The
private funds not being sufficient, Becar asked the assistance of the magis
trates of the town and also sought help from the intendant. The in
spector, M. Crommelin, consulted on the subject, was far from showing
himself favourable to his application, he first pointed out tlie bad
situation of Valenciennes, as regarded a market, then the impossibility of
this city contending against the established reputation of the works of
Saint Amand ; he also accuses Becar of negligence, and reproaches him
with not having applied his attention to saleable objects, and attaching
himself to those of ornament, such as trials in porcelain and pipe-clay
which ruin him, and turn his attention from faience. As a natural con
sequence, the assistance was refused, and the 18th of April 1780, the
partnership was dissolved.
The very reproaches, made to Becar, are an incentive to seek his
works, the faiences produced by one so artistic would recommend them
selves by special qualities ; his trials of porcelain and pipe-clay
would be curious evidences in ceramic history. But Dr. Lejeal
2 c 2

388 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
does not venture to point out any work of Becar, although three
little figures in pipe-clay gracefully modelled appear to him to have
probably come from Valenciennes.
Saint- Am and. — The manufactory of faience at Saint-Amand-les-Eaux
appears to go further back than 1740, it was founded by Pierre Joseph
Fauquez, proprietor of another establishment at Tournay, where he was
buried in 1741. Pierre Francois Joseph his son succeeded him in the
two towns, but when the Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748, continued
France of Tournay, Fauquez ceded the Belgian works to Peterynck and
went to fix himself at Saint- Amand. He worked there until 1773, at
which period he gave it up to his son Jean Baptiste Joseph, who continued
the establishment until the moment when revolutionary excesses forced
him to seek security in emigration.
The faience of Saint-Amand recommends itself first by its ex
cellent workmanship ; in an artistic point of view, it is still more
remarkable, for while rivalling by its style of decoration the most cele-
¦ brated manufactories, it has had processes peculiar to itself which give
it a particular relief; also after its own inventions, it usually employs
a blueish glaze, upon which, independent of other colours, it can apply
a white enamel, after the manner of the Italian "sopra bianco."
From this characteristic alone, we can recognise the works of Saint-
Amand, for nowhere, we believe, has this style been made in such
perfection. We are also able to fix distinct epochs in the faience of Saint-Amand,
by establishing the period of the invasion of the taste of the other great
manufactories ; thus, in the period which, according to us, is the first, it is
the Rouennais style which the artists aspire to imitate ; though in some
specimens, it is only a distant inspiration. We cite as an example of
this style, the beautiful fountain in the museum at Sevres, where the
principal subject is a dolphin in relief the scales heightened with blue,
and the sides ornamented with designs in wdiite. Two dolphins are on
the edge of the top, (couronnement). This form, called in popular
lauguage "morue," was common at the beginning of the eighteenth
century. Plates and other pieces, in blue camaieu relieved with white,
are of the same date, and could not be mistaken for certain Swedish
potteries to be spoken of later.
To this period belong no doubt certain polychrome types of the
style " a la corne," and others of excessive delicacy, carefully decorated
in blue and iron red, with elegant scrolls and lace patterns inspired by
the Rouennais school.

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE.— ST. AMAND. 389
The second period embraces the faiences painted in the muffle fur
naces in the Strasburg style. There again, are two well marked divisions,
the first comprising pieces with au enamel of irreproachable whiteness,
and painted with bouquets and birds, elaborately executed in the
style of the finest specimens of Hannong. These works, Dr. Lejeal
thinks, should be ascribed to Joseph Fernig, an artist of Strasburg
origin, allied to the Fauquez family, who worked successively at
Saint-Amand aud Valenciennes. The second division comprises in
numerable and charming products in which the Strasburg style, ex
ecuted upon the bliieish enamel, combines with the white height
enings or the French sopra-bianco. The ingenuity developed by
the Saint-Amand decorators, in the combination of these two elements,
it is impossible to describe ; to understand it, we should study the
splendid collection of M. Paul Gaillard. There we see laces rolled
round wreaths of flowers, white masses, forming an embroidery between
arabesque medallions, with delicate polychrome subjects, besides semis
of white bouquets alternating with natural flowers, all executed with
spirit, and forming the most elegant ware.
The third division, composed of porcelain faiences, is no less
remarkable than the two others, although very few specimens exist.
M. Lejeal considers it inspired by the Saxon style, but we find in it
the true French type, as inaugurated by Watteau. The learned
doctor recognised it even himself, when he called to mind that Louis
Watteau, of Lille, descendant of the great painter, went to Saint-
Amand to decorate the rooms in the hotel of the Provost, and that
be gave lessons to the ceramic painter Alexandre Gaudry, author
of the charming potteries in question, representing animals, figures
upon terraces, pastoral subjects, scenes from La Fontaine's fables,
in a word, all one is accustomed to see upon the faiences of
Sceaux. The flowers were painted by Jean Baptiste Desmuraille, an artist
of deserved reputation ; in his bouquets, tulips, roses and especially pinks
repeat themselves frequently ; violet, gold red, less hard than in the
Lorraine products, and a beautiful copper green further the inspirations
of the painter. As in the porcelain, a red or brown line, sometimes
gilded, circumscribes the pieces, and pinked or scalloped borders in blue,
red and green enrich the body.
Thanks to the researches of Dr. Lejeal, the mark of St. Amand is
now well established if not perfectly explained. It is composed of a
complicated cipher in which crossed F's form the letter A. Two other

390 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
lines crossed below appear to be S's combined with a P. (Marks 100 and
101). We have also found a signature
a little different, although composed of
the same elements (Mark 102) on
M. ioo. M. 101. M. 102. a cruet-stand (portehuilier) of delicate
Rouennais decoration.
Fauquez did not confine himself to the fabrication of ordinary
faience, the fame of English pottery had reached him, and he hastened
to show his high capacity in this style as in others. The Amandinois
pipeclay is well worked, but a little yellow in the enamel ; the
camaieu decoration in varied colours is sometimes heightened with
lines of gold. It would appear that the maker had taken greater
pains in the mark of this style
than in the others. Here are those
we have found (Marks 103 and 104).
The two F's of Fauquez leave no
doubt, and the initials of the name
of the manufactory, placed on each side of the cipher, are easily
explained. We will not finish what we have to say on the works of French
Flanders without insisting upon one important observation; in a
technical point of view, these faiences can scarcely be distinguished
from those of Delft, and are produced from the same materials.- They
found themselves in competition in the French market in consequence
of the ordinance of 30th May 1750, which, by virtue of the con
vention made with Holland, 8th December 1699, decided that " the
counterfeit porcelain or Dutch faience should only pay ten livres per
hundred weight on entering the kingdom."
To favour as much as possible French industry, it was necessary that
an ordinance of the 31st of August 1728, should suppress the " droit de
derle " or duty upon imported clays. We give the principal clauses of
this curious document :
" According to what has been represented to the king, being in his
council, that earthen wares or kitchen services, such as pots, dishes
and other similar things, coming from abroad for French Flanders and
the conquered countries, being exempt from the import duties of the
tariff of 1671, foreign makers of these works, had a considerable
advantage over those of the same kind made in the conquered countries,
in that the * derle,' or earth proper for these potteries, which
the undertakers of manufactories of Flanders are obliged to bring

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— PARIS. 391
from abroad, is subject to the same import duties by the same tariff of
1671. The 'derle' or earth fit for making porcelain shall remain
discharged from the import duties of Flanders."
lie de France.
It is naturally round the capital, the heart of the country, and centre
of modern civilisation, that the efforts of progress are concentrated ; we
may then rigorously sum up the history of ceramics, by setting forth the
labours and discoveries of which Paris and its environs have been the
theatre. But, in order to escape the imputation of partiality, we shall
here, as elsewhere, simply, follow facts in geographical order and by
departments. Paeis. — We have no necessity to recall how rich the soil is in
plastic clays ; from the remotest antiquity, Lutetia has been famed
for her various potteries, hence the excavations made for public works,
and the cleaning out of the Seine have brought to light fragments of all
kinds, and of all ages, from the fine red pottery, called Samian, aud the
barbaric pottery of the Frank period, to the glazed vases of the Middle
Ages, and the sealed essays of the Renaissance. It therefore remains
beyond a doubt that they made in Paris all that could be made
elsewhere. Where shall we place the beginning of modern faience ? De Thou
writes in 1603, that " Henry IV. set up manufactories of faience, both
white and painted, in several places of his kingdom, at Paris, Nevers
and Brissambourg in Saintonge, and that what they made in these
workshops was as fine as the faience they derived from Italy."
In 1659, letters patent were granted to secure the potters against
the encroachments of other corporations; a receipt of the master
jurors of the community is signed : Marin Regnault, Pierre Dangreville,
Francois Chamois and Etienne Ronssin. Yet it is only in 1664, that
we find the first official title authorising the establishment of a
manufactory of earthenware ; we give this curious document :
"Louis, by the grace of God, etc., our well beloved Claude Keverend, wholesale
merchant, citizen of our good city of Paris, has humbly shown to us that he has, by his
works and labours, in the travels he has made in various foreign countries, found an
admirable and curious secret, which is to make faience and counterfeit porcelain as fine and
finer than that which comes from the East Indies, which secret he has brought to perfection
in Holland, where he has made a great quantity of which the greatest part is there still.
But as he cannot continue to make the said porcelain without giving a knowledge of it to
foreigners, of which they might in future take advantage to the detriment of the said
petitioner : having thought it would be more expedient to communicate his secret and give a
perfect knowledge of it to the French, of which they have until now been ignorant, it would
be to them a great advantage knowing it, because there is no one in our kingdom who can
make such works as the petitioner, the which our subjects are obliged to seek from foreigners

392 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
and the purchase of these makes the money go out of France ; therefore, it would be
neither just nor reasonable that after the said petitioner will have made known his secret,
where it was necessary that he should make great expense for the establishment of the manu
factory of the said works, he should be deprived of the fruit of his labours if any one had the
same means as himself to make them and to bring them from Holland, which would cause his
total ruin ; this is what it is necessary to provide for. For these reasons we declare, wishing
to make known to every one the particular esteem we have for the person of the said
Keverend, on account of his rare qualities and admirable secret, and desiring to treat him
favourably in consideration of the advantage the public may derive from the establishment
of the said works in our kingdom, without having recourse to foreigners : we have of our
special grace, full power and royal authority, permitted, accorded, and granted, and we per
mit, accord, and grant, by these presents, signed by our hand, the faculty to fabricate the
said faience, and to counterfeit porcelain, after the manner of the Indies, iu our city of Paris
or its environs, in places he will judge the most commodious ; as tilso to cause to be' brought
into our kingdom what he has made and fabricated in Holland, to be distributed and sold
to the public, in paying notwithstanding our duties due for this ; and we make express pro
hibitions and interdictions to all sorts of persons, of whatever quality and condition they
may be, to cause any to be made within thirty leagues round Paris, nor to make any come from
any foreign countries for sale, other than those of the said petitioner or those who will have his
rights for fifty years, on pain of confiscation of the said faiences and porcelains, ten thousand
livres fine, half to be applied to the hospital general, and the other half to the petitioner for his
compensation ; to the which they will be compelled by virtue of these presents, which will be
executed, notwithstanding oppositions or appeals whatever ; and if any appear, we reserve
to ourselves, and our council, the cognisance of it, and interdict all other courts and judges.
If we give in command to the Provost of Paris, etc., for such is our pleasure. In witness
whereof we have set our seal to these presents, given at Paris, the twenty-first of April, the
year of grace, one thousand six hundred and sixty-four, and the twenty-first year of our reign.
Signed, Loots." And upon the fold, "In the name of the king, De Guenegaud;" and on the
back is written : " According to judgment given by the civil Lieutenant upon the decision
of the Attorney -General of the king, to-day, the present letters have been registered at the
civil Eecord Office of the Chatekt of Paris, by me, the undersigned Eegistrar, 19th of May,
1664. Signed, Sagot."
What had then become of the Parisian manufactories, and the
corporation of glassmakers and potters, that such a privilege should
have been granted, and what were the works of Reverend, that he
should so enjoy the royal favour ?
The faiences of Reverend are now well known, their workmanship is
excellent ; thin, with a white enamel, painted with clear polychrome
colours often excessively pure, they are able, as say the letters patent,
to rival the best works of Holland. It must be admitted, that iu the
greater number of cases, they are counterfeits ; and Reverend seeks so
well himself to deceive the consumer, that his mark, of which more
presently, appears only to have been chosen to imitate certain Dutch
signatures. They have gone further; writers have pretended that he
had only solicited and obtained his privilege in order to cover the
introduction of foreign wares. This cannot be sustained ; on one part,
the citizen potter of Paris had no reason to conceal importations of the
kind, since he was legally authorised to make them ; on the other side,
we ask what advantage he could derive from importing foreign wares

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— PARIS.

393

as made by himself, since he had to pay for either one or the other the
duties imposed by the tariff.
It is clear to us that Reverend worked at Paris ; where ? we
could not say, but we are in the same ignorance with regard to many
other Parisian workshops, even of an epoch approaching our own. The
works may be divided into several groups ; first are two cups in
relief of excessive whiteness, and decorated only in red and gold, with
a border and two outlines of suns ; these pieces in the Patrice Salin
collection, are evidently a tribute to Louis XIV., of whom they bear
the emblem. The second group, of Dutch style and make, is composed
Fig. 103.

DISH BY CLAUDE REVEREND.

of table pieces with borders of birds and flowers inspired by Chinese
pottery ; in the centre, in a light framework, are figures in French
costumes of the time of Louis XIV., with explanatory inscriptions, such
as the actress, (Fig. 103) the officer, the pedlar, &c. In this group, the
blue is pure and soft, the iron red a little pale, and the green obtained
by a mixture of blue and yellow which renders it cloudy and dark. Yet
the whole is harmonious and of pleasing aspect. The third group,
quite oriental, consists of pieces with plants and Chinese birds, and
green and white compartments filled with the floweis of the ginger,
bouquets, and other designs, distorted from the Corean or Chinese

•394 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
porcelain; which makes it very difficult to distinguish the works of
Reverend from the products purely Dutch.
But the mark ? it is here (Mark 105), composed of the letters A. R.
conjoined, which as we have just foreseen, have not a
fit J5f direct connection with the name of the maker ; some
> connoisseurs have pretended to read in it three initials,
M 105 R. A. P. signifying ; Reverend a, Paris ; this appears to
us overstrained, and besides prejudges the seat of the manufactory,
while the letters patent empower ReVerend to establish himself in the
city or elsewhere. To us, it appears that the object in the cipher is to
imitate the celebrated signature of Holland, specially the A.P.K. of
the gilded Delft, and some others so near the A.R. as scarcely to be
distinguished. This counterfeiting of the marks was of such common
occurrence in Holland, that we shall see further on by what means the
magistrates of Delft put a stop to it.
There exist likewise faiences so identical with those of Reverend
that one might suppose them as forming part of the same service and
• __. which are marked with peculiar ciphers such as (M. 106). We
\L-k have met with these upon plates surrounded by "lambrequins"
M. 106. alternating with large fleurs de lis; on compotiers encircled by
ovolos in relief and with partially green grounds to which (M. 106)
is affixed concurrently with this other (M. 107) which
"ZP^/^Xl — we would not dare formally to attribute to Reverend.
M- 107- Now are we to believe that this potter enjoyed his
privilege during the long period assigned to him? We think not.
Having doubtlessly quickly acquired a large fortune, he will have
allowed his manufactory to decline ; this at least is what may be in
ferred from the silence preserved respecting him in subsequent letters
patent. From 1664 to 1720, we do not find any documents relative to the
workshops of Paris ; this explains itself ; if the potteries of Reverend are
confounded with those of Delft, the others are lost among the
Rouennais wares they imitate. The rue de la Roquette, in the
faubourg Saint Antoine, was then, as it is now, the great centre of
ceramic industry ; towards 1720, we find there Francois H6bert, allied
to the Chicanneau family; in 1730, it is Genest to whom succeeds
Jean Binet in 1750; about the same time Digne appears, whose
products are known, thanks to the researches of M. Riocreux ; it is
this potter who made for the pharmacy of the duchess of Orleans
emblazoned pots, ornamented in the Rouen style and executed some in

M ODERN FA IENCE.—FRA NCE.—PA RIS.

395

blue and others in blue and citron yellow (Fig. 104). Another
ceramic artist, established from 1774, rue de la Roquette, at the Trois
Levrettes, (greyhounds) was still working in 1784. In 1788, Gournay
cites for white and brown faiences, Veuve Dagne, Digue, Dubois ; for
white faience, Olivier, Veuve Petit and RobiUard, Tourasse. There are
several things to bring out from this list ; Digne would appear to have
given up the making choice wares for brown earthenware, resisting fire ;

Fig. 104.

PHARMACY POT 01? DIGNE.

his establishment passed, according to the documents at Sevres, into the
hands of a certain Gauthier. As to Olivier, it is a name which may be
applied to several ceramic artists, the eldest was still working at painted,
enamelled ware in 1788, and had for immediate successor Masson.
The other Olivier, of whom M. Champfleury possesses "faiences
parlantes " lined w ith brown (terre a feu), is the author of the stove
offered to the Convention and representing the Bastille. This historic
piece is in the Museum at Sevres.

396 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
One word now upon an important establishment, the royal
manufactory of " terre d'Angleterre." Edme, who directed it iu 1749,
married, the 31st of August of the same year, Marie Claude Serrurier,
daughter of a clothier of Nevers. In 1754, its seat, after a book called
' Geographie de Paris,' was rue de Charenton. The ' Guide des
amateurs et des etrangers,' by Thierry, says, in 1787, " This manufactory
of earth in imitation of that of England, is established at the bottom
of the Boulevard, at the angle of the rue Saint Sebastien. One finds
there complete services of dishes, plates, cups, &c, and all orders
are executed." Two years later the ' Almanach general des marchands,
negociants et armateurs,' in affirming that " the works issuing from it
are advantageously known to the public," adds that the undertaker is
M. Mignon. One sees theD, the ceramic baggage of the great city is complete,
and if the works it has produced are confounded in the great unknown,
it is precisely in consequence of the feverish activity of a centre where
all that was new, all that was adopted by fashion, was immediately
imitated. The figure we give of one of Digne's pieces (Fig. 104), will
better show than all reasoning, how easy it was to believe, by its style,
that it came from Rouen ; it was the same as regards the products of
other potters who had not adopted a special mark.
With respect to fine faience, pipe-clay, or " terre d'Angleterre," how
distinguish it from the model? how dare to affix a name, even upon
the finest pieces, when we know that this pretended importation was a
French invention, and that long before it came to France from foreign
potters across the Channel, it was made in every part of the kingdom ?
Sceaux. — There existed at Sceaux, at ike entrance of the rue des
Imbergeres and in front of the little chateau of the Princes, works of
common pottery belonging to an architect named De Bey, who worked
the produce of a neighbouring property, called " fosse," or " trou aux
glaises." Desiring to enlarge the circle of his operations, and having
secured the co-operation of Jacques Chapelle, a potter, he hired, 17tb
July 1748, a large stone building, near his first workshop. The first
attempt did not answer the expectations of the undertakers, and to
increase their resources, they formed an association composed of
Chapelle, Delanee, Minard, de Chateauneuf, and De Bey. This second
company was not more fortunate than the first, the members could not
agree, and in 1749 it was broken up. Notwithstanding these diffi
culties, De Bey, relying on the talents of Chapelle, did not despair of
the future, and on the 9th of May 1750, there was a treaty concluded

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE— SCEA UX. 397
between them for the making of what Chapelle styled " Japanese faience,"
an enamelled pottery of very fine paste, decorated with delicate muffle
colours, seeking to imitate the perfection of Japanese porcelain. His
ambition went still further; he was seeking the secret of porcelain
paste, and his attempts promised complete success.
The manufactory of "porcelaine de France" was informed of these
audacious enterprises, and put a stop to them, making known to
Chapelle the decrees which secured its privilege, and ordering him to
stop the works. The Duchesse du Maine, though not very powerful
at that period, extended her protection to the newly born establish
ment, and if the attempts at making porcelain slackened, the working
at faience continued. But, on the 23rd January 1753, the duchess
died; her arms no longer appeared over the iron entrance gate of
the manufactory which was thus destitute of all patronage.
Yet the incessant applications of Chapelle, his perseverance in his
work, finished by gaining the mastery over the ill-will of the authorities.
He obtained the costs of his suit and authority to continue his works by
a decree of 23rd June 1753, the wording of which is sufficiently curious
for us to give an extract :
Upon the request presented by the Sieur Jacques Chapelle, setting forth that he has for
about two years established in the villuge of Sceaux a manufactory of terres-faience, of
which he alone has the secret, that the works he causes to be made there are liked by the
public on account of their goodness and neatness, and that the sale increases every day;
that this establishment employs a large number of workmen, etc.
The faience of Chapelle was indeed most remarkable ; fine,
enriched with mouldings and reliefs, covered with a white, even
enamel, it received a charming decoration of bouquets and emblems,
groups of Cupids playing in the clouds, delicate figures in the
landscapes, all surrounded with arabesques in colours and gold, or
with wreaths of laurel — formed not only a neat, but a most elegant
whole. Relieved of his partner, who gave him no assistance, Chapelle
rapidly developed the production, and arrived at great success. After ten
years of labour, he let his manufactory, the 12th June 1763, for a term
of nine years to Jullien, one of his best painters, who had been working
with him since 1754. This last associated with himself Charles
Symphorien Jacques, a sculptor, turner, and modeller of talent What
were the conditions of these works ? How were Jacques and Jullien, who
took from Barbin the porcelain works of Mennecy, protected by the due
de Villeroy, able to manage at the same time two establishments so

398 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
different and so distant from each otlier? It is a fact difficult to
explain, and one which Dr. Thore, in his interesting memoir, from
wdiich we borrow these details, does not seek to discuss. He accepts
the ubiquity of our two artists, because official documents mark beyond
a doubt their presence in the two establishments.
The 29th April 1772, period of the expiration of his lease, Chapelle
definitively sold his works to Richard Glot, gentleman and quarter-master
of the royal barracks, living at Paris, rue Saint Denis, porte Saint
Sauveur. Glot was a skilful sculptor, and in buying the materials of
the works he had stipulated at the same time to be possessed of all the
secrets and processes of his predecessor; therefore, far from any
slackening in the production, the arrival of the new possessor was a
cause for extending the works of every kind, groups and figures of the
most graceful forms were multiplied. Glot obtained, about 1755, the
protection of the due de Penthievre, high admiral of France, and from
that period the making of soft paste (pate tendre) was resumed with
great activity. Further on, we shall describe this charming production.
As regards faience, its commercial development might perhaps injure
its perfection, but it always remained worthy of taking its place among
the finest and best painted.
It is not uncommon, in the eighteenth century, to see establishments
devoted to art industries begin by masterpieces, and decline as they
develop ; such is the history of the faience of Sceaux. At the time of
its struggles, Chapelle could only support himself by first class produc
tions, and his first works are of the highest merit ; indeed it is only by
this character they may be recognised, for he placed no mark upon his
pieces ; his jardinieres are elegant in form, with reliefs happily com
bined, and tastefully painted ; nothing can be more graceful than one
belonging to M. Edouard Pascal, upon which, in rose-coloured camaieu,
is a group of Cupids in the clouds ; at a certain distance one would
think it one of those remarkable porcelains issued from the workshop of
Vincennes. Others, executed in polychrome enamels of a pure tone,
represent groups of figures, birds, and flowers. Fig. 105 is a master
piece of its kind.
It would be rash to attempt to define the limits between the
cessation of Chapelle's labours and the beginning of those of Glot ; yet
we think we may attribute to this last a charming oblong soup tureen
in the museum at Sevres. The*lid is surmounted by a little group of
two naked children which we have found again in soft porcelain, and
which must have issued from the hand of this skilful sculptor. The

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.-SCEAUX.

399

piece too is enriched with all the resources of painted decoration, partial
lilac grounds, bouquets, &c, and may justly be classed among the best
productions of the new direction. Among the more ordinary produc
tions we still find pieces with scattered bouquets, with semis of corn
flowers (bluets) in the style of the porcelain a la Reine, which, though
indicating a relative decline, are still very estimable.
Fig. 105.

M. 108.

JARDINIERE, SOEADX.
We have never met with any faience of Sceaux marked with the
letters S X, which are, on the other hand, the constant mark of the
soft porcelain. Protected by the due de Penthievre, high admiral of
France, Glot chose as mark an anchor (M. 108) traced in >
colour, and sometimes surmounted by the word SCEAUX,
a mark which admits of no doubt; but there is another
of which the meaning does not explain itself, for when a
workshop is favourably known, it has every interest to preserve the
distinguishing mark of its products. We would speak of the letters
S P, which may be interpreted as Sceaux-Penthievre. The faiences
generally inscribed with these letters are of a yellow paste, having the
appearance of pipe-clay ; the paintings are wanting in freshness, and
we at first rejected the idea that they had come out of the hands
of Glot ; yet a piece in the collection of Paul Gesnault has removed
our doubts. It is an urn of very white, fine faience ; the stem
is surrounded with leaves painted in green shaded to yellow ; upon the
body are medallions in grey camaieu, representing nymphs and cupids ;
a seme of bouquets of flowers in bright enamels, a little drv, is carefully

400 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
painted ; under the foot of the vase we find not only the letters in
question traced in the same form, but the anchor, emblem of the high
admiral, protector of the fabric (M. 109). This is one of
C D those facts to which there is nothing to oppose, although
"¦^ I tbey appear to overturn the usual laws of logic. Even
1" this proof of a change in the mark of the manufactory of
\\^ Glot has an unexpected result ; it proves that this under-
M \ taker, not satisfied with his productions in faience and soft
porcelain, worked to attain hard paste. We shall cite later a
" trembleuse " cup in true porcelain, marked with the S P. Notwith
standing this proof of the variation in Glot's signatures, we cannot yet
decide ourselves upon placing to his account the signs oP, which we
find upon some fine potteries, assigned in England, we know not why, to
Bourg-la-Reine. We read the word SCEAUX alone, upon specimens of the beginning
of the Revolution. At this period, Glot, a man of substance, had
obtained by his fortune and personal connections an eminent position ;
he was mayor of the locality, and when a protest was entered in the
name of the ceramic industry against the treaty with England, it is he
who was chosen to make heard the common grievances. This excep
tional position raised him up persecution later ; he had adopted with
enthusiasm the principles of 1789, but when he saw the abyss into which
the men of '93 were leading France, he battled courageously against
them, and was soon put under arrest. After having recovered his
liberty, he sought to get rid of his establishment, and sold it the 26th
Messidor year III (14th July 1795) for a rent of 6000 livres, to Pierre-
Antoine Cabaret. This was the end of artistic fabrication, the new
proprietor having no object but the production in large quantities of
common wares.
Botjrg-la-reine. — According to a report of M. Buchet, inspector of
police of the city of Paris, dated 19th August 1774, a document in the
possession of M. Riocreux, the works of Bourg-la-Reine will have
been established, under the protection of the Comte d'Eu, by Jacques
and Jullien, already possessors of the manufactory of Mennecy and
workers by location, of that of Sceaux. The 27th July 1773, says Dr.
Thore, Jacques and Jullien inscribed in the register of police the declara
tion of their mark, which was to be B R for Bourg-la-Reine, and D V for
Mennecy-Villeroy. We have already expressed doubts as to the exact
ness of documents ; with which the agreement is difficult to establish ;
it is almost notorious that in consequence of the expiration of the lease of

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE. 401
the buildings at Mennecy, Jacques and Jullien transported their
working-stock to Bourg-la-Reine. Did the Due de Villeroy continue
his protection? did they solicit that of the Comte d'Eu? How, other
wise, could they suffice at the same time for the works of Mennecy and
those of Sceaux ? All this can scarcely be explained. In any case,
Joseph Jullien did not work long at Bourg-la-Reine ; he died #iere,
on the 16th of March, 1774, aged 49, and was succeeded by his son
Joseph Leon. In 1780, this last and Jacques pere still directed the
works. When Jullien fils left, C. S. Jacques became the partner of his
father, who died at Bourg-la-Reine, aged 77, the 26th Germinal year
VII (15th April 1799). The porcelain of Bourg-la-Reine is well
known, and will be described later, but- we do not know if it produced
artistic faience. It is probable that after the fall of translucent pottery,
the fine fabrication of white faience was developed, which still continues.
Mr. Chaffers attributes to Bourg-la-Reine faiences finely painted with
birds, insects, &c, marked oP.
Geos-Caillou. — Thierry, in his ' Guide des etrangers voyageurs a
Paris,' says " Taking the rue de la Vierge .... we enter in the rue de
la Paroisse, or de Saint Dominique. We find near the garden of the
sisters of charity, the manufactory of faience of the widow Jullien.
This manufactory was formerly established at Sceaux, near Paris." This
is an error ; in 1787 the manufactory of Sceaux was still in full activity,
since Glot kept it beyond 1791. The works of Gros-Caillou were
doubtless established, about 1784, by the widow Jullien, associated with
Bugniau, at the time when Jacques remained sole master of Bourg-la-
Reine. Saint Denis. — It is in the island where formerly the Parisians re
sorted for recreation, and probably in the dependencies of the chateau of
M. Laferte, a retired fermier general, that the manufactory had its seat ;
all that we have been able to learn from some old men, inhabitants of
the island, is that at the time some excavations were made for new con
structions, a large quantity of fragments of faience was found of
common decoration, and which must have resembled the wares of Rouen
and Paris.
Mont-Louis. — The list of Glot makes known that in 1791 two
workshops were in activity at Mont-Louis. These ought to be the
advanced sentinels of the faubourg Saint Antoine. Mont-Louis, as
we know, is the place contiguous to the city where Pere la Chaise
established his country house, since become the great necropolis of
Paris.
2 D

402 'HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Vincennes. — This place, rendered illustrious by the first attempts of
the porcelain manufacture of France, can it also claim a page in the
history of faience ? Without doubt. At the time Gravant succeeded in
regulating the production of soft paste porcelain, he did not continue
the less to devote himself to experiments of all kinds, and in his leisure
hours delighted in finding means of advancing his old industry, the
manufacture of faience. We find the proof of this preoccupation in the
curious collection of our friend M. Paul Gasnault, two jardinieres of
a thin paste carefully worked, the ground in turquoise blue, with
reserved medallions, ornamented with delicate bouquets; lastly, as
if unable to do better, the artist has enriched his ground with some
touches of gold, laid on without firing. The whole completely resembles
porcelain, and, to add no doubt to the resemblance, the mark of the
crossed L's is on the reverse. It is one of those exceptional pieces which
have the double merit of perfect execution and rarity. In 1767 a
sieur Maurin des Aubiez obtained in his turn permission to establish
at Vincennes a manufactory of faience in imitation of that of Strasburg,
and of hard porcelain. The man who was to be the soul of the enter
prise was no other than the restless Pierre Antoine Hannong, who, not
having been able to succeed in Lorraine, nor sell the secret of his hard
paste to Sevres, sought to create new resources by setting up a private
manufactory. But Hannong produced little; his partners became
tired, and the works closed, notwithstanding his twenty years' privilege.
Saint Cloud. — Have there been at Saint Cloud several manufac
tories of faience ? We must admit it, if one would retain for this place
the products attributed to it in collections both public and private. In
1690 the Almanac of Abraham de Pradel says : " There is a faiencerie
at Saint Cloud where one may have executed what models one likes."
This no doubt relates to the establishment directed by Chicanneau pere,
who was working at the discovery of soft porcelain of which he left the
secret to his widow and children. The difficult point would be to find
a type we could reasonably attribute to this potter so celebrated in his
lifetime, and immortalised by his ingenious discovery.
In 1865, the question advanced an important step ; M. Fleury sent
to the Retrospective exhibition made under the care of the " Union
, centrale des arts appliques a 1' Industrie," a magnificent plate de-
O C corated with delicate blue arabesques, and marked like the soft
X porcelain of St. Cloud, Trou (M. 110). This fine piece com-
¦ pletely answers the glowing descriptions made by the ' Mer-
cure ' and other publications of the eighteenth century ; but, in reality,

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— ST. CLOUD. 403
it could not be anterior to 1706, the period when Trou was received
into the corporation of enamellers and verriers-faienciers, as it is proved
by his diploma still preserved. Did the anterior faience offer the
same characters of purity, delicacy and care ? One may believe it
in referring to the most ancient types of soft porcelain, all inspired
by the arabesques of the French " petits maitres," and taking, in their
absolute value, the praises of Abraham de Pradel. Therefore enlight
ened by the piece of M. Fleury, we set about the search for the
faiences of St. Cloud, and soon proved they were pretty numerous ; first
we found a pair of " pitong " or cylindrical vases (rouleaux) belonging
to M. Le Blant, member of the Institute, and both decorated in the
style of the first porcelain, one in the white enamel, the other upon a
sulphur yellow ground ; then in every collection, lost in the midst of
the Rouennais ware, we found charming sugar sifters, saltcellars, plates,
&c, to be recognised by their delicate manipulation, and more still by
their fine and capricious decoration inspired by a pure taste and
exceptional refinement.
Now, to whom attribute heavy faiences of very common decoration,
classed at Sevres, under the rubric of St. Cloud ? They consist of borders
and designs coarsely imitated from the Rouen pottery, of dark blue
outlined with black, upon one piece, the heavy caricature of a mendicant
friar, a cowled capuchin loaded with the wallet, recalling, they say
the corporation which sat at Saint Cloud. If such be the origin of the
faience which occupies us, there were certainly two manufactories at
Saint Cloud, for nothing like these could have emanated from the work
shop of Chicanneau.
Sevees. — When the royal establishment had fixed its seat in this
locality, it is probable that industries of a second order came to range
around it; no planet gravitates without its satellites, it is therefore
assumed there was at Sevres a manufactory of faience, though, up to the
present time, none of its products have been recognised. It is not the
same with fine faience or pipe clay ; about 1785, a Sieur Lambert
produced some pieces, as remarkable for their elegant forms as for their
decoration. The ceramic museum possesses of him a vase of good style
and soft coloration, which eloquently shows the influence of good models
and high emulation in art industries. Unfortunately, they bear no
mark, the style and coloration are the only indications by which they
may be recognised.
Meudon. — There appears to have been at this place about 1726,
a workshop of common earthenware ; this date is ascribed to a salad
2 d 2

404 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
bowl, in the interior of which is figured a locksmith's workshop with his
utensils, and men at work ; it must have been made for a Sieur Claude
Pelisie, locksmith to the King, for the Chateaux of Meudon, Bellevue
and "the manufactory of Sevres.'" This title is difficult to reconcile
with the date of 1726, since the porcelain manufacture was created in
1756. Either the number has been wrongly deciphered, which is
probable, or M. Pelisie did not make the iron railing of Sevres, the
faience with his name is not for that the less worthy of artistic
interest. Mantes. — The Annuaire de la Nievre for the year 1843 repeated
after the 'Archives de la ville de Nevers,' by Parmentier, that letters
patent had been granted in June 1668, to the city of Mantes for the
creation of faienceries. We have not found anywhere mention of this
authorisation, and we know no product which would appear to have
issued from the city of Mantes ; we therefore inscribe its name here under
reservation. Avon. — We bring to the mind of the reader what we have already
said (Page 333) relative to the statuettes and sealed faiences of this manu
factory. It was working under Louis XIII., and nothing proves that it
suddenly disappeared. It is therefore not impossible we may meet one
day with its products applied to modern uses.
Boissette or Boisselle-le-Roy. — Established in 1733, this faiencerie
was purchased in 1777 by the Sieurs Vermonet father and son, who
set up ovens for hard porcelain; during forty-four years of working
it must have produced much, and if we do not know any faience
which has issued from it, it is that, by their style, these products are
confounded with others ; we therefore appeal to the amateurs of the
country to fill up this gap in ceramic history.
Melun. — The list of Glot informs us that two workshops were in
this town in 1791. It may be possible that we ought to count as one
of these two manufactories the establishment of Boisselle, which is quite
close to this town, but even supposing this to be the case, we must still
search for the faience of Melun.
Montereau. — We find the letters patent of this establishment on
the 15th March, 1775 : here are its principal dispositions :
Upon the request presented by the Sieurs Clark, Shaw and Company, natives of
England, setting foith that they had begun to establish at Montereau a manufactory of
English faience, that the trials they have made of the pipe clays, clays and marls found in
the environs of this town have very well succeeded for making English faience called queen's
ware ; that these earths are of a nature to make this kind of faience much more perfect even
than that of England, since there may be given to it a greater degree of whiteness ; that in

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE.— SINCENY.

405

consequence the petitioners propose themselves to set up, on a large scale, their manufactory,
and to form with this view workmen and apprentices of the country, whom they will prepare
for this work, in order to furnish to the public this kind of ware, which is of a more perfect
and durable composition than all those in the kingdom, and that they will establish it at a
lower rate than all that has been yet made ,- that the petitioners, who have all wives and
children, who, with two other workmen they are obliged to bring from England, form
together seventeen persons, who have not been able to displace themselves without great
expense ; that besides an enterprise of this kind, of which the capital will form in the end
a considerable object, will cause them infinite expense ... as well as the losses they have
already had, and that they will still have to sustain, before they are well versed in the
regulation of wood fires, since they only burn coal in England, etc. . . .
They asked various privileges which were granted them, with leave
to establish themselves.
The second ordinance of the 15th March 1775, conceded to them,
dating from the 1st of January of the said year, an allowance of 1200
francs per annum for ten years. With such encouragements theyr
ought to prosper, and so, in 1791, two workshops were in activity at this
centre. We know what became of the fabrication of Montereau united
to that of Creil.
Sinceny. — Light has been thrown upon this important ceramic
locality, by a work of Dr. Warmont, of Chauny ; until its publication, the
works of Sinceny were confounded with those of Rouen, and now it is
still very difficult to distinguish the wares produced in the two workshops
by the same artists. Would that imply that we admit, with certain
writers, that Sinceny is Rouen of second class? No; precisely from
the beginning, the character and processes of the new workshop, were
of extreme refinement and particular care.
Officially, Sinceny dates as manufactory, from the 29th January 1737,
and its letters patent of establishment, given the 15th February
following, were only registered the 6th of June. But certain products
existed from 1734, already marked with the letter S accom
panied by two dots (Mark 111, the only official and constant mQ
signature of the works) the others, accidental, are the marks of jO
painters. After the titles examined by M. Warmont, M. de Fayard, lord of
Sinceny, would have been sole proprietor of the establishment, we do
not deny it, yet we find in the registry of letters patent this indication,
at least worthy of record. " Decree granting permission to the Sieur
de Soiueux, to establish a manufactory of faience in his chateau of
Sinceny." The first period of decoration is evidently an inspiration of the Sino-
Norman style ; the plates of 1734, although with subjects recalling field
occupations or familiar scenes, are surrounded with a blue camaieu

406 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
border of flowers, franco-oriental, of the style called " a la come ;"
later polychrome, Chinese figures predominate, and the principal colours
are blue, or a very pure citron yellow and a brown green (Fig. 1 06).
Lastly, when the workshop is in Rouennais hands, the colours a la corne
show forth in all their vigour, and landscapes with workshops blaze out
„. ,.„ under the vivacity of the touch and the
- tig. 106. J
multiplicity of details. The paste is well
worked, the enamel a little blue, but even
and less crazed (tressaille) than those of
Rouen. Pierre Pelleve, first director, and Leo
pold Maleriat whose son succeeded him,
had called from Rouen, Pierre Jeannot,
JARDINIERE OF SINCENY. Philippe *Vincent Coignard, Antoine Coi-
gnard his brother, Julien Leloup, Pierre Chapelle, Antoine Chapelle,
Joseph Bedeaux. Artists also came from Lille, Claude Borne, who
worked from 1751-2, and Andre Joseph Lecomte, who ended his days
thei-e in 1765.
But the taste for Rouennais wares began to decline, and to give .
a new impulse to the works, the director, Chambon, determined on
introducing muffle painting, in the Strasburg style ; trials were made
of the red gold, Pierre Bertrand and Charles, his son, were called from
Lorraine and also a painter of Tournay, Francois-Joseph Ghail and
Joseph le Cerf des Islettes. The paintings with fleurs and in the
Chinese style of this period are very difficult to recognise, the imitation
is so perfect. We may also cite among the decorators of Sinceny
Alexandre Daussy; among the potters, Gabriel Morin of Nevers, and
Lamotte; lastly, Felix Joseph Novat or Novack, a Swiss specially
versed in making stoves (poeles) in the Alsatian style.
The finest specimens at Paris of Sinceny, are in the collection of Messrs.
Ed. Pascal, Paul Gasnault, Dr. Guerard, Patrice Salin and Madame
t f) II ^ Jubinal. Besides the S mark, we find upon a jardiniere
'gypuioves of M Pasca]> the name of Pelleve- (M. 112j . a rare
m. 112. signature is that of S. c. y. (M. 113). The museum at
r^. fX/ Sevres has a large dish having for subject two grotesque
^ J figures fighting ; it is signed with the initials of the
m. 113. painter de la Fontaine, its fine border of flowers and
fruits on a blue ground in the Persian style, resembles the old Rouen.
Rouy, near Sinceny. M. de Flavigny, seigneur of Amigny-Rouy,
founded this manufactory in 1790 ; he died upon the scaffold in 1793,

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.

ap-]

and his widow let the works to a Sieur Joseph Bertin, who extended
the production. In 1804, the son of this last, M. Theodore Bertin,
increased it still more. The faiences of Rouy, always unmarked, are
confounded with those of Sinceny.
Ognes, near Chauny. This establishment appears to have been set
up by Rene Dumoutier de la Fosseliere, proprietor of the place from
1748 to 1782. Dr. Warmont is not very affirmative in his description
of the faiences issued from Ognes, considering that, like those of Rouy,
they have been mostly made by workmen of Sinceny, he thinks never
theless to be able to distinguish as Ognes, those with a pink granite
like pattern on the reverse ; he cites some helmet-shaped vases (buires),
signed underneath with the initials CH, which may signify Chauny.
Yet this is only a suggestion he proposes without affirming anything,
not even the certain derivation of the pieces which are among those
executed everywhere. Their sole probability as to their origin comes
from their having been given as prizes in archery, and preserved
carefully in the families of the victors.
Villees Cotteeets. — In 1737 there was a furnace in this place,
which had no great importance, if one may judge from the letters
patent relative to Sinceny, where it is incidentally mentioned.
We only recall, as in order, the manufactories of Beauvais and
Savignies of which there has been previous question ; the stonewares
and glazed wares had made the reputation of the department of the
Oise at a very remote period, and although Hermant, under Louis XIV.,
affirms that this part of France furnishes with pots and table-ware
(vaisselle), the kingdom and the Low Countries, we do not think that any
has issued from there, in modern times, worthy of our attention. We
have seen a large dish glazed in green and decorated with ornaments
in relief, borrowed from ancient moulds (creux) of the sixteenth
century ; having underneath, 1721, par Jean Gillet. It was no doubt a
" prentice " piece and what would lead to the supposition is that this
dish has remained in the family of one of the oldest workmen of the
manufactory. There is reason also to distrust sealed pieces without
date ; one might with reason class among the works of the eighteenth
century pieces still decorated with the emblems used in the Middle Ages
and the Renaissance.

408 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Champagne.
We are now in a country where the ceramic art goes back to an
early epoch. M. Natalis Rondot finds at Troyes, in 1382, a potter who
made white ware. Since then to the end of the sixteenth century, the
workshops are numerous. M. Fillon even cites in this town one
Perrenet, an imitator of Pallissy.
Mathaut. — But, independent of Troyes, the department of Aube
offers an establishment whose products are still little known ; founded
by an ordinance of 14th October 1749; the letters patent run
thus : —
Louis, etc. . . . our dear and well beloved the Sieur Gede'on Claude Lepetit de Lavaux,
baron of Mathaut, a parish situated in Champagne, upon the river Aube, has caused to be
represented to us, that he had found in the said parish a canton, where the earth was fitted
to make fayence, according to the trial he had made; that the said earth was near the forest
of Rians, he would find there the wood necessary without hurting the consumption of the
country, and the provisioning of the city of Paris ; that besides, a manufactory of fayance
could not be other than of great use in. the coimtry which is twenty-five leagues distant
from like manufactories; but that he could not form such an enterprise without being
authorised to it, and wishing on our part to contribute to the success of this new enterprise
from the advantages which may result from it, we have, by ordinance of the 14th October,
of the last year, decreed upon the ends and conclusion of the request of the said Sieur
petitioner inserted to the said ordinance, and ordered that for the execution of this all
necessary letters shall be sent. . . . For this reason, and by the advice of our council ... we
have permitted and by these presents permit the said Sieur Lepetit de Lavaux to establish in
the said parish of Mathaut, a manufactory of fayence, on his agreeing to put within a
year this said manufactory in condition, and always to have one furnace at work, in default
of which we will that the said Sieur de Lavaux shall forfeit the said permission which will
remain null and as not given, we make, in consequence, very express prohibitions and inter
dictions to all persons of whatever quality and condition, to trouble the said establishment
nor to form any like in the time and space of ten years, within three leagues or about of
the parish of Mathaut. Given 26th May, 1750 ; these letters patent have been registered
the 6th September of the following year.
The faience of Mathaut is not rare ; a large dish we have now
under our eyes, has a checquered border in pale green ; in the centre is
a basket of flowers of a peculiar make, stiff and feeble,
A/V manganese violet, dirty green and pale blue. This style is
m. 114. veiT genel'al throughout the country; (M. 114) is the mark,
thick and traced in blue.
We also meet statuettes of coarse make, and some pieces, in
imitation of the arabesques of Rouen.
Arrey (Haute Marne). — This manufactory was erected in 1740 to
1750 by the sieurs de Lallemand, lords of Aprey; a Nivernais potter,
Ollivier, appears first to have directed the works and afterwards to
have become proprietor of the establishment ; the archives of Sevres
indicate on their side that, from 1774-1775, it belonged to a Sieur

MODERN FA IENCE.— FRANCE.— A PREY.

409

Villehaut, an old military officer. Under the direction of Ollivier, an
artist called Jary or Jarry, painted the birds and flowers which have
caused the reputation of Aprey. The first works, those where the paste
enamel and decoration show themselves in all their perfection, are
constantly unmarked. Later and when the fabrication became current
and commercial, there was another fundamental Sign AP, soon accom
panied by the mark of Jarry and with several others indicating the
multiplicity of decorators (M. 115).

J% /Pj

4

X-y. LR fit,

M. 115.

Fig. 107.

PLATE IS RELIEF OF APRET.

This ware is always elegant in its forms, which are copied from
metal work, and have like it rocaille reliefs in its circumference, the
richest compositions have upon a landscape ground delightfully painted
trellised bosquets, style Louis XV., accompanied by bouquets of
flowers, and birds especially. These birds highly finished, lively in tone
almost to crudeness, have no pretension to imitate nature, but their
lively figure and diapered feathers make them very ornamental. The
covered pieces, the pots with handles, have generally appendages in
figures, rugged branches with foliage, flowers or fruits upon their
stalks, and always in natural colours. One must be on one's guard

410 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
against faiences of the same kind signed with ciphers of which the
fundamental AP is wanting. Aprey dates from a period in which
porcelain was being tried everywhere.
A second fabrication of the Haute Marne had its seat at Langres ;
its products are unknown to us, but they exist, for Gournay cites this
manufacture in 1788, and Glot's list shows that it was still working iu
1791. Epernay (Marne) is a centre where were specially made glazed
wares in relief for the service of the table ; some representing in half
relief a hare, a fowl, &c. ; on the reverse is graved the name of the
manufactory ; and often fleurs de lis semes round the circumference
indicate that these pieces appeared even at the royal table. Surprise
or puzzle jugs sufficiently complicated, have also issued from these
works ; upon one, terminated by a man with a three-cornered hat and
holding an open book, we see a running floral pattern, while at the base
are mice and other animals in relief; under this master-piece is in
scribed " Fait par moi Jacques Gallet, 1761."
Bois-d'Espence (Marne). — Is an earthenware manufactory men
tioned by Gournay, which was still in activity in 1791.
Region of the East.
Lorraine.
This province occupies a distinguished rank in ceramic history.
The dukes of Lorraine, particularly Stanislaus, king of Poland, en
couraged the arts, so that establishments crowd there, and men of talent
elbow each other. To put a little order in the study of Lorraine
products, we will examine them by successive departments.
Niederviller (Meurthe). — This village which, in 1728, counted
thirty-five furnaces, had for lord, Jean Louis de Beyerle, king's coun
sellor, director and special treasurer of the mint of Strasburg. It was
he who, about 1754, founded the manufactory, the products of which
are sometimes marked with his initials (M. 116).
s\f *^M ^n genera^) thi*3 pottery of good workmanship is
-^ lS£/ vj • decorated with jagged borders, and delicate bouquets
of flowers. The statistics of the department of the.
Meurthe, assert that, in 1765, artists were sent for to Saxony for this
style of painting. A valuable document communicated by M. Durand
de Distroff, barrister of Metz, appears to refute this assertion.

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— NIEDERVILLER. 411

Exact state of all exempt from taxes now living in this place of Niderviller ; iheir names
and surnames, and this for the year one thousand sewn hundred and fifty-nine.
First.
The Sieur Francois Anstette, controller of the manufactory, earns about thirty sous
per day.
The Sieiir Jean Baptiste Malnat, director of the same manufactory, has five hundred
livres per annum wages.
Michel Martin, painter, earns about twenty sous per day.
Pierre Anstette, painter, earns about twenty-four sous per day.
Joseph Secger, painter, earns about twenty sous per day.
Frideric Adolph Tiebauld, journeyman painter, earns about twenty-four sous per day.
Martin Schettler, journeyman painter, earns about fifteen sous per day.
Augustin Herman, journeyman painter, earns about twenty sous per day.
Daniel Koope, journeyman painter, earns about twelve sous per day.
Michel Anstette, journeyman painter, earns about twenty-four sous per day.
Jeau Pierre Kaquette, journeyman painter, earns about eighteen sous per day.
Nicolas Lutze, journeyman painter, earns about twenty sous per day.
Deroy, journeyman modeller, earns about twenty sous per day.
Charles Mire, journeyman sculptor, earns about twenty-four sous per day.
Jean Thalbotier, journeyman painter, earns about twenty sous per day.
Philiph Arnold, journeyman sculptor, earns about twenty sous per day.
We, the undersigned, mayor, syndic, and alderman, certify that there are no others
exempt from taxes, but the aforesaid workmen of the manufactory, who enjoy no other
means and revenues than from their works and handiworks, and do not participate in any
of the advantages of the community.
Made at Niderviller, the second of November, one thousand seven hundred and fifty-nine.
Signed, H. Martin Blant, mayor ; Niclose Bemsin, syndic ; H. Lulls, alderman.
Thus, from 1759, a pleiad of painters were united at Niederviller, the
sculptors Charles Mire and Philip Arnold were already modelling
those graceful statuettes generally assigned to Cyffle; lastly, after
conscientiously studying the names of these artists, we remain con
vinced that they have rather an Alsatian than a German origin. The
fact is certain as regards the Anstette.
Baron de Beyerle, will, they say, have ceded his lordship, about
1780 or 1781, to Count Custine, who became at the same time pro
prietor of the ceramic establishment, and confided the direction of it to
Lanfrey. It appears to us that the active direction of baron de Beyerle
is prolonged beyond its real term ; we find, with the date of 1774, a
charming piece, signed with the two interlaced C's, the mark adopted
by Custine, and which was, at the same time, his personal cipher, for
we see it encircled by palms, with the motto : " Fais ce que tu dois,
advienne ce qui pourra," upon a service destined for the use of the new
lord of Niederviller. The faience of general Custine is almost always
very fine, and painted in the style of porcelain, bouquets of flowers are
common, another style of decoration is rather frequent; it imitates

412

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

veined wood, upon which a sheet of white paper has been laid, having
a fine landscape, delicately finished in pink camaieu ; the better to
deceive the eye, (trompe l'ceil) one corner is sometimes folded over, and
on the border of the frame is the name of the draughtsman or of the
painter, (Fig. 108) ; at the period when the " porcelaine a la reine " set
corn-flowers (bluets) into fashion, the services of Custine reproduced this
decoration in great perfection.
There exist though several ordinary specimens decorated with
bouquets of large flowers in pale enamels ; blue lilacs, set with leaves

NIEDERVILLER PLATE, " TROMPE L'OSIL."
of olive green ; a rather large jardiniere has at the back this singular
inscription, the abbreviation should evidently be
H- P. L. read " hopital," beneath the piece are a P and an
des pauvres orphelins N, one under the other, with two points under
the downstrokes of the N.
Fine faience was made at Niederviller, simultaneously with ena
melled ware and porcelain ; a magnificent dish bears on its notched rim
medallions of black ground with polychrome fruits ; in the middle a
cipher, composed of the letters C. D. V. interlaced

^fir ^P 3F and plaited amonS tne lowers, is surrounded with
^^ ^^  graceful wreaths ; the mark is that of Custine,
M 117 who sometimes varies it thus, (M.117) and is found
exceptionally accompanied by decorators' marks.
Luneville.— According to the ' Recherches sur la ceramique ' of M.

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE— LUNEVILLE. 413
Greslou, it is in the suburb of Wilier that this workshop will have
been founded by Jacques Chambrette, towards the last years of Leopold,
duke of Lorraine, who died in 1729 ; letters patent, delivered the
10th April, and 14th June, 1731,by duke Francois Etienne, successor to
his father, will have granted new privileges to the manufactory, which
took the title of " manufactory of the king of Poland," when Stanislaus
came, in 1737, to seek hospitality in France. From the hands of
Jacques Chambrette, the establishment will have passed into those of
Gabriel Chambrette, his son, and of Charles Loyal, his son-in-law, and
the letters patent of the 17th August 1758, which will have consecrated
this new order of things, granted also to the manufactory of Luneville
the title of Royal manufactory. We have not seen these letters patent,
and we do not know if they were signed by the king of France or
the duke of Lorraine, but they are contradictory to several other authen
tic documents. Thus, in 1788, Loyal was at Luneville, and Messrs.
Chambrette and company at Moyen ; lastly, Charles Bayard, director
in 1771 of the earthenware works of Luneville, was authorised under
this title to open a new establishment at Bellevue. We fear there is
here some confusion : which is not to be wondered at when we consider
the incessant peregrinations of the ceramic artists of the eighteenth
century, and the complete identity of the various works of Lorraine.
In 1778, the establishment was bought by Messieurs Keller and
Guerin, who made faiences with blue decoration, in the style of Nevers,
and others imitating old Strasburg. Their mark, according to Mr.
Chaffers, was K. & G. Some figures of lions and dogs, the size of
nature, were made there during the eighteenth century ; bearing
generally upon their pedestals the name of the town printed in black.
They served to ornament the doors of houses, and sat face to face upon
the piers ; hence the saying " to loek at each other like two dogs of
faience." Paul Louis Cyffle, sculptor in ordinary to the king of Poland,
worked at Luneville. We doubt if it was in the above manufactory,
for his workshop was authorised by letters patent of the 1st June 1798,
to make a particular and superior ware, called "terre de Lorraine."
We will speak of this when we arrive at porcelain.
We do not think Luneville marked her best products ; according to
Gournay, the delicacy of the paintings and the beauty of the ducat
gold, would make them easily distinguished.
Bellevue, near Toul. One named Lefrancois set up this manufactory
in 1758; he sold it, 1st May 1771, to Charles Bayard and Francois

414 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Boyer, who, by order in council of 13th May, 1773, were empowered to
work it there. The 17th May following, they were taxed the " marc
d'or," dues on entry of five hundred livres, by a decree of which these
are the principal terms .
"Upon the request presented to the king, &c  by Charles Bayard, formerly director
of the royal manufactory of fa'ience and pipe-clay at Lune'ville, and Francois Boyer, artist in
faiencerie, setting forth that by order of the council of the 1 3th April last, His Majesty has
authorised the establishment formed at Bellevue, ban of Toul, generalship of Metz, of a
manufactory of faience and fine and common pipe-clay, and has permitted them to continue
to fabricate there, sell and retail for fifteen years, all sorts of works of faience and pipe-clay
fine and common, as also to take from all places in the generalship of Metz, the earth,
stones, sands, and other materials proper for the fabrication of the works of their manu
facture, &c."
Three months later, the 13th August, new letters patent extended
their privileges, and permitted them to style their works, " royal manu
factory of Bellevue." To render themselves deserving of this patronage,
Charles Bayard and Boyer called around them skilful artists; Cyffle
remained there a long time and furnished the most charming models.
At length, Francois Boyer was left sole proprietor and continued until
1806. M. Georges Aubry, successor, gave the modern impulse, developed
still more by his grandson, a distinguished manufacturer to whom we
owe this information.
A valuable document has been found by M. Cournault, of Nancy,
unfortunately not dated, but giving the current prices of the pieces
made at Bellevue, at the period when the manufactory, directed by
Bayard, father and son, was no longer under royal patronage.
TARIFF
Of the price of the different pieces and figures in biscuit of pipe- clay or enamelled upon tlie
biscuit and coloured ; and little pieces of jewellery in this style, useful as well as
agreeable, all at the lowest price for the dealer ; which articles are made at the manu
factory formerly privileged by the king, of the Sieurs Bayard, father and son, at Bellevue,
ban de Toul. GROUPS.
Belisarius, in three figures, upon a terrace of a long square. (Height 12 inches, width
12 inches. — 18 livres.)
Belisarius alone, led by a child. (H. 11 1 in., w. 7 in.— 8 liv.)
Henry IV. and Sully at his feet. (H. 12-J in., w. 7'in— 9 liv.)
Henry IV. and Louis XVI. (H. 12J in., w. 7 in.— 9 liv.)
Gardener and wife standing near a pyramid whence issues a stream of water. (H. 16 in.,
w. 9 in. — 160 liv.)
The dead Bird, two figures upon a terrace. (H. 10 in., w. 8 in. — 7 liv.)
The live Bird, two figures upon a terrace. (H. 10 in., w. 7 in. — 7 liv.)
The pleasant Lesson, two figures, idem. (H. 9 in., w. 7 in. — 7 liv.)
The Huntsman concealed behind a column looking at a girl washing her feet in a stream
issuing out of the column. (H. 17 in., w. 9 in.— 16 liv.)
The Countryman who kisses a girl with a lapful of eggs, some of which she lets fall, so
much is she at her ease. (H. 8J in., w. 6 in.— 7 liv.)

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— BELLEVUE. 415
Lovers surprised by the mother, 3 figures., — (H. 7 in., w. 7 in. — 6 liv.)
The scuffle for a grape, 2 figures. (H. 6 in., w. 6| in. — 4 liv. 10 s.)
The Cobler and the Stocking-mender, two upon the same terrace, although each in his
shop. (H. 14 in., w. 12 in.— 20 liv.)
The four Seasons, 2 figures in each group. (H. 8 in., w. 4 in. — 4 liv.)
Catching Quails, 2 small figures each group. (H. 6 in., w. 4 in. — 4 liv.)
Birth of the Saviour, 4 figures, and the Infant in the cradle, the group mounted on a
pedestal. SINGLE FIGURES, NOT GROUPED.
The Cobler whistling to his starling, who is in a cage above his head. (H. 9 in., w. 6. —
9 liv.) The Stocking-mender, her head out of her barrel listening to the starling. (H. 8J in.,
w. 6% in. -9 liv.)
An old Woman with distaff asleep in her chair. (H. 7 in., w. 4 in. — 4 liv. 6 sols.)
A Gardener leaning on his spade. (H. 9 in., w. 3J in. — 4 liv. 10 s.)
A female Gardener distressed at having broken her pot of roses. (H. 9 in., w. 3 J in.
—4 liv. 10 s.)
A crier of fresh fish seated upon a bar. (H. 10 in., w. 3J in. — 4 liv. 10 s.)
A fishwoman, a carp in her hand, her basket before her. (H. 9 in., w. 3J in. —
4 liv. 10 s.)
A quail-catcher leaning upon his net. (H. 8J in., w. 4 in. — 3 liv. 10 s.)
A woman with quails in her apron. (H. 8 in., w. 3J in. — 3 liv. 10 s.)
A Falconer holding his falcon on his wrist. (H. 8 in., w. 2| in. — 3 liv.)
A woman holding a heron in her arms. (H. 8 in., w. 2J in. — 3 liv.)
The Four Seasons half naked, each. (H. 8 in., w. 3J in. — 3 liv.)
The Four Seasons clothed, smaller. (H. 7 in., w. 2J in. — 2 liv.)
A little Savoyard standing. (H. 7 in., w. 2J in. — 2 liv.)
A little Savoyard girl with her marmot in a box before her. (II. 7 in., w. 2| in. —
2 liv.) A Butcher about to kill a ram. (H. 9 in., w. 5 in. — 3 liv.)
A Tripe-Seller in her basket. (H. 9 in., w. 5 in. — 3 liv.)
A large Cupid silent. (H. 15 in., w. 2 in.— 9 liv.)
A large Venus as companion. (H. 15 in., w. 6J in. — 9 liv.)
A little Cupid silent. (H. 7J in., w. 3 in. 1/2.— 2 liv.)
A little Shepherdess spinning her distaff. (H. 4J in. w. 2 in., — 1 liv.)
A little Boy catching a rabbit behind a tree. (H. 4| in., w. 2 in. — 1 liv. 4 s.)
A little Girl playing the tambourine. (H. 4| in., w. 2 in. — 1 liv. 4 s.)
A little Flute Player. (H. 4J in., w. 2 in.— 1 liv. 4 s.)
Louis XVI. in his coronation robes. (H. 7 in., w. 2 in. — 3 liv. 4 s.)
The Queen, his wife, the same. (H. 7 in., w. 2 in. — 3 liv. 4 s.)
Bust of M. Voltaire. (H. 10 in., w. 4 in.— 6 liv.)
A repentant Magdalen, upon a little pedestal, in the same style as the group of the
Nativity. (H. 7 in., w. 5| in. — 6 liv.)
St. Theresa, upon similar pedestal. (H. 6 in., w. 5J in. — 6 liv.)
St. Bruno in prayer, upon similar pedestal. (H. 6 in., w. 5| in. — 6 liv.)
St. Charles Borromeo, id. (H. 6 in., w. 5£ in. — 6 liv.)
St. Anthony of Padua, id. (H. 6 in., w. 5| in.— 6 liv.)
St. Francis d' Assisi, id. (H. 6 in., w. 5J in.— 6 liv.)
A little Virgin standing holding the Infant. (H. 5 J in., w. 2 in. — 2 liv. 10 s.)
St. Joseph standing, as companion. (H. 5i in., w. 2 in. — 2 liv. 10 s.)
The enamelled and coloured figures are of the same price as the biscuit.
LARGE FIGURES TO PLACE IN GARDENS, WHICH ARE IN BISCUIT OF EARTHENWARE.
A Savoyard Chimney-sweep. (H. 35 in., w. 18 in. — 12 liv.)
A Savoyard Girl playing the Hurdy-gurdy. (H. 36 in., w. 18 in. — 12 liv.)
A Gardener leaning on his spade. (H. 36 in., w. 18 in. — 12 liv.)

416 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

A female Gardener. (H. 36 in., w. 18 in.— 12 liv.)
An Abbe' seated reading. (H. 26 in., w., 15 in. — 12 liv.)
A young lady seated, with a fan in her hand. (II. 26 in., w. 15 in. — 12 liv.)
They made at Belleville, in common ware, benitiers, chamber candlesticks, fan-shaped
nosegay holders (bouquetieres a eventail), boxes (caisses) for plants or flowers, candlesticks,
fountains, flower-pots on stems, for placing in gardens, altar vases, coffee-pots, tea-pots, etc.
FAIENCE PAINTED IN THE REVERBERATORY FURNACE.
Plate each. 1 piece and nantoises (?), the dozen. 10 liv.
Boxes for bulbs. 1 liv. 4 s.
Nosegay holders a e'ventail with 4 cornets. 1 liv. 4 s.
That with three is smaller. 1 liv.
That of middling size, also with 4 cornets. 18 s.
That of less size. 12 s.
Little square boxes for bulbs.
TIPE-CLAT PAINTED IN THE REVERBERATORY FURNACE, WITH LITTLE CORN-FLOWERS AND
OTHER PATTERNS IN COLOURS.
Plates for service, the dozen. 8 liv.
Id. soup or dessert. 8 liv.
Be'nitiers forming a bouquet of roses. 2 liv. 8 s.
Id. decorated. 1 liv. 4 s.
Coffee-pots holding 12 cups. 2 liv. 10 s.
Cabarets or trays with 6 cups, saucers, sugar basin, coffee and milk-pot. 15 liv,
' Box writing dusk on a plateau. 3 liv.
Id. cylindrical. 2 liv. 10 s.
Id. witli mosaics cut out in openwork. 7 liv. 10 s.
Toul. Here we confine ourselves to copying the advertisement of
Gournay, in his ' Almanach general du commerce :' " The works which
proceed from this manufactory consist of everything that can be made
in fine and common earthenware, in white faience and painted in
imitation of Japan, in pipe-clay enamelled, and of porcelain, white,
either plain, or gilt, or in fine painting in imitation of the
porcelain of France. They make also ancient and modern vases in
white, richly gilt and painted in colours; fine blue camaieux, also
richly gilt ; different works in fine biscuit, such as groups, figures, busts,
vases, medallions of celebrated men, after the designs of the greatest
masters. The solidity, whiteness, beauty of the enamel, delicacy and
variety of the colours, distinguish the works of this manufactory, which
may be said in general to be a fine establishment. All possible orders
are executed, and arms painted in colours or gold indifferently upon all
kinds of pieces. The works of this manufactory enjoy a reduction of
duty of three livres per quintal in all the offices of the five great farms.
Proprietors : MM. Bayard, father and son." This last indication appears
to us of particular importance ; in 1788, Charles Bayard had
left Bellevue, and from that period it is to Toul that the tariff of figures
and groups, given above, appears to apply itself.

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE. 417
Moten. — In the district of Metz, three leagues from Luneville ; it is
again Gournay who speaks. " Considerable manufactory of fine faience,
the solidity, whiteness, and beauty of the enamel, with the taste,
delicacy, and variety of designs, distinguish the works which it pro
duces ; these works have also the advantage of resisting the fire. Under
takers : MM. Chambrette and Company." The manufactory of Moyen
was still working in 1791.
Nancy. — The 11th January 1774, the Sieur Nicolas Lelong was
authorised to set up a manufactory in the suburb of Saint-Pierre, as may
be seen by the letters patent of the following 24th April, fixing the
tax to which it was subject.
Upon the request made to the king, etc. ... by the Sieur Nicolas Lelong, citizen of
Nancy, setting forth that he had obtained, the 11th January last, au order in council per
mitting him to establish in the suburb of Saint-Pierre, in the said town, a manufactory of
fayance, and that this order should be invested with letters patent, which cannot be sealed
without paying the " marc d'or " entrance duty, ordered by the edict of the month of
December 1770. For which cause he petitions His Majesty to be pleased to fix the amount,
etc. . . . Orders that the sieur Lelong shall pay 500 livres. . .
If it is to this Nicolas Lelong that we should assign a large hexa
gonal fountain decorated with arabesques in the style of Rouen, and of
which the basin (vasque), ornamented with a wavy medallion, surrounded
by flowers and scrolls in good taste, contains this inscription, A. Majo-
relle a Dijon ; the workmanship is very remarkable. The name of
Nancy, written upon the piece, establishes its origin. At Nancy was
niade a particular biscuit, styled, " biscuit de Nancy."
Montenoy. — At two leagues from Nancy ; this manufactory is cited
without other details in Gournay's Almanac.
Saint-Clement. — Its foundation goes back, they say, to 1750.
The proprietor of this establishment joined, in 1791, in the protest of
the potters against the treaty with England. In 1835, M. Sigisbert
Aubry was directing it and left it for Bellevue.
I^pinal. (Vosges.) — This again is one of the manufactories men
tioned by Gournay without commentary.
Rambeevillees. — Respecting this centre, the same author is less
reserved ; he writes : " Its faiences resist the fire, they have a white
ness and beauty approaching enamel, and are decorated with fine
paintings. Undertaker, M. Gerard."
A charming piece answering Gournay's description, is in the collec
tion of Dr. Guerard, and bears on the reverse the letter G.
Vaucouleues. — (Meuse.) These works must have been founded by
a sieur Girault de Berinqueville, by virtue of an order in council of the
2 E

418 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
16th of December 1738, of which it will be question later. The dis
order of French archives, in what concerns manufactories, does not allow
us to acquire any certainty on this point. The style of the products of
Vaucouleurs is the same as that of the other Lorraine centres ; a thin
faience, well worked, white enamel, painting bright even to crudity,
and a remarkably fine faience of rich and refined decoration. Upon some
pretty jardinieres with rocaille reliefs heightened with yellow, gold red,
and bright green, we have seen Chinese designs in the Strasburg style ;
a charming writing desk, belonging to Madame Furtado, has, with
the same rocailles, wreaths of flowers, torches and figures, vigorously
coloured, and in relief.
But the best and undoubted pieces, shown, at the Universal Exhibi
tion, are more curious still ; a large pot pourri vase with lid, sur
mounted by a bouquet in relief and handles formed of groups of flowers ;
two other covered vases, with twisted handles, semes with red dots, stems
and foliated acanthus decoration of a bright green heightened with black ;
bouquets intervene between the zones and rose pink borders, which are
embroidered with a kind of work incised in the paste. This style of deco
ration, quite similar to that applied at the modern manufactory of Pesaro,
leads us to think that Italian artists had been called to Vaucouleurs.
Montigny (near Vaucouleurs). — Two workshops. We give a docu
ment which has enabled us to throw some light upon the ceramic
fabrications of the Meuse.
"Louis, by the grace of God, &c. . . . Our well beloved Mansuy Pierrot, and Fran
cois Cartier, dealers in fayance, living at Montigny, near Vaucouleurs, have shown to us
that in the suit pending in our Council, 16th December 1738, as much by reason of the
opposition made by them to the decree rendered in our Council, 16th December 1738, upon
the request of Jacques Antoine Girault, the Sieur de Be'rinqueville, and to the registry of the
letters patent of the 18th September 1739, by which we have confirmed the establishment
made by the original vendors to the said Sieur Girault de Be'rinqueville, and we have prohibited
all those who have made like establishments without permission to continue their works until
it may be otherwise ordered by us, and that at the penalties declared by the said decree ;
that of that similarly formed by the said Sieur Girault by the decree rendered in our council
the 28th November 1741, upon the request of the petitioners, showing that, for the reasons
there given, it has pleased us to grant them permission to continue the use of the manu
factories of fayance, whichthey have established for these last ten years in the said place of
Montigny, and in consequence to prohibit to the Sieur Girault and to all others to trouble
them and their workmen. There has intervened a decree of our said Council the 25th
December 1742, upon the respective productions of the parties and upon the advice of
the Sieur Intendant of Champagne, for the execution of which decree we have ordered that
all letters patent shall be sent. For this cause, and by the advice of our council, who have
seen the decree of the 25th December last, of which the extract is attached to this, . . .
making decree upon his demand, we have, conformably with the said decree, given, and do
give, to Sieur Girault, and to the said Sieurs Pierrot and Cartier, on their giving over
the demands in opposition to those reciprocally made to the decrees of our Council the
16th December 1738, and 28th November 1741, this done by grace and without further
construction we have of our full power and royal authority confirmed the establishment,

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE.. 419
by the said Pierrot and Cartier, of their manufactories of fayance, situated in the parish
of Montigny, and permit and have permitted them to use it as in the past."
This decree, given the 29th January 1743, was registered only the
4th August 1745.
In 1788, Gournay only cites one manufactory at Montigny. We
know neither its mark nor its products.
Cleemont-en-Aegonne. — All we know of this establishment is
that it was still working in 1791.
Waly. — This little workshop, which has produced faiences with
flowers, is particularly reputed in Lorraine for the purity of its blue ;
to express a fine shade of this colour, they say proverbially blue like
the faience of Waly.
Les Islettes. — In 1737, the manufactory of Les Islettes, whose
establishment went back to a very anterior date, was under a director
jiamed Bernard. What would appear to indicate an establishment of
a certain importance, is that at the date mentioned above, a celebrated
painter, Joseph Le Cerf, emigrated from the Meuse into the Aisne,
and went to work at Sinceny. The known products of the Islettes
are of a recent date and inferior decoration. We remember the plate
sent to the Universal Exhibition by M. Maze-Sencier, with a pretty pink
jagged pattern descending from the edge to the centre, Avhere in a
medallion surrounded by laurels, was the bust of a woman with round
cap and this legend, "Epouse du philosophe republicain francais." On
others, a Grenadier with bearskin cap, kneels before a woman simply
attired. At the Islettes are also made wares lined with brown,
decorated with a lozenge border, and a basket in the centre in the
Rouennais style.
Thionville (Moselle). — It is under the head of this town that
signs, in 1791, one of the ceramic artists, protesting against the
• English treaty. Would that mean that the works were at Thionville
itself? We think not, and this is the information furnished us on
the subject by M. Durand, of Distroff. In 1756, ' Le departement de
Metz,' by Sterner, contains this phrase: "La Grange, half a league
from Thionville, has a fine manufactory of faience." This then would
be the true centre of the manufactory, and Thionville was probably
the place where it was sold ; according to Sterner, both La Grange and
Niederviller were distinguished for their fine glaze.
Saeeeguemines. — We know the immense development in modern
times of this magnificent establishment, founded about 1770. It is
especially in fine faiencs and cailloutage that it has distinguished
2 E 2

420 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
itself since the Revolution. Its brown decoration is in good taste,
and nothing can be imagined more surprising than its vases imitating
marble, jasper, and porphyry. Alsace.
Steasbueg. — The ceramic history of this city, or rather that of
the department of the Lower Rhine, for Strasburg and Haguenau
are closely united, may be comprised in the name of one sole
family, the Hannong or Hanung. The first potter of this name, of
whom M. Tainturier has found a trace in the archives, devoted himself
to the making of green enamelled stoves, ornamented with reliefs, in
the style of Nuremberg. About 1709, Charles Francois Hannong
created, Rue du Foulon, a pipe manufactory, which was soon to be
transformed ; for ten years later, a German deserter, John Henry,
Wackenfeld, made an unsuccessful attempt to found a porcelain manu
factory at Strasburg ; Charles F. Hannong, informed of his short
comings, opened to him, in September 1721, the doors of his esta
blishment, and as the stranger was particularly versed in the know
ledge of the processes of earthenware, their association had the double
result of developing the production of enamelled wares, and of advancing
the experiments in porcelain. In 1724, the Strasburg establishment
no longer sufficing for the importance of the works, Charles set up
a second workshop at Haguenau.
The burden of the management of these two establishments became
soon too heavy for an old man of sixty, and he placed it in the hands
of his two sons, Paul Antoine and Balthasar, long his assistants, and
by an act of the 22nd September 1732, they bound themselves to
hold these works in partnership, in consideration of a pension and the
payment of a certain sum; Charles died in April 1739, leaving the-
example of a life much honoured by industry.
In 1737 Balthasar gave up the partnership, and took on his own
account the establishment of Haguenau, Paul Antoine remaining alone
in Strasburg, where he continued to develop his works ; his faience is
often most remarkable, the painting of flowers and insects is carried to
a truthfulness, w-hich does not exclude boldness (Fig. 109). It is in our
eyes a character by which to distinguish the Alsatian pottery from
that of Hbchst, to which they have desired to assimilate it. In 1744,
Paul Antoine had discovered the fine gilding, which so well accom
panies the white enamel, and he took advantage of the passage of

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— STRASBURG. 421
Louis XV. through Strasburg, to offer him the first specimens of
this remarkable ware.
This prosperity was not to last long, the attempts at making por
celain pursued by Paul Antoine, awakened the jealous attention of
the royal manufactory. In February 1754, an ordinance prohibited the
Strasburg potter from continuing the fabrication, and obliged him to
exile himself; it is at this period he passed into the Palatinate.
Fig. 109.

OPENWORK BASKET.— STRASnURG.

Pierre Antoine, one of the sons of Paul, resumed the pottery works
of the Lower Rhine on the death of his father, in 1760 ; while the
eldest son, Joseph Adam, inherited the works at Frankenthal, which
had been given up to him before, on the occasion of his marriage.
Unstable, and perhaps not industrious, Pierre Antoine, instead of
continuing the laborious track of his father, threw himself into spe
culation ; he first sold to Sevres the secret of porcelain, and soon saw
his bargain cancelled from the want of power' to secure its execution.
He was to give up the administration of the Alsatian workshops
to the widow Lowenfinck, then he ceded them definitively to his
brother Joseph Adam. This last resumed the fabrication of enamelled
earthenware, but when the ordinance of 1766 allowed porcelain
to be decorated in blue or in camaieu, in France, he resumed
his labours, and carried it on with the other wares. Difficulties relative
to the payment of duties, then a law-suit with the Receiver-General
for the Bishopric of Strasburg, who had advanced money to the potter,
completed his ruin. The Prince-bishop caused Pierre Antoine's work
shop to be seized and sold, after having imprisoned the debtor, and not-

422 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
withstanding his unheard of efforts to re-establish his credit and
reputation, the unhappy Joseph had to flee to Germany, where he
ended his days. The furnaces of Strasburg had ceased working in
1780. The character of Strasburg faience is well known ; fine, and
carefully worked, it takes the most elegant forms, and applies to
them the most complicated appendages. Its enamel is smooth, white,
without cracks, and receives the most complicated colours of muffle
painting. In general the pure red from gold occurs frequently. Its
most brilliant epoch was that of Paul Antoine ; one piece alone is cited,
decorated in blue in the Chinese style, and marked (M. 118), which
would be the work of Charles Hannong. As to the signature of Paul,
yv ftf it is very variable, and sometimes accompanied by
f T~\ decorators' marks, its habitual form is either of these
M 118. (M- 119)- We have found it on a fine rocaille fountain
u o of M. Aigoin, and upon a splendid clock belonging also
?7) y'/^ to the same collection; upon large plates and dishes with
A*^, \ flowers in the Perillieux collection, and on magnificent
/? plaques, with subjects in pink camaieu of M. Achille
Mp 119, Jubinal, &c. An essential remark suggests itself by
several pieces having the above monogram, and yet possessing none
of the characters of the Alsatian faience; the paste is common, the
enamel blueish; the flowers coarsely outlined with black, have a dirty
and violet tint, which are hardly ever seen except in German
fabrications ; it is probable they are works of Paul, executed at
Frankenthal, during his exile. We will cite in their place other
a . 0 faiences of the Palatinate, signed by Joseph Adam
• li Hannong, his son, whose monogram, accompanied
ly| pf by numerical signs, is frequent (M. 120). We have
\ J observed it on pieces as well executed as those of his
M. 120. n ,,
lather.
Haguenau. — History preserves the remembrance of a first esta
blishment, founded about 1696 ; but the character of its products remains
undetermined. No more is known about the works of Charles Hannong.
His son Balthasar, who arrived in April 1737, must have left traces
of his superintendence, either as proprietor, tenant, or as manager for
his brother Paul Antoine, this state of things lasted till 1752. We
think we recognise this trace in a plate of fine enamel, decorated with
blue camaieu, in the Chinese style, and signed on the reverse ; H. I. B.
(Mark 121). Again become sole proprietor and sole manager, Paul

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE. 423

had to seek an assistant, and found it in a certain H. E. V. Lowen
finck or Lowenfincken, whose passage has been indicated by t
plaques painted in camaieu, signed in full, and which their / V)
character would make us believe to be foreign. 1 ' /
At the death of Paul, the establishment of Haguenau fell to
his younger son Pierre Antoine, who associated himself later with a
Sieur Xavier Hallez, and then sold it to the widow Anstett. In 1786,
Anstett fils, Barth, and Vollet retook the manufactory, while Pierre
Antoine followed the varied fortunes that his restless character prepared
for him. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to separate in the known
marks of the Hannongs those which belong to Strasburg and Haguenau.
Saint-Blaise. — This manufactory of the department of the Upper
Rhine has been made known to us by a series of plates, evidently
a marriage present, belonging to Madame Rouveyre. Round the
edge is a peculiar rocaille decoration, interspersed with small flowers
and insects; in the centre, St. John the Baptist, patron Saint of the
married pair, standing, with this motto : — " Jean Cammus de Vautzon,
1760." The Magdalen lying down enveloped in her hair, with these
inscriptions : — " Magdeleine le marie. Saint-Blaise. 1760."
Saint-Blaise Magdeleine le marie, 1760
Saint-Blaise.
Here the repetition of the name does not admit of supposing that it
relates to the birth-place of the wife ; but to the manufactory. The
colours are a pure blue, a fine yellow, olive green, and manganese.
A plateau with subject, Venus reclining and two Cupids, sent to the
Universal Exhibition by M. Bart, of Versailles, is in the same style,
and permits us to establish that the Upper Rhine also made decorative
pottery. Franehe- Comte.
This is so little of a ceramic country that it will not detain us
long ; according to Glot's list, Besanqon had three furnaces in activity
in 1791, one of which probably made porcelain.
At Rioz, near Besancon, a shoe-maker bethought to make himself a
potter ; some pieces by him, preserved by Mr. Francis Wey, are the
more curious, as they show the justice of the old adage — " Shoemaker,
do not go beyond your last."

424 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Aebois, in the Jura. The Count of Liesville possesses the oldest
known specimen of this manufactory ; a plate decorated in blue, in
the style of Moustiers, but of broader and more hasty execution, in the
centre is the patron saint of the person for whom it is intended, with
the name, place, and date, 1746. Gournay's Almanac mentions, in
1788, the manufactory of Arbois, and informs us that it was directed by,
a Sieur Giroulet; from that time it must have declined, to judge from
a piece of 1787, in the collection of M. de Liesville, a barrel of poly
chrome decoration, vulgar in style and enamels.
Burgundy.
Dijon (Cote-d'Or). — Two manufactories existed there in 1791 ; but
we know neither the date of their foundation, nor the name of their
proprietors. Pontaillee, near Dijon. — Mr. Marryat cites these works without
giving any information upon their products, which appear to go back to
the sixteenth century.
Mirebeau (Cote-d'Or) had a manufactory of glazed ware of which
we have no occasion to speak, its products having nothing artistic.
Premieres, near Dijon, a brick-kiln, which, about 1783, made, it is
said, faience ; we do not know it. Mr. Chaffers states that Lavalle, the
proprietor of the works, was instructed in the secrets of making
pottery by an Italian monk named Leonardi. At present, Dr. J.
Lavalle, grandson of the founder, gives an artistie character to the esta
blishment. The mark of the known specimens is composed of the
letters J L separated or united in a cipher.
Auxeere (Yonne). — There was there, towards the end of the
eighteenth century, a manufactory long unknown, because its works
became confounded by their vulgarity, with those of the last period
of Nevers. Plates with the patron saints of those for whom they were
intended, others with so-called patriotic devices. Such is the stock of
the manufactory ; specimens of which are to be seen in the Musee de
Cluny. Some of 1798 are signed Boutet.
Ancy-le-Feanc (Yonne). — This locality is only known to us by the
list of Glot.
Macon (Saone-et-Loire). — It is the same with two establishments
which worked in this town in 1791.
Digoin, in the same department, appears to have an anterior origin,
as Gournay mentions it in 1788.

, MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE. 425
Meillonas (Ain). — We find the first mention of this manufactory in
Gournay, who writes thus : — " Manufactory of faience, much esteemed.
Proprietor, M. Marron, lord of the place." Some charming jardinieres,
belonging to M. Voillard, and signed, " Pidoux, 1765, a Miliona,"
prove how well founded was the eulogium of Gournay. The publica
tion, in the ' Gazette des beaux arts,' of a notice upon the faiences of the
South, in which these pieces are mentioned, brought forth explana
tions from M. Etienne Milliet, in the : Journal de l'Ain,' and thenceforth
• the history of Meillonas was cleared up. Between 1740 and 1750, Madame
de Marron, Baronne de Meillonas, established in her chateau a furnace
destined to acquire some renown. A friend to letters and the arts, this
lady, whose maiden name was Carrelet de Loisy, of Dijon, was not con
tented with painting herself works which she gave as presents, and of
which a great number went to her natal city, but she called artists from
without. Pidoux was certainly one of these. The memory of Meillonas
has remained in Burgundy with some of the masterpieces of the manu
facture. M. Baux, of Bourg, possesses two remarkable vases delicately
painted. M. Phil. Le Due has also some curious specimens of the same
origin, and M. de Surigny possesses a succession of pieces painted by
Madame de Meillonas for her grandmother ; these faiences of a
yellow ground have reserves decorated with bouquets, and are
marked with this cipher (M. 122).
The manufactory of Meillonas has passed into different hands, and
now only produces common wares of excellent quality. M. Joly, its
present possessor, desires to restore its ancient artistic splendour. The
usual decoration of the pieces created under the inspiration of Madame
de Marron consisting of graceful wreaths of flowers, tied and interlaced
with ribbons of brilliant colours, with centre landscapes delicately painted,
particularly attract attention. Almost all these works are unmarked,
the jardinieres of Pidoux have enabled us to. determine the origin of a
magnificent anonymous dish in the Musee de Cluny.
Pont-de-Vaux (Ain). — Leonard Racle, Voltaire's architect, had
founded at Versoix, near Geneva, works of pottery which he after
wards transported to Pont-de-Vaux. This establishment applied itself
specially to the production of large pieces, fitted for the embellishment
of sumptuous interiors. These monumental works recommended them
selves only by their form, not seeking brilliancy of colours ; but the manu
factory also made white faience heightened with gold. Our friend
Tainturier possessed the manuscripts relative to this manufactory, and
proposed to publish what is most interesting relating to it.

4,

426 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Bouee. — This capital of the department of the Ain has also had its
manufactory of earthenware ; Glot's list shows that it still worked in
1791, but we know neither the date of the establishment nor the nature
of its products. Dauphine.
Here again is a province which demands the investigation of
amateurs ; two workshops were at Geenoble (Isere), another at Saint
Valliee (Drome). With regard to this last, a document in the Archives
gives us the name of its proprietor; the 12th Ventose year X. Garcin,
maker of faience at Saint Vallier, asks for authorisation to set up a
porcelain manufactory in Corsica.
Dieu-le-Fit (Drome), had also works in activity in 1791. The
geographical dictionary would seem to indicate that they only made
common pottery; but the memoir annexed to Glot's list sufficiently
establishes that the signers of the complaint are all "workers of
faience and porcelain to the exclusion of potters of earth."
Lyonnais.
We have spoken (page 317) of the ceramic establishments formed at
Lyons itself by Jehan Francisque, of Pesaro, 1530 (?) ; Julien Gambyn
and Domenge Tardessir, of Faenza, 1547-1559 ; and Sebastian Griffb,
of Genoa, 1555. But the pre-occupation of these initiators was above
all, the search after a pure even white ; the " vaisselle blanche," an
expression special to France, predominated over historic compositions.
At what epoch did the ceramic industry of Lyons become trans
formed ? Where begins the modern period ? We do not know, but
documents gathered by M. Rolle, keeper of the city archives, show the
interest the Lyonnais municipality took in possessing manufactories of
fa'ience. The 31st March 1733, Joseph Combe, a native of Moustiers,
and potter at Marseilles, obtains, in conjunction with Jacques Marie
Ravier, of Lyons, a privilege of ten years to work at La Guillotiere, a
"royal" manufactory of faience. The enterprise not succeeding, a
woman takes possession of it, and obtains, the 22nd April 1738, a decree
appointing her in the place of the founders. This woman, Francoise
Blateran, dame Lemasle, shows such perseverance and courage in her
actions that she obtains the interest of the provost of the merchants and
aldermen, who come to her assistance with annual allowances. In 1748,

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— LYONS. 427
her privilege was prolonged for ten years, and later she had a grant of
3000 livres. Yet it does not appear that the working of the Lemasle
Works, situated at Saint Clair, extended beyond the expiration of
her privilege, in 1758. M. Maze Sencier possesses plates found at Saint
Etienne, and which appear to be of Lyonnais fabrication.
Is it from this manufactory, still imbued with the principles of the
Italian school, that has issued the curious plate, dated 1734, in M. de
Liesville's collection ? The form is that of the ordinary French table
ware ; the whole surface is taken up by the sea, a mythological
subject (Urbino tradition), Neptune descending from his car drawn
by sea-horses, and pursuing, armed with a dart, a young winged
goddess.. The drawing is not incorrect. A French inscription,
barely intelligible, explains the scene after the Italian manner, and
bears a date repeated at the bottom of the painting. If Combe and
Ravier are the authors of this faience, their talent deserved success.
The 22nd April 1766, the Consulate came to the assistance of a
new manufacturer, the Sieur Patras, who had set up a manufactory of
pottery (the deliberation of the notables says of porcelain).
In 1791, three establishments, one of which was of porcelain, worked
in the department of the Rhone.
Roanne (Loire). — Again another centre which would have remained
unknown, had it not been for the protest of the potters against the
treaty with England. It is much to be regretted that the list of Glot
does not mention, with the indication of the seat of each manufactory,
the name of its proprietor.
Region oe the South.
Provence.
" Moustiers (Basses Alpes).— Here we are in one of the most important
of the ceramic centres, and of which the industrial and artistic fortune
would not be explained without the influence of Marseilles. Provence,
we have already said, was one of the focuses of French civilisation ; its
commercial relations, its vicinity to Italy, had developed instincts of art
which we do not find elsewhere. Without pre-occupying ourselves with
the fables which attribute to monks the revelation at Moustiers of pre
tended industrial secrets, let us trace, by the means of positive documents,
gathered especially by Baron Ch. Davillier, the history of this remark
able assemblage of workshops.

428

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Fig. no.

There lived, in the Lower Alps, a family of potters who were destined
to render their country illustrious, these are the Clerissy; at the
beginning of the seventeenth century one of them appears whose works
remain undetermined ; but, in 1686, Pierre Clerissy becomes himself
known as " maitre faiencier," and certain works issued from his furnaces
permit us to establish the exceptional development which he gave
to the industry. The finest type we know is an oval dish belonging
to Baron C. Davillier, which appeared at the Universal Exhibi
tion. The border is composed of masks and winged griffons sport
ing in the midst of elegant arabesques, and supporting cartouches
in which are represented a stag, a wolf, and dogs. This rich composition,
inspired rather by the antique than by the majolica of the Renaissance,
is drawn with masterly decision and a talent very superior to that of
contemporary Italian artists. In the centre is a bear hunt, after Antonio
Tempesta, a Florentine painter and engraver, whose works were long in
fashion in the South. This dish is signed by Gaspard
Viry, one of the most distinguished ceramic decorators ;
another painter of the same name, Jean Baptiste Viry, is
inscribed in the civic archives of Moustiers, in 1706, on
the occasion of the baptism of his son, but there is no
signature of his upon fa'ience. This then is the first
type. Hunting pieces or scenes from Scripture history,
with borders, and French ornaments of ancient or
oriental style, for some pieces show us mantlings (lam
brequins) and arabesques inspired by Chinese porce
lain and adopting the Rouennais excentricities. These
fiiiences, of a fine white, even enamel, not vitreous, are
painted with an intense blue, clearly and delicately
outlined.
Soon the antique border disappears to give place to delicate orna
ments in the style of Berain and Andre Charles Boulle. It is, as" it
were, an intermediary style, for we must recognise that the lambre
quins and fine lacework do not harmonise with the heavy conceptions
of Tempesta ; hence these faiences have been accused of wanting
the first element of success, an ornamental character. The artists of
Moustiers understood it, and soon discarded hunting-pieces and
other limited subjects to substitute compositions with canopies and
detached or terminal figures, taken from the masters who had inspired
the borders of which we have been just speaking (Fig. 111).
Would not the second period mark a new direction ? We think

KNIFE HANDLE
MOUSTIERS, 1ST STYLE.

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE.— MO US TIERS.

429

so ; Pierre Clerissy, helped perhaps by the two Viry, had worked from
1686 to 1728, the period of his death, which took place at the age of
seventy-six ; but a second Pierre Clerissy, his nephew perhaps, succeeded
him ; from his age, he would naturally be inclined to progress, or simply,
may be, to change, besides, at the moment when he took upon himself the
burden of administration, competitions started np around him, exciting
emulation. A certain Pol Roux, master potter, appears in 1727 ; later,
a rough opponent, Joseph Olery, established himself in his turn.

Fig. 111.

EWER, MOOSTIERS, STYLE BERAIN. — COLL. P. GASNAULT.

We may consider as coming from the hands of these various potters
pieces with mythological subjects ; Orpheus charming the animals, the
Triumph of Amphitrite, the Vengeance of Medea, subjects surrounded
by graceful stalks, crowned with canopies or scrolls, united to caryatides,
and surrounded with flaming pots alternating with vases of flowers,
cascades issuing from light basins, or streams falling from the open
jaws of monsters into a cistern supported by Cupids or Satyrs.
What confirms the plurality of origin, is that the two distinct styles
have the same decoration ; the one preserves the dead white and pure
blue of the elder Clerissy, the other affects an enamel so vitreous as to
rival that of porcelain, aud give to the cobalt a soft, celestial tint, as if
seen through a thick glass.

430 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Here is the place for an interesting fact of which the archives have
retained no trace, but which is indicated by a manuscript found in
Calvet's papers, and confirmed by material proofs. Joseph Olery, a
man of talent no doubt, disturbed by his works the peace of Pierre
Clerissy IL, who redoubled his efforts to maintain the first rank for his
manufactory. The reputation of Moustiers, increasing thenceforward
with the perfection of its works, the Duke of Aranda desiring to improve
the Spanish manufactories by sending to them southern artists, Olery
was one of those who consented to expatriate himself, but, as he only
carried there the blue camaieu decoration, they soon dismissed him,
and he returned to his furnace in the Lower Alps ; only having seen
polychrome decoration practised in Spain, he applied himself to this new
work which obtained a special fashion.
Clerissy, whom his works had caused to be ennobled, in 1743 (with the
title of Seigneur de Trevans) would not remain behind ; he attempted
the same style, and used it in a way to increase his fame and fortune.
In 1747 he left the works in a flourishing condition in the hands of
his partner Joseph Fouque. Olery ruined himself and disappeared.
In 1756 Moustiers counted seven or eight establishments ; in 1789
there were eleven; ten years later they were reduced to five. The
names of the last potters are Achard, Barbaroux, Berbiguier, and
Feraud, Bondil, father and son ; Combon and Antelmy, Ferrat brothers,
Fouque, father and son ; Guichard, Laugier and Chaix, Mille, Pello-
quin and Berge, Tion, Yccard, and Feraud.
In the middle of this crowTd of potters, seconded by artists more
numerous still, one can understand how difficult it is to assign to each
his work; the dish of Viry enables to discover, by analogy, the
pieces of Clerissy7 1. Those of Clerissy II. are much more difficult to
determine. Roux, like him, made the blue decoration, style Berain, as
Fig. U2. proves a fine centre-piece (surtout) belonging to
M. Paul Gasnault, which is signed Hyaci. Ros-
setus ; this G. Hyacinthe Roux, who gives to his
name an italo-latin form, was probably son of Pol
Roux ; we have of him plaques dated from 1732.
But when the scroll and caryatides style is
coloured with varied enamels, when it is mixed with
wreaths of flowers and bouquets (Fig. 112), when
MOUSTIERS. MEDALLION _ _ ± \ o /'
and wreaths.— coll. the decoration is entirely floral, associated with

P. GASNAULT.

grotesques, so many various hands show themselves
in the drawing, so many inexplicable monograms are on the reverse of

Plate IX.— FRANCE.
Moustiers — Sugar Castor, Blue Decoration. Collection E. Pascal.

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE.— MOUSTIERS. 431
the pieces, that the collector is lost in inextricable chaos ; there is
yet one mark which by its stability would appear to belong to an
important centre. It is formed of the letters L 0 united (M. 123).
Some read in it the cipher of Olery ; we cannot admit it, for q<
the multiplicity of letters with which the cipher is accompanied, -v*
the extreme epochs which the pottery which bears it indicates, M' 123'
would establish unmistakably that Olery had been the most persistent,
the most fortunate, and the most skilful potter of the South, and that
he had the most (considerable workshop. Thus we find upon pieces
with caryatides (M. 124-128) :
2*$. *ff ?% $jc j$
M. 124. M. 125. M. 126. M. 127. M. 128.
with a blue Rouennais style (M. 129.): -<.X\- M. 129.
on mythological subjects of various colours and divers borders (M. 130-
136)
{% $9 M 'Et j%£ f$ n
M. 130. M. 131. M. 132. M. 133. M. 134. M. 135. M. 136.
Wreaths and bouquets have (M. 137, and M. _j 0. ft
138) and many of the monograms above : -DSu >
1 J ° M_ 137. m. 138.
Grotesques are signed (M. 139-144) :
M. 139. M. 140. M. 141. M. 142. M. 143. M. 144.
Let us prudently leave these ciphers with those of which the
explanation is not easy (M. 145-147) :
M. 145. M. 146. M. 147.
With pieces marked as above, we find (M. 148) : f\ P,
M. 148.
Some pieces signed in full letters appear still more to complicate
the question. On a soup tureen we read : Tion, a Moustiers ; and under
a water-pot with its basin, Ferrat a Moustiers ; these are artists of the

432 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
decadence, as shows their Chinese decoration; but upon a round plaque
with flowers we find, 1761, Solome Cadet. This may simply be the
owner ; we would say as much of Pierre Fournier de Moustiers, who,
in 1775, caused his name to be inscribed round a flask with flowers.
With respect to the painters Fo Grangel, Miguel Vilax, Soliva or
Soliba, and Cros, who have signed some fine pieces, all executed in
polychrome colours ; these are Spaniards. Now are we to think they
followed into France their old master Olery, and that their works
have issued from Moustiers, or is it not more natural to admit that suffi
ciently instructed, accustomed to the southern style, they have made at
home, faiences analogous to those of the Lower Alps ? We thought so
before, after having seen some plates with a delicate Provencal border in
copper red, and we no longer doubted, when Baron Ch. Davillier
exhibited his beautiful cup raised on a stem, decorated inside with a copy
of the Family of Darius, after Lebrun, and under which Soliva has added
to his name ; ALCORA ESPANA. Another piece, by the same artist,
has been painted at Piezas, a hamlet of the province of Almeria.
Yet Mr. Chaffers cites, after Baron Ch. Davillier, the pieces signed
by these artists as having formed part of a service which, according to
tradition, will have been executed for Madame de Pompadour about
1745, and for which 10,000 livres were paid to the maker Pierre Clerissy.
It is evident, in the first place, that the pieces inscribed with the
name of the artists just mentioned, belong to different services, and
can never have formed a whole; many among these faiences are
identical with pieces marked L 0., and attributed to Olery by a certain
number of collectors. If we admitted the supposition of Mr. Chaffers,
we must renounce definitively to see the cipher of Olery in the two
letters indicated, and restore them to the establishment of Clerissy.
We do not deny that Madame de Pompadour may have ordered a
service at Moustiers at a time when this faience was in fashion ; and
besides, the Great, led away by fashion, never failed in providing them
selves with the most renowned manufactories. Marshal Richelieu also
ordered for his chateau a complete service bordered with delicate blue
arabesques, and decorated with his arms and those of Elisabeth Sophie
de Lorraine Guise, his second wife. This service was executed about
1734, at the period when the style was especially French, and it is in
the same taste that we find most of the escutcheoned pieces, beginning
with those of the dauphin. Armorial bearings, on the contrary, are
verv rare among the polychrome faiences of the decline.
The following are some (Marks 149-154) still inexplicable signs in

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— VARAGES. 433

the actual state of ceramic history, and are to be met with on pieces in
blue camaieu : —

rj

-£ S\ & Fe Ji

f

M. 149. M. 150. M. 151. M. 152. M. 153. M. 154.
The last cipher is also to be seen upon a polychrome faience heightened
with gold in M. E. Pascal's collection ; it is perhaps the signature of
Fouque, Clerissy's successor. Baron Davillier proposes
to attribute to Feraud this monogram (M. 155) which U "X?
we find upon a soup tureen at Sevres. The letters or '
M. 155.
inscriptions below do not appear to us susceptible of any
probable attribution (Marks 156-161).
Jt.C. M-CAO50.TA
M. 156. M. 157. M. 158.
J>$ jr# >qy.
M. 159. M. 160. M. 161.
Varages (Var.). — The commercial success of Moustiers could not
fail to stimulate to new enterprises. About 1740, a Sieur Bertrand
opened a workshop at Varages, a town about six or seven leagues from
the primitive establishment ; it was called the works of Saint Jean,
because it occupied the site of an old church of that name. The
Bertrand family always held this establishment; but there rose up five
others.; the names of the proprietors were Bayol, called Pin, replaced by
Gregoire Richeline ; Fabre, replaced by Bayol ; Clerissy, succeeded by
Grosdidier ; Montagnac and Laurent, replaced by Guigou.
The wares of Varages had no special marks ; they resemble more or
less coarsely those of the Lower Alps, and appear made for popular
use ; at the works of Saint Jean were painted in the muffle furnace
services in the style of Strasburg.
Taveenes, in the same department, about four miles from Varages,
had an establishment directed by a Sieur Gaze, who signed with his
initial (M. 162). To judge by a plateau, orna- —
mented with blue flowers, in the museum at C- ' f~ i& CL 4=
Sevres, the products of Tavernes were inferior M 1
even to those of Varages.
Les Pouepres (Var.). — This furnace is mentioned nowhere, and is
2 p

434 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

known only by a solitary specimen at Sevres, a potiche of vitreous, white
enamel decorated in the muffle with pale, but thick enamels, pink, light
blue, and yellow and green mixed. The subject is Chinese, and under
neath is written Pourpre japonne. This indication tells all, the locality
and the style imitated. It will be remembered that it was Japan
faience which was made at Sceaux by Chapelle.
Fayence (Var.). — Let us finish what we have said concerning the
ceramics of this department, by reducing to its precise value a phrase
of the historian Mezeray. Speaking of the military success of Lesdi-
guieres, who was fighting in Provence for Henry IV., in 1592, he
says, " Fayence, more famed for the earthenware made there than for its
size .... made little resistance." This phrase, based upon an error of
synonymy, cannot be accepted in a ceramic point of view. The fame of
faiences — even their very name in the sixteenth century — came from
the city of Faenza, and not from the little town of Fayence, where cer
tainly did not exist then, and has never existed since, any establishment
for the fabrication of enamelled earthenware.
Maeseilles (Bouches-du-Rhone). — This old Phocaean city has at all
times successfully cultivated the ceramic arts ; one is not then surprised
to find her among the foremost in the open competition for making
enamelled pottery. Baron C. Davillier has found the name of one
Clerissy, a potter, incribed in the fifteenth century in the archives of
the city ; it was equally reserved to him to discover the same name
upon the oldest specimen of Marseilles pottery. A dish with a lion hunt
in the centre, after Tempesta, surrounded by a border of Oriental style,
apparently of Nevers origin, bears on the reverse :
A. Clerissy, a Saint- Jean du Dezert, 1697, a Marseille.
This faience is well worked, the enamel of a blueish white already dis
tinguishes it from the works of Moustiers; but it has one special
characteristic, the alliance of manganese with cobalt ; all the outlines
are of a palish violet ; lozenges of the same tint fill some of the com
partments ; in a word, the products of Saint Jean du Dezert, a suburb of
Marseilles, are easily to be recognised after seeing authentic specimens,
such as those of Baron Davillier, MM. Lucy and Aigoin. Often a cursive
C, or the letters AC, occur under the plates, imitating certain running
ornaments in the Nevers wares.
We have reason to think that the manufactory of A. Clerissy con
tinued during the first years of the sixteenth century. According to the
researches of M. Mortreuil, a second maker of faience, Jean Delaresse,

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— MARSEILLES. 435

established himself about 1709. Between this date and the middle of
the eighteenth century, what were the works of Marseilles ? No doubt
we must seek them among those ascribed to Moustiers, the one
decorated with arabesque borders, and large bouquets of flowers in the
oriental style of the chintz patterns (perses), the other with grotesque
figures. Below, are the names of the potters established at Marseilles about
1750. Agnel and Sauze, out of the Porte de Rome.
Antoine Bonnefoi, near the Porte d'Aubagne.
Boyer, at la Joliette.
Pauehier, out of the Porte d'Aix.
Fesquet and Company, out of the Porte de Paradis.
Leroy aine, out of the Porte de Paradis.
Veuve Perrin fils and Abellard, out of the Porte de Bome.
Joseph Gaspard Robert, at the same place.
Honore Savy, at the same place.
Jean Baptiste Viry, out of the Porte de Noailles, allees de Meilhan.
These works produced extensively, since in 1766 the Abbot of
Expilly informs us that they had exported for the French islands
in America alone, 105,000 lbs. of ware. Some years before, the
Sieur Celles, a merchant of Marseilles, had taken to Paris a quantity of
these wares, which by an ordinance of 1760 he had authority to sell,
notwithstanding the opposition of the company of Parisian potters.
Yet it is at the moment when the porcelain decoration and the painting
of muffle furnaces found' favour in the South, that the products of
Marseilles had a deserved success.
Now that there are in many collections, both public and private, a
number of curious examples, it is more difficult than ever to give the
characters of the fabrication of each workshop. Honore Savy, whose
manufactory existed in 1749, was mentioned in 1765 as possessing a
particular green. We find the green as perfect as possible on pieces
signed by another workman. Savy, we think, has never marked, but
his name appears upon the shield of a grotesque on a plate in bright
green camaieu. When Monsieur, Comte de Provence, (afterwards
Louis XVIII.) went to Marseilles in 1777, he visited Savy 's manufactory,
and was so satisfied with its products, that he allows the potter to give
to his establishment the title of " Manufacture de Monsieur, a
frere du Roi." It is said that in consequence of this privi- **J/^
We Saw had marked his works with a fleur-de-lis (M. 163). *V"
We have seen faiences, probably Marseillais, signed with a
fleur de lis, ornamented and traced either in blue or pink ; a charming
2 p 2

436 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

soup tureen, in the museum at Sevres, classed as having belonged to
Louis XVI., bears this flower enclosed in scrolls, and surmounted by
the royal crown. But there exist so many different products where we
find this symbol that the piece must be carefully studied before
applying to it an origin.
The second potter in order of importance is Robert. The specimen
at Sevres, on which we find his name inscribed in full, is a soup tureen
decorated in green camaieu, with flowers, fishes, and shells, and having
in relief on the lid a group of fishes.
Some polychrome services are specialised by their disposition to
represent marine productions ; others have been called " services aux
insectes ; " the flowers are easily recognised by the disposition of their
Fig. 113.

MARSEILLES TEA-POT. — COLL. E. PASCAL.
long stalks (Fig. 113). In some instances, these flowers are accompanied
, by marine landscapes and subjects delicately painted.
Rtj? » V « Happily Joseph Gaspard Robert has occasionally signed
his works either with a single R, or with the cipher J R
M 164. (M. 164). His faiences are often heightened with gold.
Veuve Perrin rivals by the beauty of her products the two pre
ceding potters ; she made the green of Savy ; she gilded
T 7"> Y/? w^ as mucn brilliancy as Robert ; and she placed
*• her paintings upon varied grounds very pleasing to
the eye. She has always signed (M. 165).
Some Marseilles faiences less remarkable than those of which we
have just been speaking, have on the reverse a B in blue, or in yellow
B ochre (M. 166), attributed to Bonnefoy. The enamel is very
fluid, and fused in the colours of the paintings, which are
m. 166. flowers aD(j b0UqUets.
We know no certain product of the other potters comprised in the

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— TOULOUSE. 437
above list. The number of workshops had diminished at Marseilles at
the time of the Revolution. Eleven signed Glot's petition in 1791 ;
there was about the same number in 1750.
Aubagne, a small town situated at some distance from Marseilles,
imitated, no doubt, the works of this great city. Gournay writes, in
1788, " There are sixteen potteries at Aubagne, and two of very beauti
ful faience, where is made all that can be desired in this style. The
consumption and exportation of both is to the American islands, to Aix,
Marseilles, and Toulon." Languedoc.
The establishments of this province have imitated more or less
those of Moustiers and Marseilles.
Toulouse (Haute Garonne). — M. Vinot has some plates with
grotesques, where the name of this city is written in full. M. Reynolds
has since met with a vase decorated with flowers in blue camaieu,
inscribed — Laurens Basso,
a Toulouza,
le 14 mai 1756.
The most interesting piece we know of is a long dish, of the form of
silver, decorated upon a dry, greyish enamel, with a border of bouquets
and insects, and in the centre of a wreathed medallion, surrounded by
genii, on red, dark ochre, blue and muddy green, is inscribed CART.
TOLOS. Carthusia Tolosensis. The dish therefore had been made
for the service of the Chartreux, and the arms are those of the prior.
From its style and execution, this dish may be supposed anterior to
the piece of Basso, and would date about 1752, an epoch when, accord
ing to the ' Recueil des industries, metiers et professions ' of Toulouse,
there was au establishment of faience in that city.
Maetees, in the same department, has had its works in activity
until 1791. A specimen, belonging to M. Pujol, of Toulouse, has
Fait a Martres, 1775.
Mones is only known to us by Glot's list.
Maeignac (Haute-Garonne).— M. de Lafue, lord of the place,
established there, in 1737, a manufactory which was officially autho
rised by an Order in Council of March 1740, and worked regularly for
nearly eighteen years. The proprietor destroyed it, because he had

438 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

difficulty in finding faithful workmen. In 1758, a Sieur Pons, of the
same place, undertook a new working, and solicited the privileges
necessary to guarantee it. He probably obtained them, since the manu
factory was still working in 1791, as Glot's list shows.
Teeee-Basse, in Comminges, about one league from Marignac. —
In 1740, the Count de Fontenille solicited a privilege to set up a
faiencerie on his property of Terre-Basse, but, in submitting this demand
to the supreme authority, the intendant of Audi remarked that the
manufactory of Terre-Basse ought to procure the clays necessary for
its work at Marignac, where was the establishment of M. de Lafiie,
and if there was reason to grant the permission, it should be simple
and without privilege.
Agen (Lot-et-Garonne). — The town of Agen, has it been the centre
of a current manufactory ? We do not know, nor does the learned
curator of the Museum of Sevres, who has classed under the Agenois
rubric a pharmacy vase with twisted handles, and a dish decorated in
the rocaille style with rather dull enamels. To the Agenois is also
ascribed terrines and table-pieces in the form of figures, the first of
violet ground with white medallions, ornamented with bouquets in
yellow, blue, and green.j
Naebonne (Aude). — Baron C. Davillier has found out the existence
of a manufactory, probably founded in the sixteenth century by Moors
exiled from Spain; it was situated at the place called Les Moulins.
Overlaid first with a golden copper lustre, its products have no doubt
been perpetuated, and it appears to be probable that Narbonne has had
its special pottery.
Montpelliee (Herault). — A Sieur Ollivier founded in that city a
considerable manufactory ; in 1717, he asked that the faiences of
Marseilles might not be imported and sold in the kingdom, and that
permission might be granted him to import the lead and tin necessary
for his works. The second part of his petition only was granted, and
what proves the importance of his products is, that there was remitted
to him on the 2nd August 1718, a passport for 200 quintals of lead
and 50 quintals of tin, at eight ounces weight (poids de marc). In
1729, the manufactory of Ollivier was invested with the title of
royal. About 1770, Sieur Andre Philip, of Marseilles, came to establish
himself at Montpellier ; it is very probable that he took up the works
of Ollivier, for, after information given us by M. Vionnois, one of his
granddaughters, now at an advanced age, remembers having seen the

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— NIMES. 439

royal arms over the door of the house. The style of Philip, better
known than that of Ollivier, resembles the floral decoration of Marseilles ;
the bouquets, in which manganese predominates, are often painted upon
a pale yellow enamel. At the death of Andre, his sons Antoine and
Valentin continued the works; only they transferred their furnaces
from the faubourg of Mmes to a place called the Poids de la
Farine. Anduze (Gard). — Here were specially made glazed wares and
marbled garden pots.
NImes (Gard). — A manufactory existing in 1702, and which, after
known specimens, imitated coarsely the Marseilles decoration with
flowers and butterflies, and the plates a grotesques ; generally, in the
middle of these last, the principal grotesque is replaced by a woman in
polychrome costume carrying a basket.
Castilhon. — The name of this village of the department of Gard is
written under a plate belonging to M. Ed. Pascal ; we see there a
grotesque figure surrounded with wreaths and bouquets, in the style of
Moustiers, executed in camaieu of a yellowish green outlined with
manganese. Vauveet, like Anduze, has made glazed wares ; one piece is signed
by Jean Gautier.
Le Puy (Haute-Loire). — It is not at Le Puy itself, but at Orsilhac
first, afterwards at Brives, that the Sieur Lazerme established, about
1780, a manufactory of faience. In 1783, the States-General of
Languedoc decided on granting a gratuity of 600 livres to the Sieur
Lazerme, merchant of Le Puy, " who has established at great expense,
in his domain of Orsilhac, a manufactory of earthenware whose works
are of the greatest utility, this establishment being unique in the
Velay." M. Paul le Blanc is preparing a work upon this manu
factory, which has been mentioned in 1785 in the ' Almanach general
des Marchands,' and in 1788 by Gournay.
Beam.
Espelette (Basses Pyrenees). — This centre is indicated by Gournay,
in 1788, and we think that it is the same place which is again desig
nated, in 1791, under the name of Espedel, in the list of Glot, who
generally is fantastic in his orthography of names. We know of no
product of Espelette. The vicinity of Spain would lead to the suppo
sition that the decoration resembles those of Moustiers and Alcora.

440 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Guyenne.
Boedeaux (Gironde).— By permission of the 15th January 1714,
Jacques Hustin opened, outside the Porte Saint Germain, a manufactory
which in 1729 had acquired sufficient importance to obtain the authority
to call itself royal. In 1750, after having procured a remission of taxes
upon his products, by an Order in Council of the 24th November 1719,
Hustin solicited a prorogation of his exclusive privilege, which, in the
public interest, was refused to him. It is curious that the products of
so important an establishment should be, as it were, unknown. At
Sevres and at the Universal Exhibition were to be seen pieces having
formed part of the service of the Chartreux of Bordeaux, as indicates a
legend, Cartus. Burdig. Cartusia Burdigalensis ; in the centres are
the arms of Francois d'Escoubleau, Cardinal de Sourdis, conjoined with
those of Brother Ambrose de Gasq (Blaise de Gasq, Baron of Portets,
Counsellor of the Parliament of Bordeaux). The polychrome decoration
which surrounds it is composed of masks, wreaths, and ornaments, in
the Louis XIV. style.
The Chevalier Hustin, director of the affairs of the King, was only
an undertaker ; one will not be astonished in learning that only one
known piece bears his name — the dial of the Exchange of Bordeaux.
M. Charropin has mentioned two of the decorators of the manufactory,
Raymond Monsau and his brother Stephen. The brothers Boyer left
the establishment of veuve Hustin, to found, in 1796, a manufactory of
common ware, in the Rue de la Tresorerie.
In 1783, Bordeaux possessed six workshops, eight were in activity
in 1791. A long-looked-for monograph of the Bordelais potters will
permit no doubt of our distinguishing the works of the various
establishments. Bazas (Gironde).- — Mentioned in Glot's list.
Beegeeac (Dordogne). — Mentioned by Gournay, was still working
in 1791. La Plume (Lot-et-Garonne).— Mentioned in Glot's list.
Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne). — Same authority.
Samadet (Landes). — Not far from Saint Sever, this manufactory
worked from 1732, by virtue of a privilege granted to the Abbe de
Roque'pine ; who displayed in it so much intelligence and taste, that
twenty years later the excellence of the works caused the founder to
obtain an extension of his privilege, indeed, it was found necessary, for
the convenience of buyers, to multiply depots for the sale of the goods.

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— BORDEA UX. 441
M. Tarbouriech thus describes the pottery of the Landes: "The
enamel is fine, and of rather a dull white; flowers and birds skilfully
drawn, form the decoration. Sometimes, dishes with waved edges are
ornamented with handles gracefully imitating interlaced branches.
Generally the vases, cups, and other utensils, have fruits intermixed
with flowers and foliage. Sometimes, also, we find traces of Chinese
imitation, and flowers give place to those grotesque figures, which, by
their unaffected expression of countenance and attractive bonhomie,
make us forgive their typical ugliness."
This description has enabled us to find in commerce the faiences of
Samadet. We have seen again authentic pieces in the hands of
M. Labeyrie, who has besides communicated to us deeds relative to the
manufacture. These pieces which have quite the southern type of forms
imitated from silver plate, are of a thick, white enamel, the colours melt
ing and soft, derived from Moustiers and Marseilles. The bouquets of
flowers are in the style of chintz, iron-red poppies with recumbent
petals, and large lozenge-shaped centres ; small flowers yellow or of a
lilac tint; leaves variegated from yellow to green, and obtained by
a mixture of yellow and blue ; the blue greyish, as if absorbed in the
enamel. We find some specimens in camaieu, in which the blue
extends in wreaths of dots and little flowers, with winding stems inspired
by the style of Moustiers. The works of Samadet have extended to
modern times; to the Abbe Roquepine succeeded M. Dizes, who
played an important part in the Revolution and under the Empire.
The Marquis de Poudens was the last proprietor of the establishment
Auch (Gers). — In 1758, the Sieurs Allemand Lagrange, Dumont
and Company, solicited various privileges for the establishment of an
earthenware establishment in the garden of Lagrange, near the porte
d'Auch, called de la Treille. The products of this establishment appear
to have met with success, for they were sold in Gers concurrently with
those of Toulouse and Samadet. We have not yet been able to determine
the characters of the Auch faiences.

442 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Region of the West.
Aunis and Saintonge.
Saintes (Charente-Inferieure). — Illustrious by the labours of
Palissy, this locality has preserved ceramic traditions, first by con
tinuing the manufactory of sealed earths, and then in proceeding to
white faience. M. Fillon cites a hunting bottle decorated with roses
and tulips, and bearing on one side, within a wreath, the name of the
owner, and on the other this inscription : —
PP.
d V image N.D.,
a Saintes, 1680.
In 1788, Gournay mentioned four manufactories directed by Crouzat,
Dejoye,Rochex aine and jeune ; in 1791, there were still two furnaces
in activity.
Beizamboueg, near Saintes, is one of the establishments, which,
according to De Thou, was erected by Henry IV. In 1600, Enoch
Dupas was at the head of the works, which consisted in faiences sealed
or impressed (imprimees en creux) with various ornaments and glazed
marblings, well incorporated in the glazes ; the reverse of these pieces
was of a plain green.
La Chapelle-des-Pots, near Saintes, is the place where Palissy
found the potters who assisted him in his laborious experiments. They
made here " azurees " and marbled faiences, as in the rest of
Saintonge. Maeans. — Between 1740 and 1745, the Sieur Jean Pierre Roussencq,
originally from Bordeaux, created this manufactory, and made first an
application of the style practised by Hustin, that is, a perverted
D Rouennais style. Later, he sought the Saxon style ; his sig-
' nature, rather rare, is a cipher composed of the letters I P R
M 167
' " (M. 167) ; it is behind a fountain, with the addition of MARAN
1754. Some other products of Marans have a simple initial. We have
seen the first (M. 168) upon a piece in violet camaieu ; the other, more
frequent (M. 169), is to be found upon thick plates

J VjL ~/{/U with polychrome rosettes of rather loose drawing.
Roussencq died 17t
ment was transferred to La Rochelle.

' Roussencq died 17th May 1756, and bis establish-

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— POITIERS. 443
La Rochelle. — When, about 1673, this city founded the Hospice
of Saint-Louis, which soon availed itself of the privileges granted to
establishments of this kind, to have certain manufactories and to sell
their products, the ill will of the trade, the incessant complaints against
the pretended competition of the hospices, soon caused this first
manufactory to be given up. Another, belonging to a Sieur Jacques
Bornier, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, closed in 1735,
but, in 1743, Jean Briqueville bought the property and re-lighted
the furnaces. The Museum of Sevres has a plate signed I B., which
is attributed to Jean Briqueville. As to the works originating at
Marans after 1756, its style was that of Strasburg, exaggerated by the
brightness of its colours ; roses of most singularly elongated deformity
may help to recognise its products. Angoumois.
Angouleme (Charente). — It is not in Angouleme, but in the
suburbs of Houveau that the manufactory was situated, directed, in
1784, by Veuve Sazerac, Desrocher et fils. The Museum at Limo
ges has a curious lion, seated and supporting a shield with the
arms of France; round the base is written in Roman characters:
A ANGOULEME DE LA FABR1QUE DE MADAME, V. S. D.,
ET F. 28 AOUT. Behind the shield is the date 1784. The manu
factory was still working in 1791, it is now in the possession of M.
Durandeau. Poitou.
Poitiees (Vienne). — The ceramic works of Poitiers must go back
to a remote date, yet the oldest specimens met with by M. Fillon,
historian of this country, are little figures of pipe-clay, one of which
is inscribed under the foot : —
A. MORREINE,
Poitiers. 1752.
In 1778, Pierre Pasquier solicited the protection of the minister,
M. Bertin, in order to escape the restrictions put on the extraction of
the clays necessary for his work. The wares of this centre appear to
be in the Rouen style, in blackish blue upon a slightly vitreous enamel.
There are some in the Museum of Sevres.

444 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Montbeenage, suburb of Poitiers. — About 1776, furnaces were set
up here by a Sieur Pasquier, who soon took as partner, Felix Faucon,
son of a poitevin printer. The Museum of Sevres has a plate deco
rated in blue, with two F's and a falcon on a tablet, mark of the
printer of Poitiers ; and hence, considered as that of Felix Faucon.
It would not be impossible that this last had alone directed Mont-
bernarge, and that his partner had gone to establish himself at
Poitiers, there would then be identity between these two potters
of the same name ; and the individual merit of Faucon would explain
itself. Chatelleeault (Vienne). — In 1641, a certain Jehan Leone, of
Poggio, and " maistre de fayencerie," obtained of Louis XIII. letters
of naturalisation. Oieon (Deux-Sevres). — We have described at page 337, the fine
faience of this locality ; the faiences properly so called which succeeded
them are generally coarser, and savour more of the influence of
Palissy than that of Bernart and Cherpentier; Generally jaspered,
they are loaded with reliefs of no style, all appearing to indicate that
the workshop did not long prolong its labours.
Thouaes (Deux-Sevres).— The inventory of the goods of a shop
keeper at Fontenay, makes known that he possessed eleven dozen plates
of Thouars' make ; eight other dozen blue, of the same make ; and a
dozen dishes, large and small — "avec histoires." Drawn up in 1627,
this inventory is very instructive, as it makes known the name of a
manufactory specialised as continuing a style of decoration brought
from Italy.
Rigne, near Thouars.— It is from here that the clays fitted for
making faience were derived, and when M. Fillon finds mention, in
1629, of five dozen plates of " terre de Rigne"," he does not hesitate in
considering them as enamelled. It is in this place, that he considers
to have been made the tiles for the paving of the bedroom of Marie
de la Tour, Duchesse de la Tremouille, at the chateau of Thouars.
Now these paving-tiles, of which there are examples at the
L ^ Louvre, Cluny, and Sevres, are of a fabrication very similar
1636' to that of the tiles of Ecouen, and bear marks of Italian
processes. Some are signed (M. 170).
If the works of Rigne momentarily ceased, they were re-established
in 1771, by a gentleman named La Haye, the furnace was in a farm
called Yversais, and two overseers, Perchin and Cornilleau, directed it
successively. In 1784 M. la Haye wished to let the establishment ; it

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— RENNES. 445
then produced eommon plates, in which the name of the persons for
whom they were intended was inscribed under the image of their
patron saint.
Chef-Boutonne.— A Sieur Drillat jeune made there, in 1778,
common faience.
Saint-Poechaiee. — A ware with the reverse brown was made here.
Fontenay (Vendee). — Vessels of azure and marbled earth were
made here between 1558 and 1581, under the direction of Sieur
Abraham Valloyre ; now, as one finds mention of a Nicolas Valloyre
in 1609, it would be possible that this last will have produced faience.
Ile-d'Elle (Vendee). — This place, so rich in clay, invited a ceramic
establishment; the 22nd May 1636, David Holland asked authority
to found there a manufactory of faience. From 1735 to 1742 Pierre
Girard had works whence issued a barrel destined to his brother
" Joseph Girard, notere." This work, decorated with peacocks and
trees, is signed, in 1741, by Pierre Girard.
Montaigu. — The name of this Vendean establishment appears in
Glot's List.
Apeemont and Mallievee have no right to appear here except for
remembrance, for their works do not seem to have been prolonged
beyond the sixteenth century. Bretagne.
Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine). — Let us begin by establishing this fact,
Brittany possessed a manufactory of faience in the seventeenth century ;
as is proved by a tumulary plaque of rather large dimensions, richly
enamelled, bearing the inscription, " Janne Le Bouteillier, dame de
Duplecix Coialu, decedee le 29me ianvier l'an 1653," with cross bones
underneath. Has this piece so important from the date it affords, issued
from an establishment at Rennes itself? A work long promised, of
Dr. Aussant and M. Andre, counsellors at the Court of Rennes, will, no
doubt, soon make it known to us; fragments of the same nature,
found at the abbey of Saint Sulpice-la-Foret, would lead to the sup
position that the use of this style of monument was very general.
We attribute equally to the seventeenth century faience vases, very
white, decorated with wreaths of large flowers in fine blue, or in blue
and citron yellow, such as the vases originally made for the hospital of
Saint Yves and the general hospital of Rennes ; they are of frequent
occurrence in Brittany.

446

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

The first positive date we can inscribe in the history of the potteries
of Rennes, is the permission granted, the 11th July 1748, to Jean
Forasassi, called Barbarino, a Florentine, to establish a manufactory
of enamelled ware in the quarter of the Capucins. These works
continued for several years, but its products remain to be found.
Another workshop arose in the rue Hue, and became very extensive.

Fie. 114.

FOUNTAIN OP RENNES FAIENCE.
One of its most ancient pieces is a group of fine white enamel, repre
senting Louis XV., Hygeia, and Brittany, after a composition of
Lemoyne. The original group, commemorative of the King's restora
tion to health, had, in conformity with a decision of the States of Brit
tany, been cast in bronze and set up at Rennes in 1754 ; this is ten

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— RENNES. 447
years later than "Bourgouin," as he signs himself, made a ceramic reduc
tion of the group, which denotes a certain practical skilfulness, if not
great success in drawing. Where the works of the rue Hue show them
selves in all their lustre, is in sumptuous pieces with waved outlines
like those of silver plate, and with bouquets accompanied by graceful
arabesques. Nothing is more interesting in this style than a fountain
and basin, seen at the Universal Exhibition, and other pieces belong
ing to Dr. Aussant and M. Edmund Pascal bearing, " Fait a Rennes,
rue Hue, 1769 and 1770 " (Fig. 114). What would astonish in these
pieces were it not for a revelation contained in the memoir of which we
have spoken, relative to Moustiers and Marseilles, is that they have a
southern decoration; but we know that Marseilles workmen were
called to Rennes, and carried there the soft colours, the mixed green
of Moustiers, and the system of floral and wreath ornament. If
the Rennes faiences cause themselves to be remarked for their dis
tinguished form, rococo reliefs without exaggeration, and a pure, milky
enamel, their painting is very dull, the dark manganese violet pre
dominates, aud the green becomes dirty by the use of black height
enings ; the yellow only remains as fresh as the blue. In addition to
Bourgoin, whose name appears upon several pieces, a certain Baron
has signed, in 1775, decorations in dark violet camaieu, and Choisi a
soup-tureen without date.
No doubt, Dr. Aussant and M. Andre will name the proprietor of
the establishment in their industrial history of Brittany. In 1788,
Gournay mentions two establishments by the Veuve Dulattey and
Jolivet. There was only one in activity in 1791. The 'Almanach
General du Commerce ' states that the workshops at Rennes make
everything for table or household use. In fact, from 1760 to 1785,
we find plates with patron saints, and marriage cups, in ordinary ware ;
portable stoves with two handles, or decorative stoves, either poly-
chromic or simply jaspered, issued since 1774 from the rue Hue.
Another frequent fabrication is that of small figures or groups of
saints ; these were sold on fete days or in the places of pilgrimage ;
thus, we have met with a Virgin, with the inscription : " N : : D : : De
Gueluin." Renac (Ille-et-Vilaine). — We fiud this name in Glot's list; and
have a plate with bouquets, in the style of Rennes, but of more »«-
common faience, marked R. (M. 171). As no sign of this _J\
kind appears on the Rennes pottery, we think we may attribute m. 171.
it to Renac.

448 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Nantes (Loire-Inferieure). — The Italians Ferro and Ribe created
there in 1588 and 1625, manufactories of white faience, after them
came Charles Guermeur and Jacques RoUand, whom M. Fillon finds
mentioned in an act of the 20th February 1654; their oven was
situated behind the church of Saint-Similien. In 1744, a Sieur
Jean Colin sold the house in which he had established, in 1737, a
workshop which had not succeeded. Le Roy de Montilliee had, in
1751, his manufactory, whose history and divers fortunes are set forth
in a valuable document which M. Fillon has furnished to collectors
in his work on the ' Art de Terre chez les Poitevins.'
Upon the request presented to the King in bis Council by Joseph Perret, registrar of
the Admiralty of Nantes, and Mathurin Fourmy, merchant in the same city, setting forth
that in the year 1751 a society was formed, under the name of Le Boy de Montilliee and
Company, to establish a manufactory of faience at Nantes, the partners not finding any
ground fitted for tbe execution of their project, except a part of the moat of the city of
Nantes situated between the walls of that city and the square known under the name of
Mothe-Saint-Andre', caused to be constructed there all the buildings proper for the working
of the projected manufactory; furnished it with all necessary utensils and materials;
they caused workmen to come from different parts of the kingdom, and with much trouble
and expense succeeded in forming this establishment. They had reason to be satisfied from
the first working, and the manufacture had improved more and more. The Sieur Bellabre,
who was oue of the partners, thought that, for the solidity of the establishment, it was im
portant it should be invested with the authority of his Majesty ; he presented a request to
the Council under the name of the Sieur Le Boy de Montilliee and Company, and obtained
a decree the 7th March 1752, by which his Majesty authorised the said establishment, and
allowed it to continue to make earthenwares of every kind, on the condition of maintaining
it without discontinuance in a working state. The society was afterwards dissolved, and
the Sieur Le Boy, as well as the other partners, ceded to the Sieur Bellabre their interest in
the manufactory. This last, by meaus of this cession, has found himself alone at the head
of the said manufactory, and has exactly fulfilled the conditions of the order in Council of
7th March 1752. But his affairs having since become deranged, he has been proceeded
against, so as to sell the manufactory in 1771. The petitioners have become the pur
chasers under the name of the Sieur du Coudray, and continue the working of it with the
greatest success, as is attested by two certificates delivered the 26th September and 3rd
October 1772, by the judge consuls of Nantes, representing the head of the commerce of the
city, and by the municipal officers and police of the said city. They attest in it that the wares
made in this manufactory are of the best quality ; that the inhabitants of Nantes and of the
whole province make use of them, and that the dealers provide themselves with them for
their trade on the Guinea coast, the colonies, and abroad ; that the petitioners find main
tenance for a largo number of artists and workmen, and that so useful an establishment
deserves encouragement and favour. The petitioners having in their favour such attesta
tions propose to petition his Majesty to be pleased to grant to their establishment the title
of Eotal Manufactory, and to allow them to place over the principal gate the arms of his
Majesty with the said inscription, and also to establish there a porter with tho livery of
his Majesty. The States of Brittany, convinced of the utility of the manufactory of the
petitioners, have passed a resolution by which they have charged their deputies to solicit
this favour of his Majesty. In the second place, the petitioners will ask that it may be
allowed them to mark the goods of their manufactory with a mark representing a fleur-
de-lis and with a cipher composed of the united letters of the petitioners. They will
observe on this point, that there are in the said city of Nantes two other manufactories of
faience lately established, and which his Majesty has not authorised. The wares made there
are of the most inferior quality, and, as that of the petitioners has not yet been distinguished
by any particular mark, they are confounded with each other, which infinitely injures the

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— NANTES. 449
reputation of the fabric of the petitioners, and much to their prejudice. It is to put an end
to this confusion that the petitioners ask permission to mark their wares with a distinctive
mark. For this cause the petitioners would request that it would please His Majesty to
grant to their manufactory the title of Boyal Manufactory, with permission to place over
he principal door of the said manufactory a picture, with the arms of his Majesty and the
Baid inscription, and to establish there a porter with his Majesty's livery; as also to allow the
petitioners to mark the wares which would be made in their manufactory with a mark re
presenting a fleur de lis, and with a cipher composed of the initial letters of the petitioners ;
and that in execution of the decree which will be given upon the present request, ordering
that all necessary letters shall be sent as required. The request heard, signed Boux, counsel
for the petitioners ; the certificates of the municipal officers of the city of Nantes and of the
Judges Consuls representing the General of the commerce of the said city, of the 22nd and
23rd of last April, from which it results that the faience the petitioners cause to be made is
of the best quality, and that their establishment is so much the more useful as it employs
a great number of workmen, together with the advice of the Sieur Dupleix, intendant and
commissary appointed for the province of Brittany, and the report of the Sieur Abbe Terray,
counsellor in ordinary and of the royal council, controller general of the finances — the King
in his council has permitted and permits, the Sieurs Perret and Fourmy to put upon the
principal entrance-door of the manufactory of faience, of which they are proprietors at
Nantes, a picture of the arms of the King, with this inscription, Boyal Manufactory, and to
establish there a porter with the livery of his Majesty; permits them also to mark the
wares which will he made in the said manufactory with a mark representing a fleur de lis
and a cipher composed of the initial letters of the names of the said Sieurs Perret and
Fourmy, and there will be upon the present decree, if required, all necessary letters sent.
Made at the Council of State of the King, held at Marly the 26th July, 1774.
(Signed) Bekgeket.
The establishment of Le Roy, retaken by Perret and Fourmy, has
made us lose the parentage of the manufactories of Nantes, let us then
mention Jerome Arnauld, who worked in 1754, and Francois Cacault,
place Viarmes, who caused to be executed in 1756, a plan of the city
of Bordeaux by a certain Colin ; perhaps this may be the same who
had established himself head of the works nineteen years before.
The physician Lhote, assisted by a workman named Castelnau, had
opened another establishment in 1753. The widow Martin, whose
furnace was in the parish of Saint-Sebastian, appeared in 1767.
Perret and Fourmy, with their official title of royal manufactory,
appear to have absorbed all these little enterprises ; yet the ' Almanach
General du Commerce' does not mention them in 1788, and cites
Derivas fils, "whose faience is equal to that of Nevers and Rouen."
At the time of Glot's advertisement, Nantes had only one manufactory,
probably that of Derivas, partner to Fourmy fils, who at the same
time made porcelain. We see that here information is super
abundant, and the sole difficulty of the historian, is to find the works
of this crowd of artisans, guided by one sole thought, working with
one aim, that of approaching their products to those then in fashion,
and having besides no sign to distinguish the one from the other.
Notwithstanding the right officially conferred upon Perret and
2 G

45o HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Fourmy pere, to mark with the fleur de lis, M. Fillon finds great
difficulty in recognising their works; he suspects that they may be
faiences with bouquets, painted in the enamel furnace, and gene
rally edged with a bright red and almost brown line, not obtained from
gold, but perhaps from iron. Some sprigs partake of this colour,
which is also used to trace the fleur de lis beneath.
These faiences are in fact well characterised, but much has yet
to be done to determine and class the various products of Nantes, and
the kinds derived from the Rouen style are especially difficult to
distinguish. Le Ceoisic (Loire-Inferieure). — It is a Fleming, Gerard Demigennes
who, in the sixteenth century established there a ceramic centre;
Horacio Borniola, an Italian, succeeded him in 1627, and himself left
the works to John Borniola and to Beatrice his sister, and wife of
one named Davys. The potteries exhibited at Rennes under the
head of Le Croisic, perfectly evidenced their origin ; white, generally
gadrooned and decorated with scrolls and flowers, in blue and citron
yellow, they resemble the old products of Antwerp and the Flanders,
and must have served, in their turn, as types for the old fabrica
tions of Rennes.
Machecoul only appears in order. The ceramic works of Jacopo
and Loys Ridolfi of Chaffagiolo, who had established themselves here,
appear to have ceased in the sixteenth century.
Quimpee (Finistere). — A document preserved at Sevres states: —
"There was at Quimper a manufactory of enamelled faience in imita
tion of Rouen, established in 1690. It supplied a part of Brittany."
The products attributed to this town are of a grey enamel, with large
scrolls reserved upon a blackish-blue ground ; it is dull in appearance,
and difficult to separate from other Breton faiences.
Quimper had also a manufactory of earthenware, with yellow
engobe, relieved by red pastillages. This kind was previously made
at Rohu (Morbihan).
Quimpeele (Finistere). — The enamelled wares at this place much
resemble those of Rennes ; a charming example in relief, heightened
with colours, appeared at the Breton Exhibition.

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— ORLEANS. 45 1
Maine.
Malicoene (Sarthe). — Glazed wares a reseaux, almost always of
a brown jasper melted in the glaze ; about 1700.
Ligeon (Sarthe). — Vases in relief and gable pinnacles (epis) of pale
jasper, in which a chamois yellow prevails ; these epis have sometimes
masks of good style, but always very inferior to the Norman products.
Specimens may be seen at Sevres and in the collection of the Comte
de Liesville. Couecelles. — This locality, very near to Ligron, has had its special
potter, Guimonneau-Forterie, a licensed surgeon. There are several
pieces of his signed and dated in the collections of Le Mans ; M. Le-
comte- mentions some of 1762, 1774, and a soup tureen, inscribed in
moulded characters: "Par G. Forterie chirurgiena Courcelles 1783."
We have seen a puzzle jug, spotted with green, inscribed " Forterie
pere, ancien chirurgien a Courcelles 1789." At this period, Guimon-
neau had no doubt abandoned the lancet and the bistoury, and places
his quality as pere to distinguish his works from those of his son, a
surgeon and potter as himself.
Pontvalain (Sarthe). — The works of this locality appear confined
to flower vases and common wares.
Region op the Centee.
Orleanais.
Oeleans (Loiret). — The ceramic history of Orleans is full of un
certainty and contradictions. The first establishment of which we find a
trace is that of which M. Piot has found in the archives of the town
the constitutive decree.
Order of the Council of State of the King granting exclusive privi
lege in favour of the Sieur Jacques-Etienne Dessaux de Romilly, for the
royal manufactory of faience of purified white earth, established at
Orleans, of the 13th March 1753.
" Upon the request presented to the King in his Council, by Jacques Etienne Dessaux de
Bomilly, director of the royal manufactory of glass of Saint Gobain, showing that after a
labour and research of ten years, and considerable expense, he has succeeded in finding the
secret to compose a faience the whiteness and quality of which are superior to all that has
been done until now ; that he is in a condition to make some with success, not only every
kind of fa'ience ware and others for use and ornament, but also other extraordinary pieces, as
flower-pots, figures for gardens, and centre-pieces for desserts; that this fayence is, in
the interior as well as the exterior, of a very fine white; exempt from impressions of heat
or cold, of the air or of damp, qualities which will render it as useful as agreeable to the
public ; which have been recognised by the trial pieces made of it, which have been examined
2 g 2

452 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

by the Sieur Hellot, of the Academy of Sciences ; that with a view to render himself useful
to the State and to the public, he would desire to establish in the kingdom one or several
manufactories ; but that in order to form such establishments, he wants, before entering
into new expenses, to be authorised to do it, to prevent the workmen to whom he will be
obliged to confide his secret being able to cause him any prejudice. For which the
petitioner requests it may please his Majesty : 1st. To grant to him and to his heirs and
assigns an exclusive privilege for thirty years to form either at Orle'ans, or in any other city
of the kingdom be may later find more fitting for the public good, one or several manu
factories in which he will cause to be made all kinds of works of faience of his composition,
with permission to cause them to be sold and retailed in the city and suburbs of Paris, and
in all the extent of the kingdom, with prohibition to all persons of whatever quality and
condition they may be, to make any like establishment or to counterfeit the said works,
which will be marked with a particular mark, on pain of confiscation of the goods, utensils,
and materials to the profit of the petitioner, and with the sum of four thousand livres
penalty. 2ndly. That the said establishment shall have the title of Boyal Manufactory, and,
in consequence, it will be permitted to the petitioner to place over the principal entrance an
inscription with these words : " Manufacture royale de fayance et terre blanche purifie'e,"
and to have a porter with the livery of his Majesty. 3rdly. To exempt him, his heirs and
assigns, from all public charges, as guardian, trustee, and keeper ; and as much for them as
for their clerks and workmen, of payment of rates, taxes, drawing for the militia, and lodging
of soldiers. 4thly. Prohibition to all proprietors of porcelain and fayance manufactories
to employ, in their workshops, any of the workmen who will have worked in the manu
factory of the petitioner, unless that they have a ticket of leave dated two months before
the day that they present themselves, on pain of one thousand livres penalty. 5thly. To
commit the Sieurs Intendant and Commissary assigned to the place where will be the said
establishment, to know and judge all disputes which may arise between the petitioner and
the workmen of the said manufactory, circumstances and dependancies, for all that may
concern the execution of the said privilege. 6thly. To order, moreover, that upon the
judgment given, letters patent will be sent out.
" Considering the said request, together with the advice of the Sieur Intendant and Com
missioner appointed for the generality of Orle'ans ; Having heard the report, and the King
being in his Council, has permitted, and does permit, to the said Sieur Dessaux de Bomilly,
his heirs and assigns, to establish in the town of Orle'ans a manufactory to make there, exclu
sively of all others, during the space of twenty years, all sorts of works of fa'ience, in white
earth of his composition, on the condition on his part of putting in a year the said manufac
tory in a working state, and that the faience that will be worked there will be marked with
the letter 0, crowned and painted in zaffre blue, under the glaze. Permits him to cause to
be sold and retailed the said faiences in the city and suburbs of Paris, as well as in all the
extent of the kingdom, with prohibition to all persons of whatever quality and condition
they may be, to form, during the period of the said privilege, like establishments in the
extent of ten leagues in the environs of the said city of Orle'ans, and to counterfeit the said
works, on pain of confiscation of the goods, utensds, and materials, of four thousand livres
fine, and of all expenses and damages. His Majesty wills that this said establishment have
the title of Boyal Manufactory ; allows in consequence to the said undertaker to cause to
be placed over his principal door, a tablet with an inscription bearing these words : ' Manu
facture royale de fayance en terre blanche purifie'e,' and to have there a porter with the
livery of his Majesty. Orders besides, that as well as the said Sieur de Bomilly, his heirs
and assigns, the clerks and principal workmen employed in the said manufactory, shall be
taxed moderately by one and the same scale in the list of the poll tax of the city of
Orle'ans, to the exception of those who by themselves or their wives carry on any other
trade, in which case the said clerks and workmen will be subject to the poll tax for the said
reason only. Wills also they shall be exempt from lodging soldiers, even the married clerks
and workmen, provided they carry on no other trade ; that all those who are unmarried, and
those who are married under the age of 20 years, shall enjoy exemption from the militia.
His Majesty makes express prohibitions and inhibitions to all proprietors of porcelain and
faience manufactories to receive and employ in their workshops any of the workmen who
will have been employed in the manufactory of the said Sieur de Bomilly, without they
are provided with a ticket of leave signed by him or by the director ot the said manu-

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE. 453
factory, dated two months before the day on which they will have presented themselves,
under the penalties set forth by the regulation of the 2nd January, 1749. It will be required
that the director of the said manufactory shall prepare, every year, a statement of the clerks
and principal workmen working there, the which statement shall be represented to the
Sieur Intendant and Commissary appointed for the generalship of Orle'ans that his Majesty
has appointed and does appoint to take cognisance of and decide as well, except the appeal
to the Council, all disputes which may arise between the said Sieur de Bomilly and the
clerks and workmen as from other circumstances and dependencies by reason of the execu
tion of the said privilege ; prohibiting the parties to appeal elsewhere, and to all his courts
and judges to take cognizance on pain of the proceedings becoming void and annulled, and
of all expenses and damages. His Majesty enjoins the said Sieur Intendant to see to the
execution of the present decree upon which all necessary letters will be sent.
" Made at the Council of State of the King, his Majesty being present, held for the
Finances at Versailles the third of March, one thousand seven hundred and forty-three.
(Signed) " Bouiltje.
" Charles Amable Honore Barentin, Chevalier d'Hardirilliers, the Bellerneries and other
places, councillor of the King, &c, in order that the present decree shall be executed, &c,
30th September, 1753.
" Begistered at the registry of the Hotel de Ville of Orleans, 21st November, 1753."
This decree was carried into effect. In 1755 a Sieur Leroy was
director of the manufactory; but in 1757, Charles-Claude Gerault-
Daraubert, having bought back the shares of the different shareholders,
found himself the sole proprietor of the establishment, and gave it an
extraordinary impulse, soon uniting porcelain to his other productions.
The mark mentioned in the decree, and which would appear to have
been widely spread, is, on the contrary, very rare. We only know of
one piece on which it occurs. A Chinese seated, with his hands
catching hold of the divergent branches of a tree, unfortunately
broken, but which had terminated with two nozzles, it being a two-
branched candlestick in the Saxon style." This interesting specimen,
exhibited at Auxerre by M. Durut, has enabled us to recognise the
origin of several unmarked pieces, especially some little figures in the
Gasnault collection, which appeared to resemble soft Italian pottery
in their colour and glaze. The author of these figures, Jean Louis,
is certainly not wanting in talent, yet there arose between him and
Gerault Daraubert disputes which called for the intervention of the
authorities. The petition of the artist is most curious ; first, because it
makes known to us his industrial peregrinations, and next that it
initiates us in the habits of the workshops, and the interior life of the
artists of that time.
" The Sieur Louis, working sculptor, in the manufactory of fayanee at Orleans, supplicates
humbly, and represents to your Grace that he was called from Strasburg by the undertaker
of the manufactory of Sceaux, whence the parties concerned in the establishment as that of
Orleans, penetrated with the injustice he experienced, called him and agreed with him to
the clauses and conditions set forth in the contract, of which a copy is annexed. These
conditions were dictated by mutual good faith, and on a certain knowledge of the

454 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

talents oi the petitioner, whose works have been honoured with the presence of Monseigneur,
who deigned to give them some value by his praises.
" Then the Sieur Leroy, director of the manufactory, was a religious observer of the treaty
made with the petitioner ; he had some consideration for him ; a separate room to exercise
tranquilly his talents, some indulgence for the hours of the repose which is absolutely necessary
to the workman who invents, meditates, and operates at the same time; all then was
dictated by justice and humanity. Now the Sieur Ge'rault, purchaser of the shares of the
different parties concerned, and guided by a system of economy, proposes to extend it to the
salary of the petitioner; the 1248 livres per year which he enjoys by the terms of the said
contract, appears to him a burden of which he desires to rid himself; in consequence, he
does not cease to vex the Sieur Louis by all kinds of means : no more consideration, no more
private room ; thrown among all kinds of workmen and distracted by their clamour, it
requires that he should redouble his tension of mind in order that his works should not
bear marks of his disturbance ; and the petitioner is so much the more wronged, that,
according to the contract, there is made to him, for each holiday, a larger reduction than
the amount of his salary ; that is to say, of four livres ten sols. To these vexations have
succeeded imputations and unjust and captious propositions ; the Sieur Ge'rault has circu
lated abroad that the Sieur Louis was become infirm, he has asserted that he did not fulfil
his duty ; he proposed to put the petitioner to piece-work, to be himself the arbitrary
valuer of his works, and thus to annul a contract which he had dictated and signed him
self; in short, without any regard to justice, he wishes to enslave and vilify » workman
whom he before had sought, and to defraud him of that which he had assured to him by
writing, as he has frustrated verbal promises. He has flattered himself, Monseigneur, to sur
prise you equally by statements without foundation ; but the justice of your Grace, in ac
cordance with the supremacy of your learning, and the protection your Grace deigns to grant
to talents called into France, have made him suspend his judgment ; he has paid attention
to the faith due to a contract passed freely and authentically, and has reserved to himself
to pronounce after the petitioner will have cleared up the imuptations made against him.
For these causes the Sieur Louis humbly supplicates Monseigneur that he will be pleased
to admit him into his presence to hear his justification, and contradict what the Sieur
Ge'rault may have advanced contrary to the interests and reputation of the petitioner, Sc."
This dispute is not the only one which arose in the Orleans
manufactory. The Intendant of the generality received a complaint
from another sculptor, Bernard Huet, who claimed the payment of
certain works executed at a price agreed upon, and which he reckoned
thus : —
Figure of 8 feet, 1 00 livres.
Two figures of 4 feet, 100 livres.
Two models, 36 livres.
The Sieur Gerault, on his side, maintained that the fixed price for a
figure of 8 feet was 36 livres ; that during an absence he had been
obliged to make, Madame Gerault had settled the price with the com
plainant, viz. : —
A figure to represent Bacchus, from 3 \ feet to 4 feet, 24 livres.
A figure to represent Pomona, same size, 24 livres.
A group of about 3 feet, with two figures, "La Feuille a l'envers,"
36 livres. A group of 3 feet, with two figures, the " Broken Shoe," 36 livres.
The inquiry opened ; it appeared that Huet was very disorderly,

0

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE. 455
preferring drink to labour, and seeking high prices to work less, and
give himself up to intemperance.
Two questions arise on reading these documents; first, were the
figures 8 feet high made like the small ones of purified white earth ?
and next, how is it that an establishment provided with an important
staff should have produced so little that we find but one piece
stamped with the official seal which was to secure its success ?
The mark (M. 172) of the specimen in the Durut collection is
, . ' M. 172.
this :
We know none of the figures of Bernard Huet, unless we
should attribute to him little groups enamelled in colours, such as
Belisarius, Henry IV. and Sully, &c, which are signed by impres
sion with the retrograde letters T3VH. We have frequently met
with these groups in Brittany, but never seen that any came from
Orleans. Has table ware of faience been made in the establishment of
Gerault Daraubert ? There is no reason to think so, his fabrication
being particularly extended to porcelain : we shall also see further that
at the visit of Monsieur to Orleans, in 1777, the manufacturers
appeared only to occupy themselves with the soft and hard varieties of
translucent pottery.
In 1776, the Orleanais Almanac does not mention the establishment
of Gerault, rue du Bourdon Blanc ; but it cites that of Meziere, ad
joining the Dames de la Croix, and of Meziere jeune, rue de la Grille.
Two years later, Fedele made faiences, rue du Devidet.
In 1797, all these establishments had disappeared, the Widow
Baubrueil was building works on the site of the Carmelites, andAsseli-
neau Grammont made, upon the poultry-market, coloured and marbled
pottery in imitation of English.
Saint-Marceau, suburb of Orleans. — The Orleanais Almanac
indicates in this place, 1788, a workshop of which the directors
were the Sieurs Leroy-Dequoy and Goullu-Duplessis.
Gien (Loiret). — This name, with an illegible date, has been taken
from a plateau of common faience, decorated with polychrome flowers
in the Marseilles style.
Saint Die (Loir-et-Cher). — Still in exercise in 1791, according to
Glot's list.
Chaumont-sue-Loiee. — We have only to mention this place as the
residence of Jean Baptiste Nini, author of an interesting series of
medallions in terra cotta of extreme delicacy. The greater number

456 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
were at the Exhibition, at the same time with one of the moulds which
served to produce them.
ChAteaudun (Eure-et-Loir). — The Duke of Chevreuse had ob
tained a privilege for the erection of a manufactory in this town ;
in 1755 the Sieurs Pierre Bremont and Gabriel Jouvet, directors,
opposed the manufactory of Orleans carrying away clays from Mamers,
whence the establishment was supplied. In 1788 Gournay still mentions
Chateaudun, whose products are yet to find.
Nivernais.
Nevees (Nievre) — This ceramic locality calls for serious study, for
it has had the greatest influence upon the French manufacture. It
deserves its special history, which has been given by M. du Broc de
S^ganges, to whose work we refer the reader for precise details and sure
information. Has M. du Broc said all? Evidently not, for science
advances rapidly in the times in which we live ; and besides, truth is
always difficult to discover there where fables, resting upon facts which
have given them the appearance of reality, have long had their course.
The accession of Louis of Gonzaga to the duchy of Nevers by his
marriage with Henrietta of Cleves, the eldest of the " Three Graces,"
was a signal for the development of the arts and sciences in the Nivernais.
There, as in some other centres, Italians were sent for, and their works
serving as types, we see the new industries manifest themselves.
We will not seek what will have been the first works executed at
Nevers by the foreigners, but will take the ceramic industry from the
time when it became settled in the hands of some gentlemen of
Albissola, on the riviera of Genoa ; we mean the Conrade. But before
fixing the individual part they may have had in the Nivernais in
dustry, let us appreciate the importance of the manufacture by a chrono
logical table of the establishment of the different manufactories.
1608. Eue Saint Genest, 12. The brothers Conrade, partners, whose works go back to
1602 : successors ; Garilland, Nicolas Hudes, his widow, de Champroud.
1632. Eue de la Tartre, 4. Barthelemi Bourcier, enameller; Pierre Moreau, in 1749,
then Jean Champesle.
1652. The " Ecce Homo,'' rue Saint Genest, 20. Nicolas Estienne, Louis Thonnelier de
Mambret, Jean Chevalier Lestang.
1652. "The Ostrich," rue Saint Genest, 11. Pierre Custode, partner to Esme Godin,
then alone ; Enfert.
1716. Bue de la Cathe'drale, 1. Gounot.
1725. Place Mosse'. Prysie de Chazelles, de Bonnaire.
1749. Bue d,e la Tartre, 14. Pierre Charles Boizeau Deville.
175 ? " TheVorld's End " rue du Croux, 10. Perrony, Petit Enfert.

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— NEVERS. 457
1760. " Bethlehem,'' rue dela Tartre, 16. Michel Prou, Jolly, Claude Levesque, Jacques
Serizier in 1772.
1760. "La Boyale," rue de Singe, 13. Gautheron et Mottret.
, , ? Eue de la Tartre, 12. Halle.
1761. Bue de la Tartre, 26. Mathurin Ollivier.
These dates, taken from M. du Broc's work, do not appear to be all
exact ; for, in 1743, there were already eleven establishments at Nevers,
and a decree of the 29th May decided that no more should be set up,
the production exceeding the demand, and the price of wood increasing
from the excess of consumption. This decree fixed even at eight, for the
future, the number of manufactories in "the Province of the Nivernais."
The first feeling of the collector after the examination of this list,
would be to find out the products of each establishment ; this is not
possible. At Nevers, signatures and marks are an exception, and we
will first quote the scanty number we have gathered. The oldest speci
men known is a Virgin seen by M. . ~ _ -. _
Fillon, produced in the workshop J: V OOuZcX/tU' C\J\£MXaY^
of the Conrade, and bearing on the 107.Z
reverse (M. 173) : M" m'
Mark 174 is the signature of Denis Lefebvre, employed by the
same manufacturers, and is inside the pedestal of a statue •»* *T7t
representing the Virgin offering a fruit to her Divine Al'JL. ^
Son ; upon the pedestal is Sancta Maeia oea pro ' 6j?6
nobis, and the date 1636. M- m-
Jacques Bourdu, who worked at Antoine's, has used this £j\\
monogram (M. 175) : '0
M. 175.
Marks 176 are the initials of Henri Borne, who produced some
statuettes of a good style, espe- -|_» -r\ „ _
daily that of Saint Henry, his ¦** ** y^ JE .JjOVXK^
patron. A Saint Stephen of the jO %9 ? 16153
same date has the signature of a-M 176_ l' M. 177.
Etienne Borne (M. 177) :
Mark 178 indicates a work of Francois Bodrigues. 'J.A..J734: M. 178.
At 1734 is to be placed the equestrian figure of Saint Hubert, given
to the museum at Varzy by M. Grasset aine, keeper of the museum.
It is signed, F. Haly, 1734.
In 1764, Henri Marais signed in full a puzzle pot. As to the cipher
(M. 179) on an annular vase in the museum of Sevres, as- <-*Q'
signed to Jacques Seigne, we think it indicates the name of *xJ'
the owner, not that of the artist. The sign N (M. 180) in

458 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
which some see the initial of Nevers and others the name of Nicolas
WViode, does not appear to us irrefutably explained. A little
dish, of Italian form, with sino-franco decoration, in blue outlined
' with manganese, gives us the letters PC. Under another large,
coarse dish, of primitive blue decoration, composed of scattered groups
-ry (~% belonging to no style or epoch, such as a Woman draped
\±.' V* after the antique, a Countrywoman and her ass, a Man on
M. 181. horseback, are three mullets (M. 182). There are two
in the arms of the Conrade, and we may hence consider the three
•U^ mullets as equivalent to a signature. Lastly, the nanie
. "*" . of Haly occurs upon dishes with bouquets, filled with eggs,
2^- ^J»- olives, and other fruits ; these are probably the works of
M. 182. Philippe Haly, son of the thrower Francois.
After all, the part of the Conrade in the Nivernais art is very
difficult now to determine. It is evident these gentlemen, some mili
tary, the others invested with honorary commissions, were not the
direct agents of the fabrication ; they patronised a great enterprise based
upon secrets preserved in their family; they made themselves heads
of an industry, thanks to powerful protection. M. du Broc thinks that
all the manufacturers established around them had formed themselves
in their workshops. We do not join in this opinion ; an Italian school
anterior to the Conrade has left traces at Nevers, particularly in the
chateau of Gloriette, the fine pieces of Italian style, such as the cistern
(vasque) in the Musee de Cluny, cannot have issued from the hands of
potters come from the most detestable manufactories of degenerated
Italy. There is in these pieces a breadth of style, a nobleness of expres
sion which denotes French hands ; besides, the ornamental floral borders
reveal the influence of enamelling, and we see in effect this branch of
r I art enter in the ceramic lists, even at the period of
$ iOV\Vd,\£ the power of the Conrade, since Barthelemi Bourcier,
A V!CUCT\5 before opening the establishment of the Kue de la
, j Tartre, enamelled upon metal, and bore the title of
^-fi/±J enameller to the Queen Mother. It is to this Italo-
French school that we must assign the splendour of
the first Nivernais products.
K we examine the works signed by the Conrade,
we soon perceive their feebleness and timidity. The
t)6 Coytioidt dish 0I" Agostino is an imitation of Palissy, or rather
(X 7l£lxdr,'A a feewe reminiscence of the reptile style associated
M. 183. with the blue striated grounds of the school of Urbino.

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE.

459

The others, where the name of Conrade a Nevers (M. 183) may be
taken for that of Antonio and Domenico, are pale copies of the subjects
on Chinese porcelain ; as to the piece of the Boux collection, of Tours,
on which Jacques, son of Domenico, had represented under the most
infantine form the Corruption of Men, and the Deluge, it would alone
suffice to prove that, in the middle of the seventeenth century, this
pretended family of initiators was beneath the level of commercial
production. This said, let us try, in our turn, to give a rational and
logical classification of the Nivernais works.
First Epoch. — a. Style, Franco-Urbino, with mythological subjects
and ornaments inspired by the antique and the Renaissance ; influence
anterior to the Conrade. (Fig. 115.)
b. Style, Italo-Chinese ; vases of Italian form, with Chinese or
familiar Italian subjects, Oriental ornaments. Blue camaieu heightened
with manganese, resembling in character the majolica of Savona. Direct
influence of the Conrade.

Fi?. 115.

Fig. 116.

NEVBES. ITALIAN STYLE.
M0SEUM OP NEVERS.

NEVERS. ITALO -NIVERNAIS
DECORATION. — COLL. PASCAL.

Second Period. — a. Style, Italo-Nivernais ; mythological and
familiar subjects, together or separate ; Italian and Oriental ornaments
mixed ; wreaths of flowers in the style of enamels. Influence of this
art and of that of tissues. (Fig. 116.)
b. Faiencas with coloured grounds, especially blue, designs in white,
pale and dark yellow ; style of chintz stuffs, and of enamelling.
Third Epoch. — Style, Franco-Nivernais. Imitation of the Bouen
decoration. Degeneracy of the Italian style, and of the decoration of

460 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
flowers blue upon blue grounds. This fabrication becomes commercial,
and ceases to be interesting in an artistic point of view.
La Chaeite. — This establishment, which will have worked in the
style of Nevers, is mentioned by Gournay in 1788. M. Grasset denies
that it has ever existed.
La Nocle. — In 1741, Savary des Brulons says, in the ' Universal
Dictionary of Commerce,' " The best (clay) is on the property of the
Marquisate of La Nocle, belonging to the Duke de Villars. They have
recently established there an excellent manufactory of earthenware,
where are made works of all kinds, of better quality than those of Nevers,
and as fine as those of Rouen, which until now have passed as the most
perfect." Bois-le-Comte. — A document in the archives of Sevres shows there
was a manufactory of faience at Bois-le-Comte, in 1768.
Saint-V^eain. — Edme Brion possessed there, in 1768, a manu
factory of stoneware.
Vaezy. — It is to this place that Bollin transferred, in 1793, the
manufactory established at Auxerre. Bourbonnais.
Moulins (Allier). — The faiences of this place bear so close a re
semblance to those of Rouen that it is very difficult to distinguish them.
A plate in the Museum of Sevres has on the reverse, "a Moulins," leaving
no doubt as to its origin ; the decoration is " a la corne," in the most
brilliant enamels.
Yet Moulins did not confine herself to this style of fabrication
alone ; in the town museum is a statue of Saint Roch, resembling the
style of the Nivernais works. Behind is written in middling-sized
characters (M. 184) : M. 184.
and below, in larger (M. 185) :

elbienn^ nwydin

M. 185. *
Upon the pedestal are the dates and initials of the same artist.
M. Queyroy, keeper of the museum, thinks that Mogdin is the painter
and Chollet the modeller of the statuette.

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE. 461

Auvergne.
Cleemont (Puy-de-D6me). — Brongniart attributes to this city the
ancient glazed ware, with network ornament, in the style of Avignon,
and overlaid with a brown glaze in imitation of tortoiseshell. But, at the
beginning of the eighteenth century, Auvergne left this common fabri
cation to create enamelled wares worthy, by their beauty, of rivalling
Moustiers, which they first copied. The first piece made known to
amateurs is a helmet-shaped cruet (buire) in the collection of M. Pascal,
decorated with elegant arabesques surrounding the figure of Time ; some
differences in the handling are to be remarked between these ornaments
and those executed in Provence ; the scrolls are terminated by large
points, the partial grounds are striated, certain subjects and false
gadroons are in shaded tints. Under the foot is written : " Clermont-
Ferrand, 1734." A pot for water, belonging to the Marquis de
Pontecoulant, has the same decoration ; upon the front is a coat of
arms with the coronet of a marquis, under which is written : " Conva
lescence de M. Rossignol, intendant d'Auvergne. M. Peyrol, tresorier
de Tordre, 1738." A third piece has furnished an intermediate date;
again a helmet-shaped vase, but this time with wreaths, scrolls, and
shells, partaking of the style of Rouen and Moustiers. Under the foot
the legend : " M. Clermont-Ferrand d'Auvergne, 21 January 1756."
Sent by M. Grange of Clermont, to the Universal Exhibition, this
helmet has demonstrated the pliancy of talent of the Auvergnat artists ;
this is no servile copy, but a fancy largely conceived and no less satis
factory than the type. These various pieces have allowed a number of
products mixed with those of Provence to be restored to the same
source. Yet Clermont has not always had this ornamental fabrication ;
we find plates in common faience with the patron saint and the name of
the possessors. M. Romeuf has a salad bowl with the figure of a turner
at his work, in the interior is inscribed : " Perrier Lauche ; " round
the exterior twines a wreath of vine with bunches of grapes. The earth
of this piece is reel, dense, and close ; the enamels but little brilliant.
Aedes or Haedes. — This second manufactory in the Puy-de-D6me
is only known to us by its mention in Glot's list.
Limousin.
Limoges (Haute-Vienne). — By a decree of the 8th October 1737,
the Sieur Massie was authorised to found at Limoges a manufactory of
faience. When the discovery of kaolin at St. Yrieix permitted the making
of real porcelain in France, Massie, partner to a Sieur Fourneira

462 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
and the brothers Grellet, obtained, by a new decree of the 30th
December 1773, permission to join the making of translucent with that
of enamelled pottery. There has been since then, at least for thirty-
six years, a fa'ience special to the Limousin, which has furnished the con
sumption of that and the neighbouring provinces ; the difficulty is to
ascertain its characters, and to find it among works not classified. There
is at Sevres a very large decorated dish, in pale colours, with a land
scape enlivened by a stag-hunt; a still more curious dish is in the
collection of the town of Limoges, the centre subject is Justice seated
on her throne with sword and scales, trampling Crime under her
_ foot ; near her are Religion, Truth, and
1 // ¦+- ft Law, with their several attributes. A
*S ^l AtJTlOO'C^ ^ fine border in the Moustiers style en-
/"* mtT circles this remarkable painting in soft
^ ( 0 TH. (L V and highly-glazed tints. The piece is
T ^— , tj 22 inches in diameter, and has on the
(J /^j-fJ reverse (M. 186). It is then of the first
period of Massie ; but this cannot have
M. 186. f . .
been a current, commercial ware.

Touraine.
Amboise (Indre-et-Loire). — It is here that Jerome Solobrin esta
blished, from 1494 to 1502, the first ceramic centre of Touraine.
Toues.— In August 1770, Thomas Sailly, an inhabitant of this
city, solicited, under the auspices of the Archbishop, authority to
build a manufactory of faience ; we believe his application was received,
since, in 1788, Gournay mentions the manufactory of Tours. Noel
Sailly, successor to Thomas, had, from 1782, claimed the necessary
assistance to add porcelain to his products ; he soon sunk under
difficulties, and was replaced by his younger brother.
This information, gathered from the archives, does not appear to
comprise the complete history of the faiences of Touraine; it would
seem there was an establishment prior to that of Thomas Sailly,
directed by M. Epron (Mathurin), fayencier and officer of the bourgeoisie
of the parish of Saint-Pi erre-des- Corps. M. Epron had married, at
Nevers, Antoinette Gautheron, the 7th November 1776. There is by
him, in the Museum of Tours, a pair of Sphinx in faience, having on the
base : DUPONT 1797 ; these pieces are by Dupont himself, a workman
attached to the works of M. Epron.

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE— A VIGNON. 463
In the Museum of Sevres is a coarse kind of flask decorated
with a Saint Louis and fleurs de lis in polychrome colours ; under the
piece is inscribed : " Fait a Tours, le 21 Mars 1782. Louis Liaute."
This name would appear to be that of the owner, or, at most, of a
painter ; but if it is what was made at the faubourg Saint-Pierre-des-
Corps, it was a fabrication of little value.

Comtat of Avignon.
Avignon (Vaucluse). — An important intellectual centre ; this ancient
refuge of papacy had not lost its taste for the elegancies of life, so its
potters had found means to create, with a reddish earth simply glazed
with brown, vases of elegant form, enriched with skilful mouldings, and
heightened often with ornaments " engobes " of a kind of patina or
gold tint. Every one has seen these vases at Sevres, the Louvre, and
Cluny ; and what proves their merit is that sometimes one hesitates in
distinguishing those of Avignon from their Italian brethren. What we
ask now is if these Avignon potters remained strangers to the general
movement, and did not seek likewise to overlay the earth with the white
enamel ? We have doubted it even in presence of a plateau with an
open-work gallery, come out of the same mould as those in brown
ware, and decorated in blue ; a second example, at Cluny, leads us
almost to resolve the question in the affirmative. The enamel of this
specimen is the enamel of the South ; the blue decoration, inspired by
Rouen, has a license foreign to the manufactories of the North ; the
blue has run into the too fluid glaze ; and, lastly, in one corner, of a
softer cobalt, recalling the processes of Moustiers, is the escutcheon of
an archbishop of the Bouillon family. We call the attention of the
amateurs of the South to this curious fact.
Apt. — Here, we know, faience was never made, but the potteries with
yellow glaze, produced first at Castellet, in the Luberon, then at
Apt, are of such fine relief, and of such elegant taste, as to demand
mention. M. Moulin imitated this style, improved by an Abbe Moulin,
his brother or nephew. A second manufactory rose about 1785 to 1788,
under the care of M. Bonnet, grandfather of the director of the im
portant products of Apt.
Goult. — M. de Doni, seigneur de Goult, canton of Gordes, arron-
dissement of Apt, was the founder, about 1740, of a manufactory
established in his chateau ; passionately devoted to the ceramic art, he

464 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

called distinguished artists from the workshops of the South, and thus
succeeded in his undertaking. In 1788, the manufactory had acquired
its full development, and worked until 1 805. The style of decora
tion, determined by the first painters brought from Moustiers, is
purely southern ; M. Demarre, possessor of the chateau, and who has
found there some of its ancient faiences, assures us there is no

Fig. 117.

BROTH BASIN AND COVER. APT. — COLL. PASCAL.
ordinary mark at Goult; the Provencaux sometimes placed a cross
upon their works, after local custom, but many pieces have no peculiar
sign ; a monogram, composed of an H and a C, is on some white enamelled
specimens, and they have also ordinal numbers.
La Toue d'Aigues. — It is also in the chateau, and by the care of
the Baron de la Tour d'Aigues, M. de Bruni, that this manufactory was
created. At what date, we do not know; but it was before 1773,
since at that period application was made for authorisation to join the
fabrication of porcelain with that of faience. The most curious piece
issued from this centre belongs to M. Pechin ; on it is a landscape with
figures executed in green camaieu and perfectly drawn ; underneath is
written : " Fait a la Tour d'Aigues." M. Pascal possesses a charming
cruet-stand (porte-huilier), of a brownish enamel, but elegantly relieved
with arabesques in the Moustiers style ; underneath is M. 187,
E which we found again upon a large dish with flowers and bouquets
in violet camaieu, and upon another still more interesting piece,
belonging to M. Jules Canonge, of Nimes, an oblong dish, the
edge scrolled and moulded in reliefs to imitate bubbling water ; in the
centre is a wreath of green reeds, surrounding a cavity in which is inserted
a piece in the form of a duck. The tower is in the middle of the dish.
The bird bears inside its two pieces (bowl and cover) the date 1770.
M. Bonnet, of Apt, possesses another specimen, given by the Marquis
Saqui de Tourres, a connection of the Bruni family, and coming direct

MODERN FAIENCE.— FRANCE. 465

from Tour d'Aigues. This flower-pot, of cylindrical form, is decorated
with bouquets of jonquils, heartsease, and pinks, very delicately painted.
In the Museum at Sevres is a magnificent dish, its rims waved and
decorated in green camaieu, with landscape and rustic figures well
drawn. We do not know if the works continued till the ruin of the
chateau in 1793. Appendix.
Whatever care we have taken to mention in this review the French
manufactories now known, some will doubtlessly have, escaped ; others
have not been classed, because their existence has appeared to us
doubtful ; thus Villeeoy, a name written upon a water-pot in the
Rouennais style, decorated in blue, outlined with heraldic bearings
in pale blue, under which are the words : " Pinte de Ville-Roy, 1735,"
would appear an imperfect indication. A plate also painted in blue,
in the Pascal collection, offered again the Rouennais arabesques and
pendants with the signature DV. Are these sufficient reasons for
classing Mennecy- Villeroy among the manufactories of faience ?
We possess a pretty, oblong cup upon its stand, decorated in pure
bright enamels with very elaborate bouquets of flowers; we have
given a similar one to the Museum of Sevres; under each piece is
written : " Fulvy." Now Fulvy is the name of a village in the depart
ment of the Yonne, where perhaps faience was never made, but it is also
the name of the first protector of the establishment of Vincennes. Were
our cups destined as a testimonial to this Maecenas, or is the name on
this pottery simply that of a painter of a forgotten workshop?
History is full of these doubts and obscurities which a coming future
may cause to disappear, thanks to universal research. We shall know
what signifies the word Yesien, written under a peasant's shoe of fawn
coloured white enamel with spots of manganese. We shall also know
to what country we should assign a fountain belonging to M. Edouard
Lamasse, and which, of a choice fabrication approaching that of Lor
raine, has graved upon it the name of ' Saint-Longe,' a place of whose
geographical position we are ignorant, and which certainly is not Longis
de la Sarthe.
Below are the unknown marks we have found upon faiences in
the French style : — M. 188.
Dish, Marseilles style.
2 H

466 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

ALEX. 1724. Table fountain, Rouen style.
JIALLJqI? Fountain decorated with arabesques in dark blue.
Poitou.
Z\ !\F Plateau with open border, bouquet, Strasburg style.
,/\. Covered cup with its stand ; a leafy branch serves as
T) handle ; Pompadour decoration, in pale manganese.
j\ Dish with bouquets of polychrome flowers, Franco-Dutch
*pT* style.
(pji) Baskets decorated with heartsease and sprigs in the tints
C^f^, of the South ; royal arms in centre.
(&12) Benitier with twisted columns, and three fleurs de
C ^.IBlrliC1 lis on the top, openwork panel and basin decorated
fi^iffl^). in polychrome colours.
CS Incense burner (Brule-parfums) with bouquets in coloured
relief.
•d' Faiences of which the appendages are foliated branches.
%£• Floral decoration in bright enamels, a little hard and
brownish ; style of Aprey.
<J Thick, heavy plate, with Chinese polychrome decoration.
paa. Dish with wreaths and grotesques, rust-coloured ; Moustiers
f~ style.
^ The Flagellation, coarse design in blue upon a
E*\J -LuOl -^hite enamelled dish ; the exterior not glazed.
^2 -« 2. n Plates decorated in dark violet, with grotesques
' * G "J" 5-6 and flowers.
¦j—r Dish, Strasburg style ; flowers delicately painted. The
/* hi • F incised in the paste.
C r» Basin with two handles ; rocaille decoration with M
ip.')' Jeanne
O < this legend : AndrS
Moustiers? 1750
r*W Dish with mythological subjects ; Moustiers style.
" Fait par GDE, Ano 1761." Plaque. Delft style.

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE. 467
^T)(t Barber's basin, with rocaille border, in which man-
|"T£j£) ganese violet and a pale yellow predominate. In the
-2=*. centre, an interior. Rennes ?
]\JQA'VlOuCf' Bas-relief of the death of Christ; fine enamel,
'69*6" frame with blue fillets and arabesques.
y_A Cream-pot with yellow ground, and medallion decorated in
blue.
I p Large vase of pipe- clay heightened with blue, the lid sur-
-"-* mounted by a pine apple, with four falling leaves.
H Q I Southern style. Service with various marks.

Faience with yellow ground, medallions with polychrome
flowers.

*3 Sauceboat with polychrome flowers.

•II-

Cruet (buire) of Italian form, the handle formed of
serpents ; blue sino-niver'nais decoration.
Dishes with bouquets ; Strasburg style.
JL Plates of a heavy, red paste ; floral decoration, in the style
%JUX of Rennes, but with bright iron red.

A cask upon its stand, with a Bacchus astride ;
*IjC^((?T* blue decoration outlined with black; the hoops
1 P * e> \l n£ + alternately blue and yellow.
a .1? ~f~ Large dish ; Marseillais style.
T> Faience pot, ornamented with birds and flowers ; Rouennais
style. Plate, very white enamel with painted flowers ; Marseilles

-M- style

2 h 2

468 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

T&

_ — X Bouen style, with Chinese figures;
JL 70 O TeiT bright enamels.
AID/ DP Pieces of very fine faience with rocaille reliefs;
^ ' delicate painting of landscape and bouquets of flowers.
The pink tints resemble, by their freshness, the Niederviller decoration.
_ w Soup tureen ; Marseilles style ; decoration of bouquets in
^¦'^ dull enamels.
T+R+PA1V7\ d F^AV-f "^Sk ' Italian style ; decorated with
-*/-/¦? arabesques and the Massacre of the Inno-
*"' ' cents, after Marcantonio.
Vase in fine faience of complicated form, with wreaths of
flowers, masks, &c, in relief.
Cream-pot decorated with bouquets in bright tints, and
7^ with pink ornaments on the handle and spout resembling
soft porcelain.
„L.i_ Cream-pot with similar decoration.
"TD Small soup tureen, surmounted by an apple with its leaves ;
floral decoration resembling Strasburg and Marseilles.
Large fountain with wreaths, sprigs, and polychrome bou
quets, attributed to Perrier-Lauche, of Clermont Ferrand.
Faience, with thick and heavy decorations, in blue, or in pale
Orj colours melted in the glaze, with bouquets and flowers .
among which are to be remarked a blue rose, and a tulip
striped with red upon citron yellow.
Dishes of fine faience, decorated with floral arabesques and
V U trees with birds ; the predominant tints are blue, pale yellow,
and violet.
P R. Faience with grotesques in imitation of Moustiers.
M\/ Jardinieres with bouquets painted in pale violet, a little
jTTK bubbled (bouillonne) ; butterflies with the flowers. Probably
from Niederviller.
Fourlobed compotier, blue decoration, border in the
Chinese style, a bouquet on the ground ; Marseilles style.
Thick dishes, decorated with flowers and fruits, in bright
R, yellow.
Plate decorated in the Sinceny style ; very bright -enamels, with
glaze.

6E

JR.

MODERN FAIENCE— FRANCE. 469
J.\»L2 Plate with waved edge, white enamel, polychrome
"|7 decoration loose and hard ; Marseilles style.
-q j Lobed plate, painted with flowers, in the Lorraine
JV Li style.
£_. Bowl (cuvette) of thick faience, polychrome decoration
"^J- J- ' with grotesques in pale colours ; remote imitation of
Moustiers. Service in fine faience, Southern ; in the centre,
«S"* Cr- fl * subjects in rust colour. Setting out for the chase.
— The Return.- — Don Quixote.— Joshua command
ing the Sun to stand still. — Rocaille borders in thin, pale green,
accompanied by manganese.
Dish impressed (terre sigillee), upon the rim, ornaments in
pale brown and green; in the centre, a family at table
saying Grace. 1629.
T C^ T* -^°* decorated with characters from Italian
r793o*i4t comedy'
\/M Plateau rocaille; wreathes, arabesques, and Chinese bou-
" "* quets heightened with blue.
\X/ Soup tureen, surmounted by a branch with its fruit and
2_ leaves, in natural colours ; seme with bouquets and little
flowers ; Rouen style.
¦
\X/ Compotiers cut out and gadrooned ; bouquets, Strasburg
style.
*Y Cruet-stand (porte-huilier), representing a vessel floating
upon the sea.
Night-lamp with two handles formed of coloured masks;
at the base a lozengy Chinese border in brown red ; upper
A border with flowers painted in pale enamels upon a ground
pricked with gold red ; designs of the same style ornament the circum
ference. (See Marseilles.)

*

47° HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

B. Foeeign Faiences.
Belgium.
Following as nearly as possible geographical order, we must not
lose sight either of the ancient divisions of the countries whose products
pass under our eyes, or the relative importance of certain centres. Thus
Antweep, that city of luxury and of the 'arts, was no doubt the
ceramic centre whence the majolicas, inaugurated by Guido di Savino,
radiated over the Spanish Low Countries. It is from there that have
issued those enamelled wares of Italian character, which, decorated in
blue and citron yellow, relieved occasionally by green and violet
enamels, have served as types to the first essays of Western France
and to the " matamores " of Spain. An attentive study of some large
dishes in blue camaieu, a little bouillonne, but soft, and always inspired
with the decoration of the Chinese porcelains already referred to (p. 63),
points to an important centre of some continuance, and quite a stranger
to the processes of Holland. This centre had direct relations with
France, as is proved by two pieces in the Museum of Sevres, one
with the arms of France, dated 1664, the other with the arms of
Colbert. Bottles, numerous jars, and deep bowls, more numerous
still, divided into compartments, and mounted on rather a high
foot, that is, of the same form as the " ballate," with blue scrolls and
citron yellow flowers, form the principal contingent of this beautiful
manufacture, whose influence extended even to glassmaking, since our
friend M. Vuillot, of Brussels, possesses a glass cup with two handles
engraved with the same wreath of foliage enlivened with large tulips.
M. Fetis and Pinchart have already collected numerous documents
on this subject, and the work they are preparing will throw new light
upon this branch of ceramic history.
Touenat. — Let us speak first and more specially of a town long
French, and where the ceramic manufacture has been established by
Frenchmen, contrary to what is generally advanced. Louis XIV. took
Tournay in 1667, and remained master of the city until 1709, the
period when Prince Eugene and Marlborough re-took it and remained
possessors until 1745. Now, when Fenelon was charged with the
education of the Duke of Burgundy, the intendants of the different
provinces of France were required to furnish a series of memoirs
intended to make known to the Prince the complete organisation of
the kingdom. The intendant of Hainault thus expresses himself relative

MODERN FAIENCE.— BELGIUM. 47i
to ceramics : "... But the faiences are not sought after, although
they are made of the same earth as the Dutch use, and that is taken
from the village of Bruyelle, a league from Tournay.
" The facilities enjoyed by the potters of Tournay, in procuring
this earth, are so great that it should excite them to improve their
works. Yet the Dutch come to fetch this earth for their wares which
they afterwards send to be sold in all the conquered countries."
Who then was the manufacturer who gave cause for these reproaches ?
M. Lejeal informs us it was Pierre Joseph Fauquez, already established
at Saint Amand, and who, after his death in 1741, was interred in the
church of Notre Dame of Tournay, his native town, where he had also
an establishment, inherited by his son Pierre Francois Joseph. At the
time of the signing of the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, Fauquez fils went
to settle at Saint Amand, and sold his Tournaisian workshop to
Peterynck of Lille, who raised it to the first rank as a ceramic
establishment. Documents are unfortunately wanting relative to the marks applied
to the faience made at Tournay by the Fauquez and Peterynck, and
it is very difficult to distinguish it from those of French and Dutch
fabrication. Yet some characteristics in its manipulation, may help the
collector in the search after this faience ; many of the large Flemish
dishes have on the reverse two, and sometimes three, circles in relief,
which served no doubt as support and to prevent the pieces from warping.
Almost always the first of the circles, or strictly speaking the foot, is
pierced with a hole, showing the habitual practice of suspending these
great pieces round the "dressoir." With these characters, combined
with those furnished by the decoration, we think we can assign to
Tournay the three following pieces : —
Large dish in fine faience, decorated in bright blue camaieu
with a border " a lambrequins," and a central subject with r ,
figures and ornaments in the Flemish style. Tournay U Z\
(M. 189). M- m
Cruet-stand of faience with masks; fine decoration of Rouen
nais style, with green lozengy border and Chinese y.
landscapes of bright colours. Tournay, Peterynck? (M. '?\'p/^
190). m. 190.
Compotiers of the same decoration and origin, the SjP /"*
mark (M. 191) better determined. * m
Beussels. — We should expect to see this city occupy a distinguished

472 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
rank in the ceramics of the Low Countries, this is what the 'Journal
of Commerce,' of March 1761 , says concerning it : " Philippe Mombaers,
manufacturer of faience to His Royal Highness, makes at Brussels every
kind of faience, consisting of " plats depargne," oval and round terrines,
in the form of cabbages, melons, artichokes, asparagus, pigeons, turkeys,
cocks, hens, eels, butter-pots, sauceboats, coffee-pots, fountains, basins,
mustard-pots, pepper-boxes, salad bowls small and great, salt cellars,
flower-pots, oval and round dishes, plates, fruit baskets, oval and round
of all colours; complete table services, large and small; lustres with
eight and six branches, &c. All fire-proof,
" This manufacture is preferable to those of Delft and Rouen, is not
dear, and well selected."
These contemporary affirmations are certainly very audacious, and
the definitions are sufficiently precise to prove that to Delft has been
attributed the greater part of the figurative pieces of Brussels, and
among others those of the chateau of La Favorite.
Besides Philippe Mombaers, there was also at Brussels a Veuve
Mombaers and a Veuve d'Artoisonnez. The Museum of Sevres possesses
a charming table centre (surtout) Rouen style, made by Artoisonnez.
Teevueeen, near Brussels. — There was here an establishment set
up by the Governor of the Low Countries, Charles IV. of Lorraine ;
a piece in the Museum of the Porte de Hall may be considered
as characteristic of the style ; it is decorated in relief with elegant
wreaths of coloured flowers, and painted with the arms of the Duke, and
with bouquets and ornaments in the style of the Lorraine manu
factories ; under the foot is this singular mark, (M. 192) given here
«==  — under reserve, for we have not seen it. Another piece of
CCC ¦ -
„ - ** the Museum of Sevres is no less remarkable : an urn with
C • V, cover, the top and handles composed of groups of fruits ; a
M. 192. wreath of flowers in relief extends from each handle^
dividing the body of the urn into an upper medallion painted with
bouquets, which are repeated in the lower, above a red border with lights
taken out. These processes resemble those employed at Bellevue ; but
the colours of Tervueren are less pure, and darker in general, than those
of the French.
Malines.— A cruet (burette) in faience well worked, the enamel a
¦r-KJf little brown, and decorated in blue of two tints, with baldachin
"^ •*- and Sino-French scrolls, has been shown to us as coming from
M. 193. Malines ; we do not affirm it. We give the mark (M. 193).
Liege. — Gournay mentions, in 1788, the products of this city, and

MODERN FAIENCE.— BELGIUM. 473
says " The glaze of this faience is fine, white, and a little apt to scale
off; undertaker, M. Bousmar." These are pieces yet to find.
Beuges. — The ' Journal de Commerce ' thus expresses itself : —
" There is a manufactory of faience at Tournay and one at Bruges,
which equal, at least in beauty and assortment, the most celebrated
manufactories of this style of goods. The Sieur Peterynck, to whom
belongs that of Tournay, and the Sieur Pulincx, who has that of
Bruges, have carried these manufactories to a high degree of per- C 1
fection." M. 194 is upon a specimen of Bruges found in that
city. We have met with pieces in the Flemish style of unknown
origin, and of which we give the marks under reserve :
(rf a Carp in fine faience in natural colours, forming a piece
Vift <£&£& 0f a tak]e service.
* Pigeons, perfectly modelled and painted in bright fresh
\ colours, probably of Brussels ?

E
£
1-6-8-0

Stove in fine faience, decorated in blue, with arabesques
in the Chinese style ; on the top is a Dutch sea-piece.
Cage in faience resembling in form a Flemish house ;
blue decoration.

Surtouts in fine faience, decorated in the Rouen style ;
-T\ G one has salt-cellars round the circumference. Brussels?
A/\n Elegant tea-pot placed upon a bracket support; blue
ay, decorations with mantlings in the Rouennais style, enriched
^ ' with scrolls, masks, and other ancient ornaments.
» Large dish decorated in blue, in the Rouen style, with
7t* (n lambrequins and laces of fine style. The reverse, as in
^ *-- ' other dishes of Flemish origin, is ornamented with a
double circle in relief.
' Comfit-box (drageoir) divided into five compartments,
P C* and decorated in blue with bouquets of large flowers in the,
t ^ Flemish style.

474 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
rx, ' Potiche in greyish faience, rich decoration in bright
' / dark colours resembling Persian porcelain of the Green
»«° family.

Mi.

Luxemburg.
This province has long possessed an important manufactory, of
which we shall speak with particular interest, it owes its foundation
and its development to the brothers Boch, simple modellers for iron
casting, who established, first at Audun-le-Tiche, in France, a manu
factory of common pottery, in 1730 ; they were assisted in their enter
prise by workmen from the potteries of La Grange, near Thionville.
In 1767, after some disputes with the Seigneur of Andun, they left
France for the Low Countries, where, encouraged by the Government,
they erected an immense establishment, which is working at the
present time. The products were a fine fa'ience of good quality,
often decorated in blue, and which it is easy, at first glance, to mistake
for common porcelain. This establishment, situated at Septfontaines,
prospered until the wars of the Revolution, then it was almost
destroyed by the French, but rebuilt immediately, it took still greater
development. Before the Revolution, the mark in blue consisted of
^P* the cipher L. B., which we must be careful not to mix with
o£D that of Brancas-Lauraguais. Since that period, the letters B L
m. 195. ]iave Deen indented in the paste. Now the Boch family
possesses, besides the works of Luxemburg, the ancient earthenware
works at Tournay, and several other establishments in Germany.
Holland.
The ceramic history of this country has yet to be done, the exag
gerations published concerning its ancient manufactories singularly
complicate the task of earnest writers. They have gone so far as to
mistake for the date 1480, the numbers of a series inscribed upon
inferior products of the end of the last century. Undoubtedly the
Dutch Netherlands, like those of the house of Austria, would have had
an enamelled pottery, going back, perhaps, to the last years of the
sixteenth century ; but these are pieces without special character, which
are lost among the products of French Flanders, and a host of other
unknown centres. The true Dutch faience, that unrivalled ware, in
spired by the sight of the vases of the extreme East, is what the

MODERN FAIENCE.— HOLLAND.— DELFT. 475

makers themselves qualified as porcelain. The first authorisation of
which we find the trace is that granted the 4th April 1614, by the
States-General of Holland to Claes Janssen Wytmans, who had invented
" all kinds of porcelains, decorated and not decorated, very nearly con
formable to the porcelain which came from distant countries." The
privileged was required to fabricate within the year a specimen of
his invention, which was to have the delicacy of Oriental porcelain.
Now, in order that it should be well established that it refers
here to faience and not to translucent pottery, let us examine subse
quent documents. In the archives of Delft, "lade A. No. 14," we find,
date 1680, " marks inscribed upon the tea-services of the porcelain
makers." In 1764 the expression still existed, for the magistrates of
the town of Delft also made use of it thus. " Having knowledge that
certain master-manufacturers and dealers in pottery of this town,
renouncing the ordinary mark of the manufactory, have allowed them
selves to put, or caused to be put upon their porcelains, the names
and marks of other potters, &c." There is then no doubt; what was
called in Holland porcelain,- was fine enamelled earth, the little pieces
for tea, red, that is to say, decorated in the Japanese style, with that
inimitable iron-red, so bright and so abundant that it predominates
over the other colours, and even over gold. The works whence issued
these products took the name Porseleyn Bakkery ; the others were called
Plateel Bakkery. Fig. 118.

SLEDGE FOR CARRYING PIPES. DELFT. — COLL. DR. MANDL.
Let us also dismiss another cause of error ; it has been said the
faiences of Delft could not be confounded with others, on account of the
beauty of their paste and of their enamel (Fig. 118). We have said at
page 471, whence came the clay used at Delft ; it is from Bruyelle, where

476 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Brussels, Tournay, Lille, and the other French factories of the north
provisioned themselves. As to the enamel, its beauty depends on the
quality of the tin used in it, and this metal was derived from England
by the Dutch as by the French.
Now, in order to lop off what is not important, we are going first to
put together all the manufactories of which the archives preserve the
mention with their marks, enumerating them in chronological order.
Hague, 1614. — Claes Janssen Wytmans, products unknown.
Delft, 1639. — Manufactory at the sign of de metaale Pot (the
Metal Pot). The sign bears this date ; in 1678, the ' Haarlem
Gazette ' announced that Lambertus Cleffius, proprietor of the works,
had found the secret of the " imitation of Indian porcelains." The
2nd April 1691, the works were sold, in consequence of the death of
Cleffius. In 1764, the Metal Pot had become the property of Pieter
Paree, whose mark (M. 196) is a simple contraction of the sign " Me-
-jvtf) taale Pot." We have found it on a soup-tureen, with enamel
0 lightly tinted in blue and with Sino-Dutch decoration in blue
J) camaieu, the knob of the lid was an open pomegranate with
M.196. leaves.
1651. De Paauw (the Peacock). The primitive mark (M. 197)
*T\/?y\/ k&s keen certamry tne sign or *ts contraction. We find
^ 0 tliis upon magnificent red porcelain, with compartments
M. 197. in which the iris is mixed with the Chinese decoration.
Later we read the name in full (M. 198), under a piece of very
r fO fine glaze, with bouquets in which manganese predomi-
J&XXXlsW nates ; with this name is a hatchet, counterfeit of the
M- 198- works of de Porcelein byl. Jacobus de Milde, proprietor of
the manufactory in 1764, marks IDM.
1675. Martinus Gouda, proprietor of these works, announces that,
§ continuing to fabricate red tea-services, and desirous of sub
mitting to the ordinance of the burgomasters of Delft, which re
quires that the potters should deposit the mark of their products,
M. 199. (1680) he hastens to present his that it may be registered (M. 199).
We have never found it upon any piece.

1680. Q. Kleynoven marks (200), KM according to his declaration.
M. 200.
1680. Cornelis Keyser, Jacobus Pynaker, and Adrian Pynaker,
deposit this complicated mark (M. 201) which we have never seen ; but
Dr. Mandl, a distinguished amateur of Dutch products, observes that very

MODERN FAIENCE.— HOLLAND.— DELFT. 477
probably in order to render the monogram more practical, they "D
will have modified it (M. 202, and 203) and that we must recog- v £
nise works of Keyser and the Pynakers in the fine faiences long £IL
undetermined, which shine with the brilliancy of their blue, red, M- 201,
and gold, equal to Oriental porcelain. We partake of this opinion, which
will account for the abundance and the elegance of this " gilded l&g~
Delft," become after a manner the type of the most remark- M 2Q2
able products of Holland. To form an estimate of the
pliancy of talent of the artists of this manufactory, one
must see the wonderful gems in the collections of Dr. Mandl,
M. Perillieux-Michelez, and M. Evenepoel, of Brussels, there
are specimens there which may rival the finest enamels in
metal; we give a helmet-shaped jug (Fig. 119), belonging to M. Paul
Gasnault* which is as perfect in form as in painting.
Fig. 119.

HELMET-SHAPED JUG, GILDED DELFT. — COLL. GASNAULT.
1680. Jan Jansz. Kuylick (John son of John), according ^/ ¦
to his declaration (M. 204). M 204
1680. Johannes Mesch put upon his tea-services (M. 205), p^g
we have never seen it. M 205

478 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
1691. Sign T' Fortuyn (the Fortune). Painted upon faience tiles,
the sign of this manufactory gives the date of the establishment and
curious details ; on the top, under a crown, is the cipher of the pro
prietor, between the arms of the United Provinces and those of the
city ; various vases are wreathed with the scrolls and flowers, which
surround the capricious goddess ; a turner and a painter at work com
plete the picture. We have reason to believe that the old posses
sors marked solely with the name of their sign (M. 206), it occurs
V under a blue camaieu-dish, of an enamel rivalling
( J c/t&ttyJl^. porcelain. We have seen this mark again under
m. 206. other works to be recommended. Pierre van der
Briel directed the manufactory towards the middle of the eighteenth
century ; in 1764 he was not living, and his widow, Elizabeth
Elling, declared the signature to her potteries to be WVDB ; weduwe
van der Briel.
Ignorant of the exact date of the foundation of the other esta
blishments, we take them in the order of the registry of declaration
of their marks, in 1764.
1764.- De witte Ster (the White Star). A. Kiell, his mark should
be A : K, with the star beneath. The white star is one of the signs
that has been most imitated, ordinary jars (potiches) with Chinese
^k subjects, are inscribed with it and the letters
f R J2> ^130 I, B. (M. 207) ; a marriage-plate, surrounded
m. 207. m. 208. M. 209. by arabesques, bears the cipher D B
(M. 208) ; other coarse pieces have only the star. One with a number,
marks a magnificent cruet-stand in blue camaieu (M. 209) ; we
have found the same delicacy of paste and decoration in various
" faiences-porcelaines " inscribed with the ciphers M. 210, and 211,
y> . — which, although destitute of the star, appear to us may
-AV J^Dl be attributed to Eiell. This same cipher existed under
m. 210, 211. ft table-fountain, imitating Rouennais decoration.
1764. In de vergulde Boot (the Gilded Boat), Johannes Den Appel ;
his signature is I D A.
1764. De Roos (the Rose), mark deposited (M. 212). This establish-
j~\^T)T\ ment seems old, and we do not know if it has had
M. 212. several proprietors ; a beautiful water-pot decorated in
blue and pale red, had Roos (M. 213) ; it would appear to be contem-
yy porary with the pieces marked A P K. Heavy plates,
/w<$" of blueish enamel, but with Dutch subjects, with height-
m. 213. enings of gold, have given us the rose surmounted by

MODERN FAIENCE.— HOLLAND.— DELFT. 479
a D (M.214); should this read Does? The faiences signed "Roos"
are not often met with, nor have we ever seen the monogram C~P\
DVDD. ^
1764. De Klaauw (the Claw), Lambertus Sanderus ; the *8*
. M 214
mark deposited is a claw (M. 215), we have seen pretty pieces
signed with both the claw and the monogram of Sander. The ^^^
claw has been imitated. l_ k
1764. De drie Elokken (the Three Bells), W. van der Does ; ""=— '
mark deposited : W. D. We have never met with it, but have M
found the three bells (M. 216) under a common decoration, .
in relief painted in crude colours. Ill drawn, the bells have /, *
been described as an unknown mark. 1
1764. De Griekse A. (The Greek A), J. T. Dextra (Dik- M' 216-
straat), mark deposited : I T D surmounted by the alpha, A fine cock
brightly coloured (Coll. Mandl) gives us the letters, without __,»
the Greek A (M.217). We have seen the Greek A under a Z
fine drainer, decorated in blue camaieu, accompanied by 1^-
... . M. 217.
the initials W VD B, which we cannot explain, as they would
appear to be the signature of the widow van der Briel, of the " Fortune."
The maker marking thus would besides have left his establishment to
his widow, as would appear to indicate the letters W W VD B which
appear upon escutcheoned plates with polychrome colours, in which
white predominates.
The word Dex is inscribed upon a magnificent plateau, a perfect
imitation of Chinese porcelain (M. 218) ; lastly, we have
found it under a drainer also of ancient date, and under a 3C3Q
piece in the Mandl collection (M. 219), which for delicacy M. 218.
of decoration might rival the porcelain of Saxony. It is
then probable that the " Greek A " has remained in the ' q
same family, and that J. T. Dextra is the last of the name. ~T"
In 1765, the establishment passed into the hands of Jacobus 2.
M 219
Haider Adriaensz. (James Haider, son of Adrian) who
marked I H. To him succeeded in April 1667, Cornelis van Os, as
is shown in an advertisement of the ' Haarlem Journal ' of 24th
February of the same year.
The Greek A mentioned above, must be one. of those counterfeits
against which the Dutch authorities were contending.
1764. De Drie Porceleyne Astonnen (The Three Porcelain Barrels),
Hendrik Van Hoorn. The sign should serve as a mark, after the decla
ration registered at Delft. Yet the only piece we can cite of this

480 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

manufactory is a rocaille time-piece, behind which is written Astonne
HVE, "at the barrel Hendrick Van Hoorn."
1764. De Romeyn (The Roman), Petrus van Marum, mark deposited,
- P. M. united (M. 220). The 16th July 1764, the
j*l \c4- establishment passed into the hands of Jan van der
M. 220. M. 221. T„ M T , , ,,, „_1N
Kloot Jansz., who signed (M. 221).
1764. Tjongue Moriaans hofft (The Young Moor's Head), the widow
Jan van der Hagen; mark deposited G : B : S.
1764. In T'oude Moriaans hofft (The Old Moor's Head), Geertruy
~ ». Verstelle G. V. S. Two remarkable pieces with sub-
^-N^* " J jects in the Watteau style, surrounded by rocaille ara-
M. 222. M. 223. jjeSqUeSj uave. given us tne signatures (M. 222, and
223). The two Moor's heads have evidently an origin anterior to
1764, the Evenepoel collection has a pretty piece marked underneath
-p r^ with the Moor's head, coiffed with a red twist, surmounting
(\tj> a cipher, composed of the letters IRHS (M. 224). We could
M. 224. not say t0 which of the two works the specimen belongs, but
it is of old date, and announces an establishment of the first order.
1764. De porcelein Byl (The Porcelain Hatchet), Justus Brouwer.
The hatchet (M. 225) is one of the most widely spread marks,
and will be found on admirable blue pieces, copied from porce-
m. 225. Iain to the point of being mistaken, and also upon heavy faiences
for vulgar use. This sign (M. 226) taken from a piece in the Leroy-
• j-f Ladurie collection, may be the mark of one of the predeces-
X) / sors of Justus Brouwer. The works marked with the hatchet
M. 226. cannot all be attributed to Justus Brouwer. There are speci
mens of all periods : first, wares literally copied from Chinese porcelain,
and of so pure an enamel as to cause illusion ; then the works of the
twelve months of the year, also in blue camaieu, and of very good exe
cution. Then follow polychrome pieces of thick common faience painted
in heavy enamels and false tints ; such as ornaments with Dutch sub
jects, baskets with large flowers, butter dishes, surmounted by shapeless
sheep, &c. One would be led to think that the mark on some of these
pieces has been counterfeited.
ftj 1764. De Drie Porceleyne Fleschjes (The Three Porce-
J-Q 2 lam Bottles). Hugo Brouwer. Fine faience (M. 227,
M. 227. M. 228. and 228).
1764. Thart (The Stag), Hendrik van Middeldijk, HVMD. A
H V MD piece in the form of an artichoke, of which the lid supported
5 two fishes interlaced, was marked (M. 229).

/*

M. 229.

MODERN FAIENCE.— HOLLAND.— DELFT. 481
Another (Collection P. Salin) decorated with rocailles and wreaths
of blue flowers, and a scallop shell for cover, has ~T/-//\RT 'fcHciffc
M. 230 and 231. M- 23°- m. 231.
1764. De twee Scheepjes (The Two Ships), Anth. Pennis, mark de
posited, A P united (M. 232). We often meet pretty pieces in yp
blue so signed, which came out of this manufactory. We need m. 232.
hardly point out the absurdity of attributing to the same work- -^
shop pieces anterior by a hundred years, and marked (M. 233). ^!V
1764. De Porcelyne Schootel (The Porcelain Dish), Johannes Ml 233'
van Duyn, marked his name, we have found it under various forms (M.
234-236), applied to products generally praiseworthy either in blue or
colours.
\£upy-7\S^ \pu,ylt Y'cUyy
M. 234. M. 235. M. 236.
1764. De Ver guide Blompot (The Gilded Flowerpot), P. Verburg.
Blompot is the ordinary mark of the workshop.
1764. De Porcelyne Fles (The Porcelain Bottle), Pieter van Doorne ;
mark deposited (M. 237). "DQ
1764. De Dubbelde Schenkkan (The Double Pitcher). Thomas M.237.
Spaandonck, DSK.
1764. De Lampetkan (The Ewer). The widow Gerardus Brouwer
declares signing Lampetkan. We have never met with the inscription ;
but, in a garniture or set of Chinese porcelain gadrooned vases, a broken
piece had been replaced in faience, and on it, in addition
to an Oriental sign, were these letters (M. 238) which ap- H ^ CLtL
pear to be a contraction of the word Lampetkan ; other ' 238,
remarkable works have LPE (M. 239), a still greater contraction, and
in the last sign, inscribed upon a fine ribbed jar (potiche), gPK
decorated in blue camaieu, with rich ornaments and medallions M.239.
of figures in the Watteau style, we see an intention to imitate /pi
the "Claw" (M. 240). These divers signatures are besides M ^7
anterior to the widow Brouwer.
1764. De Twe Wildemans (The Two Savages). Widow Willem
van Beek. W : V : B.
These are the establishments officially known ; would that imply
there were no others ? Certainly not, first, the archives of Delft have
been destroyed by two fires, and the documents we find are probably
a small part of those that will have accumulated by time ; on the
otlier hand, traditions are so soon lost in a country of large production ;
2 I

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

when we visited Holland in 1852, we found no collection of faience,
and the name of Delft pronounced by us, excited more astonishment
than enthusiasm. It is modern collecting that has brought to light
forgotten monuments, and, as always happens, fable has caused truth
to disappear under its glittering tinsel. In the Museum of the Hague,
where exists a beautiful painting in faience, we see it catalogued " a pla
que of porcelain." Now all is changed, the least daub in blue upon
enamel or in glaring colours has the pretension of being by the pencil
of Berghem, Jan Steen, Willem van der Velde, Van der Meer of Delft,
Asselyn, or Wouwermans. That those masters may have made some
rapid sketches upon faience we will not deny, but we protest in the
name of good sense and good taste, against the calumniators who have
dared to place in a public exhibition, the basest works dressed out with
these great names.
The true Dutch ceramic painter is Terhimpel or Terhimpelen, who
has left in his country a well deserved reputation, and what would prove
besides he had no powerful rivals, is that he considered it useless to
sign his works. Fig. 120.

OIL CRUET OF DELFT. — COLL. MANDL.

As to the mass of sundry decorators who have covered tho jars,
plates, or plaques with subjects, landscapes, or marine pieces, it would
require long researches to complete the list of them. We have, of 1650,
plaque-? with polychrome borders, framing subjects in the style of

MODERN FAIENCE.— HOLLAND. 483
Teniers, executed in violet camaieu : they bear the name " C. Zacht-
leven fa." We find in the Evenepoel collection a little heroic bust,
crowned and signed "John Decker, 1698." A plaque, representing in
blue the bust of Saint Peter, is thus inscribed in German characters :
" Johann Deobalt Frantz, 1724." We should not be surprised if this
specimen, in the South Kensington Museum, were restored to Germany.
In 1760 I. Baan signed a remarkable marriage piece. M. v. Kuik
placed, in 1765, his name to a plaque, representing the return of the
Prodigal Son. In 1761, A. Zieremans makes himself known by an
escutcheoned plate, upon which brown and violet tints heighten the
bright enamels.
Piet Viseer, who has painted, in 1769, a plaque representing a cock,
is also an artist deserving mention.
Her Majesty the Queen of Holland possesses an historic piece of the
highest interest, bearing the date of 15th November, 1775, and repre
senting the inundation which invaded Schevening and its environs at
that date, executed by I. Kuwzt, 1775, as indicated on its reverse.
As to Samuel Piet Roerder, an artist cited for his ancient faiences,
with black grounds ornamented with baskets and bouquets of polychrome
flowers, we do not know if his existence is a myth, but what is *>
certain is that the pieces attributed to him, and under which should ip^1
be the letters SPR in cipher, are simply signed (M. 241), i. e. APE.
Suter van der Even, a distinguished ceramic artist of the seventeenth
century, possessed an enamel affecting translucency. Upon this mar
vellous subjectile he painted in pale blue, heightened by a darker outline,
subjects and ornaments in the Chinese style. We have
seen, by him, a magnificent spicebox, of which the cover p^/~ SnJ
had interlaced snakes for the handle, and some monu- 5TQ 2.k
mental jardinieres, with perforations, marked (M. 242 m. 242. m. 243.
and 243). /
We do not know if we should equally assign to him some bottles,
with oval medallions in relief, of which the signature is thus ,4,
modified (M. 244). What is certain is, that he has made some *UH
elegant cruets, with twisted handles and open work, which have M 244
been attributed to Nevers.
Oveetoom. — The artists just named are probably all from Delft;
yet there must have been other centres, nearly or quite unknown. Thus
Overtoom, near Amsterdam, had, it is said, its manufactory from 1754
to 1764. Its works, not to be found, will have been vases, candlesticks,
groups of birds, &c.
2 1 2

484 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Amsteedam. — This important city could not fail to place itself in
competition with Delft. In 1767, Jean Besoet made there a fine ware
of the same kind as that of the Haider. From 1780
to 1783 Hartog van Laun and Brandeis established
another workshop at Vlakkeveld, near the Weesp gate,
whence remarkable pieces have issued, especially a fine
fountain with flowers, wreaths, and subjects, now in the
collection of M. Paul Dalloz. The mark is a cock
M. 245. (M< 245^
We again find this mark upon a charming openwork piece, with
baskets of flowers and bouquets, painted in bright colours, belonging to
Dr. Mandl. M. Fetis thinks the seat of this manufactory was Arnheim,
in Guelderland, not Amsterdam.
Aenheim. — There exists in the fine collection of M. Evenepoel, at
Brussels, a plaque, which should serve as sign of this establishment.
Scalloped above, it is ornamented in soft blue with a group of figures,
in the style of Watteau, dancing in the shade on the right of the
picture, whilst on the left, upon the other bank of a river flowing in
the second plane, are houses, among which is to be remarked a
large establishment, which must be the manufactory. Above, on a
scroll, we read Abnheim's fabrique, surmounted by a cock, and this
sign, supported by the enunciations of some Belgian writers, leads
M. Fetis to place at Arnheim the seat of the manufactory, said to be
of Amsterdam. Rotteedam. — This city has also had its faiencerie, as well as its
manufactory of tiles. We have seen among the wonders collected by
M. Ollin, large pictures composed of tiles (malons) united, and decorated
in blue camaieu with subjects, in the Watteau style, representing the
Seasons. The figures are boldly drawn, if not polished ; the trees and
ground show wonderful manual dexterity and a thorough experience of
processes. The artist has given his name, and has signed each
of his pictures : on one, we read " Aalmis of Rotterdam." Thus the
painter and place where he worked are known, but the date is wanting,
which the style of the painting admits of supplying. A dish in the
Villestreux collection, ornamented with a German Bacchanalian scene,
has, with the same signature, the chronogram 1731.
Uteecht. — Here wall tiles were made in the style of those of Delft.
The works, founded in 1760 by Albertus Prince, passed, in 1798, into
the hands of Jacob Kraane Pook and GerritBruyn. It has been worked
more recently by different proprietors.

MODERN FAIENCE.-HOLLAND. 485
Mr. Chaffers has some plates, coarsely painted with violet cartouches,
and printed below Gabeeil Vengobechea, Houda, which he assigns
to Houda, in North Holland, Jbut we know of no such town.
We now give the unknown marks found on potteries in the Dutch
style :
Zk Salt-cellars of fine faience, decorated in blue with bouquets
M. 246. (M. 246).
D Coarse faience : pieces surmounted with figures of mermaids
12. (M. 247).
M. 247.
/K A J^ Faiences, with coarse figures in relief; others with
M. 248. M. 249. blue Pamtings representing workmen (M. 248).
-Orx Faience in the form of a quail (M. 250).
M. 250.
A p Faience : in the form of a monkey seated, carrying a fruit to
IL. ^ lips (M. 251).
f/^ Fine light faience, with figures delicately painted (M. 252).
O
M. 252.

T

, Ribbed jars of remarkable enamel, very bright blue deco-
0 ration (M. 253).
M. 253.
.-.tS ... Tea-boxes of magnificent faience, similar to that marked
APK. In some, the B is replaced by an R (M. 254).
M. 254.
J3 Central table-ornament (surtout), in blue camaieu, Chinese
m~255 style bou<luets" foliage, birds, and " ceils de perdrix " grounds.
_ Large plaques, with landscape and figures after Berghem.
jptVJLf "Would this decorator be a van der Does? His work has
nothing in common with that marked with a rose (M. 256).
Yg» Covered broth basin (ecuelie), in magnificent faience Bouen-
0 nais style, iron-red and copper-green (M. 257).
M. 257.

486 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

(fc I fr Candlestick and bowl (bol), decorated in blue (M. 258).

M. 258.
\f Figure-piece, having the form of one of the cucumber tribe,
^ its stalk covered with fruit and leaves (M. 259),
M. 259. v '
F_H Square potpourri vase, with mouldings, feet and lid termi
nated by a flower. On its sides medallions, with polychrome
M' 26°- subjects (M. 260).

VI Fine faience, blue decoration (M. 261).

M. 261.
4* Drainer, blue decoration, Chinese style (M. 262).
-*: M. 262.
fHy Fine jars (potiches) and bottles, blue camaieu deco-
JS«^ ration, with bouquets, Chinese ornaments and subjects of
m. 263. the eighteenth century (M. 263).
HT>K
Fine nosegay-holders, with blue decoration (M. 264).

7

M. 264.

g^UCr Water-pot, decorated in blue, Chinese border: subject,
C*/y Perseus and Andromeda, - of feeble drawing, but careful in

execution (M. 265)

M. 265.

-/J* Rich faience plate, similar to the mark APK (M. 266).
M. 266.
TT tjT Money-box (tirelire), fine rich blue decoration (M. 267).
M. 267.
sjf Mark attributed to a descendant of John Brouwer, whom the
Jd archives do not mention.
M. 268.
.¦*¦ Plates of fine faience of the seventeenth century ; in the centre
JB a shield (M. 269).
M. 269.
ID *W" Ball for decoration, in blue, with animals in a landscape
Ji. 270. (M. 270).

MODERN FAIENCE— HOLLAND. 487
\\-r Large decorated bottle, in blue, with animals in a landscape
2(~ (M. 271).
M. 271.
¦J\ ^J\, Fluted jars, magnificent faience, with blue decoration, in
> 5 the Persian style (M. 272).
M. 272.
JL. Drainers, same faience, border and flowers of a fine blue,
X Chinese style (M. 273).
M. 273.
\J? Ribbed bottle, fine vitreous enamel, Chinese decoration, in
\£ <*• pure blue (M. 274). .
M. 274.
\L* Corapotier, with Chinese landscape, faience like that of Re-
M^5. ^erend (M. 275).
\VTi Plaques, with blue Chinese decoration (M. 276).

"M. 276.
¦

J Qg- Polychrome potiche, decoration of very bright enamel

n0 £ (M. 277).
M. 277.

5" Potiches, in blue and polychrome, of the quality of APK
(M. 278).
M. 278.
*-i< Baskets, ground pale-clouded blue, seme* with polychrome
'C> butterflies (M. 279).
M. 279.
T>. «r -k . Little sledges, with skating subjects (see fig. 118, p. 475)
KnU" (M. 280).
M. 280
If IT Bottles, with Chinese decorations (M. 281).
M. 281.

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

/i Cruet-stand, decorated with bouquets, Chinese style (M. 282).
M. 282.
r />>» Dish, with polychrome rocailles ; in the centre a landscape
M. 283. in blue, with works (M. 283).
JV2. V jD Money-box, with subjects of the seventeenth century, in
1ffi blue camaieu (M. 284).
M. 284.
„ Helmet-shaped jug of magnificent faience, decorated in bright
blue, with an allegorical subject representing Holland and the
M' 285' Reformation (M. 285).
"T~£, Little pieces delicately decorated in blue, Chinese style (M. 286).
M. 286.
pvnD Box, with cover decorated in pale blue, with subjects
M. 287. an<^ landscapes (M. 287).
C/i sJ. QjO'Q) Plaque decorated in bright colours, with fine
7T0 <T*7tf/ bouquet of flowers. Amsterdam (?) (M. 288).
M. 288.
"Ig Can decorated in blue camaieu, with borders and ara-
p TJrOf besques, and with a subject representing the works of coopers
"YT/VY an<i brickmakers (M. 289).
1717
M. 289.
R Tea-boxes {see B) (M. 290).
M. 290.
J< Plates decorated in blue, subjects representing trades (M. 291).
M. 291. Little pieces, very delicate polychrome decoration
VA JtfV8o

* - and gold, of excessive refinement. They would
appear to be contemporary with the finest gilded
Delft (M. 292, 293). •

MODERN FAIENCE.— SWITZERLAND. 489
(—> Potiche ribbed with polychrome decoration, in which rust-red
<K predominates (M. 294).
M. 294.
~\J*\ Magnificent faience, perfect imitation of Chinese porcelain, a
q teapot, black ground seme with flowers and ornaments, delicate
2, landscapes in medallions (M. 295).
M. 295.i Candlesticks decorated in blue (M. 296).
DS
M. 296.
- w, \V£S Plates decorated in gold, red ; style APE (M. 297,
Wv WV 298)-
M. 297. M. 298.

Jars in faience, overlaid with imitation Chinese
lacquer (M. 299).

M. 299.

Switzerland.
This country has had remarkable earthenware manufactories, going
back perhaps to the sixteenth century. We find in collections, and we
have specially seen in that of Dr. Guerard, plates, of which the centres
are filled with complicated armorial bearings, which appear to have been
executed by Swiss glass-painters. It is the same richness of composi
tion, the same steadiness of drawing, we may add, the same precision
approaching to dryness, in the details and the application of the enamels.
One may even say that generally this dryness, increased by the dead
white of the subjectile, is one of the characters of Swiss faience.
Zueich. — This locality, of which the mark is known by its porcelain,
has produced various works. A pretty covered urn or
potpourri jar, enriched with reliefs and decorated with J2. 3?
polvchrome bouquets, faintly outlined, gives us mark ^
300. The habitual barred Z (M. 301) is under jardi-
nieres, also painted with flowers, but with a thick touch, like soft

49° HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
porcelain. Let us here discuss the opinion of Teinturier, in his
remarkable " Etudes." He announces having found the name of the
painter Zeschinger accompanying the wheel of Hochst, and more often
this same wheel with a Z ; hence he infers that the Z is an artist's signa
ture, and not the mark of a manufactory. Here the judicious critic has
allowed himself to be carried away by his subject; the Z of Zeschinger
has nothing in common with that of Zurich, and Swiss faience has
no resemblance with that of Hochst.
Winteethue. — This manufactory of the canton of Zurich is much
more ancient than that of the capital. The stoves they made there,
were true monumental structures, in which we find again the ornamental
richness of the sixteenth century at a much later epoch ; such is that
of M. Paul Gaillard, signed David Pfauw, hafner in Winterthur, 1678.
Another, made by David Sulzer, dates from 1714. One style peculiar
to this centre consists in dishes, with wide borders, resembling the Italian
"ballate." Round the rims are groups of large fruits or flowers,
disposed in squares. Sometimes these groups are replaced by ara
besques of a soft blue ; on the bottom is a subject or escutcheon, the date
almost always inscribed in black. The potters of Winterthur have been
partial also to certain monumental pieces, fortresses flanked with towers,
embattled castles, covered with rich arabesques in the style of the Re
naissance, and often resembling Italian compositions ; a writing-
-A.O desk in the Pascal collection is a real masterpiece : it is signed
aC38 /M 302). Another fortress, with all its approaches filled
with soldiers, bears the date only — 26th September 1689.
Steckboen. — There is at the chateau of Sigmaringen a stove, deco
rated with painted figures in the costumes of the eighteenth century,
and signed Daniel, Hafner, Stekbom.
Beene. — This town has had its potteries, we have no doubt.
M. Paul Gasnault has procured from the descendant of a manu
facturer a charming little model of those stoves, called " furnaces " in
the country, and which pass for coming from the Vorarlberg and the
borders of Lake Constance. Here proofs abound. The model signed
E. I. F. 1772, is the work of Emmanuel Friiting, of Berne, born 17th
June 1745, and died 12th October 1798. His workshop was at Berne,
and perhaps some furnaces, built under his direction, are yet to be
found. Generally, works of this kind are divided into compartments
decorated in blue or violet camaieu, with landscapes and small groups
of figures. M. Gasnault has purchased and carried to Paris a stove,
which is remarkable for its elegant frame with pilasters, fillets, &c,

MODERN FAIENCE— GERMANY. 491
ornamented with reliefs in coloured rocaille, and by bouquets deli
cately painted on the panels. This remarkable specimen would place
the manufactory which produced it among the best of its period. We
cannot yet affirm that it had its seat at Berne. Whether Austrian or
Swiss, it is not the less to be commended.
Schaffhausen. — In the Musee de Cluny is a curious dish, which
shows at the same time the simplicity of Swiss manners, and the con
stancy of processes and types among this primitive population. It is
a dish of coarse earth, destined to replace, in a church, one of those
religious " stations " generally executed in sculpture or painting. Upon
the ware engobe with an orange yellow has been " sgraffito," a subject
with figures ; below is graved " die 10 statio Jesus wirt entblost met gall
en essig getranckt. Gerrit Evers Schaphiisen, 1795." The tenth sta
tion shows Jesus despoiled of his garments drinking gall and vinegar.
The painter Gerard Evers has not been satisfied with signing his work,
he has placed his initials G : E : in the field of the dish. A border,
enamelled in white, yellow and blue is formed round it with those sin
gular ornaments, one would willingly date as of the middle ages.
Germany.
What is known of the German manufacturers is too little to attempt
a methodical classification. We will, therefore, confine ourselves to
giving, in alphabetical order, the series of the establishments whose
works are beyond doubt.
Anspaoh, in Bavaria. — The existence of this faience manufactory has
been made known to us by a magnificent centre piece belonging to
M. Edouard Pascal. It is ornamented with elegant IV/f ' n±LL*
mouldings and decorated in blue camaieu with bor- n
ders and mantlings in the Rouen style. Below, 4 0 .r-
between the fillets put to support the tablets, is the ' J
inscription (M. 303), leaving no question as to its M 303,
origin or its author. Without doubt, many Anspach pieces are classed
in collections as Rouen.
Baden. — In 1799 Charles Stanislas Hannong founded here a pipe-
manufactory. Baieeuth, in Bavaria.- — Its wares are thin, sonorous, well worked,
and covered with a blueish enamel, relieved with delicate designs in a
greyish blue, not very bright. The Museum of Sevres has a large vase,
marked in full, Baireuth. E. Hu. The ordinary signatures are mono-

492 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
grammic BK (M. 304), or BEC (M. 305). We find them on pieces
_ ^ with flowers, arabesques, and birds, among which
¦?? P should be noticed as particularly elegant some
—i *» drageoirs, in the shape of those of Nuremberg.
One magnificent soup-tureen of this kind has
mark 306. The same letters (M. 307) are again found upon faiences,
decorated with polychrome bouquets
7} -TD V I ,J3* L *5B aD<l brownish-red lines. Certain
M 306 M " flowers are remarkable for the
warmth of their red ochre ; the rest
resemble the Saxon style, which the artist evidently sought to imitate.
jl A water-pot in blue, with baskets of fruit and floral ornaments,
T bas only the mark 308.
M. 308. Feankenthal, in the Palatinate.— -Paul Antoine Hannong,
expelled from Strasburg in February 1754, for having made hard porce
lain there, transported his industry to the Palatinate, where it became
prosperous ; but he did not rest satisfied in making translucent pottery.
A maker of earthenware like his father, he worked at
CD i S-+— enameiled wares, and continued the use of the mark he
J*C \_V had adopted in France (M. 309 and 310), that is, the
*? PH. What characterises the faiences of Frankenthal is a
M. 309. M. 310. .... . „ „
whitish enamel, and paintings of flowers of a bright tint,
muddy in the pinks and violets, and always heavily outlined. When
Joseph Adam retook the paternal establishment, he followed the same
^ industrial path, and we have found his mark (M. 311) upon a
*"t-/ plate in the Gasnault collection, where no one would trace his
M. 311. French traditions.
The same collection has an oval medallion in white faience, sur
rounded by a crown of laurel, and having, in bas relief, the head of a
man, which we believe to be that of the Elector Charles Theodore.
Behind the piece the CT cipher, interlaced, in blue, as we find it upon
the porcelain, except the crown, sufficiently indicates the manufac
tory under the Elector's patronage.
This faience, very different from that of Hannong, may serve to verify
the origin of several undetermined products, especially of those great
figures, enamelled in white, which pass for being of Frankenthal. These
are gardeners or other figures, usually placed upon stoves.
We have also seen vases, very finely decorated in bistre camaieu,
like porcelain, and which appear to be purer in execution than the
ordinary wares of the Hannong.

MODERN FAIENCE.— GERMANY. 493
Goggingen, in Bavaria. — The faiences of this place have almost
always their name in full. The decoration is generally pale blue,
melted in the glaze, in the style of the Savona pieces. Yet one ex
ception is to be found in a fine piece of the Pascal collection ; magni
ficent arabesques in bright blue stand out in relief „
upon the milky enamel, and surround a genius who £jOgynrUJin-
supports a medallion; the initials of the artist this " o
M 312
time accompany the legend (M. 312).
Gennep, in Luxemburg. — Potteries were made here of large dimen
sions in engobe and graffito ; upon a dish, the inscription explains the
subject, and gives, with the date, the name of the artist and the place :
Saint Joseph et Marie avec leur eher petit Jesus sous un pommier. — ¦
Antoine Bernard de Vehlen, 1770, 24 Aout, Gennep. Mr. Chaffers
states having seen, at Mr. Swaab's, at the Hague, two dishes of
Gennep, one dated 1712, representing the sacrifice of Abraham, the
other, a Holy Family, with this inscription : — Antohius Bernardus von
Vehlen, 1770-1771.
Haebueg, in Hanover. — A certain John Schapper flourished in
this place towards the middle of the seventeenth century. Enameller
upon glass and faience, he affected drawings in black, which he
executed with incredible delicacy; faiences signed with his name or
monogram are excessively rare. A vase belonging to Madame Beaven
is of Italian form; it is thin, well worked and ornamented with a
landscape surmounted by a wreath of laurel. The lights taken out
with a point, give a singular finish to the camaieu, some heightenings
of gold add to the richness of the decoration ; there is another piece at
Sevres, and M. Pascal possesses a thin plate, in which our Saviour between
two disciples is painted in blue, this is the mark (M. 313), if it is
also by Schapper, the praises given to his science as a draughts
man are very exaggerated. But the doubt is allowable, for there
is among the unknown monograms attributed under reserve to
Holland by Mr. Chaffers, a similar cipher, preceded by the letter R,
which might be that of the same potter as this. It is a canette in blue,
Chinese style.
Had Schapper pupils ? Will his success have created imitators
at Harburg or elsewhere? We find in the collection of M. Paul
Gaillard, a remarkable work, which we may, in any' case, place among
those of this master. It is a beer-pot (chope) in very white enamel
decorated with the muffle in two tints only, very delicately painted,
and heightened with incised workmanship. The subject is the Fall

•$

494 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
of Man. Adam and Eve are under the Tree of Knowledge of Good
and Evil, and about to disobey the Divine orders by tasting the
fatal apple. Both figures are executed in a gold red of excessive fresh
ness ; the ground and the accessories are of a bistre tint, arriving at
absolute black in the dark parts. Upon a part of the ground the
artist has carefully inscribed his name and the date : If. Schmid, 1722.
This piece was purchased at Nuremberg, which certainly is no proof
of its German nationality ; but the style of the drawing, the nature
of the pottery and of the enamels, and above all, the character of the
work, can leave no doubt on this point.
Hambueg. — There was in the Burn collection, in England, a tea-box
artistically painted in blue, with figures of Amorini in rocaille cartou
ches and with borders of gold ; the piece has this inscription in cursive
characters: Johann Otto Lessel Seulpsit et Pinxit — Hamburg, Mensis
January, Anno 1756. Mr. Chaffers, who has noticed this curious speci
men, thinks that it has been made at Delft, and only painted at Hamburg.
It appears to us that the word " seulpsit " implies the making of the
object, as the expressive " pinxit " indicates the definitive decoration.
Hochst upon Main, principality of Nassau. — Here is a manufactory
whose admirable products are known by every body, thanks to the
general practice of the painters to trace on the reverse the wheel
with six spokes, taken from the arms of the Archbishop of Mayence,
protector of the manufacture. Founded by Gelz of Frankfort, towards
the first years of the eighteenth century, it acquired a deserved
reputation, as much from the perfection of the plastic of its works as
for its delicacy of decoration ; landscapes, flowers, figure subjects, are
treated with a care and an art one only meets in establishments where
enamelled pottery and porcelain are made together. Some elegant
little statuettes would lead to the supposition that Melchior modelled
there in enamelled earthenware.
It has been attempted to establish a similarity between the pro
ducts of Hochst and those of the Hannong ; these last, we must admit,
have never approached the finish of the fine works of Mayence. Among
the ornamental products are birds well executed, and some pieces of a
figure service in the same style as that of Brussels. An artist of the name
of Zeschinger has sometimes signed his name in full, and more often
his initial, which resembles in nothing the Zurich mark. We find other
signs accompanying the wheel (M. 314 and 315), which cannot surprise,
for there must have passed a great many artists through so important
an establishment. After its destruction by General Custine, the

MODERN FAIENCE.— GERMANY.— NUREMBERG. 495
moulds were sold, and bought in part by one named Dahl. We
frequently find figures in faience or pipe-clay executed by ^o . ^
him, and marked with the wheel, accompanied by a D. " <f^
This sign must not be confounded with the ancient w Vj9
wheei. M. 314. M. 315.
Kaschau or Kassa, in Hungary, possessed a manufactory, said to
have been worked by Italian potters. The colour of the enamel, of a
silico-alcaline aspect, the polychrome decorations, in which man
ganese violet and a very faded green predominate, appear rather to
announce an Oriental origin. Dr. Mandl possesses a curious hand-
warmer (chauffe-mains) in the form of a book, inscribed on the back in
the Sclavonic language " Old and New Testament."
Louisbueg, in Wurtemberg. — Before Ringler came to found in
this place a porcelain manufactory, they made faience ; we have met
with a piece, of elegant form with violet jaspered ground, having
on a reserved medallion the German eagle charged with a shield,
inscribed with the two crossed Cs, beneath the date, 1726.
Memmingen, in Bavaria. — Fine stoves have been produced at
these works, which appear to have made wares in blue camaieu, and
afterwards vases of polychrome decoration. We have observed no
certain specimen of Memmingen.
Nueembeeg, in Bavaria. — We have said elsewhere, the great
German school had left, in the intellectual centres, skilful traditions
and a profound taste which have long acted, even upon the industrial
arts ; so it is very difficult to seize the transition from the Renaissance
to modern times in Nuremberg ceramics. The Museum of Sevres
has stone plaques or tiles of 1657, which differ but little from those
made a hundred years earlier. A large dish of the same museum,
surrounded with antique ornaments, has, in the centre, a Holy Family,
boldly drawn and shaded with brown strokes upon rather cold enamels,
in which yellow and violet predominate. This remarkable work
signed G. E. Gulner, is not dated, notwithstanding its archaic style.
There must have been a great number of furnaces at Nuremberg to
judge from the number of names inscribed upon the pieces. Let us
first speak of the potter who had armorial bearings if we are to
believe a faience plaque having this inscription on the reverse : —
Herr Christoph Marz anfanger des Allhiesen porcelaine fdbrique, natus
1660, den 25 decemb. denatus anno 1731, den 18 marz ; Mr. Christopher
Marz, founder of the manufactory of porcelain of this place ; born in
1600, the 25th December, died the year 1731, the 18th March. The

496 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
expression " porcelaine fabrique " in this legend is to be remarked ; Mr.
von Olfers, Director of the Berlin Museum, asserts, as we shall state
later, that Marz made soft porcelain with the assistance of Conrad
Romeli. What is certain is, that the escutcheoned plaque is in faience,
and that the signature of Christopher Marz is upon another faience in
the Museum of Sevres, a magnificent bell ornamented with the arms
of the town, and bearing this notice : — Christoph Marz, Johann
Jacob Mayer, der H. Reichstadt Number g. 1724, Stroebel: that is to say,
" Christopher Marz, John James Mayer, of the city of Nuremberg of the
Holy Empire, 1724, Stroebel." We ask ourselves who is this Mayer,
whose name is associated here with the founder, of the workshop ; he
is not a decorator, since the painter Stroebel has signed in his turn ;
he is not a proprietor, since it is Conrad Romeli who shares with Marz
the honour of the foundation of the establishment and of the working of
the discovery. As to Stroebel, he has dated, the 12th of December
1730, a large dish at Sevres, in which we find the true type of the
modern Nuremberg decoration ; upon an enamel a little blue, runs a
blue arabesque border, surrounding a large bowl filled with fruits,
on the edge of which reposes a peacock. A service in the same
style, ornamented with arms, and made in 1741, that is, ten years
after the death of Marz, gives us, with the name of the potter in full
C \s I 1 r i r- tr (M- 316) the let*ers GK (M. 317)
U:Ko«fen6u/ch. GK- Now> the frequency of this mark
M- 316> M- 317- under fine faiences closely united in
make with those of Stroebel, and of which some have figures drawn in a
masterly style, leads us to think that Kozdenbusch was an eminent manu-
_ j/>, facturer with whom Stroebel had emigrated. Some
' » ~* • M> •  '-~ pieces marked with the K have also the initials of
K-'- £_ A* the town (M. 318). These last are found with other
ale signs. The remarkable series at Sevres shows
another artist of so decided an individuality that
one would hesitate to consider him as one of those directed by Marz ;
upon a large dish of poor style, dated 1720, he has tried to revive the
ornamental richness of Faenza ; this abortive attempt proves at least
that the taste for the Renaissance had not entirely abandoned Nurem
berg in the eighteenth century; the second dish, also poor as
regards drawing, develops an interesting subject. We see on it John
the Constant, Duke of Saxony, standing facing Luther; between
them on an altar is an open Bible, with these words : Augustana
eonfessio. Signed G. F. Greb (Greber), and dated 1730; this dish

MODERN FAIENCE— GERMANY. —NUREMBERG.

497

commemorates the second centenary of the Confession of Augsburg,
being presented to the Emperor Charles the Fifth by the Elector John,
root of the Albertine branch of Saxony. Some verses of doubtful taste,
playing upon the words joy and jubilee, sufficiently explain the subject ;
yet a German, who pretends to have discovered the existence of the
workshop of Marz at Nuremberg, declares himself unable Au, Con
to say to what event the piece alludes ; he has read upon gusta fes
the Bible, he says, but .that means nothing. na sio
The Reynolds' collection had a fine dish signed thus : " Nuremberg,
1723. Gliier." A new name to add to the list of German artists.
A work of a posterior date appears to us also to belong to Nurem
berg; a pitcher with cylindrical neck, covered with C, t
a dead-white enamel, and decorated with rich scrolls *;-,_-
laden with large, polychrome flowers heightened with c/,|5 #v7»C
black outlines; below is Mark 319: This pretty piece m. 319.
(Fig. 121), in the collection of M. Maze-Sencier, gives an excellent
type of the taste of the period.

Fig. 121.

NUREMBERG TANKARD MOUNTED IN rEWTEK.— COLL. P. GASNAULT.

2k

498 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
A little dish of Italian form surrounded by ornaments in relief
brightly coloured, has a Bacchus seated upon a barrel, holding grapes
and fruits ; this figure is upon a dark-violet ground, with the word
Herbst, Autumn, graved by removing the colour.
Peoskau, in Prussia. — One occasionally meets with pretty cups and
saucers of a brown glazed ware, relieved with silver ornaments ; the
name of the place, PROSKAU, is graved in the paste. A magnificent
example, belonging to M. Leroy Ladurie, has the arms of the Grand
Duke of Mecklenburg, surrounded by inscriptions q. Manjaek
with the date of 12th December 1817. Below is fecit
written :— Proskau.
This modern example is one of the most perfect we have seen.
Saint-Geobges, in Bavaria. — The existence of this locality is
revealed to us by a fine piece of polychrome design in the Gasnault
collection ; with fruits and flowers deli- _ ,, ~ ™ . , ™, •
. .,,-,,.,. , , Pinxit F: G : Fliegel St-
catelv pamted m the interior, and under-
; ,.. , , n . , ., Georqen amsee.
neath this legend, which is quite a ,,/,__, -,-„.
^ R : 3 A offember 1 < 64.
history : —
Schkeitzheim, in Wurtemberg. — It is said that potters of the
name of Wintergurst have exercised their trade from father to son, in
-v this locality, from the first third of the seventeenth century.
^ A prettv cream pit. with polychrome bouquets, has been given
m. 320. to us as a certain specimen. It has Mark 320.
Stealsuxd. — This ancient Hanseatic town became, from 1738 to
1740, the seat of a manufactory founded by M. de Giese ; he had found
the requisite clay in a little island called Hiddensoe, of which he was
proprietor, and which was only two leagues from the town. After
having produced some remarkable works, tlie manufactory was almost
destroyed in 1776, by the explosion of a powder magazine. It was not
of sufficient importance to be completely restored, and M. de Giese had
not the funds necessary to give it a new impulse, so it was abandoned
on the death of its owner in 1788.
Protected, no doubt, by local authority, it had taken as mark the
arms of the town, three horns issuing out of a coronet and
surmounted by a cross (M. 321). We have observed this mark
on a charming open-worked potpourri jar in the form of
a potiche, placed upon a rock covered with leafy branches
in relief, all in bright tints, well treated, and the vase
painted with flowers of soft and delicate execution. Several fine

MODERN FAIENCE.— GERMANY.— NUREMBERG. 499
pieces of the Gasnault collection have the same mark, more neatly
traced and accompanied by unexplained initials (M. 322 and 323).

M. 322. M. 323.
We give here marks taken from German pieces whose origin has
not been determined.
70l Gadrooned dish, with rocaille reliefs upon the edge, deco
ration of fruits in unburnt enamels, " a, froid," in which
manganese predominates.
/\ Open-work, plaited basket, of white even enamel. At the
p bottom a polychrome bouquet in dull tints. Probably of Marie-
J*(R berg in Sweden ?
JF> Cup decorated outside with bouquets and wreaths of flowers
qj in relief.

St- flfy-oSUi ^°* (Cbope) of white enamel, decorated
l-v 0 rh'\ vtith. the arms of some company in hard
VM{en(iii9fttinitniff6i' enamels. Probably of Switzerland ?
•t- t> Plate with waved outlines, border covered with wreaths
' J ' of roses and landscapes. In the centre, a woman seated in
' •*' * a landscape with ruins. Marseilles style.
\L) I Candlestick in greyish enamel, decorated in polychrome
Lj. f, y. - colours rather raw.
~f~ Soup tureen silver form, the Hd surmounted by a scaly green
W fruit, with four leaves, blue decoration. Rouen style.
¦X? Ribbed bottles; blue ornaments and flowers in the German
' style. Waved dish, subject Sino-French style of the Louis
r../3 .H.. r, XIV. period. A lady served by a Chinese ; hard, black
enamels.
2 k 2

5oo HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Cf-C'P. ^ot' w^tn c^ea(^ polychrome decoration in raw colours,
f/3 Q outlined with black.
vrliEDX Vases decorated upon white enamel, with polychrome
vV»"I»J>* borders and arabesque medalhons in which red and blue
«J7 50 pervade.
IJ Pot-pourri, with wreaths of coloured flowers in relief.
ll Cup " trembleuse," yellow ground, with reserved medal
lions of flowers.
"LX Plateau with grotesques in green camaieu. Moustiers
style.
/X yf\ Faience bottles, greenish enamel, decorated in blue.

Covered vegetable dishes, scaly knobs with leaves. Deco
ration of polychrome flowers.

Potiches of good faience, Chinese decoration, "Rose"
XI I( family, with heightenings of gold. Germany or Italy.
Large dish, blue ground, scattered with playing cards
•JJ[§; thrown irregularly. One of the figures supports an escut
cheon of gold, with an eagle crowned sable.
TT^1 f\ | Plates in Rouen decoration, dull colours.
ln w Ribbed potiches, having upon a very lustrous
rlv /»A A\ enamel, flowers in pale yellow and manganese.
ET Piece of excessively fine paste with very elaborate figures
in rather pale tints.
• r Large dish of blue decoration, ornaments surrounding a central
landscape.
Tj * Plate, blue decoration. German.
ht Pitcher with landscape in blue camaieu.
^a Soup tureen ; upon the top a lemon with its leaves, deco
ration of bouquets in rather cold tints. Germany or Sweden.
r~K Similar piece; appendages composed of flowering branches.
** Decoration of bouquets. Nuremberg ?

MODERN FAIENCE.— GERMANY. -NUREMBERG. 501
-, Dish with gadrooned edge, and a German inscription between
0/r two palms.

i\L'.t -Dish in common ware painted with a singular sub-
'PTP. ^_,_V iect, ill drawn in hard tints.
--ji Small dish with rustic edge imitating plaited branches; in
' the centre a blue flower, style of Baireuth.
10- tj>»/I , . ,. Small pitcher with twisted handles and gadroons
A ' disposed in an S ; blue decorations with figures,
Tvlin^ /^/ wreaths and birds of good style.
r-17^rP? Large dish decorated in deep violet with a large rose, and
¦>i semes of bouquets and butterflies. Probably Swedish.
J^'X/L Cup with bouquets, Strasburg style; dirty tints. Prob-
-p< ably Swedish.
/-* Creampot in light faience, cursively decorated with bou-
 quets, in which manganese predominates.
Pieces decorated in blackish blue camaieu scattered
with bouquets and flowers. Perhaps of Stockholm ?
The close resemblance of the second sign to that attributed to Bous
semart of Lille is observable.
J_ , Large basket dish. Nuremberg style.
v Compotiers with polychrome bouquets, very delicate and
' elaborate. Saxon style.
"VJJ Night-lamp (veilleuse) with detached bouquets in hard dull
U colours.
W/ Canette with polychrome decoration, dated 1736.
Water-pot, the decoration covering the ground, painted with
y\T\ muffle colours delicately executed. The mark under the
handle. Mounted in silver.
Small flask decorated with bouquets of flowers, Chinese style,
Y " Rose " family, dull, blueish enamels. A similar mark upon
porcelain is attributed to Riidolstadt.

Jf^JS

502 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
-YY) Plates with bouquets, Strasburg style, with white enamel
^*^ reliefs on the rim.
fjlP Saucer, Sevres form, decoration and flowers, Strasburg style.
n Various pieces with rocailles indentations, polychrome deco-
^~* ration, heightened with white upon blueish enamel.
England.
The first beginnings of the pottery manufacture in England are
enveloped in great obscurity; what appears from the works of
Mr. Marryat and Mr. Chaffers is, that the ceramics of hard paste
have specially pre-occupied the artists, and that common and fine
stone wares, fine earthenwares and other compositions resembling
porcelain, have preceded these by some time.
Fig. 122.

TEA-POT OF FINE FAIENCE, JASPEP.ED PASTE. — COLL. JA.CQUF.MAF.T.
Staffordshire is in either case the cradle of the potter's art. In
1581, a certain William Simpson asks for authorisation to establish a
manufactory of stoneware to compete with the products imported from
Cologne ; at Burslem, towards the middle of the seventeenth century,
Thomas Toft, Ralph Toft, his son, and William Sans, made earthen
wares in relief of a primitive and barbarous aspect.
As regards enamelled earthenware — called by our neighbours
Delft — it seems to have been an imported industry. Some Dutch
appear to have established it at Fulham and Lambeth ; towards 1640
were made in this last locality drug pots, jugs and wall tiles with
blue landscapes ; wine bottles on which are inscribed " Sack, Claret,

MODERN FAIENCE— ENGLAND, 503
and Whit," dated 1642 and 1659,. are considered to be of English
origin, yet it may not have been impossible that they were made in the
countries which produced the wines.
An impressed faience, coloured yellow, blue, brown and green, in
the Palissy style, appears later; specimens, with scripture subjects,
dated 1660; a portrait of Charles IL, made in 1668, and dishes
bearing the arms of corporations, formed the contingent of this ephe
meral industry.
About the same time, England tried glazed wares with engobe or
" slip " coating and graffito ornament. Wrotham, in Kent, was one oi
the centres of this production; a dish, dated 1660, has upon a brown
«arth with yellow glaze, geometrical designs ; another piece of the
same style, glazed in brown, is inscribed, "Wrotham 1699."
Beadwell.— It was in this place that a systematic commercial
fabrication first began to be manifested. In 1690, John Philip Elers, a
native of Saxony, who accompanied the Prince of Orange, when he came
to England to take possession of the throne, assisted by his brothers, and
having discovered a clay fitted to give a red, hard pottery approaching
the Chinese bocaros, they worked it concurrently with a kind of greyish-
white stoneware, of which the fine grain lent itself to moulding the
most delicate reliefs. This new fabrication had a deserved success.
To preserve the fruit of their labours the partners shrouded themselves
in the most absolute mystery, and only took as assistants in the
rougher work, coarse, unintelligent men, incapable, in short, to see
beyond their daily manipulations. They even gave the preference to
idiots. A certain Astbury, desirous of discovering their secret, entered
the manufactory as a workman, pretending to be an idiot ; he had the
courage to keep up the character for several years, until he had gained
the information requisite to set up a furnace, when he fled from
Bradwell, and went to found at Shelton, the establishment which was
to make general the invention of the Elers. It spread with such
rapidity that, in 1710, the inventors themselves had to yield to this
powerful competition.
Fdlham. — Is it to the Dutch that we must give the honour of the
stone and other wares executed in this place ? In 1684 John Dwight
produced there statuettes, busts, table ware, and objects in marbled
paste. Bueslem. — The first potter of whom we find any trace in this locality
is Ralph Shaw, who, in 1733, produced a kind of artificial basalt ware
of a chocolate colour, striped with white. Then from 1730 to 1740, it

5°4

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Fig. 123.

is Ralph Wood who is succeeded .by his son Aaron about 1750. But,
from 1759 to 1770, this town became the centre of the most brilliant
manufactory of England, that of Josiah Wedgwood. The products of
this illustrious inventor are difficult to class ; mostly all are of earthen
ware and fine stoneware, but the purity of paste, the addition of kaolin
in certain varieties, so nearly approaches soft porcelain, that many of
its delicate small pieces might be classed as such. Well known are his
remarkable vases and medallions with black ground, from which are
detached, busts and bas-reliefs; and the still more charming imita
tions of the antique where the figures in white biscuit are laid upon a
soft blue or sage coloured ground ; these delicate works distinguish
themselves in kinds which the founder of the works thus designates :
porphyry, basal tes, or black Egyptian ware, jasper ware with white reliefs,
biscuit bamboo colour, porcelain biscuit fitted
for chemical apparatus, and his table ware called
Queen's ware, because the Queen had made
herself protectress of the potter. The fashion
for these elegant products gave soon a con
siderable development to the establishment.
In 1770 a whole village, called Etruria, was
founded to contain the works and their work
men ; the celebrated Flaxman composed sub
jects and modelled the most important works.
The potteries of Wedgwood became the type
of general fabrications, and by the side of
objects upon which was stamped in the paste
the name of the inventor, we find a host of imi
tations of which the authors are barely known.
In 1770, Enoch Wood established a pottery
at Burslem ; he made busts and cream wares.
His successors, Wood and Caldwell, continued
the style to modern times.
Liverpool. — From the year 1674, we find traces, in the official
documents, of works in this city, but the first known specimens are
signed, in 1716, by Alderman Thomas Shaw ; others follow in suc
cession in 1756. This Delft establishment had its seat in Dale
Street. Richard Chaffers, a pupil of Shaw, set up another work at Shaw's
Brow, in 1752 ; he had soon a powerful rival in the person of Wedg
wood, and worked actively to maintain a respectable level. He

WEDGWOOD EAREING.-
COLL. JUEINAL.

MODERN FAIENCE.— ENGLAND. 505
succeeded, and his establishment was soon the most important in
Liverpool. His principal production was white faience with blue
camaieu decoration, which he exported in large quantities to the
English-American colonies. One piece has obtained a kind of celebrity,
a pepperbox of cylindrical form, contracted towards the middle and
pierced with numerous holes ; chequered borders decorated the two
edges, and the name of Richard Chaffers, with the date, was inscribed
in the middle ; it was proverbial in America to say of a hot-headed
person, "He is as hot as Dick's pepperbox." The name of
Chaffers, with the date 1769, and a heart transfixed with two
arrows (M. 324) occurs on one of his pieces in England. M- 324-
John Sadler founded in 1756, in Harrington Street, an establish
ment for making pottery ; he was son of Adam Sadler, a printer, and
had not only studied the processes of his father's trade, but also the
engraving upon metal. Assisted by these special acquirements he
invented a process of impression, by means of which he was able to
transfer upon the earthenware enamel, the proofs of a copper plate ;
to give to his invention the industrial development of which it was
susceptible, he took into partnership Mr. Guy Green. So early as
1756 a patent was offered to secure to them the benefit of their
discovery, but they preferred keeping their invention unknown, by
making it with the requisite precautions for secresy.
Several signed pieces are well known, specially a portrait of
Frederic IL, King of Prussia, inscribed " J. Sadler, Liverp1., enameP ; "
a portrait of George II. has simply " Sadler, 1756 ; " upon other works
we find "Sadler and Green."
John Pennington possessed, from 1760 to 1780, a work- —. ^
shop famous for its vases, punch bowls, and his mark (M. 325) *j *T
is in gold or colours. M. 325.
Zachariah Barnes, born 1743, died 1820, was the last potter of
Liverpool. Shelton. — In 1685 Thomas Miles made here brown and white
stonewares, which are marked with the letter M, sometimes accom
panied by the mark of the series.
Astbury established- himself here when he had acquired the
processes of the Elers. He made red and white stonewares, and died
in 1743 ; his son Thomas had begun in 1725 making cream-coloured
ware, and was the introducer of calcined flints into this class of
pottery. Samuel Hollins established at Shelton, about 1760, a manufactory

506 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
of tea services of a fine red ware ; when he retired in 1777, to join the
New Hall Company, he had for successors T. and J. Hollins, imitators
of Wedgwood. Little Fenton. — Wheildon, in 1740, made the same style,
Hanley. — Elijah Mayer, contemporary of Wedgwood, imitated his
products, and made also unglazed wares with coloured reliefs ; about
1700, Mr. Miles made brown stonewares, and Henry Palmer, in 1760,
imitated the works of Wedgwood.
Job Meigh and his sons had in this place a manufactory of salt
glazed stoneware.
Tunstall. — .About 1770, Benjamin Adams of this place, was one of
the many imitators of Wedgwood.
Lane End now Longton. — Turner established here, in 1762,
works for the production of the same wares, and his imitations, we
must say, hold the first rank after the originals. We have seen, at
Baronne Salomon de Rothschild's, a set of three pieces of extreme
elegance and perfect execution. The central vase, a reversed, trun
cated pyramid, supported by four lions' paws reposing upon a pedestal,
had, at its superior angles, busts draped in light veils; upon the
greyish-blue ground was a bas-relief of allegorical figures of exquisite
elegance, headings, flowers, and ornamental borders served as frames to
the principal subjects. Had not the name of the author been stamped
in the paste, we should certainly have attributed this remarkable piece
to Wedgwood himself.
Longpoet. — John Davenport established in this place, in 1793, a
manufactory of fine faience, which was marked with his name, some
times accompanied by an anchor ; later he made hard porcelain.
Stoke-upon-Teent. — Spode the elder, pupil of Wheildon, founded
here, about 1784, works for the production of the same potteries, and
introduced blue printing ; at his death, his son devoted himself to the
fabrication of porcelain.
Minton father established, in the same place, in 1791, the workshops
his son has placed in the first rank among those of England.
Beistol. — A German, named Wrede or Reed, first made here salt
glazed wares in 1703 ; fine faience was afterwards made, signed SMB.
The earliest specimen signed SMB, is dated 1703.
Jackfield. — The most ancient manufactory of Shropshire. There
exists a specimen of its brown pottery dated 1634. In 1713, the
establishment was resumed by Richard Thursfield, who produced there
an earthenware with black glaze; at his death, in 1751, his son sue-

MODERN FAIENCE.— SWEDEN. 507
ceeded him, and worked until 1777. About 1780 the works were
acquired by Mr. John Rose.
Benthal. — It is to this place that John Thursfield transferred, in
1772, the working stock of Jackfield, in order to continue the making of
hard-paste pottery. He obtained here some remarkable products, and
especially vases noted for their fine black glaze, of which the secret
died with him.
Nottingham.— A stoneware of this place bears the date of the 20th
November 1726.
Lowestoft. — In 1756 Hewlin Luson founded here the fabrication
of various potteries, which afterwards passed into the hands of several
undertakers. Leeds. — Messrs. Hartley, Greens and Company, founders of these
works, made in 1770 various potteries impressed with their name.
Yaemouth. — Pretty potteries, in imitation of .#¦
Wedgwood, have been made here by a potter of the
name of Absolon (M. 326). rf&iolon yaan^
Swinton, near Rotherham.— In 1790 a John M-326"
Green, from Liverpool, established this pottery upon the river Don.
A specimen has stamped underneath, " Don Pottery."
We here close this lapid sketch. The history of English Pottery
has received all the development it deserves in the luminous works of
Messrs. Marryat, A. W. Franks, and others; it is recapitulated as
completely as possible' in the book of Mr. Chaffers, and we can only
refer to these works the collector desirous of following out the study of
this special and interesting manufacture. Sweden.
Roesteand, a suburb of Stockholm. — Here faience was first made
in Sweden, about 1727. The name of the first proprietor was Norden-
stople ; he was succeeded by B. R. Geyers and Arfvingar. Most often
the pieces are decorated in relief, with scroll borders and flowers in the
Saxon style, either in violet camaieu, or in colours where manganese
and citron yellow predominate. Marks 327a, b, and c, are some of the
signatures on the pieces : —
wsXr A- <&¦
M. 327a. M. 3276. M. 327c.

508 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Are we to trace the name of the director in the second row of
/?/V. figures ? Are the others those of painters ? We
pj^ o/7/tt ' '• do not know. Some fine works of the same origin,
z/(p J\ the one of delicate bouquets, like those of Aprey,
M. 328a. M. 3285. had M. 328a and b.
Rorstrand enlarged, soon became a district of STOCKOLM
Stockholm, and then the works took its name. A
One may suppose this change goes back very far, Hakan Arigman
a piece of the Gasnault collection having under- 1737
neath (M. 329) :— M. 329.
In the Museum at Sevres is a punch-bowl, signed "Stockholm,
1751, D. P." An inscription adds, " To the health of all the beautiful
girls ! " The decoration of this bowl is that of most of the pieces of
Stockholm, and in a rather pale blue camaieu, upon a blueish enamel,
sometimes relieved with designs in white enamel ; there is often a
tendency to the Rouen style.
f/oj/" A pretty curved jardiniere, ornamented with subjects
J§71v of interiors, Music and Dancing, bears the sign (M. 330).
<?Jix£t~ We do not venture to affirm the origin of the piece, but
m. 330. believe it to be Swedish.
Maeiebeeg, near Stockholm. — Established in 1750 by a society of
which Count Scheffer was patron, this manufactory competed with the
royal works, and when the privileges of this last expired, Eberhard
V^Uf vi/ u^ Ehrenreich obtained, in 1759, the protection
""/j/^rhi 7$Lb °^ ^e sovereign- ^he beauty of its products
'¦{3 J if deserved this encouragement. A frequent
* J^Jq^ mark is that of the three crowns (M. 331).
We have seen it on some escutcheoned
plates forming part of the service of Baron
de Breteuil, ambassador of France to the Court ' of Sweden ; we have
\XJ\Lf seen i* modified as M. 332 upon a plateau with che-
u~l - quered borders, charged at its intersections with sprigs
'VJj V/ of flowers in relief; this style of ornament, imitated
from Niederviller, is almost a. characteristic whereby
to distinguish the products of Marieberg ; thus, reticulated jars
with medallions, painted with fruits and flowers, and having a violet
1VT or 1VR rose ^or k110^ ' Wishes with bouquets and open border,
m. 333a. M. 3336. marked only with M or MB (M. 333a, b) united in a
monogram, have left no doubt of their origin. The first sign, M. 333 a,
was found under a vase in the form of a mitre.

$£,

M. 331a. M. 3316.

MODERN FAIENCE— DENMARK- 509
We also attribute to Marieberg another mark (M. 334) of heraldic
origin, taken from some reticulated pieces with polychrome bouquets ; a
fine soup-tureen, the lid ornamented by three roses ( <, c C
f r c c
grouped, has shown us the value of these signs ; four JL*. L - £
medallions, with rocaille framing, reserved in the * O {£
exterior network, had a shield of silver with three M. 334.
crescents sable, surmounted by crested helmet mantlings between two
other crescents ; the reverse and the interior of the piece reproduced
the mark with the three crescents and an E. Would it be the initial
of Ehrenreich ?
A large dish, decorated with wreaths, birds and insects, well drawn
in blue camaieu, and having in the centre a large pink, like . _-^
those of Moustiers, appears to us of Swedish origin, its ppP„5 '
Mark 335.
Kuneesbeeg. — This name, written in full (M. 336), occurs on some
plateaux and baskets, with bouquets where manganese, - it ,
pale-blue and yellow predominate, some pieces are JVUI'ieiSvfclNv
ornamented with violet camaieu ; two of these have M. 336.
a shield charged with an ox (colls. Gasnault and Pascal).
To the same works would appear to belong centre — - r^ e
pieces, plates, and a pot of similar decoration, marked j^ ** ""l/L
as M. 337. m^37.
Denmark.
Kiel. — T-he manufacture of this town is certainly one of the most
remarkable of modern times. The paste is thin, well worked, its forms
choice, and rivalling those of silver; the painting equals in purity
the works of Hochst, and surpasses those of Strasburg. A large
enamel bowl, in the form of a mitre, with the orb for knob, is one of
the most curious specimens of the Reynolds collection. Upon one of
its sides, in a framework of yellow endive leaves, relieved with brown,
is an engagement of cavalry, executed with rare talent of drawing
and harmony ; on the other, a party is seated at a table drinking
out of a similar mitre the liquor beloved by people of the North.
Raisins and a cut lemon, painted upon the lidj sufficiently indicate the
beverage (punch) ; and that nothing should be wanting to the interest
of the work, we read underneath it, Eiel, — Buchwald, directeur. —
Abr : Leihamer fecit. Other pieces have given us these signatures
abridged : —

5io HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

K

k

"S

cr

u

K

<T- HieL jtno. ftglCv.X jL

t

c

M. 338.

The first mark was under a potpourri vase, ornamented with
branches in relief, enamelled with bright blue ; some bouquets of the
same blue semes upon the vase indicate another hand than that of
Leihamer. The sixth sign was on pieces with bright green camaieux
relieved with black, and some touches of dead gold.
Italy.
We have before observed that, if the invention of the historic
majolicas had placed Italy at the head of European industries, her
modern faiences were powerless to maintain her there. The manual
skill still exists in her turners and painters, but invention is wanting ;
the efforts made to revive the art amount to a simple bastardised
counterfeit of the productions of the sixteenth century, or to the copy
of oriental vases or French ceramics.
We have in consequence thought it more befitting to separate the
ancient works from the modern, less in taking the absolute date of their
fabrication than in distinguishing their style of decoration ; it is in
this spirit that we establish the following descriptions : —
Tuscany.
Siena.— This manufactory cannot have entirely lost the good
traditions of art, for we find still in the eighteenth century remarkable
draughtsmen contending against the current of fashion. These are
Terenzio Romano, in 1727 ; Bar. Terense ; Bar. Terchi Romano ; Fer
dinando Maria Campani, Senense, 1733 ; Ferdinando Campani,
1736-1744. The cipher composed of the letters FC (M. 339),
f taken from the reverse of a plateau with trophies in grisaille,
is attributed to him. The plate in the Louvre, No. 167, may
be given to Ferdinando Maria Campani, styled the Raffaelle
of majolica, but the dish No. 168, signed T. M., not F. M.,
we do not think to be by the same master ; the initial of the family
name of an artist would not be wanting to his signature at this late
epoch.

MODERN FA IENCE. -ITA LY. 511
San Quieico. — Founded about 1714 by Cardinal Chigi, this
establishment had in view the revival of the ancient majolicas ; and to
raise the languishing manufacture. Piezzentili, painter and founder, was
called to direct it, and. was chosen because he had formed his style upon
a long study of the vases of Fontana. After his death, Bartolommeo
Terchi, a Roman artist of the Siena works, successfully replaced him,
but, as the Cardinal gave his majolicas as presents, and did not put
them into commerce, the, works of San Quirico are scarcely known,
and their influence over the public taste remained null. Ferdinando
Maria Campani appears also to have worked for Cardinal Chigi before
going to Siena. At the Louvre is to be seen a plaque with Moses
striking the rock, signed " Bar. Terchi Romano in S. Quirico."
Monte Lupo. — To this centre are attributed brown glazed potteries,
heightened with arabesques and small yellow flowers, resembling a
gilded decoration. There occur ini collections teapots, cups, and goblets ;
also pieces with a warm brown glaze, very lustrous, with Chinese
borders, and bouquets in brilliant gold, heightened by strokes raised
with a point. These charming pieces appear to us more perfect than
those of Monte Lupo, and their style recalls the finest. Oriental deco
rations of Milan. We mention them here under reserve.
' The feeble attempts at majolica of Giovinale Tereni, towards the
end of the sixteenth century, were continued in the following century
and had some followers. Among these we note Rafaello Girolamo,
who signed in 1639 a cup rudely painted with three horsemen, now
in the South Kensington Museum; also, the artist who traced this
long inscription: — "Adi 16 di Apeile 1663 Diacinto Monti di
Montelupo." Borgo San Sepolceo.— A singular piece reveals to us the existence
of these works — a hand-lamp, with pillar stem, upon which the recipient
for oil moves up and down ; the faience is of a violet-grey, with wreaths
and draperies in colours ; the mounting and accessories are of silver ;
under the faience base is written, Citta Borgo S. Sepolcro — a 6 febraio
1771 — Mart. Boletus fecit. This Rolet is a Frenchman who travelled
about with his trade, and whom we shall again see at Urbino.
Marches.
Faenza. — This old and important centre would naturally remain
one of the last at work. We find, in 1616, pharmacy vases signed,
Andrea Pantaleo pingit. In 1639 Francesco Vicchij was, according

512 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
to written documents, proprietor of the most important manufactory
at Faenza, which implies there were others whose products are yet
to find. Duchy of Urbino.
Pesaeo. — After having seen this town manifest its artistic tendencies
by paintings of the highest class, and by decorations with metallic
lustres, one would hardly expect to find it, in the eighteenth century,
imitating the most coquettish works of France. No doubt, this trans
formation did not take place without a struggle, for we still find, in 1757,
a pharmacy vase having all the characters of the old majolica, with the
subject of Adam and Eve driven out of Paradise. Who was the author
of this protest against fashion ? He has only made himself known by
ciphers yet unexplained: — ell: r. P. C. P. Two artists of Lodi, Filippo
Antonio Caligari and Antonio Casali, are the principal promoters of the
new ideas; their double signature appears under two soup tureens,
copying in form and painting the rich porcelain of Sevres ; bleu de roi
grounds, heightened by gold arabesques; in reserve are medallions,
-» _, where are finely executed, in soft unctuous enamels, sub-
. «. jects, landscapes, and flowers. Underneath is, Pesaro. —
" Caliqari e Casali. — Ottubre 1786. These rare specimens
M. 340 explain those of a generally anterior date marked (340).
A curious plate in the Fortnum collection is ornamented in the cir
cumference with birds and coloured flowers in relief, and having in the
centre a bouquet composed of a rose and forget-me-nots ; underneath, in
violet, is this same mark, with the date 1765, and the initials P. P. L1.,
which no doubt indicate the decorator.
Some vases, with bouquets and pink borders, embroidered with
white designs rubbed out, resemble the faiences of Nevers, and more,
those of Vaucouleurs. The name alone pesaro appears with the date
1771, under an ewer of blue ground, with reserved medallion containing
a bouquet. There is a piece we have studied at Madame Rouveyre's, of
which the historical subject must be interesting. A woman seated,
crowned with a radiated circle, and having at her feet the tiara of
Venice, a closed crown and the iron crown, was receiving the homage
of a man in civil oostume, who presented her with a kind of Greek
temple ; behind the emblematic person, was a soldier holding a horse
richly caparisoned.
We cannot precisely give the epoch when the works of Caligari and

MODERN FAIENCE.— ITAL Y. 513
Casali. began ; what is certain is that they had rivals ; in 1757, Giuseppe
Bertolucci, of Urbania, came to settle at Pesaro, and six years later, in
1763, Pietro Lei, a painter of Sassuolo, was called to take direction of
one of the works in exercise.
Uebania. — We may remember that this name was given to Castel
Durante by Pope Urban VIII., when he obtained the tiara; the majo
lica artists who have left in their works the trace of this change of
name, seemed to have felt it an honour to follow the path of ancient
art, and to keep up in the public a taste for historic pieces; one
represents the Triumph of Flora, and signs, Hippolito Rombaldotti pinse
in Urbania ; another, Fatta in Urbania nella bottega del Signor Pietro
Papi, 1667. In 1693 a plaque with landscape is signed by Giovanni
Peruzzi; lastly, a pharmacy vase, executed in 1698 for a religious
establishment, has still a subject : St. Martin dividing his cloak with a
beggar. Such were the last Italian potters, by the assistance of whom
Passeri wished to revive ancient traditions ; a useless and senseless
attempt, for the human mind does not retrograde, and the torrent
of ideas carries away all that resists it in its course. Therefore, the
Urbania furnaces had only an ephemeral existence, and the potters
ambitious of a future had to transport themselves elsewhere. Such
was Giuseppe Bertolucci, who left Urbania in 1757 to establish himself
at Pesaro. Uebino. — This great intellectual centre had to wrestle valiantly to
defend the principles of art. Thus we have seen Jos. Battista Boccione
endeavour in the seventeenth century to sustain, with Patanazzi, the
" istoriate majoliche." But nothing can stop the march of time. After
having tried in Tuscany, a Frenchman came to establish, at Urbino
itself, a workshop in the new taste. We have a proof in a lamp in the
South Kensington Museum, similar to that described p. 511. The piece
has this singular inscription : Fabrica di majolica fina di monsieur Rolet,
in Urbino, a 28 Aprile, 1773. Bitter derision ! must it not be cruel to
the Italians, our teachers, thus to see our degenerate products enthrone
themselves among them, excluding the great forms of art ?
The two lamps made by Rolet at Borgo San Sepolcro and at
Urbino, are not the only ones of their kind. One first in date, marked
with a flaming heart, followed by the letter R, is dated Urbino 1768.
Its decoration is a seme of polychrome flowers. Another, painted in blue
in the style of Moustiers, has : Fabrica di Majolica di Urbino gli 30
7bre 1772. Have all these works been made by the same artist ? If so,
Rolet would not only have paraded his speciality, he would have pos-
2 L

514 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

sessed several establishments at once ; that of Urbino from 1768, that
of Borgo San Sepolcro in 1771, still retaining the first.
States of the Pope.
Deeuta. — And as if the most ancient centres had desired to join in
this transformation, Deruta, the city of mother-of-pearl lustres and of
mythological subjects, exhibits, in 1771, a dish with scrolled rim of a
grey paste, decorated with a chequered chamois ground, and reserves
containing bouquets in greyish blue; in the middle, in a larger circular
reserve, intended, no doubt, to receive the foot of an ewer, we read :
1771 fabrica di majolica fina di Gregorio Gaselli in Deruta. This
curious piece belongs to M. Gasnault.
Ba.gnioeea. — How was it that this little locality of the delegation
of Viterbo had its furnace almost at the moment when majolica was
beginning to disappear ? This is one of the frequent problems in the
history of industrial art. Here, fleeting as it may have been, the mani
festation was not the less brilliant; a large dish in the South Ken
sington Museum covered with the subject, the Holy Family, has this
inscription : Jo. Silvestro. d'Agflotrinci da Deruta. fati" in Bagniorea.
1691. The place where it was made and the origin of the artist are
therefore beyond doubt; his name only may appear of singular con
struction, and little conformable with Italian euphemism.
Duchies of the North.
Modena. — The Dukes of Ferrara, dispossessed by Pope Clement VIII.,
retired, in 1598, to this city, which they made the capital of their States.
From that period industries of every kind developed themselves. We
do not know if Modena had a manufactory of faience, but it sent out
some ceramic painters.
Sassuolo, near Modena. — It was in 1741 that this workshop was set
up, and in 1754 it obtained a special privilege. Pietro Lei da Modena,
who went later to Pesaro, aud Ignacio Cavazzuti, of the same city, were
its principal artists. This last afterwards worked' at Venice, and finished
by directing the establishment of Lodi.
Venetia.
Venice. — We have before stated that this city had produced, from
the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, vases of a remarkable fabrica-

MODERN FAIENCE— ITAL Y. 515

tion, decorated with views and buildings, and of which the style went on
declining as we approached the modern epoch. The degeneracy is more
specially observable in the dishes with rims ornamented with repousse
reliefs in the style of the contemporary coppers. We have already given
the marks of these faiences, which have been perpetuated from the
sixteenth to the eighteenth century.
Another mark which, like the grapnel, is certainly a national emblem
and not an individual signature, is the fish-hook in the form of a C
(page 304). We have seen it in 1571 under a plate, painted with the
Visitation. We find it again in 1622, under a piece in 1he Berlin
Museum ; then in 1636, in conjunction with the name of L. Dionigi
Marini. From the period when she devoted herself to the fabrication of
porcelain, Venice has produced very fine faiences with Chinese decora
tion, and which it is difficult to distinguish by special characteristics,
except by the presence of bright iron red, equally to be remarked in
its porcelain. Mueano. — In 1753, the Senate granted to the brothers Giannandrea
and Pietro Bertolini a privilege for establishing faience works, and
allowed them to open a shop in Venice for the sale of their products.
But the fabrication ceased about 1760, and the concession was annulled
by a decree of the 2nd April 1763.
Este. — This locality, where we shall later find a manufactory of soft
porcelain, devoted itself to the making of fine faience or pipeclay. We
have seen a magnificent water-pot, with mouldings and reliefs resembling .
metal work, and with a cistern (vasque) in the form of a shell. The
whole was most elegant, the paste and glaze all that could be desired.
Beneath, the name of the town was impressed in relief. A similar piece
was in the Beynolds' collection.
Teeviso. — To this town are generally attributed pieces of a white
unctuous enamel, decorated with rocailles and flowers in the style of
Moustiers. The enamels — blue, olive green, yellow, and violet — are
sometimes in relief. Some pieces, with open borders, greatly
resemble those of Lodi. A fine basin (ecuelle), belonging to * l\I "
Dr. Guerard, and which would appear to be of Treviso, is M. 341.
marked (M. 341).
By the side of these beautiful products, there are others, very com
mon. A graffito dish, of the most frightful style, had this circular
inscription : Fabrica di boccaleria alia campana in Treviso. Valentino
Petro Storgato Bragaldo jo flglio fabricator. Jouane Giroto Liberal
2 l 2

5'6 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
flglio f ecce. Mattio Schiavon inciso e delineator. Anno dui cic ic cclxix.
This workshop of pottery at the Bell, is not worth detaining us long ;
it only proves that, even in 1769, the production of the graffiti " alia
castellana " was not confined to La Fratta, but took place everywhere,
as in the sixteenth century.
Bassano. — This manufactory, established from the sixteenth century,
has continued its works down to the modern period, by the care of a
Roman family devoted to ceramic art, and who appear to have contri
buted to the prosperity of several industrial loca-
JLJ J Crtll lities ; these are the Terchi. Bartolommeo has
^vA/v*, (j signed some pieces, particularly some charming bell-
_ ^— * shaped cups, with landscapes, delicately painted ;
I5c\.$S<\"n.O. his mark is M. 342. Antonio has placed his in the
M 342. same form and with the same emblems under a plate
(No. 599) of the Louvre, representing the Flight of Lot from Sodom.
The iron crown placed between the two names is not the special
emblem of Bassano ; it appears upon majolica of other origin.
We do not think the Bassano establishment worked beyond the
seventeenth century ; it still practised the style of the old majolica, and
did not appear to have followed the movement which drew Italy away
to the imitation of Chinese or other porcelain.
Yet, according to Sir William Drake's ' Notes on Venetian Cera
mics,' the sisters Manardi will have set up a faience manufactory at
Bassano about 1728 ; at least, so it appears from a petition addressed to
the Senate, in 1735, by Giovanni Antonio Caffo, to ask a privilege
permitting him to sell off the numerous wares in his shop in order to
cover the considerable expenses he had incurred to attach skilful
workmen to the establishment.
The Senate refused, referring to its proclamation of 24th July 1728,
which, with a view to prevent the exportation of money in the Mila
nese, Romagna, and Genoa, for the purchase of faience, authorised the
creation of majolica manufactories.
At the same time, in 1753, Giovanni Maria Salmazzo established at
Bassano a manufactory with the purpose of rivalling that of the Antoni
bon at Le Nove, then the only important one iu the Venetian States.
Later, Salmazzo complains that the Antonibon excited the workmen to
insubordination in the rival workshops, received them when dismissed,
and thus ruined their competitors. But the Senate refused to interfere
in private disputes.
Le Nove, near Bassano. — This manufactory was founded, in 1728,

MODERN FAIENCE— ITAL Y. 517
by Giovanni Battista Antonibon, and the 18th April 1732, the Senate
granted him a privilege for two years for the sale of his products. To
permit him to recover part of the expenses he had incurred and to pay
his debts, a new privilege of ten years was conceded to him the 2nd
June 1735. In 1741, the establishment was in a most prosperous state,
and the place for sale not sufficing for the requirements of commerce, it
was transferred by Pasquale Antonibon to a new shop in Venice, and
guaranteed by an Act of the 6th July 1741.
In 1762, Pasquale associated with him bis son Giovanni Battista, and
began making fine majolica and pipeclay. He- even extended his pro
ducts to porcelain, taking the 6th February 1781, a new partner, Signor
Parolini. These curious documents are furnished by Sir William Drake's
work. Towards the middle of the eighteenth century Giovanni Battista
produced a piece, bearing this mark : Noue. G : B : A : B : which is ex
plained thus : Giovanni Battista Antonibon, Bassano. A centre piece
(surtout de table), dated December 1755, is inscribed : Delia fabrica di
Gio-Batista Antonibon alle Nove. Mr. Reynolds possesses a magni
ficent vase of agatised blue ground, heightened with gold in relief, with
reserved medallions containing delicate copies after paintings of
Le Brun, specially, the Family of Darius. At the base of the piece,
four cartouches repeat this inscription; Bracciano alle Novei Evi
dently a work so exceptional, and which will bear comparison with
the richest conceptions of Sevres, must have issued from manufactories
where porcelain was made, it remains to know if Bracciano was the
director of the establishment, or the painter. Mr. Chaffers gives
the inscription : fab* Baroni Nove, indicating Baroni as the successor
of Antonibon. We hold to the first indication of Mr. Reynolds
himself. Perhaps the name of the maker appears upon one front of
the vase, and that of the painter on the other.
Nove has produced very remarkable pieces. A recipient, in the
form of a fish lying down, is a wonderful imitation of form and colour; a
lemon, with its leaves, forming the knob of the cover. The stand for the
fish, cut out and ornamented with rocailles in relief, has in the centre a
group of fruits, foliage, and rocailles of the finest execution. This dish
has enabled us to determine another in the Gasnault collec
tion, with similar fruits, surrounded by a blue border, copied /S-vI-«-G-
from Moustiers; underneath are these letters (M. 343), indi- ' ^5v
eating other artists, and showing the importance of the M 343'
manufactory.

5 i8 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Chandiana. — It is very difficult to fix the date of the products of
this place, specialised by the production of faience with flowers in the
Persian style. A potiche, among others, bears the date of 1633.
¦The works of Chandiana are rarely marked ; the letters S. F. C. are
the only ones we have met with at the place where habitually are the
signatures of the artists. Upon a vase, with raised stem, of fine form,
we have taken this inscription, difficult to explain : M. S. DEGA.
Inscribed upon a ribbon, which divides the bouquet by the middle, it
appears to apply to the name of the owner of the piece rather than
to its author. Is it the same with the legend PA. CROSA, found
by Mr. Chaffers upon a cylindrical vase, with blue ground and reserves,
enriched with Persian flowers? He explains it by the name Paolo
Crosa, without saying if the name is that of a painter or of a potter,
of whom we have already mentioned the works.
To sum up, the majolica of Chandiana have a very special style, and
must have been long made.

J&

Lombardy.
Milan. — Why did this intelligent city remain a stranger to the move
ment of the sixteenth century ? This is what we do not know how to
explain ; but when Oriental pottery became the model of European
ceramics, the Milanese products were certainly those which approached
most nearly the sought for type. Yet, let us not go on too quickly ; some
old pieces have been conceived perhaps in a more independent thought.
The Museum of Bordeaux possesses a fine dish, decorated with bouquets
inspired by the textiles of the seventeenth century. Blue and orange
^y _ predominate ; in a word, nothing recals the Chinese
^Dz/jjiPy^ preoccupations: the mark is M. 344. The name
jC-__<==£> of the city, without other signature, is under some
^ little cups at Sevres, painted with figures in the
M 344. r r °
Watteau style.
A magnificent basin, with waved edge, belonging to the rich
Liesville collection, approaches the dish of Bordeaux. A polychrome
wreath, relieved by black hatchings, forms the border; iu the centre
a scrolled medallion, also polychrome and of a pure style resembling
the Louis XVth period, surrounds a soft blue camaieu, broadly treated,
with buildings, colonnades, and figures in the costume of the seven
teenth century. Under the piece we read Mil0 Fele Cleri1 1747.
Must we read Felice Clerici, and may we find again there one of

MODERN FAIENCE.— ITALY. 519
the members of the family which has illustrated itself in France, at
Fontainebleau, or at Moustiers? Would not this name also explain the
following initials (M. 345a and 3456 ) we so often meet upon services of
purely Chinese style, mixed with gold ?

^ti/c\.ao, V~P:

T^rC
M. 345". M. 345".
Another artist who has illustrated himself in Oriental imitations
is Pasquale Rubati, whose most interesting work is in the Gasnault
collection, two semi-circular jardinieres (Fig. 124) of such beautiful
Fig. 124.

JABDINIEEE OF MILAN FAIENCE. — COLL. GASNAULT,
enamel, they might be taken for porcelain. The upper and lower
edges are decorated with shells, scrolls, and rocailles in relief, height
ened with gold ; the whole surface has a decoration of peonies and
sprigs, in blue, red, and gold, which dispute in beauty the richest speci
mens of old Delft. Below is :
F. di Pasquale Rubati. Mil".
A plate in the Museum at Sevres, also by the same artist, although
the colours are rather pale, has only the initials (M. 346) .-,
of his name. —/-
Milan has produced monumental works in the greatest JW rfL
perfection, and of surprising boldness of composition. /*/•/ no
Such are two rocaille consoles belonging to Madame */'il ' —
. . M. 346.
Harel. The slab, of elegant waved outline, is ornamented
with pendants in gilded festoons, and painted with landscapes with
ruins, surrounded by bouquets and scrolls. This slab rests upon a

520 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
scroll-shaped floriated foot, brilliant in colours and gold, and inserted
into three branches twisted in the form of an S, which secures its
solidity. This wonderful work is in one piece, and can only emanate
from consummate artists.
Madame Achille Jubinal has some splendid plates, closely copied
from a Chinese service of the Green family ; only the medallions
in the border, reserved for ornaments, bear in gold a Turkish inscrip
tion showing that these pieces had been presented to the Emperor
Othman, in the name of the King of Poland, as a testimony of friend
ship. We also read in it, " Warsaw." Othman III. reigned from
1754 to 1757, at the time Frederic Augustus II. was King of Poland.
How came this Sovereign to seek in Italy the elements of a political
present ? Why at Milan more than elsewhere ? This faience has
no name, so it cannot be attributed to Rubati more than to any
one else.
Milan has produced in quantities wares with indented yellow
borders, and bouquets of flowers of the Chinese Rose family. Now
counterfeits have taken up the style and inundated commerce with
their imitations.
To Milan is attributed a beautiful service decorated in a violet-red
^y~ camaieu, with flowers in the Dresden style, and
/Yecc/it heightened with gold borders ; one piece only
M 347 has inside this signature (M. 347), which is still
unexplained.
Pavia. — Have there existed works at Pavia, or ought we to consider
as an individual fancy the production of pieces of graffito upon engobe,
thus signed: PRESBITER ANTONIVS MARIA CVTIVS PAPI-
ENSIS PROTHONOTARIVS APOSTOLICVS ? Usually, these
pieces of small dimensions are dishes of brown earth overlaid with
a reddish yellow slip (engobe) ; the borders consist of scrolls of foliage ;
the inscriptions run between this border and the ground, upon which
sometimes are shields of arms. The date varies between 1677 and
1695, and religious legends or proverbs complete the decoration; some
times we read : Ave Maria, or Timete Deum. — Solamente e ingannato
chi troppo si fide. " He only is deceived who trusts too much in himself."
— Chi sta bene quando piove e ben pazzo se si muove : " He who finds
himself well when it rains would be very foolish to change."
What is curious, the sacred calling of the author being known-, is
that his oldest and largest piece is a coppa amatoria inscribed with
these four verses : — ¦

MODERN FA IENCE.—ITA LY. 521
Se non traggo d'hesperia i pomi d'oro,
Porto pero del donatore il core,
Che ricevuto con cordial amore,
Si dird che portai un gran tesoro.
Adi 24 Luglio 1677.
" If I have not taken from Hesperus the golden apple, I yet bear the
heart of the giver, If it is received with cordial love, They will say I
have carried a great treasure. This 24 July 1677." This dish, which
is 18 inches in diameter, is in the Limoges Museum.
A writer who is in the habit of murdering dates, who reads Curtius
instead of Cutius, classes among the products of Pavia a graffito dish
representing the Baptism of Christ, and of which he indicates the
signature as: Joannes Vicentius Mareellus; it is not so, but " Johanes
Vicentius MAVRELLVS," a French name Latinised. To which
country can we attribute this degenerate work ? Certainly not to
Pavia ; the armorial bearings are too ill expressed to assist in a study
of the question, and the drawing so feeble, it is of little interest
whether Jean Vincent Maurel or Maurelle worked in Italy, Savoy, or
France. The same author advances that, from 1650, the Guargiroli have
succeeded each other in the fabrication of faiences, style of Rouen and
Marseilles, it would have been curious to have described what this style
is ; it would have helped to determine French works of the seventeenth
century. For ourselves, we have nowhere been able to study the
potteries of Pavia decorated in colours.
Lodi. — The faiences of this place have the greatest analogy with
those of Treviso, since the same artists appear to have been employed
at both workshops. They consist generally of services with borders
ornamented with iron-red, in the Chinese style, and with polychrome
Chinese landscapes in very fluid enamels.
M. Osmont has a piece signed Ferret, at Lodi; another in the
Reynolds' Collection has M. 348. The
monogram here is disfigured, we find it A/i <0^~>
again visibly (M. 349) composed of the is *i . nt^fh *T\/f
letters ACM upon another specimen ' — ' *^v '
, , . ,, , M. 348. M. 349.
belonging to the same amateur.

522 HISTORY OP THE CERAMIC ART.

States of Genoa.
Savona. — We have before cited the artists of this locality who
painted historical majolicas to the beginning of the eighteenth century ;
we have said moreover that it is from Albissola that the Conrades
went to establish at Nevers the style which was perishing in
Italy. We must return to these indications given in page 308. Two
principal workshops existed at Savona at the end of the seventeenth
century : that of Girolamo Salomoni and Gian Antonio Guidobono, of
Castel Nuovo, who was succeeded by his sons Bartolommeo and
Domenico. The pieces distinguished by the arms of the city may
emanate from various works ; one can only fix their exact origin by the
assistance of monograms sometimes joined with the shield; but this
interpretation must not be abused ; thus, we readily admit that the
initials GS, with the arms of the town, are those of Girolamo Salomoni,
but when the two letters are under a sun, or even the S only, with the
sun, or with different shields from that of Savona, we do not see
sufficient cause to read in them the name of the same potter. The sun
is upon faiences approaching no doubt those of Savona, but of a
particular make.
As to the piece marked with a trumpet with a cross upon the
banner, it ought to be a product of Turin. Nor do we see any reason
for assigning to Savona the mark of a falcon, figured upon faiences
of very varied dates, many having nothing in common with the
Genoese make ; besides, what means the letter F ?
As to Solomon's knot, a kind of star of six points composed of two
triangles intersected, it has no resemblance with the star of five rays
which they would ascribe to the Salomoni.
The Chamber of Arts of Berlin has pieces of the eighteenth
century, signed : Agostino Ratti, Savona, 1720.
But as ceramic history is full of singular and apparently con
tradictory facts, it remains to us to speak of French artists which
will have carried to Savona the same anti-Italian style practised in
our southern establishments ; we would speak of the Borelly. It is
perhaps yet to ascertain whether the one best known, Jacques Borelly,
was really a Frenchman, or whether he did not descend from a family
of the peninsula.
The Marquis d'Azeglio possesses a piece inscribed : M. A. Borrelli
Inuent. Pinx : A. S. 1735. The Borrelli who wrote his name thus, and
who dates from 1735, appears to us to have been an Italian, father of

MODERN FAIENCE.— ITALY. 523
Jacques ; when later, the works of this last appeared, a prolonged
sojourn in the workshops -of Marseilles and Moustiers had made him
adopt the custom of the country, he first signs Borrellij with two r's
and the long Italian/, and at last a piece has Jacques Borrelly, Savonne,
1779, 24 septembre. Many other works are simply signed : Jacques
Borelly. These are particularly scrolled plateaux, covered basins
(ecuelles) and other pieces of middling size, with bouquets of flowers,
in which, setting aside the olive green of the South, the tints are a
little raw. This is a name that may be inscribed, at will, either in
France or Italy. Kingdom of Naples.
Capo di Monte. — Charles III., King of Naples, caused an estab
lishment to be set up at Capo di Monte, near Naples, where was made,
by exception, faience, as is proved by the magnificent piece we are
about to describe ; a fountain for a sacristy, composed of the Holy
Spirit towering over a group of clouds, whence issue three heads of
cherubim ; to the base of the clouds is attached a basin (vasque) in the
form of a shell, with grotto-like reliefs. The holy bird is in gold
heightened with blue and burnished in parts, the clouds are of dead
silver, and the cherubs' heads of gold ; in the basin, bright blue
and gold predominate, and the unglazed mouldings are relieved by
foliage and chequers obtained by burnishing. The inside of the
fountain is enamelled in green; behind, we see the red earth
enamelled in part ; upon two angles, where the glaze is tolerably
pure, is traced this mark (M. 350) near the crowned N. Qapo ^ Monte
Although of a low epoch, this piece is one of the most Md°
remarkable. M_ 350_
Castelli. — The history of this manufactory is very obscure, and the
learned researches of M. Gabriele Cherubini, by their very abundance,
perplex still more the enquirer. The principal works of Castelli issue
from the hands of a regular dynasty, that of the Grue ; Carlantonio, to
whom is attributed pieces signed CAG.PI and C. A. G., had several
sons : Francescantonio, Anastasio, Aurelio and Liborio : Anastasio
painted hunting pieces and landscapes ; Aurelio, animals and hunting
pieces, which he never signed. As for Francescantonio, who generally
took the title of doctor, he worked not only at Castelli, but in other
places, and founded the porcelain manufactory of Naples under
Charles III. We find by him a drug-pot signed: MDCCV1I—VII
Kal X'"" Dott. Grue f Neap. Another piece : Franc. Ant. Xaverius,

524 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Grue phil. et Theol. Doctor inventor et pinxit. In Oppid Buxi. Anno D.
1713. In 1718, D' Franc- Anton0. Cav. Grue. P. In 1722, Fra' Anf.
Grue P. Napoli. In 1737 :
D' Franc' Ant' Castelli
GRUE. P. A.D.MDCCXXXVII.
But, who is the Grue who signed in 1647 : FG.DE.CHAP., and, in
1677, F" A. Grue eseprai?
Now, where are the works of Pietro Valentino, died in 1776 ; of
Giovanni, died 1678, and who had one of the same name between 1698
and 1752 ; of Niccolo-Tommaso, died in 1781 ?
As to Francesco Saverio Grue, nephew of Francescantonio, one
knows by him at Atri, a plaque with this inscription: D.
, ,P. Franciscus Rosa donavit pm opus q. m. F"* Xaverii Grue die
M. 351. 22 M. Maij. 1759. — Trae Castelli, and we have seen land
scapes signed M. 351.
There was again a Filippo Saverio, son of Francescantonio, who
directed the porcelain manufactory of Ferdinand I., and died in 1799 ;
then a Francescantonio, his son, who worked very little.
The Fuina and Giustiniani have generally been considered as
pupils of the Grue ; there are still several artists of the name of
Gentile ; the first, author of a Christ with this inscription : Questo
crocifisso del carmine lo feee Bernardino Gentile per sua divozione, 1670,
and of the plaque representing the Martyrdom of St. Ursula. There
exists, besides, a Bernardino il Giovino, born in 1727, who painted
pastoral scenes and history ; then a Gentile Carmine, author of sacred
subjects, who, born in 1678, died in 1763. Lastly, Gentile Giacomo il
Vecchio, died in 1713, and Giacomo il Giovine, born in 1717, produced
also rural scenes and hunting pieces. To which of them should we
assign pieces simply signed Gentili P. ?
It is no doubt to the Grue school that belongs the author of
a plaque with Ruins in a landscape, and a Shepherdess spinning
„ _ # _ by the side of her cow and sheep ; on an
XVC-Aflt-GyxiUtt)!. angie 0f the ground is M. 352. Luca
>i^ Antonio Giannico is still an unedited
M- 352- name.
In the Berlin Museum is a plaque with the Baptism of Christ, and
signed : C. Rocco di Castelli, 1732 ; the form " di Castelli " would
appear to establish that we must give to this workshop the name of
this artist.

MODERN FAIENCE.— ITALY. 525
A piece in the same museum has : Math. Roselli fee. Another new
name is that of Liborius Grue: whose signature is in the South
Kensington Museum, under a covered bowl decorated with figures
after Annibal Carracci, unless he should be either Liborio Seniore,
who painted indifferently in the seventeenth century, or Liborio, son
of Carlantonio, who worked with his brother Aurelio at Atri, and
afterwards established himself at Teramo.
Sicily.
Baron Davillier has found this inscription : Fatto in Palermo, 1606,
upon albarelli resembling the Castel Durante style of decoration ;
without doubt, the last products of those Sicilian workshops of the
sixteenth century, of whose existence there is no question, although
we have not yet been able to determine any of their authenticated
works. Sardinia.
We have seen, page 312, what had been the interesting productions
of Turin from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, fabrications
marked with the arms of the Sovereign or with the testimony of his
protection. But beyond the patronised establishment, we have spoken
of that of La Forest ; the existence of another has been made known
to us by the collection of the Comte de Liesville. Established in the
valley of Maurienne, it bears its name ; its works, numerous perhaps,
are confounded by amateurs among the Nivernais faiences, which they
resemble with extraordinary precision. The pieces of M. de Liesville
are hunting-bottles a little flattened, with two loops supported by
rams' heads and decorated with medallions of landscapes surrounded
by large leaves, often of a bright green. It suffices to have seen
those products of Maurienne to distinguish them from the true
Nevers. Doubtless, it is to this establishment we must restore the little
dish with blue decoration, signed Jean Gony ^1
(M. 353), whose name of Savoisian origin struck OG0il\\QQTXy
us from the first. M 353
One meets with interesting pieces, evidently Italian, which perplex
the classifier by their particular style, or their mono- 1(\rL,li
grams. A cup on stem, for instance, with fruits in \ «--v J\
relief, dated 1634, gives us these ciphers (M. 354) : -oJ-IaA «V» »

526 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

M. 355 is on a circular tub, decorated inside with bouquets,
A»n»T?. A f1 Moustiers style, and fishes swimming at the
M. 355. bottom ; on the outside are arabesques, Rouen
style, in very soft polychrome enamels.
AJ. rJ. 17 bO. Vases covered with ovolos in relief and with
twisted handles, polychrome decoration and wreaths of flowers in
rocaille medallions.
Couzuka or Couzaka. This singular name was traced very cursively
underneath an elongated fleur de lis, painted in bright iron red. The
piece which had these marks was in the San Donato sale ; it was a large
fountain composed of a mythological group : a Nereid, a Triton and a
Cupid with a dolphin. The basin was a large shell with jagged border,
blue, pink and lilac, and in the indented sides were wreaths of flowers,
among which was a convolvulus characteristic of the same bright red
as the fleur de lis.
Where had this important piece been composed ? Was it at Capo
di Monte of which we describe another first-class work ? Or of
Lombardy'? The name has nothing Italian in it, and we should be
almost tempted to see in it a sobriquet ; a Russian artist may have
come to work there, and they may have styled him Cossack in the
jargon of the workshop.
"p ~p Dishes and plates, Milanese style, Chrysanthemo-pseonian.
Services, perhaps from the same locality, style of the

f.t r

Rose family.

Plate of fine faience, Sino-French decoration in blue, yellow,
and pale green.
/*/* /\/^ Bursiform vase "with lid, having in relief floriated
" ' u l L. branches, in natural colours.
./. (jr. 0» Large bottles (gourdes), citron yellow ground,
having in relief floriated branches, in natural colours.
M. O* -r» Pieces cut out and in relief resembling metal-
Ti »SjraE.L work; polychrome decoration, in which a bright
chatoyant green and an intense gold red predomi
nate. The colour and style of the subjects indicate Italian make.
T> (L^ Drug-pots, blue ground with brown arabesques, tro-
h£70 phies, escutcheoned medallions.

MODERN FAIENCE.— ITAL Y. 5 27
E>R-* "V y^ Service of fine faience decorated in violet camaieu,
~\ with bouquets, birds and insects.
Cup, Chinese decoration, a Chrysanthemum on the outside,
\/ f-J Eoses within, encircling Watteau dancing figures, heightened
in gold.
. jj » ¦ Teapot of rocaille form with reliefs ; decoration of
*J / bouquets of tulips, in blue heightened with gold.
\X^ Cache-pots with mask handles ; blue decoration, orna-
T)A_ ments and bouquets at set distances.
We replace here the mark of a bird crowned (M. 356), under which
is the letter F ; this bird, however cursive it may
be, is always characterised by a forked tail, and is
therefore a kite. Must one infer from thence that
pieces so marked come from Milan? or must we, on
the contrary, recognise in the F the initial of the
manufactory ? One of the " ballate " we have M. 356.
seen had a cavalier in the costume of Louis XIII. ; another, peasants
dancing in modern costume, the ornamentation was also desperately
poor. Must we, on the contrary, bringing these indications together
with those we .have given, see in tliese signs the name of Felix
Faucon ? Then the drawing of Louis XIII. would not be understood.
Mr. Chaffers and some others, resting upon a certain conformity of
style and execution, give this mark to Savona, the refuge of all uncertain
pieces of the last two centuries.
Let us mention, among these singularities, a puzzle pot having at
the bottom a heart surrounded by rays, and this double device : Mate,
furbe. Is it an allusion to the heart itself, mad and deceitful, or to
the piece ?
The Marquis d'Azeglio possessed a fine covered vase, with pedestal
and -twisted handles, the subjects of which are of historic interest.
In a large medallion is a pope who offers incense to the Virgin,
surrounded by a crown of stars and rays ; above and below is
written: Clemens XI. Vibg. sine labe concepts festum cele-
beandum edicit. — Nec solis instae sola eegnat illusteatque.
Upon the other side, a man pours oil upon the flame of an altar, the
inscription tells : Clemens XI. pontifex ceeatde — olem supeb
lapidem eectum. This piece, therefore, is commemorative of the
fete of the Immaculate Conception, founded by Clement Albani, pope
from 1709 to 1721.

528 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Here is another religious piece; upon a dish coloured brown, by
a mixture of manganese, has been raised with the point a pretty
arabesque border, which comes out white. In the centre, a reserved
medallion bears the eagle displayed, with the iron crown, below is :
S. AGNIESA. = GAT1".
ONOFRI. 1751.
We mention here under all reserve large dishes with rims covered
with fruits and animals, dogs, cats, &c. In the centre are grotesques,
we will not say in the style of Callot, but rather imitations of what we
see in the Neapolitan porcelains. The signature J. D. L. F. pxit has
been indicated as signifying De la Fontaine pinxit. That is a French
name we should be astonished to find in Italy, and, on the other side,
we do not know any French works which have been painted in this
style and with these numerous enamels, so pale and washy.
Spain.
We have seen (page 176; to what a remote epoch is referred the
origin of Spanish ceramics, and how, from the twelfth century to
the present time, the gilded works of the Arabs and Moors have
become transformed under Christian influence.
But this kind of faience is not the sole that has been made in
the Iberian peninsula, one would even consider the lustred works as
destined for export trade, while the potteries heightened with colours
served for home consumption. Unfortunately, precise information is
wanting upon the special style of each centre, and we must confine
ourselves to repeating the rare indications taken from modern travellers;
to facilitate researches we class them in alphabetical order.
Alcoea, near Valencia. — In his 'Voyage d'Espagne,' the Marquis
de Laborde mentions this establishment as one of the most important of
the province, and announces that it belongs to the Aranda family. A
memoir, published by D. Calvet, appears to contradict this statement ;
he places the works of the Duke of Aranda at Denia, city of the kingdom
of Valencia, situated at eighteen leagues south-east of the capital. But
pieces come to light, showing that Laborde is right. A previous tazza
belonging to Baron Davillier, representing the Family of Dvarius,
after Lebrun, bears underneath: ALCORA ESP ANA. Soliva. Now
this artist is one of those who, formed in the school of Moustiers, has
practised alternately in France and Spain. Many pieces of Alcora,

MODERN FAIENCE— SPAIN.

529

therefore, should be taken out of collections purely French where they
are wrongly placed, only where to put them is a delicate point.
We have also reason to believe that this remarkable pottery, made
under French inspiration, is not the only kind issued from Alcora ; we
have seen a vase with two handles, of Arab form, resembling the alca-
razas, upon a smooth white enamel, decorated with birds and flowers
coarsely painted, which is said to be of this manufactory.
Another piece more common still marked CO (M. 357) would appear
to be of the same origin ; also a lobed plateau, fS r\
in the collection of Dr. Guerard, though still O \J ^ <i^n (s
recalling the traditions of the Renaissance by M- 35?- M- 358-
its masks and scrolls, offers great technical analogies with the pre
ceding pieces, and bearing the signs M. 358.
Alcoy, in the kingdom of Valencia. — We may suppose that the
production of this centre has a certain merit, since, according to
Laborde, it is sent into Catalonia, Aragon, the kingdoms of Murcia and
Castile; and is, they say, almost the sole description used in Madrid.
We do not know its characters.
Denia. — After what we have said above, speaking of Alcora, we perhaps
ought to efface the name of this locality from the list of Spanish workshops.
Manises, kingdom of Valencia. — The principal production of this

centre was, as we have already seen,
that of its " gilded works." We have
given, p. 186, the passage of Diago,
who speaks of the orders made by the
pope, cardinals, and princes. This vase
(Fig. 125) will give an idea of the taste
which reigned in the manufactory at the
beginning of the eighteenth century.
The decadence rapidly went on, al
though, at the end of the century,
there were still thirty ovens in activity.
Baron Davillier relates how, in his last
travels, he had found the fabrication
reduced in the hands of an inn-keeper,
who bakes and works in his leisure hours,
leaving to his wife the office of diaper
ing with gold the pieces he has turned.
Azulejos were also made at Manises,
but very inferior to those of Valencia.

Fig. 125.

GILDED VASE OF MANISES, WITH
SHIELD.
2 M

530 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Onda, in the same province, has made faiences destined for local
consumption. Segovia, in Old Castile. — At the time de Laborde published his
work there was a manufactory in this town of little importance.
Seville, in Andalusia. — The same author cites this centre as
possessing a manufactory, which, without doubt, must have been of
great importance and of long duration. We have met with faiences
having a great analogy of fabrication and style with those of Savona,
only brown and orange yellow were the predominant colours of the
decoration, composed of figures of pretty good style, wreaths of
*~> flowers and ruins, the letter S surmounting a star (M. 359) forming
^ the mark. Some desire to see in these two marks an Italian origin,
M. 359. to
the S signifying Salomoni, and the star Solomon's knot ; we have
already explained (p. 309) that Solomon's knot, a cabalistic sign, is
composed of two triangles superposed ; besides, Salomoni worked at a
period anterior to that indicated by the decoration of the Andalusian
piece. A fine helmet-shaped piece, of the Salin collection, ornamented
in blue in the style of Moustiers, represents the same mark
¦— > with an artist's sign (M. 360). The pieces exhibited in 1865
** by M. Arosa, and painted with the Fandango Dance, Bulls led
. *- to the arena, the Arms of the Cathedral of Seville, and the View
of the Golden Tower, although of a less ancient period and a
looser make, which the large proportion of the pieces accounts for,
perfectly resemble the works described above.
Talaveea de la Reyna, in New Castile. — Brongniart mentions this
establishment, renowned from the sixteenth century, as the true centre
of the fabrication of enamelled earthenware ; in fact, they say in
Spain, Talavera to signify faience, as they say Delft, in Holland and
England. The enamel of Talavera is white and well glazed ; from this manu
factory have been sent pieces very remarkable in form and deco
ration ; we have seen a large state vase with twisted handles, and
opening decorated with a twist in relief ; upon the ovoid body twisted
mouldings mark the boundaries of a central zone painted with detached
landscapes, groups of rocailles and bouquets of flowers ; towards the
top, heads in relief, fastened by draperies, support little vases ; at the
base, above the stem, gadroons in S recall the disposition of certain
Italian pieces of the decadence. All this ornamented in soft, well
glazed tints, has a very uncommon appearance.
A vase (Plate X.) equal in merit forms part of the interesting col-

Plate X.— SPAIN.
Talavera de la Eeyna-Fai'ence-Ewer. Collection Comte de Liesville. '

-

¦ ¦ -

FfliaiaWLW

MODERN FAIENCE.— SPAIN. 53*
lection of the Comte de Liesville ; we will not describe it, the engraving
giving the most exact idea of its style and perfection. These last pieces
would appear to have been made in the seventeenth century. Speci
mens of a later date recommend themselves still by their pure enamel,
recherche form, and a floral decoration whose soft harmony resembles
the polychrome works of Moustiers, with bouquets and wreaths. Would
it be also there that was made the bell of the convent in the collection
of Arosa where the legend " Saint Francis pray for us, 1769," surmounts
the view of a village with its churches and towers ? Ancient writers
speak of a green and white pottery, special to this establishment ; we
have seen a fine plate, almost of Moresque style, where these colours laid
on en engobe formed a rich composition, relieved with graffiti and out
lines of manganese.
Toetosa, in Catalonia. — De Laborde, generally severe upon Spanish
industries, states there existed at Tortosa two manufactories of which
the pieces are very common. The works of this centre are unknown
to us. Teiana, suburb of Seville, Andalusia. — Several establishments have
flourished iu this place, some famed for the production of the earthen
ware spikes (epis) with which, since the Arab occupation, the edifices
are crowned, the others specialised for the making of azulejo tiles for
overlaying. Valencia. — This capital has, in all ages, been celebrated for its
azulejos, made with the clay of Quarto, carefully glazed, and often
decorated with important subjects painted upon a number of tiles
joined together. The edifices and palaces of Spain present frequent
applications of this style of decoration, which is continued to the
present period, as may be seen by two pictures exhibited at Sevres.
The one represents the Surrender of Valencia by the Saracens, and
has this legend : Dia 2 de octubre del ano 1239. Conquista de la ciutad
de Valencia. Entregan los Sarracenos las Haves al rey D. Jaime.
The other represents a meeting of ladies in full dress, and officers in
uniform, with this sole indication : De la Real fabrica de Azulejos de
Valencia. Afio 1836.
One can understand the importance attached in Spain to ceramic
decoration by this fact alone ; to Pablo Cespedes, a good painter and
excellent poet, author of a didactic poem upon painting, is attributed
the painting upon faience which covers a wall of the chapel containing
the tomb of Cardinal Ximenes in the Church of St. Ildefonso, at
Alcala de Henares.
2 m 2

532 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

In 1788, Gournay mentioned at Valencia three manufactories of
tiles directed by Casanova, Cola and Disdier; the name of the last
seems to indicate a French origin. At the time of Laborde, three
furnaces of azulejos were still in activity in the town.
Villa Feliche, in Aragon. — The same traveller, in announcing a
manufactory of faience in this place, adds that its products are very
common. Is this all that writers teach us upon Spain ? Certainly not. We
have spoken elsewhere of their "matamores" dishes, of which the
curious prototype has been brought over by Madame Furtado ; the
style is perpetuated in the Peninsula, and appears even to have pene
trated into the Netherlands with the Spanish governors. But more,
the towns mentioned in Marineo Siculo, and other old historians, would
certainly not have suddenly given up an industry which procured
them profit and honour. There should therefore exist faiences of Biar,
Trayguera, Paterna, Alaquaz, Moncada, Quarto, Carera, Villalonga, of
Barcelona, Murcia, Murviedro, and Toledo, renowned in the sixteenth
century ; of J aen and Teruel ; let us then hope that some learned
enquirer, versed in the knowledge of the manners and language of
the country, will throw light upon tliese interesting questions. We
have already said the work of Baron Davillier upon the gilded works
naturally points him out for this second undertaking, as a natural
complement of the first. Portugal.
This country is in some sort the New World of ceramics, for it is
only since the travels of M. Natalis Rondot and the Great Exhibi
tion of 1867, that one has been able to appreciate the merit and extent
of the works of the Portuguese in the potter's art. Have they
been among themselves the inventors of a fabrication which all en
lightened nations inaugurated at the same time? Have the Italian
majolicas served as models to them ? or rather the Arabs and Moors,
will they have been their first teachers ? These questions will soon
be resolved, now that curiosity is awakened among the Portuguese
amateurs. As regards the modern epoch, we may say that all the styles have
been happily imitated, and that it is very difficult to distinguish
between the Norman and Provencal types and the analogous fabrications
of Portugal.

MODERN FAIENCE.— PORTUGAL. 533
But, above all, let us speak of the azulejos which, in this part of the
Peninsula, have been treated with no less success than in Spain. Since
1850 the ' Magasin Pittoresque ' pointed out the general employment
of this decoration in the public edifices and private houses, which
sometimes are overlaid with enamelled tiles from the base to the roof;
they represent hunts, sacred and historic subjects, landscapes, vases
filled with flowers, arabesques, &c. The principal events of the revo
lution of 1640, which took away Portugal from Spain, are figured in
ceramic pictures in the hotel of the Count d'Almada au Raio ; it is
there that the conspirators united, and that took place the accla
mation of John IV. of Braganza. The principal subject shows the
attack of the palace by Spanish soldiers ; . the Count, from his balcony,
harangues the mob, and presents them a flag with this inscription:
"Liberdade! liberdade ! viva el rey dom Joao IV.!" In the fore
ground, an engagement is taking place and frightened horses drag a
coach of ancient form. One of the two other pictures represents the
Procession and Miracle which inaugurated the Eevolution ; the Arch
bishop of Lisbon, Rodrigo da Cunha, marching at the head of the
multitude bearing the crucifix, when the figure of Christ detaches itself
and extends its right arm.
The Church of Saint-Mameda, at Evora, is decorated with azulejos
purely arabesque, but those of the College of Saint John the Evangelist
present historic subjects with figures of large dimensions; they have
been painted by Antonio d'Oliveira.
Lisbon. — The capital of Portugal has had, as may be expected, a
certain number of manufactories of which the current products were
vases, and table wares of white ground with arabesques and flowers, either
blue or in colours, where green, yellow, blue, and violet predominate.
But the most important of these manufactories is that which, under the
title of royal manufactory of Rato, has furnished works of all styles.
The Universal Exhibition has shown us a figurative vase formed of a
negro's head with a turban; recipients with handles, composed of
crowned genii and surmounted by fish and vegetables in relief; a
candlestick, of which the body is a dolphin, resting upon shells and
marine plants and supported by escutcheons ; one with the busts in
relief of Portuguese sovereigns, the other, with the legend, Maeia I et
Pedeo III, Poetugalize eegibus. Then, near these specimens, were
wares of the Rouen style of fine character, others with flowers and
scrolls, landscapes, and detached flowers. From what M. Natalis

534 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Rondot tells us, the manufactory at Rato would have had M. 361,
~V 7? Tr ST" comPosea 0I tbe letters FR. The ciphers
-^ - V> _Q jJvL alSo (M. 362) have been found upon other
M. 361. "m. 362. specimens.
Caldas. — This manufacture would appear to have been specialised
for faiences in relief; the greater number are covered with a black
coating; the others with the customary enamels of the country,
violet, yellow, and green. Some bulls of excellent design and skilful
modelling sold at a low price. .
Coimbea has also made black faience of remarkable delicacy. Such
are a writing-desk and a teapot which were in the Exhibition of 1867.
Poeto. — The town of Porto has had several manufactories, which
have produced potteries of varied form and style. We find all kinds,
from the pharmacy pots decorated in blue to the vases of form and
escutcheoned table-services. A plate with detached bouquets, having a
fountain in the centre, had this inscription, on a medallion supported
by birds : — Na eeal fabeica do cavaquinho. — Poeto. The front
surface of a cup was entirely filled with the arms of Portugal.
The manufactory of Saint Antonio de Poeto was represented at
the Great Exhibition by a lion in the style of Luneville, and by foun
tains placed upon pedestals, and ornamented with flowers and branches
iu relief, coloured in blue.
The history of these various establishments, still a little obscure,
will soon be developed ; we have as guarantee the zeal of Portuguese
amateurs, at the head of which we place H. M. dom Pedro, father of the
reigning sovereign, the Marquis de Pombal, the Count de Penafiel, the
Baron d'Alcochete, &c. Section 2. — Poecelain.
a.— soft poecelain.
French Soft Porcelain.
We have shown, in its place, how the ingenious pottery called soft
porcelain was invented, in the sixteenth century, in the laboratory of
the Grand Duke of Tuscany, and in consequence of what events the
enterprise had disappeared with the Prince, its protector. When, at
the end of the seventeenth century, France, in her turn, set herself to
the work, the Florence porcelain had been forgotten, and it was by
proceeding to new researches, and inventing entirely new processes,

SOFT PORCELAIN— FRANCE. 535
that our ceramic artists arrived at again making an artificial translucent
pottery more wonderful even than the first.
By one of those phenomena so frequent in the order of ideas,
all those who handled the clay and vitrifiable materials worked
at the same time, so that one saw arise almost at the same moment
attempts of different natures ; here enamel cut with the wheel, there glass
more or less opaque, and more or less devitrified, then at last porcelain
of vitreous frit, obtained almost simultaneously in s'everal localities. In
seeking to bring to light the labours of these ceramists, we have cited
as first in date Claude Reverend, a citizen in Paris, obtainer of a
privilege (mentioned page 392), and delivered 21st April 1664. We
hardly thought that this fact could have raised a storm against us, but
we knew little of the local patriotism of the Normans. M. Andre Pottier
had written that European porcelain had been invented at Rouen ;
nothing could disinherit this enlightened city from the claim raised to
its glory, as was affirmed by a pamphlet. We admit, when speaking of
the probable attempts of Reverend, no local consideration animated
us, and we adjudged to this potter so small a share ; we attributed
to him works so little to be recommended, that we did not think of
any objection being raised. Now, facts have modified and changed
certain of our appreciations, without shaking in their base our anterior
convictions. It remains demonstrated for us that Reverend sought,
like all the potters of his century, the secret of the fine paste of Oriental
vases. Let not people attempt, by quibbles, to turn away the language
of the letters patent of the seventeenth centuiy from their true sense ;
if in the Low Countries, where faience had an origin relatively ancient,
the word porcelain had introduced itself at the end of the seventeenth
century to designate works of fine paste and rich decoration, made in
imitation of Oriental pottery, nothing with us gave rise to this abuse of
the expression. Reverend had expatriated himself in order to make
enamelled terra cotta, after the process of the Dutch, and he had suc
ceeded ; but he had, at the same time, found the secret to imitate
porcelain "as fine and more, than that which came from the East
Indies," and he asked to work this secret in France, that it might not
be stolen from him by foreigners. And they would wish to make one
believe that this man, taught in the Low Countries to make faience
" fa<;on d'Hollande," would have manifested in an official act the fear
that his masters should steal from him their own processes. Common
sense revolts against the expression of such an enormity. And then
we know this fine faience of Reverend; can one consider it "as

536 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
beautiful and more" than Oriental porcelain? It has not even the
pretension to offer to it the most distant resemblance ; it is the current
faience of Holland, nothing more. Yes, Reverend is one of those who
have contributed to the search after translucent pottery ; this search has
served him as pretext to establish in France his making of enamelled
ware, and to obtain a privilege which evidently has fallen into desue
tude, because the privileged person had not fulfilled the conditions
imposed upon him.
This is what we have always thought, and which would be proved,
if necessary, by the silence preserved upon the privilege of Reverend
in the letters patent, delivered the 31st October 1673, to Louis Poterat,
Sieur de Saint Etienne. This last, a most fortunate seeker, almost
arrived at success; he produced porcelain, and the writings of the
time place faith in it. Thus, the contemporary almanac of Abraham de
Pradel, and subsequently the dictionaries of Savary des Brulons and
others, mention these attempts, and judge of the result. Why then
did this invention remain in the state of trial ? It is that Poterat, a
maker of faience, accustomed to working an industry of which he was
an expert, would not drop the substance for the shadow, and plunge
into the chances of a doubtful enterprise. Like Reverend, he had found
in porcelain a pretext for a privilege, and used it largely.
Let us then see which are, among these trial pieces gathered by
collectors, those which may be attributed to Poterat. The first of all,
and one which appears without doubt, is the little covered pot in the
Museum of Sevres ; the decoration is similar to that of the blue faiences
of the good epoch, and the arms, those of the family of Asselin de
Villequier, which occupy the principal front, appear traced by the hand
of the same artist who had painted these arms on the service of faience
executed for the same family. Taken as a type, this specimen gives the
following characteristics : — Porcelain very translucent, with ¦ vitreous
enamel of rather a blueish cast, painting fused in the paste, but
without blisters. Various specimens answering to these characters, and
specially those of the Museum of Rouen, have been adopted without
dispute as the works of Louis Poterat.
At the same time we find several thick pieces, ill worked, of a dead-
white, neatly painted, of rather a blackish blue, and marked, notwith
standing their imperfect success, with a cipher A.P., surmounted
by a star (M. 363a), often carefully traced. The two first specimens
of this kind, both of similar decoration, evidently borrowed from
faience, belong to us, and by reason of their very defects, we have

SOFT PORCELAIN— FRANCE.

537

thought ourselves able to consider them as the essays of the potter
Reverend. But pieces thus marked multiplied themselves ; our friend
M. E. Pascal acquired a salt-cellar identical in decoration with the first
works of St. Cloud ; and several others rose up of the same character.
Fig. 126.

M. 363a.

M. 3636.

SPICE-BOX. TRIAL PORCELAIN OF LOUIS POTERAT.
M. G. Gouellain communicated to us a salt-cellar of the same form as
the preceding, gadrooned upon its two edges, but not marked, and of a
decoration approaching to that of faience ; the central subject particularly,
inspired by Oriental pottery, and representing a vase of flowers placed
upon a stand, was characteristic; besides, from its translucency, its
blueish aspect, this porcelain was identical with the types of the
Rouennais Museum, and our learned friend did not hesitate to consider
it as the work of Poterat. Since then, another specimen that has been
found throws new light upon the question ; a moulded saucer with sunk-
centre, " trembleuse," having in the middle the flower-pot in question,
and the edge ornamented with arabesques quite different from the com
positions of the Chicanneau, as may be seen by this sketch (Fig. 127).
Fig. 127.

EARLY DESIGN ON POTERAT S PORCELA1X.

Translucent and blueish, this trial piece, yellow in places, split in the
middle, was inscribed underneath with the A P, surmounted by a star
(M. 363&). It becomes therefore probable that works thus marked,
have like the others, come from the Rouen manufactory, and that

538 HISTORY. OF THE CERAMIC ART.
the translucency and azure tint of some specimens are the effect of
a baking -more or less prolonged, and of fire more or less intense,
bringing the paste to a state approaching vitrification. But then,
how explain the mark ? Why, among the specimens now sufficiently
numerous, to form the Rouennais contingent, do we find some signed
and some anonymous ?
The blue faiences, whose decoration approaches to the first attempts
at porcelain, possessed by us are not generally signed, one only gives
the letter G. The faiences in enamelled colours, upon which we find
an A P cipher, are very posterior to the works of Poterat, since some
even see in the cipher the name of Andre Pottier. The A P of the
porcelains remains then inexplicable ; the star above might bear an
allusion to the arms of the Saint Etienne, who bore three, an idea
suggested to us by M. Gustave Gouellain ; but the initials seem to
reject this explanation. Yet if the porcelains thus marked must, of
necessity, be attributed to Louis Poterat, auother question arises, whence
can he have derived his decoration, which differs generally from the usual
types of faience, and is identical, towards the latter epoch, with those
of Saint-Cloud ? Have the Chicanneau invented nothing ? Would it
be asserted they themselves copied the Norman designs ?
Documents recently published are not of a nature to elucidate
facts ; quite the contrary. In a request addressed to the magistrate of
Lille to obtain certain immunities, Dorez announces that he is "the
sole, with M. Chicanneau, of Saint Cloud, who possesses the real
secret of making similar (porcelain) to the specimens he has the
honour to submit to you. The master of the manufactory of Rouen,
thinking he had penetrated the secret, had interfered and tried to make
it and sell it at Paris, as of the manufactory of Saint Cloud, which
gave a bad reputation to this last by its inferior quality ; .the abuse
being discovered, he has been obliged not to make any more of it."
Thus, in 1711, Poterat still made porcelain, and sought to assimi
late it to that of Saint-Cloud. When did the imitation begin ? Where
is the primitive original decoration, and whence comes it? From 1673,
date of the privilege of Rouen, to 1696, epoch indicated by the Chi
canneau for their discovery, there remained twenty-three years in
advance for the first; how in 1711, that is, after thirty-eight years of
labour, did he seek to imitate a potter who came after him ? It is yet to
be seen; these questions are complex, and very difficult to resolve. Con
temporary essays with those of Rouen have taken place ; it is upon the
ornamental type of Poterat that have been made the specimens of the

SOFT PORCELAIN— FRANCE.— ST. CLOUD. 539
unknown potter who marked with the cipher JB (M. 364), and of
which the origin remains unexplained, unless one would see
in him the potter of whom Savary des Brulons vaguely speaks ' "ID
as working at Passy. In either case, one would not think of ~*
giving this cipher to ReVerend. The AP had at least certain
analogies with the mark of his faiences. Let us restore, then, until
more amply informed, the essays of the style AP to Rouen, and let
us pass to productions more uninterrupted, and recognisable by certain
signs. Saint-Cloud, 1695. — We inscribe under this head, and under this
date, the first French manufactory which gave to commerce soft
porcelain. Its letters patent are of sufficient importance to be
given : —
" Louis, by the grace of God, King of France and Navarre, to all who will see these present
letters, we send greeting. The graces and privileges that we have granted in favour of
certain manufactures, to procure their establishment in our kingdom, having excited our
subjects to make researches and to arrive, by their application, to a knowledge of the most
hidden arts, the said Barbe Coudray, widow of Pierre Chicanneau, Jean, Jean Baptiste,
Pierre and Genevieve Chicanneau, brothers and sister, children of the said Coudray and of
the said Pierre Chicanneau, and undertakers of the manufactory of fayence and of porcelain
established at Saint Cloud, would have very humbly shown that the said Pierre Chicanneau
pere, having applied himself several years to the fabrication of fayence, and having arrived
at a high point of perfection in this fabrication, he would have wished to push his know
ledge still further to finding the secret of true porcelain ; he would have made for tiiat
several experiments of different materials aud tried different preparations which had pro
duced works almost as perfect as the porcelains of China and the Indies ; his children, whom
he had brought up to the work of the said manufacture, and to whom he had taught all he
had found, have since his death continued the same application, and have at last arrived,
from before the year one thousand six hundred and ninety-three, to the point of being able
to make true porcelain, of the same quality, more beautiful, and as perfect and proper for
the same uses as the porcelain of the Indies and China, according to the testimony of
persons the most skilful and capable of judging, and that they were in a state to give to
this manufacture, of which the commerce would be very advantageous to the kingdom,
all the extent it can have, if it pleases us to grant them the favours and privileges necessary
to derive from the establishment of this manufactory, which they will carry on at their
own expense, all the profit they may hope from it, and to indemnify themselves from the
great expenses that they have been obliged to make to acquire a knowledge of the makino-
of porcelain, and to place themselves in the state to make the enterprise and to succeed.
That this manufacture would already have appeared to us so advantageous to our kingdom^
that we had granted Letters Patent containing several privileges in favour of the named
Saint Estienne to make the establishment of it at Eouen and in such other places of our
realm as will seem good to him, with prohibition to all persons to make establishments
of this manufacture : that nevertheless the Sieur Estienne has at the most only approached
the secret, and has never carried it to the points of perfection nor of execution where the
petitioners have placed it, and made his work only consist in the manufacture of fayance ¦
and that, since his death, which took place several years since, neither his wife, who has'
always continued to make fayance, nor any one on his part, has made porcelain ;' and that
thus we could, without doing wrong to the said Saint Estienne, his heirs and assigns, to grant
to the petitioners the same privilege and the same general exclusiveness for the making of
porcelain only, being certain that no one but them make it in the kingdom, and has never
executed the secret as they do. For these causes and others, in that we being well informed
of the good quality, of the beauty, and of the perfection of the porcelain fabricated by the

54o HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

said Chicanneau, of their capacity and skilfulness in the art of making, and of the great
expenses they have incurred to acquire the knowledge of this art to the point they possess
it, and that the establishment of this manufacture would be very advantageous to the
kingdom, and desiring favourably to treat the said petitioners, by the advice of our Council,
and of our certain knowledge, full power and royal authority, we have by these presents,
signed with our hand, permitted and granted to the said Barbe Coudray, widow of Pierre
Chicanneau, Jean, Jean Baptiste, Pierre and Genevieve Chicanneau, botli conjointly and
separately their heirs and assigns, to make in the bourg of Saint Cloud, and in such towns
and other places of our kingdom as will appear good to them, except, nevertheless, the
city and faubourg of Rouen, one or several establishments for the manufacture of fine
porcelain of all colours, kinds, makes, and sizes. We also likewise permit to the said
Coudray and Chicanneau to continue the fabrication of fayance in the said bourg of Saint
Cloud, and to make work in fayance also of every colour, kinds, makes, and sizes, in all the
towns and places where they will establish the manufactory of porcelain, and to retail and
sell, in' wholesale and retail, in all the towns and places of our kingdom, the porcelain and
fayance of their manufacture ; prohibiting to all persons of whatever quality soever, except
the said Saint Estienne, his heirs and assigns, to undertake to make porcelain in any places
of our kingdom, lands, and seignories of our dominion that may be, even in the pretended
privileged places,_ during the time and space of ten years, beginning from the first day of
October next, on pain of confiscation of the goods made, materials and utensils serving for
the same manufacture, and of three thousand livres fine. We also make express inhibitions
and prohibitions to all persons, under pretext of mastership (maitrise), wardenship, or other
wise, to visit the places of the manufactures of the said Coudray and Chicanneau, neither in
the places where the sale and show of their goods will take place to give them any trouble
in the place for the show and sale of the porcelain aud fayance of their manufactures, and
to require of them any sum by reason of imposition in other cause, excepting tlie charges of
the community of the Master Enamellers of Paris, to which Jean Baptiste Chicanneau will
be obliged to contribute, as member of the said community; without, nevertheless, that he
may be elected juror of the said community, with his own consent. We have exempted
and do exempt, the said Barbe Coudray, and the said Jean, Jean Baptiste, Pierre and
Genevieve Chicanneau, undertakers of the manufactory, their workmen and persons em
ployed in the said manufactory, of all taxes, impositions, and ordinary public charges of
the bourg of Saint Cloud, provided the said undertakers do not possess any other property
in the town and territory of Saint Cloud ; that the house in which the said manufactory is,
or will be established, and the dependencies joining the said house, and that also the work
men and persons employed do not possess any property in the said bourg and land of Saint
Cloud, making there no commerce, trade, nor work, save for the said manufactory, and
have not been before employed in the Eolls of the Taxes and in other places, to the charge
of the said undertakers, their heirs and assigns ; and having cause, will pay to the collector
of taxes of the said bourg during the said ten years, and for each of them, the sum of one
hundred livres only for reason of the said taxes, impositions, and ordinary charges of the
said Bourg of Saint Cloud. We give in command to our friends and faithful councillors
people holding our Courts of Parliament, Chamber of Accounts, Courts of Aydes of Paris,
and all others, our officers of justice ; that they have to register these presents, and with
the contents of these, to make enjoy fully and peaceably the said Coudray and Chicanneau-
For such is our pleasure. Given at Versailles the sixteenth day of May, the year of grace
one thousand seven hundred and two, and sixtieth of our reign. Signed, Louis ; and lower
down, in the name of the King, Phelypeaux; and lower still, Seen at the Council, signed,
Chamillard, and sealed with yellow wax with double label. Registered at the Court of
Aydes, headed by the Attorney-General of the King, to be executed according to their
form and tenure, and enjoy by the grantees to the effect herein contained, at the charge
of lawsuits and differences that may arise, in consequence of the said letters by reason of
the tax and other impositions, will be instructed and judged in the first instance before the
officers of the Election, except the appeal in the said Court. Given at Paris, the twelfth
of April one thousand seven hundred and thirteen. (Signed) " Robert."

The whole history of Saint-Cloud is in this document, and

one

SOFT PORCELAIN— FRANCE.— ST. CLOUD. 541
asks oneself how the manufactory could have remained so long obscure
to the point that Brongniart, in 1844, was ignorant of the reputation of its
products. Yet, when in 1698, Martin Lister, physician to Queen Anne,
published the relation of his travels in France, he expresses most
enthusiastically his impressions of the new manufactory, which he had
carefully visited. We owe indeed to his narrative the description of
certain works which have not been found by present inquirers. The
travels of Lister contain an erroneous statement which we wish to dismiss ;
he announces having visited Saint-Cloud, shown over by M. Morin, the
manager of the establishment, and inventor of the secret of porcelain.
Whatever may be the origin of this indication, it is erroneous. All
official documents controvert it; it is contradictory to contemporary
publications, and the perseverance of some writers in substituting
the name of Morin for that of Chicanneau is an insupportable
annoyance. Let them not pretend that between the erection of the
manufactory aud the letters patent of 1702, many facts may have arisen
to modify the industrial condition of Saint-Cloud. Let us open the
' Mercure de France ' for the year 1700, and we find this announce
ment : — " I have forgotten to tell you that on the 3rd of last
month (September) the Duchess of Burgundy, having passed by Saint-
Cloud and turned along the river to call on the Duchess de Guiche,
stopped her carriage at the door of the house where MM Chicanneau
have established for some years a manufactory of fine porcelain,
which, without contradiction, has nothing like it in all Europe. The
princess was pleased to see the potters turn on the wheel some pieces of
very fine outline ; she saw some others painted of more regular design,
and better executed than the porcelain of the Indies. She then went
to see the processes of the faience at the same manufactory, after
which MM. Chicanneau conducted her to their private room, where she
saw a quantity of beautiful fine porcelain in its perfection, which pleased
her so much that she promised to come again. She did not leave with
out having marked her satisfaction by her liberality to the workmen.
"Their Royal Highnesses Monsieur and Madame often do MM.
Chicanneau the honour of going to see their manufactory. They also
receive frequent visits from the princes, lords, ambassadors, and all
kinds of collectors, who come every day to admire the beauty of the
works they make there, and of which they have a large sale for foreign
countries. They have established their shops for the sale of their
porcelain at Paris, at the corner of the Rue Coquilliere and Des Petits-
Champs, near the Place des Victoires."

542 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
This advertisement, worthy of the present time, is of a nature to
Fio. 12g remove all doubts, for if M. Chicanneau
had been only the instrument of a
powerful capitalist, or of some high
personage, the journal would not have
failed to say so. Besides, as we have
before said, we have in our hands the
family deeds, which cannot be ques-
salt-cellar. porcelain of st. cloud, tioned ; and which throw light upon
" AU soleil." — coll. jacquemart. . . , ___ t. ¦> r*
this point, for, in 1698, Barbe Coudray
and her new husband Trou, mortgaged a rent upon the house of Saint-
Cloud, where was their manufactory, to the profit of Jean Chicanneau.
There is a second point, which should preoccupy collectors more
than the first, that is how to recognise the works of Saint Cloud?
Fortunately the Chicanneau from the beginning applied a cha
racteristic mark upon the majority of their pieces, only these marks
have varied ; the oldest (M. 365), indicating the protection of
Louis XIV., from 1702 to 1715, is the sun, alluding to the
device invented by Ouvrier, " Nec pluribus impar." The second
(M. 366), which goes back pretty far, and was continued during
the whole term of the establishment, is easy of explanation.
Before Barbe Coudray, widow of Pierre Chicanneau, obtained,
with her children, the Royal privilege, she had changed her
condition, having married Henri Trou, usher of the ante-chamber to the
Duke of Orleans ; but Trou could not appear in the official act, because
he did not belong to the corporation of earthenware makers ; he did
what was necessary to be received in it, and collectors will not be sorry
to see tlie form of the act which gave him the title.
" To all those who will see these letters present. Charles Denis de Bullon, Knight,
Marquis de Gallardon, Seigneur de Bonnelles, Bullion, Esclimont, Montloiiet and other
places, Councillor of the King in his councils, Provost of the City, Provostship and
Viscounty of Paris, greeting. We make known, that to day Henri Trou has been received
master enameller, merchant glass maker and earthenware maker of Paris, as apprentice
and by trial piece (par chef-d'ceuvre), iu the presence and with the consent of Jean
Baptiste Chicanneau, Jean Douillart, Nicolas and Antoine Lejeunehomme, and Liermaud
Jacques Morieux Jurors, in presence and in charge of the said community, for that the said
master may henceforward enjoy, and fully and peaceably use, just as all the masters of it,
after he has made oath to well and faithfully exercise the said trade, to keep and observe
the statutes of ordinances of it, to suffer the visitation of the keepers in the customary
manner. This was made and given by Messire Claude Robert, Councillor of the King in
his councils, ahd Attorney of his Majesty at the Chatelet, Presidial seat, City, Provostship
and Viscounty of Paris, First Judge and Conservator of the Body of Merchants, Arts, Trades,
Masters, and Jurors of the city, fauxbourgs, and banlieue of Paris, the first day of September
one thousand seven hundred aud six. " Ciiaillon.
" Sealed the 1st of September 1706. " Dechambault."

SOFT PORCELAIN— FRANCE.— ST. CLOUD. 543
Become thus by right, head of the manufactory of Saint-Cloud, Trou
hastened to affix his cipher, which continued afterwards when his son
resumed the establishment. Yet this retaking possession did not take
place without protests. The letters patent of 1702 were a real nest of
lawsuits. They admitted the common share of the heirs of Chicanneau
in the discovery of the secret of porcelain, and authorised them to work
this secret, conjointly or separately, in whatever place it pleased them.
Each of them pretended to have a copy of the notes of Chicanneau pere.
Trou refused all communication, expressing the fear lest these docu
ments should serve to carry to the foreigner the art of the French manu
facture. He sought at the same time to have the rights of his children
established by new letters patent. Before deciding, the authorities
desired to know exactly who were the heirs possessing the rights of
Pierre Chicanneau, and a statement, preserved in the archives, enume
rates them to the number of nine.
At last, the 15th September 1722, a decree was issued which, in re
voking a first delay of ten years, granted the 15th March 1713, by
Louis XIV. to the undertakers of the manufactory of Saint-Cloud,
granted a new prorogation of twenty years to Jean, Jean Baptiste
Chicanneau, Marie Moreau, widow of Pierre Chicanneau, Henri and
Gabriel Trou, children of the second marriage of Barbe Coudray. This
favour was based on the plea that the interested parties had to sustain
lawsuits and to suffer from the general interruption of trade, the dearness
of provisions, and the increase in the wages of the workmen. It had also
for object the allowing them to recover the advances they would have
made to render useful to the public a new secret the Duke of Orleans
had given them to improve their works.
Dating from this period, the manufactory divides. Trou directs
Saint-Cloud, and Marie Moreau opens another workshop in the faubourg
Saint-Honore. Until lately, the porcelains of Saint-Cloud have been little or not at
all known. Brongniart considered them as of coarse make, yet Lister and
other writings spoke of their merit and of their high price. " They sell,"
says the physician of Queen Anne, " the vases of Saint-Cloud at excessive
prices ; their ordinary chocolate cups are quoted at a crown a piece 
They have sold some furniture of tea tables at 100 livres the set. There
was no moulding or model of Chinese ware which they had not imitated,
and had added many fancies of their own which had their good effects,
and appeared very beautiful." The selected works should be seen to well
understand these eulogiums. Those decorated in polychrome colours

544

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

are of the most charming harmony ; such as the cream-pot (Fig. 129),
with Trou's cipher, and the marked piece belonging to Baron C. Davillier,
a quantity of small pieces, such as snuff-boxes and patch-boxes, mounted
in gold or silver gilt, and the charming salt-cellars of M. Edmund Le
Blant. Those in blue camaieu are to be admired for their select
forms, and a decoration in which embroideries and lambrequins recall the
Fig. 129.

MUG. POLYCHROME PORCELAIN OP ST. CLOUD. — COLL. JACQUEMART.
best ornamental compositions of our petits maitres. Some pieces in
relief, inspired by the Chinese white, are composed with so much taste,
that they appear sufficiently rich, though destitute of the heightening of
colour. These are sometimes anonymous, sometimes stamped in paste
with the mark of Trou.
Lille, 1711. — The Sieurs Barthelemi Dorez and Pierre Pelissier,
his nephew, founded, with the concurrence of the magistrate of Lille,
this manufactory, when the city was in the possession of the Dutch.
Both Frenchmen, they desired to make French porcelain similar in
every respect to that of Saint-Cloud. They set it forth in the acts, and,
after the treaty of Utrecht had restored the city to its ancient owners,
they did not hesitate to claim special privileges for an establishment
so useful to the country.
Lille porcelain, long confounded with that of the Chicanneau, is
,j# distinguished by a whiter lustre (ceil). The decoration is iden-
M *gg tical with that of Saint-Cloud, but a little less delicate in the
blue camaieu. The first mark is this initial (M. 367). Later
we find one or two L's less heavy (M. 368). Probably between
1716 and 1717, when Dorez directed alone, his initial (M. 369)
replaces that of the city. Lastly, upon a charming cup of more
recent period, with little flowers and scrolls, we find under

VL
M. 368.
M. 369.

SOFT PORCELAIN.— FRANCE.— CHANTILLY. 545
the saucer, L (M. 370a), and under the cup, B. We do not know the
meaning of this last (M. 370&). ,¦*¦ -o
M. J. Houdoy equally assigns to Lille, cups of excessively *
heavy paste, painted in polychrome colours, with Chinese m. 370.
borders and bouquets of the Rose family. We do not venture to decide
on the origin of these pieces, which appear to be more Italian than
French. Paris, faubourg Saint-HonorE. — About 1722, Marie Moreau,
widow of Pierre Chicanneau II. (nephew of Jean), established a branch
of the Saint-Cloud manufactory, at Paris, rue de la Ville l'Eveque. The
manager was Dominique Francois Chicanneau, who had been director of
the works of Saint-Cloud from 1710 to 1724, and whose long experience
enabled him to make, not only wares similar to those of the first manu
factory, but grotesque figures and trunks of trees for girandoles and all
kinds of fine porcelain, as is announced in the prospectus of the ^
"succursale de Saint-Cloud." We have a little toilet-pot, ijf
bearing Mark 371, which we attribute to the new manufactory. M- 371-
Chantilly, 1725. — Established by Ciquaire Cirou, under the pro
tection of Louis Henri, Prince de Conde, this manufactory obtained
letters patent, the 5th October 1735. Its object was the imitation of
Corean porcelain, of which the Prince possessed a remarkable collection.
This is set forth as positively as possible in the letters patent which were
granted him : —
" Our well-beloved Ciquaire Cirou has caused to be represented to us, that for more than
ten years he has applied himself to the making of porcelain similar to that which was
anciently made in Japan ; that the trouble and expense he has incurred have had such a
favourable success, that there is no room for doubting that his porcelain is superior to
that of Saxony, which nevertheless had found great credit in France and in the rest of
Europe ; that the different works he has produced of them, and the eagerness with which
foreign countries, such as England, Holland, and Germany apply for it, serves to show the
superiority of his porcelain over all that has hitherto appeared of this style, and that he is
in a condition to give this manufacture, of which the trade would be very useful to the
kingdom, all the extent possible."
The porcelain of Chantilly (Fig. 130) is, in fact, very remarkable.
Upon a tin enamel, which deprives it a little of its translucency, giving
it a dead whiteness analogous to that of the fine Corean pottery, are
Oriental creeping plants. The squirrel climbs and perches on the hedge,
in varied but rather cold tints. Later, the opaque enamel aud the flowers
in the Saxon style were given up ; and decorations in the Sevres style
were melted in a vitreous glaze, similar to that of Mennecy. /^)~<3
The invariable mark of Chantilly has been a hunting-horn /"^CJ/
(M. 372), first carefully traced in red, then rapidly sketched in M- 372.
2 N

546 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

blue, accompanied by letters indicating the names of the decorators.
We have also found it stamped in the paste on plates with reliefs.

Fisr. 130.

TEA-POT. CHANTILLY TORCELAIN.

When Ciquaire Cirou retired, the manufactory passed into the
hands of Messrs. Peyrard, Aran, and Antheaume de Surval, who kept it
in a tolerable state of prosperity ; but when the Revolution came they
could no longer carry it on, and closed it, to escape a catastrophe.
According to the statements of a History of Chantilly, Mr. Potter, a
rich Englishman, already proprietor of other establishments at Mon
tereau and Forges, tried, in 1793, to restore the manufactory for the
benefit of the numerous workmen out of employment. His generous
efforts proved fruitless, for, having expended his fortune, he was obliged
to give up the enterprise in 1800.
Impelled by the same feeling of commiseration for the labouring
population of Chantilly, M. Pigorry, mayor of the town, set up a new
establishment in 1803, applying himself this time to the making
<->. of wares for common use. We have seen his cipher
vL surmounting the traditional hunting-horn (M. 373) upon
 cups and saucers, decorated in blue. We also find on it
l>C J? " Chantilly," in full letters. M. Pigorry was succeeded by
M. 373. Bougon and Chalot.
It is no doubt one of the successors of Pigorry who placed upon the
De Boche pieces of the same service sometimes the hunting-
rue Coquilliere horn, sometimes this legend (M. 374), stencilled
N° 12 (vignette a jour). The statement preserved at Sevres
a Paris. indicates that the first workshop was retaken, after
M. 374. the failure of Potter, by Baynal and Lallement.
Mennecy-Villbeoy, 1735. — It is at the place called the Petites-
Maisons, on the estate of the Duke de Villeroy, and under his protection,
that Francois Barbin established this manufactory. The paste is fine and

SOFT PORCELAIN— FRANCE— MENNECY.

547

translucent, the glaze smooth and even ; the painting affects every style,
from the archaic decorations of Chantilly, the bouquets of the French
style, to the rich compositions of Sevres, with varied grounds and
heightenings of gold (Figs. 131 and 132). .Notwithstanding the prohi
bition of Sevres, Mennecy made a tolerable number of coloured statuettes
and some biscuits of remarkable importance. The most noteworthy,
without contradiction, was an allegorical group, placed in an exhibition
for sale, and which has disappeared without leaving any trace, to the
great regret of M. Riocreux, who reckoned on securing it for Sevres.

Fig. 131.

Fig. 132.

KNIFB- HANDLE. PORCELAIN
OF MENNECY.

MILK-POT. PORCELAIN OF
MENNECY.
(COLL. JACQUEMART.)

Upon a vessel, equipped and masted, stood France, with helmet and
lance in her hand, resting upon a shield with the fleurs de lis;
as far as we remember, other persons, all characterised by emblems,
surrounded a sleeping child. The skilful manipulation of this piece,
and the delicacy of its details, made it approach the works of the
royal manufactory, and gave a high idea of the artistic staff of
Mennecy. «
M. 375 is the mark of all its products. Traced in colours or in gold,
it indicates the older products; marks, graved iu .jvw. .j)y:
the paste, are more frequent and more modern. M 3?5a M 3756
Barbin was succeeded by Jacques and Julien, who
retained the establishment until the expiration of the lease of the
buildings in 1773, when they transferred their materials and stock to
Bourg-la-Reine. Paris, faubourg Saint-Antoine.— Reaumur speaks in his Me
moirs of a manufactory of curious porcelain existing in this place, about
1739. Its products are yet undetermined.
2 n 2

548 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

With respect to Reaumur himself, his porcelain essays have an
importance which requires they should not be passed over in silence ; for
if artificial soft paste had not been discovered and developed so rapidly,
commerce had certainly taken possession of the products of the celebrated
natural philosopher. Reaumur had observed that in devitrifying glass,
it acquired an exceptional solidity and a translucent whiteness analogous
to that of Chinese porcelain. He conceived the idea of thus making
a porcelain, to which his contemporaries gave his name. This singular
product has been described by its author in a memoir, where, after
having shown the useful qualities and low price of this glass, he adds :
" Is it not sufficient for a porcelain that will be so cheap, if its white
ness is superior to that of our common porcelains made in faubourg
Saint-Antoine ? if it is as beautiful as that of the porcelain of Saint-
Cloud, which is sold dear, although it is only moderately good." What
ever it may have been, the ingenious discovery had no commercial appli
cation. Vincennes, 1740. — Seeing the industry of translucent pottery
develop itself abroad, the authorities became uneasy and attempted to
create in France a strong competition, more especially with Saxony.
The brothers Dubois, old pupils of Saint-Cloud, went, in 1740, to offer
to M. Orry de Fulvy, Intendant of the Finances and brother of the
minister of Louis XV., to reveal to him the secret of a new porcelain.
They were given a laboratory at Vincennes, and the expenses of their
experiments were defrayed. . After three years of pretended labours,
which cost 60,000 francs, it was found necessary to expel them. Gra-
vant, one of their workmen, had followed the experiments with intelli
gence, and, by his own personal experiments, he obtained a soft porcelain,
of which he sold the secret to M. Orry de Fulvy.
Such was the starting-point of the royal manufactory. At first, in
1745, a company was formed, composed of eight sleeping partners, and
guaranteed by a privilege, granted under the name of Charles Adam. A
new decree of 19th August 1747, had for object to guarantee this specu
lator, by preventing his workmen from emigrating and carrying else
where the knowledge they would have acquired at the manufactory of
Vincennes. Fashion had so taken possession of the graceful flowers first
produced to ornament lustres, girandoles, clocks, and other articles of
furniture that the little workshops, and especially the clandestine esta
blishments, had given themselves entirely to the copying of these little
masterpieces. Charles Adam having complained of the injury done to
him by these counterfeits, his privilege was revoked, in 1752, to transfer

SOFT PORCELAIN— FRANCE.— VINCENNES. 549
it to Eloy Brichard. The latter scarcely succeeded better than his
predecessor in developing the commercial prosperity of the manufacture,
but renewing the wailings of his predecessor, the authorities sought for
a more efficacious means of maintaining France on a level with foreign
industries. In 1745, Charles Adam, when demanding for his workshops
the full use of the buildings in the superintendent's court of the covered
riding-school and the menagerie at Belair, pointed out "an establish
ment which has just been formed in England of a manufactory of porce
lain, more beautiful than that of Saxony by the nature of its composition,
and which would cause the going out of considerable sums of money
from France." It would therefore be necessary to contend against this
new cause of the money going out, and create an earnest, national,
ceramic industry. For this end there was nothing more efficacious
than to give to the manufactory a high protection.
In 1753, the Eing, Louis XV., interests himself to the extent of
taking a third in the expenses of the establishment, which assumes the
official title of " Manufacture royale de porcelaine de France."
Until then the mark had been two L's crossed, sometimes a
dot in the middle (M. 376). From this period, the mark be
came compulsory, and was accompanied by a letter serving ^
as a chronogram, A for 1753, B for 1754, and so on. At
the same time, measures are taken against imitators and protection
established upon rigid bases, intimidating for the small workshops.
Fig. 133.

COOLER (SEAU A RAFRAICHIR). PORCELAIN OF VINCENNES.— COLL. DUKE DE MARTINA.
An immense development in the production was the result of the
new organisation (Fig. 133), and the company, finding tho localities
which had been conceded to them not sufficiently extensive, resolved
upon leaving Vincennes to establish themselves in a house of their

550 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

own. They bought at Sevres a vast extent of ground, upon which
was the house of Lully, the musician, and caused the building to be
erected there, whigh the manufactory at the present time is about to
leave for a new edifice just completed.
Sevres, 1756. — From the period of this change, the name even of
Vincennes was forgotten, and the old products, as well as the new, took
the name of Sevres. Protection increased also its rigors in restricting
the rights of other manufactories ; sculpture or painting on gold was
prohibited to them, they could only produce wares in camaieu. From
the 1st October 1759, Boileau directed in the name of the Eing, who
had become sole proprietor; and the privilege thus secured, Boileau
occupied himself entirely in perfecting the works and in discovering
the making of hard paste. In our history of this last, we will relate
how its elements were discovered. It may not perhaps be uninteresting
to give here the salaries granted by the Government to the different
officers of the manufactory : —
The Sieur Boileau, director  2000 livres.
The Sieur Duplessis, composer of models (he
was goldsmith to the Eing), for going to
Vincennes four days a week .... 3600 „
The Sieur Bachelier, for going one day . . 2400 „
Brother Hippolyte, for his journeys . . . 100 „
This last was a monk of Saint-Martin des Champs, who, at the period
of Gravant's first appearance, had sold the secret of gilding.
From its origin, the royal manufactory of " porcelaine de France"
had applied itself to the production of coloured flowers for ornaments,
lustres, girandoles, and gilded bronzes. It created at the same time
vases of great ornamentation, of the most elegant and varied forms.
The " salles des modeles," re-formed with so much perseverance by M.
Riocreux but now destroyed by the Prussians, could alone give an idea of
their number and importance. Scarcely would the rich collections of the
Rothschild family (Fig. 134), Sir Richard Wallace, M. Leopold Double,
(Plate XI.) and Madame Heine, the important series united in England
by the Queen and the great amateurs of the country, suffice to give an idea
of these masterly compositions. Among these were those styled the vase
ecritoire ; vase du milieu du roi ; vase du milieu Falconnet ; the vases
chaine, console et a bandes; vase vaisseau a mat; vase fon taine
Dubarry ; vase Duplessis a tetes d'elephants ; vase Tritons, by La Rue ;
vase bas-reliefs of Clodion ; vase a 1' Amour Falconnet ; vase a cartels

Plate XL— FRANCE.
Sevres — Soft Porcelain — Vase, commemorative of the Battle of Fontenoy. Collection
Le Double.

<*N~> — '

F?I^enardiinp .

SOFT PORCELAIN— FRANCE.— SEVRES.

55i

Bachelier; vase colonne and the vase ceuf garni; the vases Furtado,
now belonging to Madame Heine ; in a word, all that the genius of
sculptors, painters, and goldsmiths, united in one common thought,
have been able to conceive of most rich and elegant.
Fte. VA.

VASE OF SEVRES SOFT PORCELAIN. — COLL. BARON J. DE ROTHSCHILD.
The same salle des modeles also contained the greater number of
o-roups which were executed in biscuit, that is, in porcelain paste, un
glazed. Falconnet, Pajou, Clodion, Boizot, La Rue, and a number of
other modellers, had sculptured these figures, which, disposed '•' en sur
tout " to decorate the tables, in company with painted vases, baskets
of flowers, and chased works of the goldsmith, afforded a repose to the
eye, dazzled with the sight of the splendid costumes ranged round the
table. Duplessis, goldsmith to the king, composed the models for the
vases- Bachelier superintended all the artistic parts, and directed
the painters who, upon special cartoons or after celebrated paintings,

552 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
executed those roundly modelled figures, so soft in tint from the colours
being absorbed in the porous creamy glaze which gives to pate tendre
its superiority. Chemists have also largely contributed to the brilliancy of these
" ouvrages de grand luxe " in creating splendid colours for their
grounds ; the oldest, bleu de roi, of gem-like richness, exhibits itself
sometimes marbled and seme with little veins of gold, like lapis lazuli,
sometimes plain, and relieved by gold arabesques in relief. In 1752
Hellot discovered the lovely blue ground obtained from copper, called
" bleu turquoise ; " at the same period, in 1757, Xzrowet found the flesh-
coloured pink termed " Pompadour," and simultaneously appeared the
" violet pensee," the " vert pomme " or " vert jaune," the " vert pre "
or "vert anglais," the "jaune clair" or "jonquille," and these tints
combined in a thousand ways, associated with flowers or emblems,
render unparalleled the variety of works produced in this establishment.
At the time Sevres became the property of the king, Boileau had
been named director ; in 1773, Parent succeeded him, and was replaced
in 1779 by Begnier, who was imprisoned in 1793. Commissioners,
members of the Convention, then administered, leaving to Chanou the
inspection of the works. He was replaced, under the Directory, by a tri
umvirate composed of MM. Salmon, Ettlinger and -Meyer, who remained
in office till 1800, the period of the appointment of Alexandre Brongniart.
At his death, which took place in 1847, this learned director had for
successor M. Ebelmen, too soon taken away from the manufactory and
science. M. Regnault, another celebrity of physical science, came after
wards, and now M. Robert directs the establishment.
From 1753 to 1792, the date of the pieces is indicated, as we have
before said, by a letter of the alphabet ; A is the first
year, B the second, &c. ; the letter Q or the comet expresses
1769. Z closes the series in 1777, when the letters are
doubled (M. 377), and AA marks 1778, as OO 1792. We
will not continue, as at this epoch, the making of pate
M- 377- tendre was scarcely more than an accident ; the other marks
will be found under hard paste,
We give a list of the painters and decorators of the old period,
with the mark assigned to each.

SOFT PORCELAIN— FRANCE.-SEVRES. 553

Monograms.
v^s Jt Asselin, portraits, miniatures.
(/$ Bar, detached bouquets.
— Boulanger, detached bouquets ; — the same initial, only a little
narrower.Gj£2 Baudouin, ornaments, friezes, or borders.
(ffift Bulidon, detached bouquets.
Q Castel, landscapes, hunts, birds.
CJIu Chabry, miniatures, pastoral subjects.
C Til, Commelin, bouquets, wreaths.
CJ*)' Chapuis aine, flowers, birds, &c.
£gf Dusolle, detached bouquets.
Cfi/3, Drand, Chinese subjects, gilding.
TYy Dutanda, bouquets, wreaths.
f Couturier, gilding.
Tp Falot, arabesques, birds, butterflies.
Q Leve (Felix), flowers, Chinese subjects.
J?. Pfeiffer, detached bouquets.

554 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
J~/q Barrat, wreaths, bouquets.
-P-v Fumez, flowers, arabesques.
fpj Gerard, pastoral subjects, miniatures.
/^. Gremont, wreaths, bouquets.
j/z: Hunny, flowers.
/k\ or LR. La Roche, bouquets, wreaths, emblems.
JIC- Hericourt, wreaths, detached bouquets.
HP. Prevost, gilding.
f/ Jubin, gilding.
j - Chapuis jeune, detached bouquets..
Z-A Henrion, wreaths, detached bouquets.
/ n Chavaux fils, gilding, detached bouquets.
jst^ Thevenet fils, ornaments, friezes.
jv-» Dodin, figures, subjects, portraits.
J\j J^, Leve pere, flowers, birds, arabesques.

Chanou (Madame), nee Julie Durosey, light friezes, de
tached flowers.

SOFT PORCELAIN— FRANCE.-SEVRES. 555

Mr%. jQjjB Le 'Bel JeUne' wreatb-s> bouquets.
j£— Be Bel aine, figures and flowers.
LQ. ,Zp-< Le Guay, gilding.
/ / T Tj Lecot, Chinese subjects, &c.
Jjjf Parpette (Mademoiselle Louison), detached flowers,
J*" Jl,, or H. La Roche, bouquets, wreaths, emblems.
Ch( Massy, flowers and emblems.
iVf'771 Michel, detached bouquets.
pV£ Moiron fils, detached bouquets.
.j^p Morin, marine and military subjects, Cupids.
&TB 11% 1} Bunel (Madame), nee Buteux, bouquets.
^/^^ * Aloncle, birds, animals, emblems.
t\, Q* Niquet, detached bouquets.
[fo Parpette, flowers.
Idt Pierre aine, flowers, detachel bouquets.
PL £/5/\ Boucot, flowers, birds, arabesques.
0J^j£ Pithou jeune, figures, flowers, ornaments.
J0/> Pithou aine, portraits, historical subjects.
"P 7 /0.% Pierre jeune, bouquets, wreaths.

556 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
^ Girard, arabesques, Chinese subjects.
O (2> Maqueret (Madame), nee Bouillat, bouquets.
Sj2^ Roussel, detached bouquets.
mj Merault aine, various friezes.
<yCo Binet (Madame), nee Sophie Chanou, wreaths, bouquets.
C7)r Nouailher (Madame), ne'e Sophie Durosey, detached flowers,
light friezes.
0 i. Schadre, birds, landscapes.
rpp Binet, detached bouquets.
~\/0. Vande, gilding, flowers.
IfC Gerard (Madame), ne'e Vautrin, bouquets, light friezes.
/L£9 Hilken, figures, pastoral subjects.
"VXT Vavasseur, arabesques, " ddchires."
3£. Grison, gilding.
V" Micaud, flowers, bouquets, clock dials.
JS Bouillat, flowers, landscapes.
^P, Joyau, detached bouquets.
es Carrier, flowers.
Q Bertrand, detached bouquets.

SOFT PORCELAIN— FRANCE— SEVRES. 557
Q • Buteux fils, aine, detached bouquets.
J/ Merault jeune, bouquets, wreaths.
%OQQ Vincent, gilding. Ciphers and various Emblems.
=J>» Armaud, birds, flowers, &c.
XX Rocher, figures.
*jfo Taillandier, bouquets, wreaths.
Vieillard, emblems, ornaments.
Dieu, Chinese subjects and flowers, gilding.
S2\_ Buteux fils, jeune, pastoral subjects, children, &c.
y\ Capelle, various friezes.
— <-t_ Noel, flowers, ornaments.
(^ Ledoux, landscapes and birds.
#> Bienfait, gilding.
^ Caton, pastoral subjects, children, portraits.
32} yU Xzrowet, arabesques, flowers.
Sinsson, flowers, groups, wreaths.

Q. *. Buteux pere, flowers, emblems.

>a

Gomery, birds.

558 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

fy Leguay, miniatures, children, Chinese subjects.
\J/ Fohtelliau, gilding.
Mutel, landscapes.
Rosset, landscapes, &c.

A

l^* Evans, birds, butterflies, landscapes.
Y Cardin, detached bouquets.
t Thevenet pere, flowers, dial cases, groups.
f Cornaille, detached bouquets, flowers.
ff Chulot, emblems, flowers, arabesques.
S** Chavaux pere, gilding.
£^ Catrice, flowers, detached bouquets.
"^Tt Choisy (De), flowers, arabesques.
Jifllbtt Anteaume, landscapes and animals.
Bouchet, landscapes, figures, ornaments.
Pouillot, detached bouquets.
"^^^ Aubert aine, flowers.
r\ Sioux jeune, flowers and wreaths in camaieu.

SOFT PORCELAIN.-FRANCE.-SCEAUX. -ORLEANS. 559
C* Tardy, detached bouquets.
, , , Tandart, groups of flowers, wreaths.
» • • • Theodore, gilding.
• j» Fontaine, emblems, miniatures.
;;•. Sioux aine, detached bouquets, wreaths.'

J>*>,

\Sao Raux, detached bouquets. 1
Sceaux, 1753.— We have seen, p. 395, that faience was made at
Sevres before porcelain; the date inscribed here has no certainty.
What can be affirmed is that Chapelle rapidly obtained a soft paste,
similar in appearance to that of Mennecy, and often rivalling in
delicacy of decoration that of Sevres, only it is difficult to assign the
limits where the works of Chapelle cease, and those of Glot, his suc
cessor, protected by the Due de Penthievre, begin. Birds upon
a terrace, groups of Amorini in the clouds, graceful bouquets, are J(X
to be seen on pieces well worked and tolerably white. The mark M- 3™.
always graved in the paste is S.X (M. 378), and more rarely an &.
anchor (M. 379), in allusion to the High-Admiral of France, *&
protector of the manufactory.
Orleans, 1753.— We have said, p. 451, what were the beginnings
of the royal manufactory of Orleans, and how the crowned mark appears
to have been reserved for the " faience de terre blanche purifiee."
When Gerault-Daraubert thought of making soft porcelain, he adopted
we know not why, a label of three points, under which is a C r- s
(M. 380). Yet the royal privilege was in force at that period C
(1755), since, in 1771, it was extended for fifteen years. M- 38°-
The soft porcelain of Orleans, first made with the clays of the
environs of Paris, then with the earths of Saint-Mamers and of the
Loire, is white, translucent, and similar to those of Mennecy, Sceaux,
&c. In some pieces, decorations have been absorbed in its fluid glaze ; in
others they are enamelled on the surface with a pure bright cobalt.
The largest piece we know belongs to Madame Heine. But probably
there are many of no less importance among the anonymous works in
collections. Natural and fancy flowers were also made here in large

560 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
quantities, but we have not seen any mounted piece that could be
attributed to Orleans.
Biscuit and painted groups and figures were also fabricated, but we
do not know if this product has a part in soft paste. The M. 380 has
been recently disputed ; in the latter years of his life M. Riocreux had
ever taken the soft porcelains with the label out of the Orleans case to
place them under the head of Crespy. A first objection presents itself:
if the mark of the label is refused for Orleans soft paste, why admit it
for hard ?
But evidence is better than supposition ; let us open official docu
ments. 7th May 1777, when Monsieur visited the manufactory, a written
order regulated the arrangement of the workshops ; we read : " In the
room of the composition of the pastes. Rough materials for the four
sorts of paste employed in the manufacture. Frits for the three first
pastes. Alloys — with the earth of Beylen for the first — Paris marl for
the second — earth of Saint-Mamers, near Chateaudun, for the third —
the three first pastes are called by the public soft porcelain."
In the table furnished to the Intendant the 8th June following, we
find this : " The birth of the royal manufactory established at Orleans
is the 13th May 1753, under permission granted by the Eing for the
space of 20 years ; the 7th May 1773, the goodness of his Majesty
prolonged his privilege for 15 years, because this manufactory had
done nothing to make his fortune nor to give him a competency.
The first earths employed came from Beylen, near Flanders ; in 1755,
from the environs of Paris, the end of 1756 from Saint-Mamers, near
Chateaudun, with additions found near the Loire. Since 1764 it has
added to its fabrication the earths of the Limousin, &c."
It appears to us useless to extend these quotations, which place
beyond all doubt the fabrication of soft porcelain of Orleans under its
various forms. The substitution of the label for the royal crown is one
of those facts that one accepts without seeking to explain.
Etiolles, 1768. — A Sieur Monnier had obtained, in 1768, authori
sations to set up a manufactory of porcelain at Etiolles, near Corbeil.
The mark deposited at Sevres (M. 381) consisted in the letters MP
# united. In its first gropings Monnier tried soft porcelain, imi-
— **E tated from that of Saint-Cloud ; we possess a little piece signed ;
later he made hard paste.
La Tour d'Aigues, 1773. — M. de Bruni, baron de la Tour d'Aigues,
who had established in his chateau the remarkable manufactory of
faience of which we have spoken at p. 464,' solicited, in 1770, per-

SOFT PORCELAIN— FRANCE.— ARRAS. 561
mission to make porcelain. That he succeeded, there can be no doubt,
for we have seen in private collections a certain number of specimens
both in soft and hard paste, marked with a tower (M. 382), which
can only be attributed to this manufactory. One difficulty
alone presents itself; for soft porcelain, Peterynck of Tournay 177 1
for some time affixed a tower to his products. The porcelain C \
of la Tour d'Aigues appears to us well characterised by its i*— *¦
style ; it has flowers and bouquets very well painted in bright
enamels, resembling the style of Sevres; it has, in a word, a very
determinate French character. The pieces with the tower of Tournay
are generally very translucent, and painted in enamels excessively pale
and washy ; birds upon terraces of a form and plumage completely
imaginary, resembling the first epochs of Saxony, or the Chinese style
of textiles and hangings of the eighteenth century.
Bourg-la-Reine, 1773. — It is to this place that Jacques and Julien
transferred the working stock of Mennecy. They continued -~ pj
there the same path as in the old establishment, only the _D'C
mark, graved in the paste, was this (M. 383). M- 383'
Arras, 1784.— M. de Calonne, Intendant of Flanders and Artois,
having been struck by the injury done to our ceramic establishments
by the enormous importation of the common porcelain of Tournay,
conceived the idea of entering into competition with the manufactory
of the Low Countries, and furnished subsidies to the Demoiselles
Deleneur, dealers in faience at Arras, to assist in setting up porcelain
works. Suceess did not crown the undertaking; the products,
generally beautiful, could not be delivered at a price sufficiently low to
contend in the market with the porcelain of Tournay. ^ "D
After four or five years the establishment closed, its /4R» ,
mark (M. 384) consisted in the letters A R, sometimes „ b
accompanied by a decorator's cipher.
Valenciennes, 1785.— A specimen of soft porcelain, made no. doubt
as a trial piece, has issued from this manufactory, which was specially
devoted to kaolinic pottery. It is in the collection of Dr. Lejeal.
The establishments of which we have just given the chronological
list are not the only ones in France who +J> -j^q^ J> •5°
have tried the employment of soft paste ; •*• 4.
the success of the Chicanneaus at Saint- a bed
Cloud must have excited the emulation of M. 385.
many industrials, and we find upon the paste of this manufactory, and
with its decoration, the various marks we give here (M. 385). 2 0

562 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
•v^vy Saucer " trembleuse," style of Saint-Cloud.
j ££ Cup and saucer, a lambrequins, edge threaded, not in-
33 dented. Covered sugar basin, decorated with arabesque borders of
lozenges, and vases in the Saxon style, in fine blue, upon a
yellow paste, split, and badly fired. Numerous similar small
pieces for the toilet.

«b

Toilet pot in the Mennecy style.
f) /") DC Cuvette with edge cut out and lace-work edged with
(f^j pink jags and scallops ; decoration of bouquets of flowers,
Mennecy style.
Now if we are to give credit to the Memoirs of Bost-d'Antic,
published in 1780, soft porcelain will have been made at Moustiers, in
the Lower Alps, conjointly with faience. What we Can assert is that
little coolers (seaux a rafraichir), quite in the form of those of Saint-
Cloud, and decorated in warm colours with a Chinese landscape,
have been given to us by the late M. Allegre as certainly of southern
origin ; the pieces having been in the family of their possessor since
the period of their creation, and having remained in the south, whence
M. Allegre brought them to Paris.

Artificial Soft Porcelain.
Foreign Manufactories.
Tournay, Belgium. — The Sieur Peterynck, a native of Lille, re
sumed in 1748 the manufactory of faience which Pierre Francois Joseph
Fauquez directed at Tournay. This last, proprietor of an establishment
at Saint-Amand, desiring to remain a French subject, left Tournay when
the treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle deprived France of this city. But Peterynck
had high aspirations, he sought to establish soft porcelain in Belgium,
and, the 3rd April 1751, he obtained, for thirty years, the privilege for
working a manufacture of porcelain, faience, English stoneware and
Rouen brown ware.
The paste of Peterynck, and it is this which caused the immense
success of his products, differs a little from that of the French work
shops ; it is a mixture of argillaceous marl and potter's clay having

SOFT PORCELAIN— BELGIUM.— TOURNAY. 563

a frit for flux; it has in consequence great tenacity, and resists
wear. Preoccupied with what was doing around him, Peterynck varied the
form of his works ; the first resemble the primitive Saxon style ; with
pale enamels, almost washy, he executed imaginary birds sitting upon
a terrace or upon conventionalised flowers ; it is works of this kind
which have the tower, sometimes accompanied by two swords +
with little crosses (M. 386) in the corners, which later becomes *y*.
the mark of the manufactory. It is necessary to establish here /jN
a distinction : the tower of which we have just spoken, similar m. 386.
to that figured page 561, is quite an exception; another a*
much more frequent (M. 387), aud known in commerce as Jg
the "tour aux oiseaux," marks selected pieces of the first .-.IlL.
and second epochs. M- 387-
The second system is a compromise between Oriental art and
Saxon decoration; there are Chinese flowers and figures in bright
colours, among which an intense iron red predominates. Later, we
find charming flowers in the German and French taste, or even
complete imitations of Sevres pieces. The collections of the Brussels
amateurs are very rich in the exceptional works of Tournay ; it is there
we must study them to appreciate fully the merit of the Flemish
ceramic artists.
The wares for common use were not marked, unless with the letters
of a series, for the convenience of orders.
Marieberg, Sweden. — A workman went from one of the little
French manufactories to carry his knowledge to Sweden. The works he
produced are so conformable to the type that we only arrive at
distinguishing them by means of a mark, composed of M and B united
(M. 388). Sevres possesses a specimen of this curious
fabrication, and there were several at the Universal Exhibi
tion. The Gasnault Collection has several soft paste pieces M- 388-
of Marieberg, some with the customary cipher graved in the paste, the
others marked with a brush in pink solely with the initial M
(M. 389) ; this last is under a little statuette, glazed and *^*-
painted in colours in the style of the statuettes of Mennecy.
Hence we may suppose that it is in this manufactory that the emigrant
artist acquired his ceramic education.
Nuremberg, Bavaria. — This is a manufactory whose existence
would appear to us doubtful, were it not affirmed by M. von Holfers,
Director of the Museum of Berlin. It is a known potter, Christopher
2 0 2

AB

564 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Marz, whose products we have described at page 495, who founded' this
establishment with the assistance of Conrad Rome'i. This is at least
what is set forth in inscriptions upon two, among six plaques, of soft
porcelain in the Royal Museum of Prussia, but which we have not seen.
Now, what has been published concerning these plaques can but excite
suspicion and make one adjourn a definitive judgment ; four of them
represent evangelists, the two others, the portraits of the two potters,
with this mention : Herr Christoph Marz, anfanger dieser allherrlichen
nurnbergeschen Porcelainefaberique. An. 1712, Mtatis sum 60. " Mr.
Christopher Marz, founder of this magnificent Nuremberg fabric of
porcelain. The year 1712, of his age the 60th year." In the first place,
Marz, born in 1660, was only 52 in 1712. But to pass to the second.
The plaque with the portrait of Romeli shows us other inscriptions ;
at several pages distant, we have two readings of the legend : Herr Johann
Conradt Romeli, anfanger dieser allhiesigen Porcelaine-faberique, an. 1712.
In Gott verschieden, an. 1720. Mtatis suse 1672. Nurnberg, Georg.
Tauber, bemahlt, anno 1720, 22 november. "Mr. John Conrad Romeli,
founder of the manufactory of porcelain in this place, the year 1712.
Died in God, the year 1720, of his age the 1672nd year. Nuremberg,
George Tauber painted in the year 1720, 22nd November." In the
second version we find : Mtatis suse 16 M. " The sixteenth month of
his age." There is nothing to choose between these inscriptions, the
reading is so ridiculous that we must wait a correct copy to discuss its
terms. It does not suffice, like Mr. Chaffers, to pass over the inex
plicable passages, and to admit without examination a fact whose historic
importance would be great, if it could be justified.
With the present elements the question cannot be solved. How !
two ceramists have worked in common from 1712 to 1720, one of those
has survived his partner eleven years, and, during this time, only six
plaques of a new and interesting product have been issued from the
establishment! This is improbable, we may say impossible; Marz,
possessor of the secret, Tauber, who attests the magnificence of the
process, would not have let it die in obscurity when all Europe was
pursuing the discovery. Natural Soft Porcelain.
Natural Soft Porcelain or English.
There is no science without order and method ; the special character
of the English porcelain is the union of natural or kaolinic elements

SOFT PORCELAIN.— ENGLAND.— CHELSEA. 565
with sands, silica, the marls and vitreous glasses which constitute
artificially soft pottery. True, the employment of these various sub
stances has been imagined successively ; at first, English porcelain
was purely artificial. Alex. Brongniart has rendered a service in
distinguishing this ceramic composition from its congeners.
How the manufacture began is rather difficult to say. There, as
in many other countries, undecorated pieces from the East have been
carefully studied, and before imitating their paste, it has been tried
to ornament them with enamel colours. We know many specimens
of those mixed works, and one in M. Bigot's collection reproduces the
same paintings upon a soft trial piece, of an excessive transparency,
approaching vitrification.
Unfortunately, there are no indications to enable us to give a known
centre, and it remains doubtful whether it is Bow or Chelsea which may
claim the invention of English translucent pottery.
Bow or Stratford-le-Bow.- — With many writers this manufactory
ranks first in date ; its works are of a coarsish paste, not very white, nor
lending, itself to painting ; it is in its reliefs and simple camaieux that
the artists have produced their effect. Little milk-jugs of twisted form
with a bee, often well modelled, are generally considered to be typical
of this manufacture.
A bowl made by Thomas Craft, one of the painters of the establish
ment, departs from this constant idea and imitates the Japanese style ;
a note annexed to the piece gives its date (1760), with curious details
upon the works, which were directed by Messrs. Crowther O
and Weatherby until about 1790. The nearly certain 40L T
Bow marks are here given (M. 390) : M. 390.
Chelsea appears nevertheless to claim priority for translucent
pottery ; to our idea, it is from there that issued those over-
decorations of Oriental pieces. Mr. A. W. Franks restores even to
Chelsea the bee jug assigned to Bow, since, with a triangle, a mark
attributed to Bow, we find, " Chelsea, 1745." At this period, the works
flourished under the direction of a commercial company ; according to
some traditions, the Elers will not have been strangers to its foundation
about 1730. From 1750 to 1765, it had attained its full perfection
under the direction of a foreigner, M. Spremont. Its groups and orna
mental vases may rival the most elegant productions of France and
Saxony. The first works of Chelsea do not appear to have been marked ;
later, an anchor (M. 391a) was the habitual sign, sometimes in

566 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
relief in the paste, and surrounded by a circle, sometimes painted in
2. +• "red or gold under various forms. A triangle and a kind
^ of cross (M. 3316) accompanying the anchor are less common.
M. 391. Derby. — Duesbury appears to have, founded this manu
factory in 1750, employing workmen and artists from Bow and
Chelsea. In 1770, the two manufactories of Derby and Chelsea
were united. The first works of Derby are said to have been
M- 392- marked with a D ; later, at their union, the same letter crossed
by the anchor (M. 392)"; towards 1780, Duesbury adopted, under the
name of Crown Derby (M. 393a), the crown and cross
swords, which were continued by Bloor, successor to the
^f"**' •$- Duesburys, until 1830. Derby has made fine porce-
*' lains and statuettes which have nothing to fear by com-
M.393a. M.3936. parison with the groupg of Saxony or &eYres. M. 3936 is
probably a Chelsea mark when the elder Duesbury had the manufactory.
Worcester.— It is to Dr. Wall, a distinguished chemist, who had
occupied himself in making researches to discover the materials for
porcelain, that this manufactory owes its foundation, in 1751, under
the name of the Worcester Porcelain Company. Soft paste was made
here. Dr. Wall died in 1776 ; he is said to have invented transfer
printing, by means of which he imitated the blue Oriental porcelain.
The first works of Worcester are of a yellowish paste, but creamy,
and harmonising well with the bright colours of the

§

^ Oriental palette; most of them have a chequer mark
M.394a. M.3946. (M. 394a and 3946) imitated from the Oriental. Pieces
made under Dr. Wall's direction bear his initial (M. 395). The ordi-
x nary and earliest mark is the open crescent
/r* ^ (M- 396)' M-397 is attributed to Richard
(// \Ss> Rt Holdship. In 1783, Mr..Thomas Flight having
M.395. M.396. M. 397., b:ought the W01,kg> j0jned his name to the
crescent; the King visited the manufactory in- 1788, when the crown
was added to the mark. In 1793, Flight and Barr, being proprietors,
signed their names, surmounted by the crown.
Caughley, near Broseley. — This manufactory of Shropshire goes
back to a date anterior to 1756. The first known specimens are
M- 398' rather rudimentary, but it was not till 1776, when carried on
r> /T> by Turner, a distinguished chemist and good
W rff%- 9^k draughtsman, that it rose to eminence. The marks
t\5' 6 ® of Caughley are very various (M. 398), The word
M. 399. " Salopian " or an S. is of frequent occurrence,

SOFT PORCELAIN— ENGLAND.— WORCESTER. 567
and the Arabic numerals (M. 399), with flourishes to conceal them,
occur in specimens with Oriental designs. A crescent (M. 400) filled
in, is also attributed to Caughley, but there is often confusion in ~,
this mark with that of Worcester, where the Shropshire white Ks
piece's were decorated. In 1799, the works of Caughley having M- 40°-
become the property of Mr. John Rose/were transferred to Coalport.
Plymouth. — William Cookworthy, who had seen in the hands of an
American, some porcelain stones found in Virginia, set about studying
the English soil, and fouud, near Helston, in 1755, true kaolin; shortly
afterwards, St. Austell furnished him with petunse, so that, abput
1760, he was able to set up, at the expense of Lord Camelford, works
which obtained, in 1768, a special patent. Cookworthy, in 1774,
sold his patent to Mr. Richard Champion, and the Plymouth works
ceased. The mark of Plymouth (M. 401) is the astronomical figure O
for Jupiter, one of the ancient chemical signs, sometimes T"
accompanied by ciphers. M- 401-
Stoke-upon-Trent. — Mr. Thomas Minton, pupil of Turner, founded,
in this place, about 1791, a manufactory of porcelain *^-»
which has acquired immense proportions, justified by the A.
excellence of its products. T. Minton's mark is this j/^**
(M.402): Bristol. — Richard Champion, a merchant of this city, set up a
manufactory of hard paste, as soon as he had acquired the patent of
Cookworthy, and joined this fabrication to that he was already carrying
on at Castle Green. The product, though remarkable, was ^
not remunerative, and in 1777, Champion sold his patent. *<7 ¦
The usual mark of Bristol is a cross, often accompanied M 403
by dates and letters, M. 403 is also a Bristol mark.
We refer the reader to the books of Mr. Marryat and Mr. Chaffers,
abundant in details we could not enter into, in a comprehensive work like
ours. Mixed or Italian Porcelain.
Hybrid or Mixed Porcelains.
This name has been given by Alex. Brongniart to the translucent
potteries of Italy and Spain, most of them composed of a clay very
different from granitic kaoliD, and of which some have for infusible
element, a magnesite. Tuscany, as has been shown, has the glory of

568 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
attempting, in the sixteenth century, the production of translucent
pottery ; the germs of this invention rapidly expanded, and there is
no doubt the ceramic history of Italy will shortly acquire unexpected
development. Doccia. — It is in the environs of the town, and in a palace built
upon the site of the house of the sculptor Bandinelli, that the Marquis
Carlo Ginori founded, in 1735, this important manufactory. The first
essays are brownish (bis), split (fendilles), granulous and decorated in
blackish blue with open-work patterns : it is the infancy of the
art. But when the chemist Charles Wandelheim is appointed director
of the works, the paste becomes purified, and skilful modellers execute
delicate subjects in bas-relief; painters animate these compositions by
the assistance of a soft, masterly colouring ; and, from that time, the
path of the establishment is marked out, it is specialised in the pro
duction of plaques and vases in relief. In 1757, Carlo Ginori died, and
was replaced by his son, the Senator Lorenzo, who considerably developed
the establishment, and gave to commerce statues, groups, and pieces of
large dimensions. His successors, Carlo Leopoldo and others, kept up
the prosperity of the establishment. The names of the modellers
transmitted to us are Gaspero and Giuseppe Bruschi and Giuseppe Ettel :
painters for miniatures, Rigacci and Giovan Battista Fanciulacci ; for
landscapes, Antonio Smeraldi, Giovan Giusti, Carlo Ristori ; and for
flowers, Antonio Villaresi.
The Doccia mark is a star with six rays (M. 404), taken from the
Ginori arms, but the present potters have tarnished its lustre
by applying it to counterfeits of ancient productions. Collectors
M. 404. can oniy ^y ju (j0UDt pieces inscribed with this sign. Doccia
now inundates Europe with spurious majolica of the sixteenth century,
and with false porcelain of Capo di Monte, of which she possesses the
moulds. Vineuf, near Turin. — We will speak further on of this manufactory,
because it bas principally produced hard paste, although it is not
certain that magnesian clays do not enter also into its composition.
Le Nove, near Bassano. — We have already said to what perfection
this Lombard establishment carried faience. Its porcelain is no less
remarkable ; we have seen in the Reynolds Collection a bowl (ecuelle)
covered with figure subjects of remarkable execution. Jardinieres, no
less beautiful, have the arms of the Tiepoli and other illustrious
families. But the most important piece is an " eventail jardiniere " of
Sevres form, with rich gilded mouldings and sides, the medallions con-

SOFT PORCELAIN.— ITALY. 569
taming views of Venice, animated by groups of promenaders and
Oriental merchants. Underneath is : Gioni. Marconi pinxi, ^,
and then the Mark 405. Would it, as at Sevres, be an /^
allusion to the comet of 1769 ? The ordinary mark is a T%0 1[£
star of six rays. M- 405"
The first works of Le Nove go back to the year 1752, when
Pasquale Antonibon sent for a certain Sigismond Fischer from Dresden
to construct a porcelain oven in the Saxon manner. In 1762, Antonibon
submitted specimens of his products to the Chamber of Commerce, and
petitioned for certain advantages and privileges. He had to contend by
the excellence of his productions against the rivalry of the Venetian
manufactory of Cozzi. The establishment which succeeded to that of
Pasquale Antonibon was directed by Giovanni Baroni, to whom we owe
some remarkable works.
The primitive mark of Le Nove is a star of six rays, generally traced
in red or gold, and accompanied sometimes with the name Nove. The
name alone is also met with, but rarely. We found this inscription of
the last epoch : Fabbrica Baroni, Nove ; or, again, G. B. Nove, signify
ing Giovanni Baroni, at Le Nove.
Venice. — Here is a manufactory whose translucent potteries ought
perhaps to take rank after those of the Medicis. It will be remembered
what we have said, page 298, concerning the offer made by Duke
Alfonso to a Venetian artist to come to make porcelain in his States.
No doubt the secrets of the old man were not lost, for we find vases of
Venetian porcelain stamped with the ornamentation characteristic of
the seventeenth century. The most important of these is a hunting
bottle belonging to Baron Dejean, others form part of the collection of
the Due de Martina. The paste is brownish and granulous, but lends
itself to the most delicate modelling and is well glazed. The decoration
in black and gold is of excessively delicate execution ; the gold is in
relief. It is the pure metal which ceramic artists call " ducat gold."
With these elements, the Venetians have represented mythological
subjects surrounded by arabesques, chequered grounds, baldachins with
rich pendants, in the pure style of Louis XIV.
The manufactory which has produced this last is the earliest in date,
and has remained a long time, for we see again its works ornamented
with polychrome Chinese paintings in bright tints, and with bouquets
of peculiar taste, of which this charming ecuelle (Fig. 135) will give a
correct idea. But, works in relief, statuettes, candelabra, show us
quite a different porcelain, almost as transparent as it is vitreous, and

570 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
which would appear to come from a workshop different from the first ;
its date is old, and we connect with it a lovely cup decorated in pink
camaieu, with a figure of Autumn ; borders of flowers and birds, style
Louis XIIL, would appear to indicate the epoch, and the inscription
traced underneath tells us : Lodouico Ortolani veneto dipins netta fabrica
di Poreelana in Veneti. . . . After the notices published by Sir William
Drake, these various works will have issued from a manufactory
founded in 1720 to 1740 under the name of Casa eeeellentissima Vezzi,
and situated at San Nicol6. Fig. 135.

ECUELLE, VENETIAN PORCELAIN.— COLL. DUKE DE MARTINA.
In 1765, the Senate granted to Gimminiano Cozzi, in contrada di
San Giobbe, a patent and subsidies for the creation of another manu
factory of porcelain, he had discovered at Tretto, near Vicenza, the
necessary elements for its production.
The abridged formula of Vena for Venezia (M. 406), sometimes
\ ornamented with tasteless strokes seeming to belong to
i/£/YLs ^e ^asa ^ezzi j it is to the Casa Cozzi that we must
' *~ attribute the anchor (M. 407a) traced in red, some-
M. 406. . ...
times accompanied by the initials of the decorator.
.2. V * E The letters GM, which occur on a piece in the
^V^ tX^* Reynolds Collection, are attributed to the painter
M.407a. M.4076. Giovanni Marcone. Those of M. Paul Gasnault and our
own contain this other cipher VF (M. 4076), which we do not seek to
explain, but which certain interpreters would boldly translate as Vezzi
fabbrica, without occupying themselves with the style of decoration
and the probable date of fabrication.
The formula Venetia seems to belong to the first marked pieces
issued by the establishment, it is rarer than the anchor.
Este. — The Marquis d'Azeglio and Mr. Reynolds possess pieces
inscribed with this name, and which have certain analogies with the

SOFT PORCELAIN.— ITALY.— CAPO DI MONTE. 571

ciiwcism iu Lilt)

porcelain of Naples, large sauce tureens in relief, with the handle
terminating in a female bust ; the stand, in the form of a shell, is relieved
by corals brightly coloured in red. Baron Davillier, who has collected
documents upon this manufactory, is about to publish a work anxiously
expected. Naples. — It is at Capo di Monte that Charles III. formed, in 1736,
a workshop for the fabrication of soft porcelain, t a workshop whose
products have nothing in common with those of Germany, but are
essentially national ;. if Queen Amelia of Saxony was disposed to take a
lively interest in ceramic works, Charles III. yielded in nothing to her,
and even worked himself personally with his artists.
The first porcelains of Capo di Monte are such a perfect imitation
of the finest Japanese products, that one might mistake the *»
nationality of those which are not inscribed with this sign *7v
(M. 408), the only one first used. Later, a fleur de lis was M- 408-
substituted (M. 409), but we must carry a sound criticism to the
examination of porcelain thus signed, for some are
Neapolitan, the others Spanish ; the two first
marks are in blue, the others in relief, obtained a b
by a seal. m. 409.
The works of a style essentially Neapolitan are specialised by forms
a little elaborated, and by reliefs, in which are introduced corals, shells,
and marine plants. A room in the palace at Portici shows all the
resources Neapolitan artists had found in ceramics for the highest
ornamentation. A bracket (console) at Sevres will give an idea of these
decorations to those who cannot accomplish the journey to Naples.
The name of a modeller Giordano is upon a figure in the Fortnum
collection, and that of Apiello under some statuettes of peasants and
peasant women.
In 1759, when Charles III. left the throne of the Two Sicilies for
that of Spain, he took with him the great part of the staff of the porce
lain works, leaving to his third son, Ferdinand IV., the succession of
Naples, and the care of restoring the ceramic manufactory. What
passed then ? Was the new sovereign less a lover of art than his fa
ther ? Had he the idea of making new experi- . ^83& «^£»
ments? We find with his cipher (M. 410a), or Sj& ,p j^r
with the crowned initial of the name of the town "^ J- b . J*
(M. 4106, 410e), works so different in nature m. 410.
and style, that one would think they came out of different workshops. The
charming cup (Fig. 136), inscribed with the monogram FRF (fabbrica

572 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Reale Ferdinando), is the sequel of the traditions of Charles III.;
Fig. 136. other works of the same mark, with subjects of
Italian comedies, are of a singularly vitreous
nature ; lastly, the crowned N is to be often
found upon mixed or hard porcelain, imitating
the style of Sevres. Yet, Ferdinand IV., from
his accession, had favoured the establishment of
manufactories rivals of his own, and had even
CAPO DI MONTE PORCELAIN. '
furnished workmen to secure the success of
their works. This hastened the ruin of Capo di Monte, which sank
definitively during the political crisis of 1821.
Spain. — It is in the gardens of the Buen Retiro, at Madrid, that
Charles III. set up the workshops in which he installed the thirty-two
workmen and artists he had brought from Naples ; there, in secret, and
by means of the ancient models, they continued the fabrication of
porcelain almost similar to that of Italy, and which often, as we
have before said, differed from it not even by the mark. If yet
" there is one which may be considered special to Spain, it is two
Cs crossed (M. 411), which must not be confounded with the mark of
Count Custine, or of Ludwigsburg.
Alcora — Appears also to have had its manufactory; it is men
tioned by the Marquis de Laborde, in his " Voyage en Espagne." What
is most curious is that Baron Davillier has seen in Spain the model
in earthenware of a porcelain oven, with this mention : — Modele de
four pour la pobselene naturele, fait par Haly pour M. le
comte d' Aranda. Alcora, se 29 Juin 1756. If this refers to natural
or kaolinic porcelain, the attempt of Spain would have preceded that
of Sevres. Gerona. — Messrs. Marryat and Chaffers give, under this name, a
piece they attribute to Gerona, near Milan ; we ask ourselves if it
does not relate to a Spanish porcelain made for the town of Girona, in
Catalonia. Indeed, the name is written, not under the piece, but
beneath a shield, of which the helmet bears a legend thus conceived : —
Antesta muerte que consentir ouir fun tirano. It would appear to us,
then, not impossible that this may have come from Buen Retiro.

X

HARD PORCELAIN— FRANCE.— STRASBURG. 573

B.—BEAL OB HABD POBCELAW.
French Hard Porcelain.
France.
The invention of real or hard porcelain is less within the domain of
ceramic industry than of geology ; there — no efforts of imagination, of
creation properly so called ; the felspathic rock must be had ; the rest
comes from oneself. Therefore, in Germany as in France, the true
merit of the ceramist has been in the discovery of new potteries ; por
celain produced herself naturally the day when people, strangers to
science, had laid their hand upon the sought-for clay.
Strasburg, 1721. — About 1719, John Henry Wackenfeld, a Ger
man, native of Anspach, a deserter from the workshops of Germany,
came to seek the assistance of the magistrates to set up in that city a
manufactory of porcelain. The first attempts having produced no
results, the stranger entered into partnership with Charles Francois
Hannong, principal of a pipe manufactory then transformed into an
earthenware establishment. But the arrangement did not last long;
Wackenfeld disappeared, and Hannong remained alone in relation with
the Strasburg authorities. In 1724, he had already obtained results,
then he had to defend himself against his detractors ; two years later, he
offered to the guild of masons, of which he was a member, three dozens
of plates, two salad-bowls, and three large dishes of fine white porcelain.
He died 29th April 1739, leaving his son Paul Antoine to continue the
work he had begun ; he then, in his turn, put himself into relation
with Ringler, a German deserter, and having attached to his works a
painter named Lowenfinck, was able to produce a good porcelain, of
which the fame reached Vincennes, and raised up the jealousy of the
" undertakers ; " to shelter himself from proceedings, Paul Hannong
claimed the profit of his invention, solicited a privilege for making
hard paste, which was refused him ; he then offered to Boileau to sell
him the secret of his fabrication, and an agreement with this view was
passed between them the 1st September 1753 ; but not having concluded
the arrangement, a decree of 1754 obliged Hannong to destroy his
furnaces, and it is then he transferred his industry to Frankenthal, in
the Palatinate.
Later, his eldest son, Joseph Adam, remained proprietor of the
faience works at Strasburg, and thinking himself sheltered by the decree

5 74 HIS TOR Y OF THE CERA MIC A R T.
of Council of 1766, restored the making of porcelain, and continued it
until the moment when the death of Cardinal de Rohan, his protector,
brought him to ruin.
All this Strasburg porcelain, had it the right of calling itself
French ? One may doubt it, since it was made with materials foreign
to the soil ; such was even the cause of the rupture between the
Hannongs and Sevres.
The first attempts of Charles are so vitreous, from excess of felspar,
that they might be taken for glass ;
Fig. 137. ii,." i • ,
 the only decorating colour is pale
|^Ll^^^^tgji3jR^ fluid gold red. One piece only, in our
J&^ "^ z$f^^2iN \Jt Possessi°n (Fig. 137), is marked
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^2 ' given by us to Sevres has no
salt-cellar, strasburg hard por- The porcelain of Paul Antoine is
CELAIN BY CH. HANNONG. — COLL. 1 o , j , i r i
jacquemart. much more perfect, and tolerably
white; it is decorated with bouquets
painted in the Saxon style ; the lines of the edge, generally violet, are
sy\ /T) hollowed in the paste. The marks are (M. 413 a, b). A
'/l • t^/1 cream-pot with border of gold, seme with detached bou-
a J> quets of flowers in green, heightened with brown, bears
r T .- the customary H (M. 414a), graved in the paste. Some
li ) specimens, particularly careful in painting, and deli-
^ J cately worked, have the letters PH impressed in the paste
M. 414. (M. 4146). We have seen the same mark impressed under
statuettes near the cursive signature applied in blue.
As to Joseph Adam, he made all kinds ; the camaieu with animals
(Sevres style), bouquets, &c. His marks are often accompanied by the
numbers of the series, as in faience ; but an examination of these
marks reveals a curious fact — it is that the numbers belong to two
series ; the first, applied in blue, correspond no doubt to the index of
. forms, since it is the potter who applied them, with the
H marks of the manufactory, for the " grand feu " firing ; the
£ <&2V second, applied over the other (M. 415), and in colours,
^¦" -^ refer to the series of decorations, and are placed bv the
M. 415. . > _ r J
painters.
Pabis, 1758. — The Count de Brancas Lauraguais was one of those
who pursued most obstinately the secret of hard paste, and he was the
first to discover, in the environs of Alencon, a true kaolin. This im-

HARD PORCELAIN.— FRANCE.— PARIS. 575

perfect rock only gave a brownish porcelain, but fine enough to lend
itself to the most delicate reliefs, and the ceramist, a great lord, used
it first to make medallions in bas relief, the grain of which is excessively
close, and the enamel unequal and granulous ; the first dated piece
is oval, and represents a countryman half-length, in the style of Teniers,
holding a pipe and a pot of beer ; long hair surrounds his laughing face,
which is seen three-quarters, and he wears a soft hat and feather. On the
reverse is the date, graved in the paste, Octo- .
ber 1764 (M. 416). This piece belongs to M. /, £ id
Gasnault. Another circular medallion in (j * I *7 O ti
the Museum at Rouen, reproduces the bust s
„ T . _,_ ,,,... , M. 416.
ot Louis XV. by IN mi; its enamel, rather
purer, gives it the appearance of a fine stoneware, or of certain porce
lain of Frankenthal. This
time, (M. 417) the date,
September 7th, 1768, is — ¦" / -\ >o
accompanied by two sig- C^^^O } ^^ O O
natures ; the one LB is v—' ^ .
that of Lauraguais, the  ~y f
other is composed of the let- y /O/ f)
ters L R. Would it be the
cipher of the modeller?
It is known the Count M. 417.
employed a workman of
the name of Legay, but it is not impossible he had other assistants.
There is at Sevres a medallion in the style of that of Rouen, and
the Strawberry Hill catalogue informs us besides, that Lauraguais
had made the statuette reproduction of the Bacchus of Michael
Angelo. But sculpture was not his sole preoccupation, and, as indicate
besides, the memoirs preserved in the archives of Sevres, he arrived at
reproducing with equal perfection the decorated porcelains of China,
Japan, and the Indies. A curious plate, belonging to M. Jules Vallet,
is in effect decorated with enamels in relief in the Chinese style. In
the circumference are three bouquets of nelumbos, tolerably faithfully
imitated. In the centre, upon a rock of peculiar blue, are bou
quets, one of myosotis outlined with pink ; the second having a
large ffower in the Oriental style, relieved with touches of iron-
red; the third formed of branches with green leaves. This rare
specimen, signed with the cipher (M. 418), is of a less dark paste

576 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
than the medallions ; its appearance, and the enamels which decorale
it, have enabled us to determine an unsigned cup belonging
to us, which we have ranged among the trial pieces; of
a tolerable porcelain, and well worked, it has been
decorated in imitation of the products of the East India
Company. The roses are passably copied ; but a large flower,
truthfully inspired by the Oriental chrysanthemums, shows a taste in
which we cannot fail to recognise a French hand ; the edges of the cup
and of the saucer are of the blue enamel which form the rock of the
plate described above.
Certainly, we cannot say the porcelains of Lauraguais are irre
proachable, yet he touched the solution of the problem so ardently
sought, and one can understand his despair when the progress of
events, and the successive discoveries of Guettard and of Macquer
came to deprive him of the fruit of his labour, and destroy the dreams
he had founded for the success of his various experiments.
The only wrong we can reproach him with, is to have attacked
without consideration, Guettard, a learned explorer like himself,
when he announced to the Academy of Sciences the real discovery he
had made, after multiplied experiments due to the initiative of the
Duke of Orleans, and to the subsidies which he granted to those who
laboured in his laboratory at Bagnolet.
Orleans, 1764. — Gerault was not satisfied with the two ceramic
pastes worked from 1753 (see p. 359) ; in 1764, according to his de
claration, he began to combine with them the making of hard porcelain,
after having purchased a mine of kaolin of Saint- Yrieix-la-Perche. The
frit of his pottery is white, translucent, and well worked, and the
XKS. decoration rich; the finest specimens are marked with a
M- 419- label (M. 419) in gold, or in blue in the ordinary wares.
The statuary of Orleans must have had a certain development, to
judge from the staff of sculptors, modellers or restorers. We have
before mentioned Jean Louis, who first began working the purified earth ;
Bernard Huet, Jean Louis Malfart, Pierre Renault, Toussaint Macherot,
and Claude Roger worked at faience and porcelain. Important groups
in biscuit, others glazed and painted, are mentioned as current products.
At the Universal Exhibition was a fine water pot of rare form, and
brown ground, fired in the porcelain furnace, belonging to Baron Davillier.
Bourdon fils, Piedor, Dubois, and Le Brun succeeded Gerault. We
find pieces by Le Brun signed LB in a cursive cipher interlaced, sten
cilled on the piece.

HARD PORCELAIN.— FRANCE— ORLEANS. '577

Bagnolet, 1765. — The Duke of Orleans possessor of a laboratory at
Bagnolet, made the chemist Guettard work there ; the latter succeeded
in discovering the kaolinic rock at Alencon, already known to Laura
guais, and having thus obtained hard porcelain, he presented it, the 13th
November 1765, to the Academy of Sciences, in support of a memoir upon
the elements of real porcelain. This publication, immoderately attacked
by the Comte de Lauraguais, gave a new direction to the efforts of
industry, and was the signal for the foundation of several manufactories.
Gros-Caillou, 1765. — In 1702, a Swiss, named Jacques Louis
Broilliet, had deposited at Sevres, with the declaration of the opening of
a new establishment, his mark, which was to be L. B. (M. 420). -.
But his privilege was specially for crucibles, retor:s, and «^> (j2
other chemical apparatus. Yet, about 1765, he tried to '  v
^r M. 420.
make hard porcelain resisting fire ; in 1767, he had not
yet succeeded, and everything leads to believei that he never gave his
pottery to commerce.
Marseilles, 1765. — At this date, Honore Savy, maker of faience at
Marseilles, applied for leave to extend his manufacture to porcelain.
The 24th April 1768, the minister Bertin caused him to be answered
by sending him the Bestriction Act of 1766, and the memoir of Guet
tard. Restrained by the difficulties opposed to him, Savy probably did
not produce any translucent pottery, although he is designated in the
' Marseillais Guide ' as maker of enamelled faience and porcelain.
Marseilles, 1766. — Joseph Gaspard Robert, another maker of faience,
was more daring or more fortunate ; for when, in 1777, Monsieur, Comte
de Provence (afterwards Louis XVHL), visited Marseilles, he found the
manufactory in full activity, and some large vases decorated with sculp
tures in relief, bouquets of flowers, and whole services ordered for abroad.
The Marseilles porcelain is known to us by specimens preserved at
Sevres, and in the collection of Baron Davillier; it is white, well
worked, and painted with talent in medallions with figures, p
maritime sites and landscapes, and bouquets of very elegant JS^
flowers. The mark is like that of the faience, a monogram M 421_
composed of an R with a point upon the first stroke, or an R
only (M. 421). We have found this last upon a white sugar- x^
basin of fine paste having only an indented border of gold, [p^
Another piece, rather well characterised as Marseilles porce- m. 422.
lain, had this more complicated monogram (M. 422), which seems to
unite the two Christian names of Robert, although the G is not very
correctly drawn. 2 p

578 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
There is another cipher on a rather elegant teapot we possess, with
iryv ribbons and flowers, of which we have seen several similar
XV- (M. 423). Mr. Chaffers asserts having seen it upon pieces of
M. 423. undoubtedly Marseilles decoration, and he proposes to read
Robert, fils or Robert frere. We have never found any document to
justify such a reading, and our piece, thin, very vitreous, differs essen
tially from the other vases of Robert. We maintain, then, that this
cipher is unexplained, and should be placed among the unknown
marks. Vincennes, 1767. — A decree, issued the 31st December of this
year, in favour of a Sieur Maurin des Aubiez, had for object to allow
Pierre Antoine Hannong to try hard porcelain, of which he had not teen
able to sell the secret to Sevres ; trials took place, but they ended in
nothing, and the parties concerned closed the workshop before it had
sent out any commercial product.
Sevres, 1768. — Among the establishments ambitious of producing
hard paste, the royal manufactory should hold the first rank. Having
been unable at the price of money to buy the secret of Paul Hannong, it
persecuted him ; a second treaty with Pierre Antoine was annulled in
default of the indication in France of the primitive material. The same
cause, made in 1767, Limprun, a Bavarian deserter, to be dismissed
who had offered to make known the composition of German porcelain.
At last, chance came to the assistance of France; Madam Darnet,
wife of a surgeon of Saint- Yrieix-la-Perche, found in a ravine a white
unctuous earth, which appeared to her fit for washing linen; she showed
it to her husband, who, more versed in the questions of the moment,
suspected that this might be the clay they sought for. He ran to an
apothecary at Bordeaux, named Villaris, who recognised it to be kaolin.
They took up specimens, which were transmitted to the chemist Mac
quer of Sevres. He went to Saint-Yrieix in August 1765, and after
repeated experiments, was able to read to the Academy, in June 1769,
a complete memoir upon French hard porcelain, and to exhibit perfect
types. The first products of Sevres, abundant in felspar, and very trans-
a. *, lucent, resembled so much soft paste, that to distin-
iST ^3» guish it, it was marked with the double L, and
y J2C, surmounted by a crown. The mark given here
* M (M. 424) is taken from a fine cup belonging to us,
and which is only decorated with gold in relief of
the most powerful effect. We have found this other signature (M. 425)

HARD PORCELAIN— FRANCE.— SEVRES. 579

upon a piece painted in polychrome colours, with detached bouquets
of. singular make, and executed in hatches, as if to obtain the
modelling. The royal cipher is thrown cursively in blue under the
glaze, the painter's mark traced by the side in violet rose. It does
not appear among the known monograms. It looks like an M, of which
the last down strokes form a B.
What establishes a very appreciable difference between the two
products is the painting. Upon the soft paste, as we have seen, the
oxides penetrate the glaze ; in the hard paste the decorating enamel
remains on the surface, only adhering by the flux ; hence, more vigour
perhaps, but also more dryness, and the inconvenience of the wear by
rubbing. During the end of the reign of Louis XVI. the two translucent
potteries at Sevres kept nearly in the same rank. It was reserved to
Brongniart to render illustrious hard paste to the prejudice of artificial
pottery. The largest pieces were undertaken, and sculpture and painting
united to enrich gigantic vases. Plaques of forty-six by thirty-six inches
were given to distinguished artists, who reproduced in unalterable colours
the frescoes of Raffaele, the masterpieces of Vandyke, Titian, and of the
modern school. The valuable series of these paintings is one of the
wonders contained in the manufactory, and there is ground for hoping
that these curious works will be taken out of the sale-room, where they
have no title to be, as they are not for sale, and be passed into the
Ceramic Museum, where they will complete the history of the national
establishment. We have said, page 552, what was the system of the Sevres marks
from 1753 to 1792. From this epoch to 1800 the letters of the year
stop ; the letters RF, united in a cipher, or separate and placed above
the word Sevres, were employed indiscriminately till 1799. At the
end of this year the republic ciphers disappear — the name Sevres,
laid on with a brush, exists alone. In 1801 (year IX) they placed T9 ;
in 1802 (year X) X; in 1803 (year XI) 11.
Towards this epoch and during the Consular period were stencilled,
in red the words (M. 426) ; the sign -// — placed It
under the name indicates 1804. In 1805 this /h was JVl IN .
substituted, and in 1806 this other s^: ; but a new OcVT6S
stencilling (M. 427) surmounts it, to express the begin
ning of the Imperial era. From 1810 to the abdication, the Imperial
eagle with closed wings replaces this legend, and the year is expressed
2 p 2

580 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
by one cipher only, 1807-7, 1808-8, &c. ; in 1811, begins another
system : oz for 11, dz for 12, tz for 13,qz for 14, qn for
Jk/L.llXl'p^ 15, sz for 16, ds for 17; but, in 1818, the figures are
Je iS^VFCS aSam taken up and the numerical series continued.
M.427. In 1814, theBourbons resumed the two L's with a fleur
de lis in the middle, and the word Sevres beneath.
Charles X., from 1824 to 1827, marked with two Cs interlaced,
with an X in the centre and a fleur de lis beneath. From 1827 to 1830,
the X cipher disappeared, and the fleur de lis took its place.
Louis Philippe, from 1830 to 1 834, adopted a stamp with a circular
cordon, bearing a star and the word Sevres, besides the cipher of the
year. From 1834 to 1848, the monogram L P crowned succeeded, with
some trifling variations.
During the second republic the letters RF, in a double circle,
resumed their course.
, The eagle or the N, surmounted by an imperial crown, was printed
in colours under the pieces from 1852 to 1870.
Now, the republican cipher has been resumed.
Below are the marks of the artists of the modern period who spe
cially illustrated hard paste :
j/Q Boullemier (Antoine), gilding.
*^to2} Ducluzeau (Madame), figures, subjects.
_/r, Poupart (Achille), landscapes.
d3 Barbin (Francois), ornaments.
t/o. T" Beranger (Antoine), figures.
Ci?. Duvelly (Charles), landscapes and domestic scenes (genre).
J) ][. Didier, ornaments.
(li Fontaine, flowers.

HARD PORCELAIN.— FRANCE.— NIEDERVILLER. 581
&&. Georget, figures, portraits, c£c.
/T& Huard, ornaments in various styles.
V A Andre (Jules), landscapes.
-rf> Julienne (Eugene), ornaments.
CD P) Le Bel, landscape.
Le Gay (Et. Charles), figures, subjects, portraits.
Langlace, landscapes.
Philippine, flowers and ornaments.
rjy Regnier (Ferdinand), figures, subjects.
it.
S-S $*' Sihsson (Pierre), flowers.
C^VV* Swebach, landscapes and domestic scenes.
Niederviller, 1768.-At this date, Baron de Beyerle gave to
commerce a mercantile porcelain made with German kaolin. The ex
periments for its production go, no doubt, back to an anterior epoch.
This white porcelain, well worked, decorated with taste, rises sometimes
to a level equal to that of the royal manufactory. Its paintings are
delicate, little figures surround some of the pieces, and vases ,11 1 biscuit
statuettes and groups, show the strength of the artistic staff of the
e8ttr!Tgle period of Baron de Beyerle, from 1768 to 1780,
the products are rarely marked. Upon one of the most
remarkable we have seen de Niederwiller ; some others have ^
^ F^om 1780 to 1793, General Count Custine became proprietor of the

&
£&

582

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

establishment, of which he entrusted the management to Francois
Lanfrey, a skilful manufacturer.

3G&^

b
M. 429.

M. 430.

The mark then was the cipher
of Custine (M. 429).
Some remarkable pieces of the
epoch when Lanfrey directed the works, have marks 430.
We have seen, in 1759, Charles Mire, or rather Charles Sauvage,
called Lemire, designated as "garcon sculpteur." This distinguished
artist had the greatest and most happy influence over the direction of the
works. His little figures are equal, if not superior, to those of Cyffle,
of which a great number were executed at Niederviller. Lemire pro
duced specially biscuits ; his smallest groups are sometimes painted and
glazed. A biscuit group has printed in relief the name of NIEDER
VILLER. A mark of Niederviller, the period of which is difficult to deter
mine, is this N (M. 431). We have seen it with a C. Upon
^-^ a cup, decorated with a view in Switzerland, was written
M. 431. in gold Nider.
Etiolles, 1768. — The manufactory of Sevres possesses two hard
pieces of these works ; one, graved in the paste, with the monogram,
M. 381, page 560; the other having in full letters Etiolles, 1770.
Pelloue. Paris, faubourg Saint-Lazare, 1769. — This date is probably very
anterior to the real works of a manufactory established by Pierre Antoine
Fig. 138. Hannong. He continued there, on account
of new partners, the experiments tried at
Vincennes. Soon dismissed, he was re
placed in the direction by one Barrachin,
who obtained leave to place the manufactory
under the protection of Charles Philippe,
Comte d'Artois, afterwards Charles X. Louis
Joseph Bourdon Desplanches, successor to
Barrachin, used, from 1782, charcoal for firing;
and vases, obtained by this new process, were
exhibited at the chateau of Versailles. The
products (Fig. 138) of the faubourg Saint-Lazare recommend themselves
a generally by good taste and careful execution. The first works
' l of Hannong are treated in the Saxon style (M. 432).
M- 432- Dating from the protection of the Comte d'Artois, his initials
(M. 433a) were adopted, and surmounted soon by the coronet of a prince

HARD PORCELAIN OE THE COMTB
D'ARTOIS. — COLL. JACQUEMART.

P cp

HARD PORCELAIN.— FRANCE. 583
of the blood (M. 4336;, generally stencilled (vignette a jour) ; but we
possess the same mark, laid on, in blue, under the glaze.
By a singular coincidence, Charles Philippe appears
to have had the same ambitious disposition as his brother, ,
* ' M. 433a. 4336.
Monsieur, the Comte de Provence. If he has not caused the
crossed L's, the royal mark, to be placed upon his porcelain, he has had
his initial CP surmounted with the closed crown of France. This
usurpation of emblem is upon a piece in the Gasnault collection.
The last proprietors were MM. Schmidt and Company, Renard,
Bourdon, Houet and Benjamin Schoelcher. 'Pieces occur with the last
name. Luneville, 1769. — Paul Louis Cyffle, sculptor in ordinary to Sta
nislas, Duke of Lorraine and ex-Eing of Poland, obtained a privilege to
make a superior ware, called " terre de Lorraine," and also statuettes in
" pate de marbre." Every one knows the elegant statuettes, with, graved
in the paste, " Cyffle a, Luneville," or " Terre de Lorraine." We some
times find with this name that of fellow-artists of Cyffle, such as Leopold,
Francois, &c.
Vaux, 1770. — These works, conceded to MM. Laborde and Hoc-
quart, and directed by a Sieur Moreau, were situated near Meulan.
We do not know their products.
Bordeaux. — We place here this important manufactory, without
knowing precisely if it is in its chronological Fig 139
order. We expect, on this subject, a work by a
Bordelais collector, M. Henri Brochon. The
porcelain establishment of Bordeaux has been
worked by one Verneuille, and what would give
it importance (Fig. 139) is, that it had three
different marks. ; _  , 
The first, printed upon a very fine porcelain
(M. 434), consists in two crossed Vs. Carried away by such an attrac
tive probability, we had attributed this mark to Vaux ; but JQ^
doubt is no longer allowable now that we have discovered the M 434
second signature of Verneuille, which is in the form of a seal, /^^
and is often found mixed with the first in some service /o^wKJ
(M. 435.) A third has been indicated to us, consisting of two *¦» -
ears of corn, or umbrellas, resembling the signature of Locre ; M- 435-
but this sign is not known, and may appear doubtful. Specimens of the
Bordeaux porcelain are at Sevres ; M. de Saint Leon has whole services.
Gros-Caillou, 1775.— The Sieur Advenir Lamarre had declared

J&

584 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
having opened a manufactory which marked AD (M. 436). We have
never met with the mark, but the cipher LAD has been
shown to us upon a cup of ordinary decoration.
M 436 Paris, faubourg Saint- Antoine, 1773. — Another declaration
made by a Sieur Morelle, indicates the signature M. A. P. which is
yet to find.
Paris, rue de la Boquette, 1773. — Souroux, the founder,
marked with an S. We have seen some, rare specimens with sprigs
of flowers, which might be attributed to him. His works lasted but a
short time. He was succeeded by Olivier, then by Petry and Rousse,
who later transferred the establishment to the Rue Vendome.
Paris, la Courtille, 1773. — Founded rue Fontaine-au-Roi by Jean
Baptiste Locre, this manufactory had for object extensive fabrications in
the German style. Locre' s first works are certainly very remarkable,
and the prosecutions of Sevres could alone stop the zeal of his artists.
His best works are in the Musee Ceramique, where they will stand
comparison with any.
V^f ff The mark deposited was two torehes, crossed
A (M. 437), very well defined upon two primitive pieces.
M. 438. M. 437. Later they were arranged thus (M. 438) :
In 1784, Locre associated himself with Russinger ; the latter remained
Pouyat alone in 1790, and then divided the direction with
& Pouyat. We find pieces dating from this epoch, marked
Russinger (M. 439). According to information given by M. Adrien
M. 439. du Bouche, director of the Museum of Limoges, this
new society adopted for mark two ears of corn (M. 440). We have
.j, „, found it under some remarkable biscuits, signed also R (Rus.
\T singer ?). But, among the painted vases, we find the ears upon
A trial pieces and upon finished works of a whiter paste than the
M. 440. ordinary porcelain of La Courtille. The question requires study.
In 1800, Pouyat remained alone.
Limoges, 1773. — Massie, the brothers Grellet and Fourneira, ob
tained, on the 30th December 1773, an authorisation
^ f,r\ to create this manufactory, whose remarkable products
\J\-' have the marks M. 441 a, 6. They were allowed to be
m. 44io. m, 44i6. exported free of duty . and tne undertakers were even
permitted in 1774, to have their porcelains circulated within the extent
of the " Farms " without paying the tax. The 15th May 1784, the
manufactory was purchased as a branch to Sevres, under the direction
of M. Grellet the younger. M. Alluaud succeeded him in 1788.

HARD PORCELAIN.— FRANCE. 585
Sold later by the Government, it has belonged to Messrs. Baignol
cadet, Monnerie, and Alluaud.
La Seinie, 1774. — The Marquis de Beaupoil de Sainte-Aulaire, the
Chevalier Dugareau, and the Comte de la Seinie, founded this manu
factory, which occupied itself particularly with the
preparation in wholesale of the porcelain pastes. The jr* or pp
works sent into commerce have nothing remarkable ; -
M. 442a. M. 442&.
they are marked (M. 442 a and 6), in red with the
brush, or the name in full.
A second manufactory was transferred from the Petite rue Saint-
Gilles to la Seinie, by Francois-Maurice Honore, who appointed as
director Anstett, from Dihl's manufactory.
Paris, rue de Reuilly, 1774. — Jean-Joseph Lassia, proprietor of
this manufactory, was to mark his products with an L. The porcelain
he desired to give to commerce was to resist the fire, and trials made in
1781, in the presence of Cadet, Guettard, Lalande, and Fon- /}
tanieu, appear to establish that it had succeeded. We know no C\^J
product of Lassia, but Mr. Marryat assigns to him M. 443. M- ^3-
Paris, eue de la Roquette, 1774. — Vincent Dubois, whose esta
blishment was known under the name of " Trois levrettes," must have
made porcelain for ten years, since he was one of the petitioners against
the restrictive decree of 1784. His products are still to find.
Clignancourt, 1775. — Pierre Deruelle deposited the declaration of
the establishment of this manufactory in January 1775 ; his mark was
to be a windmill. In the month of October, in the same year, he
obtained the patronage of Monsieur, brother of the Eing (afterwards
Louis XVHL), and signed with the cipher of that prince.
From its beginning, the porcelain of Clignancourt is to be com
mended for the beauty of its paste and the elegance of ^
its paintings. Thus, among the pieces produced during ^TN >~K .
the first nine months, and marked with the windmill *-""» -""^
1VF dd_d
(M. 444), there are already some very remarkable ones.
The Museum of Sevres possesses a curious specimen, signed thus
(M. 445) by stencilling. We asked ourselves first whether the
letter B was not a mark of date, like that of Sevres ; but seeing ^^
the stencilled pieces with a large B, surmounted by the crown A
of a prince of the blood, this supposition fell of itself. What ^ ^
does this B signify ? It is difficult to say ; the title-deeds
preserved in the manufactory could alone have explained it, The

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

crossed L's, an imitation of the royal cipher, could not last; other
signatures were substituted, of which the first (M. 446a) is the initial of
^ ^ *f)!ci« the title of Monsieur, and the second (M. 4466)

j. ~ u» ^ (TQ1^ is composed of the letters L S X, Louis-Stanis-
1VI ^!j las-Xavier. We possess one (M. 447) very
M. 446a, M. 4466. M. 447. legible, and surmounted also with the crown
of a prince of the blood. We had placed among unknown marks one
"J\ rf~ (M. 448) in blue, without glaze, traced under a very fel-
Yy*' spathic trial piece, decorated with a seme of cornflowers
M. 448. (bluets). Now, there is no doubt of its belonging to Cli
gnancourt. We have found it under a plate with flowers, in imitation
of Sevres, which had at this same time
this inscription stencilled (M. 449), only
CLIGNANCOURT the blue letter is
M evidently a mo-
M. 449. nogram, and its
irregularity intentional ; the first down
stroke, turned on the top, forms an I
which stands out from the smaller
letter, the M. We do not think, there
fore, we must see in it the initial of
Monsieur. Moitte succeeded to Deruelle :
would it be some allusion to his name ?
Paris, rue du Petit-Carrousel, 1775. — In placing here this
manufactory, we do not give it its true date ; it might, without doubt,
go back higher. Indeed, upon the title-page of an historical romance
of Monvel, published in 1775, the author gives his address as " rue du
Petit Carrousel, au magasin de Porcelaine." This street, now destroyed,
was at the end of the rue Saint-Louis de l'Echelle, near the rue Saint-
Nicaise, coming out on the place du Carrousel.
The porcelains of this manufactory have nothing to distinguish them
from their congeners ; it is a good current manufacture, which produced
the different decorations of the period — semes of flowers, scrolls, and espe
cially the cornflower in quincunx, brought into fashion by the " porcelaine
de la Reine." No document had been published upon this establishment,
which was generally supposed to belong to the last years of the eighteenth
century, until M. Jules Vallet brought to light the first indications.
Below (M. 450-454), are the various stencilled marks of the manu
factory :

HARD PORCELAIN OP THE COMTE DE
PROVENCE. — COLL. JACQUEMART.

HARD- PORCELAIN.— FRANCE. 587

P

P

P

p

F

CG

CG

CG

CG

Carousel

Mtu du F

MANUFACTURE

MANUFEE

Paris

Carousel

du Petit

du Carousel

a Paris
Carousel a Paris
a Paris
. -M. 450.
M. 451.
M. 452.
M. 453.
M. 454.
The commercial almanacs make known that in the year VII.
(1798-1799) the works were directed by the widow Guy ; a year later,
the year VIII. a Sieur Guy, probably her son, had the direction. One
may then infer that in 1775 Guy pere, the founder no doubt, was at the
head of the manufactory ; then the cipher would have maintained its form,
independent of the development given to the rest of the legend.
Boissette-pres-Melun, 1778. — Vermonet, father and son, obtained
a privilege of fifteen years for the production, in this place, of a porce
lain of a superior white, and to be sold at a low price. Generally
decorated with bouquets of flowers, this pottery is of # r\ ^
a fine white and well worked ; it has a B in blue uQ (/J • •
(M. 455) under the glaze. We have observed it M- 455- M- *56-
under different forms. M. 456 is always followed by two dots.
Ile Saint-Denis, 1778.— M. Laferte, an old fermier general, appears
to have been the proprietor of this manufactory. We have seen neither
vases nor table-ware which could be attributed to him ; but there
exist in the galleries of Versailles two busts — the one of Louis XVI.,
the other of Monsieur — dated 1779 and 1780, and signed Grosse Visle
Saint-Denis. The establishment then was important and provided with
distinguished artists. We know also that the porcelain of the Isle Saint-
Denis was in commerce, since at a seizure effected at Nicolas Catrice's,
painter of Sevres, who made spurious decorations, seven pieces of this
manufactory were captured.
Paris, rue Thiroux, 1778. — Andre-Marie Lebceuf, founder of this
Fig. 141.
mauu
HARD PORCELAINE DE LA REINE. — COLL. JACQUEMART.
factory, obtained leave to place it under the patronage of the
588 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Queen. Many common services have come from the rue Thiroux, but
the finer pieces, and they are numerous (Fig. 141), recommend them
selves in every point of view. Lebceuf had established the depot of
these porcelains at M. Granger's, jeweller of the Queen, quai de
Conti. The usual mark is the A crowned (M. 457), cipher of the Queen
m Marie-Antoinette. Some pieces have this cipher
a cursively traced with a brush (M. 458a); others
C-fe M.458a have only an A ia blue under the glaze (M. 4586).
A A These works certainly, date from the beginning
><v'f of the manufactory : later the A crowned was
M. 457. M. 458&. .„ ,
stencilled.
The successors of Lebceuf were the Sieurs Guy and Housel. We
x—\ /*\ find pieces with their names expressed thus (M. 459).
(^ m L-\ Was it Guy who succeeded to the widow Guy at the
J ' Petit-Carrousel ? At the date which corresponds to this
Rue Thirou change, Housel only marked his name. He remained
a Paris proprjetor of the works from 1799 to 1804.
M. 459. r
LEVEILLE
We find some modern porcelain inscribed thus . 12
(M. 460) : RUE THIROUX
M. 460.
Paris, rue de Bondy, 1780. — Established under the direction of
Guerhard and Dihl, this manufactory is one of the most interesting of
the end of the eighteenth century. From its beginning, it places itself
at the head of this industry and rivals Sevres, thanks to the chemical
knowledge and high intelligence of Dihl. Placed under the patronage
of Louis Antoine, Due d'Angouleme, it escaped the persecutions of the
royal establishment, and was able to produce vases of great ornamenta
tion, biscuits, and even coloured flowers. Inventor of an improved
mineral palette, which does not change in firing, Dihl had his portrait,
in 1798, by le Guay, upon a plaque of middle size ; in 1801, he went
further and had himself painted full-size by Martin Drolling, upon a
plaque of 23 in. x 20m. He thus created the style in which Sevres was
afterwards to distinguish itself.
• The following are the first marks of the establish
ment (M. 461, a, 6), all stencilled. On one piece only
we have found the name Dihl, in blue, under the
glaze. Later we find printed in red, with a pattern
M. 461a. M. 4616. (]yj_ 462-464).

HARD PORCELAIN. -FRANCE. 589

MANUFACTURE DE MONSE
LE DUC D' ANGOULEME
A PARIS
DIHL ET GUERHARD MANUFACTKE
GUERHARD ET DIHL DE DIHL ET
A PARIS A PARIS GUERHARD
M. 462. M. 463. M. 464.
M. Marryat, and after him M. Chaffers, have given a letter (M.
465), traced in blue, under the glaze, as the mark of a A
manufactory which will have existed at Paris, in the rue de >f\
Clichy. It is simply the initial of the Due d' Angouleme, Dihl's M- 465-
protector. We have found this A under a very fine cup jp de
of black ground, with a border reserved, ornamented Guerhard
with arabesques, in gold. The saucer had this mark et Dihl
stencilled (M. 466). Paris
Sceaux. — We place here at a chance, in its probable M- 466-
order, the only specimen of hard paste of Sceaux we have ever seen ;
a soup basin, " trembleuse," ornamented with lines of gold and bouquets
of flowers, well painted in the Sevres style, and in well-glazed
enamels. Underneath is SP (M. 467), Sceaux-Penthievre, which q. q
we have already pointed out upon special faiences on rather O f
11 a i- M- 467-
yellow, soft porcelain.
Paris, rue dePopincourt, 1780.— Founded by the Sieur Le Mai re,
this establishment was bought, in 1783, by M. Nast, pere, and after
wards transferred to the rue des Amandiers, where it was worked by
Nast brothers. They made remarkable biscuits and pieces of rich deco
ration. The only mark we know is the name NAST, stencilled.
Tours, 1782. — Noel Sailly, the elder and younger, have marked in
turn this establishment, which has produced little. We do not know
any of its works.
Lille, 1784. — Leperre Duroo opened this establishment by virtue
of a decree of the 13th January, which allowed him to import free the
necessary materials for his work. In 1786 he obtained permission to
place it under the patronage of the dauphin, and M. de Calonne gave
it his special patronage. What attracted his favour to the new
industrial was, that he had conceived the idea of using pit-coal for
firing. Of this a piece in the ceramic museum gives evidence ; it is
inscribed " Fait a Lille, en Flandre, cuit au charbon de terre, en 1785.
Le Perre was called to Paris to teach his process ; but the experiments

59° HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

he made failed from the illwill of the porcelain makers of the capital.
The Lille porcelain is fine, very translucent, and well decorated ; the
A words only, a Lille, traced with a brush, are of the first
v}\ eP0Cn '¦> later, a crowned dolphin (M. 468) is stencilled on
*feLj}\ the pieces. In some services the two marks are employed
y^ simultaneously with one composed of a W. The dolphin
M. 468. in biuej under the glass, is in the Gasnault collection. To
Leperre succeeded Roger, Graindorge and Company, and Renaud.
The Museum of Sevres possesses a piece signed iu red with the
cursive letters L. D. interlaced, near which is an anchor. M. Riocreux
reads in the cipher Leperre Duroo ; we dare not accept this
unconditionally. Paris, Pont-aux-Choux, 1784.— Founded first in the Rue des
q-j> Boulets, faubourg Saint-Antoine, by Louis Honore de la Marre
(Jfjij de Villiers, this manufactory produced a rather fine and well-
M. 469. decorated porcelain with this mark (M. 469). But the sieurs
Jean-Baptiste Outrequin de Montarey and Edme Toulouse, having
syjT) acquired it, transferred it to the Rue Amelot, at the Pont-aux-
Cji<J Choux, and placed it under the patronage of Louis Philippe
M. 470. Joseph, Duke of Orleans, the 6th August 1786 ; the cipher
then adopted was LP (M. 470).
Dating from 1793, Fdbrique du Pont-aux-Choux is simply placed
under the pieces. The products of this manufactory are rather to be
commended. Outrequin and Toulouse sold the works to Werstock, soon replaced
by Lemaire, who had for successors Caron and Lefebvre.
There appears to have been at Pont-aux-Choux another esta
blishment worked successively by Mignon, Eroel, and Deuster. It
existed previous to 1784.
Paris, barriere de Reuilly, 1784. — Henri Florentin Chanon,
when establishing this manufactory, declared his wish to sign with the
letters C H interlaced. The ceramic museum possesses a piece with
arabesque decorations marked in red C H; another specimen, in
England, has the same letters united in a cipher.
Saint-Brice, 1784. — MM. Gomon and Croasmen possessed here a
manufactory of glass and porcelain, of which the products are unknown
to us. Saint-Denis en Poitou, 1784. — Nor do we know more of the
porcelains that the Marquis de Torcy applied for permission to make on
his property of Saint-Denis de la Chevasse, near Montaigu.

HARD PORCELAIN.- FRANCE.— VINCENNES.

59i

Valenciennes, 1785.— Fauquez, proprietor of the earthenware
works of Saint-Amand, has asked, from 1771, the authorisation to
found a manufactory of porcelain at Valenciennes, and notwithstanding
the refusal he met with, he made, in .1775, some trials in camaieu by
virtue of the general authorisations. At last, the 24th May 1785, he
obtained permission with the stipulation of using coal ; he then went
into partnership with a Sieur Vannier, and the works were begun.
In 1787 the property of the manufactory had passed from Fauquez
into the hands of Lamoninary, his brother-in-law.
The importance of this establishment has just been made known by
an interesting monograph of Dr. Lejeal; we see by it that Ver-
boeckoven, called Fickaert, a sculptor of the first order, executed here a
number of biscuits, among which a Descent from the Cross was
exceedingly remarkable. Among the collaborators of Lamoninary may
be mentioned Anstett, of Strasburg; Joseph Fernig, painter and
chemist, Gelez, Mester and Poinbceuf.
M. Lejeal considers as dating from the origin of the manufactory
the rare pieces marked VALENCIEN ; the second
period is characterised by the cipher (M. 471) com
posed of the initials of Fauquez, Lamoninary, and
Vannier or Valenciennes. Lastly, the letters LV,
Lamoninary Valenciennes, or Lamoninary Vannier, are the most fre
quent, and occur under this form (M. 472).
Choisy, 1785. — Founded by a sieur Clement, this establishment
belonged, in 1786, to M. Lefevre ; we do not know its works.
Vincennes, 1786. — This manufactory, which appears to have
belonged in the beginning to M. Lemaire, was protected by Louis
Philippe, Duke of Chartres (later, Eing of the French), and directed by
Hannong. From 1785 Hannong without work and living in the
Chateau of Verneuil, at Dormans, had asked, by letter of the 28th
July, authorisation to make experiments in firing with coal, and they
had answered him that the Government would not oppose itself to such
useful, attempts, and that he was free to make such experiments as he
thought suitable. This was not the answer he expected, and no doubt
it was then he engaged himself in the service of the ^^ ^. _
new manufactory of Vincennes. We find by him }|Q| X
pieces bearing this singular mark in which appears ^ ^ M ^
the h already used at the Faubourg Saint-Lazare
with crossed pipes (M. 473). These signs are under a trial cup and
saucer, yellowed as if, it had been baked by coal. This curious piece,

592 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
belonging to Jules Vallet, is decorated with gold, wreaths of foliage
and detached flowers in the style of the period ; the pipes alone are
&%*\ under the cup (M. 474), the h under the saucer ; now this first
4x sign is explained by this (M. 475) placed under a cup of the
M. 475. same style, in the Reynolds collection, and which is accom
panied with the cipher L. P. with a brush, the first manifestation of
Fig. 142. the interference of the Duke de Chartres in
the works, and of the protection he was about
to grant to the wandering porcelain-makers.
Thus, by a logical deduction, the h of the
Faubourg Saint-Lazare leads to that of Vin
cennes, and the signature of Hannong leads,
by the transition indicated upon the piece of

'~'"~* Mr. Reynolds, to the cipher of the Duke de
PORCELAIN OF THE DUC DE ...
chartres.— coll. jacque- Chartres traced upon a porcelain which has, in
effect, all the characters of that of Hannong.
Its products are very felspathic, and decorated often in pale colours ;
<^y-*- wreaths of flowers interlaced with ribbons, bouquets and sprigs
sfy. and indented borders of gold are what we most frequently
<^o* m£et with. The mark in blue, und,er the glaze, always
M. 476. very careless (M. 476), is the crowned cipher of the prince.
Paris, petite rue Saint-Gilles. — Messire Francois Maurice
Honore, equerry, councillor of the king, warden of the city of Paris ;
founded there, about the end of the century, a manufactory of which
the garden looked upon the boulevard in front of the park and of the
Hotel Beaumarchais. The establishment was later transferred to La
Seinie, near Saint- Yrieix. The son of M. Honore gave himself also to
the making of porcelain and went into partnership with Dagoty.
Paris, rue de Crussol, 1789. — The Englishman Potter set up
this manufactory, Rue de Crussol, styled that of the Prince of Wales
(Prince de Galles), he introduced there the system of ceramic im
pressions, long tried elsewhere ; and the municipality of Paris, surprised
with the pretended progress, applied through the medium of Bailly for
a privilege in favour of the foreigner. Events caused his application to
be forgotten ; the time of privileges had passed. Potter signed his best
products, in full letters," sometimes in gold, sometimes in blue.
Pontenx or Ponteinx (Landes), 1790. — We place here, at a date
probably posterior to its foundation, a very interesting establishment
whose existence had been vaguely indicated by the " liste necro-
logique " of the porcelain manufactories preserved in the Archives of

HARD PORCELAIN-FRANCE. 593

Sevres. We read: "Pontens (Landes) no longer exists." This was
written about 1810, and might be true, but the importance of the
manufactory is proved to us by curious specimens communicated
by M. Henri Brochon, of Bordeaux. These are four small busts repre
senting the Four Seasons ; the porcelain is white, fine, close grained,
and the enamel, though very vitreous, is sufficiently thin not to choke
up the reliefs. Winter is a bearded old man, bald-headed, sheltering
himself under an ample drapery; Spring, a graceful girl, scantily
draped with a light material supported by a fillet, is crowned with
roses ; Summer, her hair turned back with a band of ears of corn,
smiles at the golden harvest; and to Autumn the author has given
that faun-like physiognomy, full of malice and gaiety, which is
suitable to express the effect of the grapes that overcharge her
forehead. These little busts are masterly modelled, of a good style,
full of animation. Under the pedestals the sculptor has placed the
name and date of his work ; Ponteinx, Ce 10 Juin (or Jouin) 1790.
Klein. The name is accompanied by a flourish (paraphe). Was Elein
the director of the establishment or one of the artists attached to it ?
It matters little ; manufactories in a condition to produce pieces of this «
kind must have a certain importance, and it is more than probable that
the greater part of its products have passed unperceived because
they were attributed to the central establishment of the Gironde.
Does this long enumeration comprise all the French establishments ?
Evidently not, and every day we discover pieces of uncertain origin,
although their production touches, as it were, upon modern times.
\\' Cipher in red, upon common porcelain with flowers,
oM) coloured grounds and cama'ieux. Most of the specimens come
from the south. Cipher in red, resembling that of Deruelle.
_ It certainly comes from a Parisian workshop. We have
Sl(P even asked ourselves if it could be the mark of one of the
^ Nast family, but the multiplicity of the inscriptions in current
characters would appear to indicate that the habits of the family did
not carry them to the cipher style. One of the most curious pieces,
signed J. N. C, is dated by its decoration; tricoloured ribbons, inter
laced with laurels, form medallions on which are inscribed in gold la
Nation, la loy, le Roy.
Mark in red with a brush, fine porcelain, with patterns in
burnished gold.
Jf] _g Pot with bouquets and gold border. Sevres style. 2 Q

594 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
/7 * Porcelain in the style of the little workshops of Paris.
Ji. ° lu\. Graved in the paste, saucer with red ground and reserves
enriched with insects, in the centre are leaves of acanthus upon green
ground, of recent fabrication.
— -*) Plate with pinked edges and bouquets in the Saxon
cJ3^ style.
q -r Graved in the paste, under a cup decorated with butter-
L < J flies.
D dt (Jte Cup " a lustre cantharide ; " reserves painted with a
a Paris landscape and a bridge. In a dark part of the cup tbe
artist has graved his initial M, with a point. Upon the
bridge is written : Near her J am happi.
T C* T r* Water jug and basin with wreaths and small flowers,
same style.

Plates with rich borders, with landscape and animals in
the style of Berghem. M. Riocreux attributed this mark to
•the manufactory of Fontainebleau, seeing therein allusion to the
historic carps in the lake of the chateau.
. kyj( " Tete-a-tete " in fine porcelain, Sevres style, enclosed in a box
t*-^J with compartments ; said to have belonged to Marie An
toinette ; it is accompanied by accessories in goldsmith's work. We
have again found this mark accompanied by a crescent reversed,
*^% a upon rather remarkable pieces, also the crescent
- ^^^. alone appears upon a sugar basin in ordinary

M

porcelain which belongs to us, decorated with a
gold border and detached bouquets.
Service in fine porcelain decorated with a border and
armorial bearings in gold, which have been defaced at
the Revolution (Le Noir family). The mark is painted
in a fine blue. We have found it again in gold under a
little coloured figure, apparently German.
ptq Pieces with wreaths, bouquets, and ribbons; Baron Davillier
TV finding in them close analogies with the porcelain of Marseilles,
has attributed them to that centre. The fact does not appear to be
demonstrated. ** Porcelain with bouquets ; style, a la Reine ; mark in red. Is
* >¦* this a C, or the crescent figured above reversed ?

HARD PORCELAIN.— FRANCE. 595
V e IM Porcelain with cornflowers in the style of " porcelaine a la
k c Eeine-"
H & C Stencilled in red, decorated with detached bouquets.
ry» p Saucer with blue decoration, resembling the common porce-
r lain of Tournay.
/SK7T) ^uP anc^ saucer> Pm^ ground, with border of flowers,
common porcelain, end of the century.
V French porcelain, with bouquets of flowers, Dresden style.
Trial piece.
Departing from the outline we had traced, we mention some of the
modern manufactories, of which it is important to note the existence.
Paris, faubourg Saint-Denis, 92, Bernard and Co., Le Cointre and
Co., Lefevre, Lebourgeois.
Paris, faubourg Saint-Denis, 168, Latourville and Co., Fleury,
Flamenfleury. Paris, rue de la Pepiniere, 16, Chevalier freres, Marchand, Fourmy,
Potter and Co., Tregent.
Paris, rue de Charonne, Levy and Co., Pressinger, Massonnet,
Dartes freres ; these last transfer the establishment from la Roquette, 90.
Paris, rue de la Roquette, 98, RobiUard.
Paris, Montparnasse, rue Notre-Dame-des-Champs, P. L. Dagoty
12, Roger, Dagoty, Dagoty and Honore. We find &
pieces marked (M. 478), and others signed cursively E. Honore
CM. 477). -^d. Honore & Cle a Paris
a Paris.
M. 477. M. 478.
Paris, Petite-Pologne, rue du Rocher, 12, Betz and Co., Nicolet and
Greder, Reville, Peres.
Paris, Butte de Belleville, Petry, Guy, Desfosses.
Paris, rue de Popincourt, 58, Coeur d'Acier, Dartes aine. We find
pieces of the Coeur d'Acier marked with a heart.
Paris, rue Baffroy, Dubois-Hannong.
Paris, rue Baffroy, 32, L'Hote.
Paris, rue Neuve Saint-Gilles, Lortz, Eouget, Savoie, Le Bon,
Honore. Paris, rue des Marais, Toulouse, Mercier.
Paris rue Folie-Mericourt, Cremiere, Freund. 2 Q 2

596 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Paris, rue des Recollets, 2, Despres (cameos).
Paris, rue Menilmontant, Cossart.
Paris, rue de Crussol, Constant (biscuit).
Versailles (Seine-et-Oise), Panckoucke, Roger, Teingout.
Chatillon (Seine). Roussel and Co., Lortz, Rouget.
Choisy-le-Roi (Seine). Leilletz (M. 479 stencilled).
Fontainebleau (Seine-et-Oise), Benjamin, Baruchweil;
M. Riocreux attributes to this manufactory the mark of
the fish, figured page 594.
Montereau (Seine-et-Marne), Hall.
M 479. Lorient (Morbihan), Herve, Sauvageau.
Bourbonnais, Sinetti, Deruelle fils.
Valognes (Manche), Lemarrons and Co., Joachim, Langlois. This
last has transferred his establishment to Bayeux.
Caen (Calvados), Mallet, Thierry. This mark is the name of the
town stencilled.
Gournay (Seine-Inferieure), Wood.
Nantes (Loire-Inferieure), Decaen.
Vierzon (Cher), Elein, Petri and Ronsse.
Colmar (Haut-Rhin). — The commercial almanacs mention in this
locality a manufactory of faience stoves, but they made porcelain here,
as appears by a pretty cream-pot in the Gasnault Collection, signed
Colmar, in gold. Germany.
Meissen, Saxony. — To reconcile order and to give facts is difficult
in a work of this nature ; to take for base of classification the date or
geographical position of the German manufactories would be to plunge
into a chaos in which the inquirer would infallibly lose himself. Let
us then adopt a middle course, and, while preserving national groups,
begin at the real invention of kaolinic pottery.
Germany, like France, dreamt of porcelain, only there it was not
potters but alchemists who sought it ; John Frederic Bottcher, son of
one of these last, worked so ardently that the fame of his supposed dis
coveries reached Frederic Augustus I., Elector of Saxony, who caused
him to be carried off and retained near him.
Bottcher manipulated, and though gold did not arrive, fear and dis
couragement rapidly approached : in short, the Elector thought himself
duped, and in order to assure himself of the real value of his adept, he
gave him for assistant and superintendent Ehrenfried Walther von

HARD PORCELAIN.— GERMANY.— DRESDEN. 597
Tschirnhaus. This distinguished savant had also sought for gold ; though
he no longer believed in mysteries, yet, struck with the good faith
of his companion, he worked to help him by every means in his
power. Bottcher complained of not having crucibles sufficiently
refractory ; Tschirnhaus placed at his disposition a red clay of Okrilla
of which he soon made a pottery, red, or of a charming brown, which
was refractory, and of which the sole fault was its requiring either
to be polished on the lathe or the addition of a glaze. The Elector
was so delighted with the discovery that he forgot the gold and
called this new pottery, red porcelain. At the same time, he desired
that all Bottcher's efforts should be directed towards the making of
Chinese porcelain.
There again chance assisted the progress. One day Bottcher feeling
his wig more heavy than usual, examined the powder which covered it,
and saw that they had substituted a mineral powder for the customary
fecula; having called his valet, he learnt that lately, a man named
Schnorr had found this powder in the environs of Aue and was selling it
everywhere. Tried in the laboratory it was recognised by Bottcher as
kaolin, and pure porcelain was then found.
This was in the year 1709 ; the Elector took immediate possession
of the bed of kaolin. The manufactory, shut up in the Albrechts
burg of Meissen, became a fortress into which no one could penetrate ;
the workmen were sworn " to keep till the tomb " the secrets they
might be able to discover. The great preoccupation of Bottcher
was to obtain a paste as white and as perfect as that of the
Corea; he succeeded at his first trial, and produced pieces with
archaic decoration so exactly imitated that one would hesitate to
declare them European. In 1719, this ceramist died at the age of
thirty-five, worn out by excesses, rather than by work. Horoldt suc
ceeded him as director, and gave a new impulse to artistic taste ; the
European style was inaugurated; Eandler, a skilful sculptor, con
ceived, about 1731, the idea of introducing wreaths in relief upon the
vases;' then he added figures; the painter Linderer executed the
birds and insects that every one still admires.
The Seven Years' War stopped the impulse of progress, and it
required great sacrifices to re-establish things. Dietrich, professor of
painting at Dresden, took the artistic direction (Fig. 143); the
sculptors Luch of Frankenthal, Breicb of Vienna, and Francois
Acier of Paris, lent their assistance ; the last, who came from Sevres
about 1765, introduced the Sevres style among the German pro-

598

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

ductions. From this time a new era of success was opened, and
the reputation of Dresden porcelain became European (Plate XII.)
It is not necessary to describe the style of Saxon works, every
one is familiar with the vases with exuberant rocailles, the centre-pieces
(surtouts), gigantic candelabra, and luxurious girandoles loaded with
coloured flowers ; the finely modelled coloured groups (Fig. 144),
painted with minute care, are also known. We pass then to a descrip
tion of the marks which may assist in determining the periods.

Fig. 143.

Fig. 144.

POTPOURRI VASE. DRESDEN. — COLL,
DUKE DE MARTINA.

PART OF A DRESDEN SERVICE.

From the discovery of hard paste, the pieces ordered by the Eing
C*y were signed AR (M. 480), Augustus Rex; about 1712
(lJj\r) appear the letters E. P. M. or M. P. M. Eoniglich porzellan
M. 480. Manufactur : Meisner porzellan Manufactur.
Works for sale had first an allegorical sign, the rod of vEscu-
1 j lapius (M. 481), alluding to the original profession
c? of Bottcher. In 1712, two crossed swords (M. 482)
|> ^ were substituted, derived from the ancient arms of
M. 481. m. 482. Saxony ; the Elector wore these two swords as Grand
Marshal of the Holy Empire. During this period, the porcelain was
painted iu the archaic Oriental taste.

Plate XII.— SAXONY".
Dresden — Hard Porcelain — Ewer in Relief, with Figures in Violet Camaieu. Collection
Doctor Piogey.

-'

s»^

FflimartUmp

HARD PORCELAIN.— GERMANY. 599

&

In 1720, Horoldt modified the swords (M. 483), he first introduced
a Chinese-German style with rich gold borders, in which an \/
intense violet and bright iron red predominated, then came OC\
paintings of subjects (Fig. 144), landscapes, birds, insects M. 483.
and bouquets, in a word, tbe special style which all Europe copied.
The Eing, wishing to give an extraordinary impulse to the manu
factory, in 1778 personally took the direction of the works ;
then the swords reappeared in their original form with a dot
or small circle between the two handles (M. 484). m. 484.
In 1796, a new director, Marcolini, was named ; he substituted
a star (M. 485) for the point. This is a period of decadence; .
the porcelain, entirely commercial, has no longer its ancient y(\
perfection. ^
Collectors should attend to this: when imperfect pieces
were cast aside, they crossed the swords with a stroke incised in the
paste by the lathe. Many of these porcelains have been collected and
decorated by imitators.
At the present time the manufactory itself counterfeits its old
productions and its old marks. Brunswick.
Furstenberg. — A runaway workman of Hochst founded this
establishment in 1750 ; but, overtaken by death, he was replaced
by Baron von Lang, a distinguished chemist, who brought the enter
prise to a successful issue, under the patronage of the Duke
of Brunswick. The porcelain of Fiirstenberg is white, well
painted and very similar to that of Berlin. The mark is a M «^
cursive F or this (M. 486) :
Neuhaus.  Von Metul, a workman of Fiirstenberg, endeavoured
with two of his companions to set up works here, but was discovered
and expelled from Brunswick.
Hoxter.— The flower-painter, Zieseler, opened a porcelain manu
factory here which did not succeed. A person named Paul Becker
established himself in his turn, but gave up the manufacture in
consequence of an agreement with the Duke of Brunswick.
Nassau.
Hochst-upon-the-Main.— About 1720, Gelz of Frankfort tried
to transfer his earthenware into porcelain works, and was on the point

600 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

of failure, when Ringler, a runaway from Vienna, came to his assistance,
and brought with him, among other indispensable requisites, the plan of
the Austrian ovens. But Ringler showed himself excessively reserved,
carrying always about his person the papers containing his ceramic secrets.
They made him intoxicated to rob him of his treasures, hastily copied
his notes, and several fled with their booty to sell the fruits of their theft.
Gelz and Ringler continued to work together, and, in 1740, under
the Electorate of John Frederic Charles, Archbishop of Mayence, their
porcelain had acquired all the qualities for which it was celebrated.
Emmerich Joseph, last Elector, gave, in 1762, a new impulse to the
establishment, which had become the property of the State. It is
then that the celebrated modeller Melchior made figures equal to those
of Saxony ; a Venus in the collection of the Duke de Martina is a
masterpiece. Melchior signed in full ; his signature is upon a biscuit in
the Sevres collection. Later, this artist disappeared, and was replaced
by Ries, who allowed the good traditions to fall ; his statuettes, without
proportion, were ironically termed " great heads." The invasion of the
French, under Custine, completed the ruin of the establishment.
The mark of Hochst (M. 487) consists of a wheel with six spokes,
taken from the arms of the Archbishop of Mayence; some
times it is traced with great care, but usually cursive. Some
m. 487. services of the later period have the wheel surmounted by the
Electoral crown. Hesse-Darmstadt.
Kelsterbach. — Busch, a Saxon ceramic artist, set up this manu
factory during the Seven Years' War, from 1756 to 1763. His mark
is not known to us. Electoral Hesse.
Fulda. — At the same period, Arnandus, Prince-Bishop of Fulda,
established, near the palace, a remarkable manufactory, whose products
were almost entirely destinerl to his personal use and that of the dignita
ries who surrounded him. His successor Henry de Buttler, finding the
expenses too onerous, gave up the enterprise in 1780. The
porcelain of Fulda is often very beautiful ; it is marked with
his cipher (M. 488), signifying furstlieh fuldaisch, belonging
m. 488. |0 tne Prince of Fulda. The groups and figures have often
but a simple cross.

HARD PORCELAIN— GERMANY. 601
Cassel. — About 1763, they say, a workman of Ringler set up
works in this town. The products, if they exist, are unknown. A
running horse, which we have seen but once, is said to be the
mark. We now enter into a particular country which has its special
porcelain, due also to a chance discovery. In 1758, an old woman went
to the chemist Macheleid, at Rudolstadt, and proposed to him a powder
suitable for drying writing. The young Henry, who had lately left the
schools of Jena, was at his father's, and impelled by curiosity, he made
experiments with this powder, which he soon recognised to be kaolin.
In 1759, he obtained porcelain, presented some specimens to the Prince
of Schwartzburg, and Thuringia was soon in possession of a new
industry. Saxe-Coburg Gotha.
Gotha.— Manufactory founded in 1781, by Rothenberg; its pro
ducts are imitated from those of Berlin ; the primitive ^
mark is a G (M. 489), or the word Gotha, traversed by g J\
a vertical bar. Transferred in 1808 to Henneberg, it m. 489. M. 490.
adopted for signature a capital Roman R (M. 490).
Wallendorf. — Greiner and Hamann founded these works in 1762_
Its mark is doubtful, some giving the trefoil of Greiner, others a
double W.
Arnstad. — Marryat attributes to it pieces marked with the sign
given (page 609) to Weesp. These are products more than ordinary
which cannot be determined.
Ohrdruf, Posneck, and Eisenberg, have also had ephemeral
works. Saxe-Meinmgen.
Limbach.— Founded in 1760 by Gothelf Greiner, and encouraged
in 1762 by Duke Anthony Ulrich ; it was soon insufficient to execute
its orders, and was united to Eloster-Veilsdorf and Grossbreitenbach.
The mark of Limbach is an L (M. 491) ~ _^
or four little rings, surmounted by a cross J/ fl™ o cTo o
(M. 493); two L's crossed in this form £^ M ^ M 493
are also attributed to it. We have also
found this (M. 492) under pretty porcelain with panoramic views
executed in bistre camaieu.

602 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Kloster-Veilsdorp. — We are ignorant of the date of these works ;
vy. before its union with Limbach, it appears to have signed with
v^ this cipher (M. 494), which is still doubtful.
Anspach. — Rather common porcelain is attributed to this
centre, marked with a very cursive A.
Rauenstein. — They made table ware, signed R  n, in blue (M.
p yx 495), often with other letters.
M. 495. Hildburghausen. — A certain Weber worked there, it is
said, about 1763. We know neither the products, nor the
mark of this centre.

Schwartzburg.
Grossbeeitenbach, near Rudolstadt. — This manufactory had already
some importance when Duke Anthony Ulrich acquired it to
unite it to Limbach. Its mark was a clover leaf (M. 496).
M. 496. Some authors assert that this same leaf traced cursively
belongs to the united manufactories ; we have seen it upon services
which had also two pipes.
We frequently find German pieces with mythological subjects
. i or simple ornaments signed with a mark composed of
A\ p an arrow traversing the letter G (M. 497). It is now
' generally agreed to restore this sign to Grossbreiten-
M.497. , ,
bach.
Ilmenau, again, is one of the works set up by Greiner and
Hamann, and which became confounded in the great centre of Limbach.
Rudolstadt. — It is here that Macheleid made his first attempts.
YDid he set up a furnace ? We do not know, but, to Rudolstadt
are attributed porcelains marked with an R, or with either one
M 498 (-^* 498) or two forks crossed.
Sitzerode, Volkstadt. — In 1759, Macheleid set up at
Sitzerode a manufactory, transferred in 1762 to Volkstadt by a mer
chant of Erfurt, named Nonne, who had purchased it, and who gave
it considerable development. In 1770, it was retaken by Greiner, and
received a more powerful impulse. The usual marks
are composed of the letters CV, separate or united in a
cipher. This signature was first attributed to Kloster
Veilsdorf, but as it often accompanies the escutcheon
M 499 of Saxony (M. 499), it remains without doubt that it
ought to be restored to Volkstadt.

HARD PORCELAIN.— GERMANY. 603

Regensburg or Ratisbon. — To this town is attributed M. 500,
sometimes found on Thuringian porcelain. Mr. Reynolds -p
has it under cups decorated with landscapes in bistre -l\ • Q.
camaieu; and we have seen it applied to pieces of orna- V
mental decoration. Reuss.
Gera. — It is not at Gera itself, but at the village of Unterhausen,
near that town, that the manufactory had its seat. Mr. _3
Chaffers announces that it was founded about 1780, and UC ^#
that its mark is a cursive G ; others give it the German G a0
(M. 501). At any rate, these signs date from the earliest M- 501-
times, and go back earlier than 1780. Towards the end of the century,
the works belonged to MM. Schenk and Lorch, who have yj y.
produced pretty services with baskets of flowers sometimes vv X
upon a pure yellow ground ; they marked (M. 502). M- 502,
Ronneburg. — This establishment, very ancient and little known,
was specialised for the making of pipe bowls ornamented with rich
paintings ; a great number of painters were attached to it, and if the
name of Ronneburg is unknown among us, it is much esteemed by
German students. Grand Duchy of Baden.
Baden. — The widow Sperl set up this manufactory, about 1753,
employing workmen from Hochst. The porcelain is very fine, gummm
and is often marked, in gold filled in, with two axe-heads M 503i
that have the edges towards each other (M. 503).
The golden axe-heads occur upon some figures representing in
coloured porcelain, Sculpture, Architecture, Painting and Poetry.
Wurtemberg.
Ludwigsburg or Louisburg— Founded in 1758 by Ringler, a runa
way from the Vienna manufactory, it was encouraged by Charles Eugene,
Duke of Wurtemberg. It produced carefully executed works, although a
little less white than those of Meissen and of Vienna, and to be j^k**
recommended for their judicious and well-composed decora- \i&
tion. It also made groups and figures in porcelain which have JJ^
nothing to envy in the similar products of Saxony. The M. 504.
customary mark (M. 504) is formed of a double C surmounted by a

604 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
closed crown, which distinguishes it from the cipher of Comte Custine,
of Niederviller. It is this mark which has obtained for it in commerce
the name of Eronenburg. But Wurtemberg has not
f* alone had this mark. We have met with fine cups with
°^— flowers bearing in blue an L crowned, or the initial L
M. 505. only, initial name of the town.
Another mark consists in an escutcheon charged with three stags'
horns (M. 5066) or one only (M. 506a), some only have
;,._, | this (M. 506c). Upon others the shield marks the saucer
and the branch the cup. Mr. Chaffers thinks that these
various signs belong to the last period of the manu
factory. We have met them upon very fine specimens
M. 506a 5066 506a „ , . , , . „ , , k , , ,
well characterised as being ot the last century. Although
Charles Eugene died in 1793, the crossed Cs were used till 1806.
Later, the cipher TR was substituted, in 1818 WR, always under the
crown.

Bavaria.
Neudeck-Nvmphenburg. — Founded in 1754 by the earthenware-
maker Niedermayer, under the protection of Count Hainshausen ;
Ringler was attached to it, and soon the elector, Maximilian Joseph,
became the patron. In 1758, the establishment was transferred to
Nymphenburg. The products of this manufactory are remarkable;
the golds are fine, the colours bright and well glazed : the land
scapes of Heinzmann and the subjects of Adler are justly esteemed.
Another painter, G. C. Lindeman, has signed a piece in the Reynolds
i-v collection. The most ancient products have for
j\Y. Hia mark a s^ar formed of two triangles and having
, 'n >H§f at each point signs of ancient alchemy (M. 507),
M. 507. M. 508. Later the ^ielr\ fusilly of Bavaria (M. 508), azure
and argent, was graved in the paste. Sometimes it is traced in blue in
the porcelain furnace.
Frankenthal. — We have related, page 492, how Paul Antoine
Hannong, expelled from Strasburg, came to offer his services to Charles
Theodore, who favoured the establishment of a porcelain manufactory and
became proprietor of it. The rapid success of the works of the Palatinate
is explained by the beauty of the products ; if they are inferior in white
ness to those of Saxony, they yield nothing in elegance and richness of
decoration to these celebrated works. The groups are in good taste

HARD PORCELAIN.— BAVARIA.

605

frankenthal. .

M. 509.

M. 510.

M. 511.

and of careful design; the paintings have a purity of tone and of
make highly to be recommended, entirely Fig. 145.
preserving the German style. We have
observed certain plates with grounds of
veined wood and design " trompe-l'ceil "
in the centre, quite similar to the speci
mens of Niederviller faience ; Fig. 108,
p. 412. The marks also give a kind of chro
nological history of the establishment.
Under Paul Hannong, the lion rampant
of the Palatinate (M. 509) is traced in blue, and sometimes accom
panied by the monogram of Hannong.
When Joseph Adam succeeded his
father, he traced, near the same lion, the
cipher JAH (M. 510). When the Elec
tor Charles Theodore became proprietor
and protector of the manufactory, his crowned cipher (M. 511) became
the official mark. Later, having become master of all Bavaria, he sub
stituted a round seal, fusilly.
This curious cipher (M. 512), which is to be found alone
on some small pieces, had been read upside down, and attri
buted to Kloster-Veilsdorf.
Anspach. — The manufactory of this town appears to have been set
up in 1718, by runaway Saxon workmen. It lasted but a
short time, and its products, pretty fine, are marked with an
A, sometimes alone, sometimes placed under an eagle, also
curiously traced (M. 513).
Bayreuth. — This name, accompanied with the date of
1744, is in gold underneath a cup decorated with the view of
a city, with persons in the costume of the end of the last cen
tury. This cipher is also attributed to it (M. 514), which we
have found on a cup decorated in blue with the Bavarian fusilly
shield. Prussia.
Berlin.— The beginnings of porcelain at Berlin are involved in
some obscurity. Abo°ut 1750 or 1751, Wegely, who had acquired one
of the copies of Ringler's notes, founded in the Neue Friedrich Strasse
establishment, which ceased, in consequence of a manufactory set up
the Leipziger Strasse, by John Ernest Gottskowski, a banker. Did this

M. 512.

M. 513.

M. 514.

an ei
in

6o6

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

latter act from his own impulse ; or was he not rather the proxy of a
greater personage ? What is certain is, that the great Frederic, master
of Saxony, carried off from Meissen the paste, models, collections,

Fig. 146.

NX/
M. 515.

and even the workmen and artists, to the
advantage of Berlin, which became one of
the first manufactories of Germany. Yet it
was not until after the peace of Huberts-
burg, in 1763, that Frederic acquired the
establishment, which became royal.
The first Prussian porcelain, that of
Wegely, has nothing remarkable ; its mark
(515) is a W, of which the inner strokes are
prolonged so as to imitate coarsely
the two swords of Saxony. This
sign must not be confounded with
the pipes of Thuringia. The products with
the two pipes are of greyer paste, and less
finely decorated than those of Berlin.
The second manufactory has a unique mark, the sceptre (M. 516),
which is taken from the ancient arms of Brandenburg ; the
elector, and later the kings of Prussia had this ensign as
emblem of their dignity as arch-chamberlains of the Holy
Empire. There, as at Sevres, when it was still private pro
perty, the manufactory already enjoyed the protection of the
sovereign. The porcelains with the sceptre are of a fine paste,
very white, remarkable reliefs, their decoration painted in pure well-
glazed colours.
Among the Saxon artists transferred to Berlin are Meyer, Klipsel,
and Bohme. We have seen a magpie delicately modelled and painted,
signed Efster.
About 1830, the common establishments having coarsely imitated
the Prussian mark, the letters E.P.M., Kbnigliche Preussische Manu
factur, were added under the sceptre, or a second mark in red, consisting
of the globe and cross, with the same initials.
Austria.
Vienna. — This manufactory was founded in 1718 by a Dutchman,
Claude-Innocent du Paquier, who had attached to himself a runaway
arcanist of Meissen, named Stenzel, by the promise of a thousand
thalers, an independent dwelling, and an equipage. The speculator

M. 516.

HARD PORCELAIN.-AUSTRIA.-VIENNA. 607

sought in a company the means of conducting his establishment into
the path of success ; Peter Henry Zerder, Martin Peter, a merchant, and
Christoph Conrad Hunger, an artist, united with him. They solicited
a privilege, which was granted them the 27th May 1718, by the em
peror, Charles VI., and which was to be available for twenty-five years.
Yet the enterprise did not succeed ; the engagements could not be ful
filled, aud before the end of the second year, Stenzel returned to
Meissen, carrying with him the secret of the porcelain — a secret he had
obstinately refused to divulge. Notwithstanding these events, Paquier
did not lose courage; he succeeded in giving to his manufactory the
semblance of some activity, continuing his works for good or ill. This
state of things lasted till 1744, when he offered to cede the manufactory
to the Government. The Empress Maria Theresa accepted, and by an
official contract the establishment became the property of the State,
which charged itself with a debt of 45,549 florins. Du Paquier remained
still at the head of the works, with a salary of 1500 florins, under the
superior direction of the President of the Bank.
To the first period are attributed pieces marked with a W, and
which have a much older appearance than those made at Berlin, and
signed with the same letter.
In 1747, Joseph Niedermayer was named master modeller, and they
began to make small figures. The manufactory took a great extension
and developed itself rapidly ; from 20 workmen it employed in 1744,
the number had reached 200 in 1770, and 320 in 1780. Since j_
it had become an imperial establishment, it marked its pieces ^A
with the Austrian shield (M. 517), at first graved in the paste M.5i7.
and afterwards traced with a brush in blue.
The superior direction was confided, from 1744 to 1758, to Maierhofer
von Grunhiibel ; from 1758 to 1770, to Joseph Wolf von Rosenfeld. In
1770, Kessler, called to this high office, thought to give a new
impulse to the works by augmenting the staff by one-third ; but it had
the contrary result: a true decline showed itself in the works of
all styles, and notwithstanding the establishment of depots at Prague,
Briinn, Lemberg, &c, the sale diminished and the enterprise became
burdensome. In 1782, the Emperor ordered an inquiry to be made into the state
of the manufactory, and, entrusting its direction to Baron von Sorgenthal,
he then decided on putting it up for sale, and the auction was to take
place the 20th July 1784 ; but as no buyer presented himself, Baron von
Sorgenthal, confirmed in his functions, introduced judicious reforms,

608 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
organised a kind of school of art, and soon raised the products to a level
they had never before reached. This period was, without question, the
most brilliant of the establishment. Joseph Leithner, a chemist on
whom devolved the preparation of the colours, invented a black from
uranium which gave grounds of the finest effect. We also owe to him the
employment of platina in the solid and brilliant state, and a decoration
of gold, burnished in relief upon dead gold, now so rare and sought after.
Schindler, a painter of ornaments, distinguished himself by his taste ;
another decorator, George Perl, was called to succeed Leithner ; Antony
Grassi, a painter, contributed towards causing the rococo style to be
given up for one of classic purity ; Ferstler represented very remark
able mythological subjects. Mr. Beynolds has a pie.ce painted with
animals, in the style of Berghem, by an artist named Lamprecht, and
Joseph Nigg rivals, in flowers, the best artists of Sevres.
Sorgenthal also caused to be made, under the direction of Flax man,
imitations of the fine potteries of Wedgwood. Wearied with so many
works, he had associated with himself, in 1803, Niedermayer, who
replaced him in 1805.
Political events did much injury to the establishment, which lan
guished until 1813, it then recovered itself by degrees, and celebrated
its centenary in 1818. At this period, its staff consisted of five hundred
persons. In 1827, Benjamin Scholz succeeded Niedermayer ; he died
in 1834, and was replaced by Baumgartner. In 1844, Baron Leithner
took the direction, to yield it, in 1856, to Alexander Lowe : this was
its last period. A decision of the Reichsrath suppressed the establish
ment, and the drawings, a part of the models, the ceramic collections,
and the library, were deposited in the Austrian Museum.
Thus ended this manufactory, which, in its varied fortunes, knew
how to keep itself on a respectable level, and never gave up to com
merce products unworthy of the imperial mark.
In its early time the paste was slightly tinged with brown, but it
became very white after having been mixed with the kaolin of Moravia.
It is generally fine and well worked, and its decorating colours add
brilliancy to solidity.
The rapid sketch which we have just made of the history of Austrian
porcelain, is derived, in great part, from an excellent memoir, published
by Mr. Jacob Falke.
The establishments of Bohemia all date from this century, and we
only mention them here to leave no apparent gaps : they are Elbogen,
Pirkenhammer, and Schlakenwald.

HARD PORCELAIN.— HOLLAND. 609
Holland.
Weesp. — Count von Gronsveld, seconded by German workmen,
founded this manufactory during the Seven Years' War (1756 w
to 1763). The mark generally known is a W, in blue or "^
M 518.
gold ; another sign (M. 518) has been attributed to Weesp,
which Marryat assigns to Arnstadt in Gotha. Tbe Eeynolds collection
has a piece with W ; also signed J. Haag.
Amsterdam. — It is with the materials of the works at Weesp that the
Protestant Pastor de Moll, assisted by some capitalists, set up at Oud-
Loosdrecht, near Amsterdam, this new establishment ; transferred later
to Amstel, on the river of the same name. The remarkable porcelain
issued from these localities is signed first and from 1772, M. 0. L,
Manufactur oude Loosdrecht ; later, one finds the name . *
Amstel, inscribed alone or in conjunction with the ^ZrnJl^l
letters M. o. L (M. 519). On the death of the Pastor -jyr T
de Moll, the shareholders confided the direction to a L M"519'
Mr. Daeuber.
Hague. — Lynker, a German, founded this establishment in 1778,
and obtained the encouragement of the authorities ; he took for mark
the heraldic symbol of the town, that is, a stork holding a
reptile in its beak (M. 520). The Hague porcelain is always
very finely decorated, and its paste is often very beautiful.
There are some paintings of the Hague, made upon white
porcelain, introduced from without. Hence, it has been in
ferred that the Hague never fabricated, an error easily refuted, since
in many pieces the mark is blue under the glaze, and more frequently
fired with the paste.
Arnhem. — It is said that this town, formerly the residence of the
Dukes of Guelderland, has been the seat of a porcelain manufactory.
We know neither its products nor its marks.
Belgium.
Brussels. — Towards the end of the last century, a Monsieur Crette
possessed a manufactory of porcelain, of which some pieces exist in the
Reynolds collection. Upon one is the monogram (M. 521); £g
the others have the name only in the inscription. m. 521.
Ls. Crette de Bruxelles
rue d'Aremberg, 1791

610 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
Other porcelains of Brussels are signed with a B surmounted by the
royal crown. One piece bears the name of the decorator Ebenstein.
Switzerland.
Zurich. — The manufactory of this place was established by a
runaway from Hochst, who gave up the direction to Spengler and
<— . Hearacher, who remained possessors from 1763 to 1768. We
T~ find groups and some services tolerably well treated ; the rest
is current porcelain ; the mark (522) is the German Z.
Nvon.^ — If we are to follow Mr. Chaffers, this town of the canton
of Vaud would have had two manufactories during the
last twenty years of the eighteenth century, one directed
by L. Genese ; the second, known by every one, is that
founded by Maubree, a Parisian painter, who introduced the French
style. The mark of Nyon is a fish (M. 523), more, or less well traced.
Denmark.
Copenhagen. — It is to a certain Muller that Denmark owes her
important manufactory, set up in 1772, with the assistance of Von Lang,
a runaway from Fiirstenberg ; it was first put out in shares, and later
purchased by the King. The considerable quantity of ordinary objects
delivered for consumption did not prevent the production of remark
able pieces of great ornamentation, and figures in biscuit of perfect
execution. The mark consists in three undulating lines (M. 524), representing,
_^_^_ according to some, the waves of the Baltic, and according to
others the Straits of the Sound, and of the Great and Little

M. 524. Belt.

Russia.

Saint Petersburg. — Elizabeth Petrowna, from 1744 to 1746, caused
this establishment to be raised, by Baron Yvan Antinnovitch; but
Catherine enlarged it considerably under the administration of J. A.
-<k Olsoufieff in 1765. French artists and workmen
(S-fTa appear to have contributed at different periods to the
C/jV2 perfection of the work ; hence Russian porcelain has
m. 525. M. 526. close analogy with ours. The mark of St. Petersburg
is the cipher of the sovereign ; thus under Catherine II., they signed
(M. 525) ; under Nicholas I. (M. 526). Certain writers pretend that

8-

HARD PORCELAIN.— POLAND.— PORTUGAL. 611

one meets with pieces having three vertical strokes ; we do not know
them, and it appears to us that their position would be very difficult to
determine, unless accompanied by some other sign.
Moscow. — It has been written that the porcelain of Moscow comes
from a manufactory established at Twer, in 1756, by Gamier ; there is
no doubt an error in this statement. First, several works bear the
name of the town, and one of them is marked with the name *
of the director, Gardner, and not Gamier, and with his initial M
(M. 527), which exists alone under some little figures long known
and attributed to St. Petersburg. The work signed by Gardner in
1784 (Coll. Duke of Martina) proves that he possessed the true talent
of painting. We saw three medallions with subjects after Boucher as
fine as any work of Sevres. A modern manufactory at Moscow set np
by A. Papove, marks with the monogram AP.
Poland.
Korzec, in Volhynia. — This rare porcelain has its name written in
red with a brush, under the figure of a kind of mountain (M. 528). We
do not know to what date we should refer the foundation of >£^
the manufactory of Korzec, but porcelain has been made in KorZ££
Poland from the beginning of the seventeenth century, since m. 528.
we find some pieces mentioned in the inventory of the Regent in 1723.
Portugal.
Vista Allegre, near Oporto. — This manufactory, since its origin,
has been in the hands of the Pinto-Basto family. The first specimens
have been marked with the letters VA crowned ; but this signature is
so rare that the actual proprietors have never seen it. The hard porce
lain of Vista Allegre is without mark. Italy.
Vineuf, near Turin. — Here is a manufactory which dates from the
end of the last century, but which is interesting from the peculiar nature
of its products ; mixed well in a considerable proportion of mag- J-
nesite of Baldissero, this element renders the paste fusible at ^Q
a lower temperature than the others, and allows it to undergo ^ ^
sudden changes of temperature. Dr. Gioanetti, founder of the
manufactory, has marked the initials of his name, accompanying a V,
2 r 2

612 HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.
usually surmounted by the cross of Savoy (M. 529). Later the
¦+¦ V only, or with the cross (M. 530), has been exclusively
» adopted. It now only remains to mention the pieces upon which we
have met with signs still unknown, and difficult to attach to the
manufactories cited above.

t
L^

We have observed this mark upon a fine German porce
lain of the Meissen school.
Fine piece, painting bright and well glazed, which
made one attribute it to Holland. Essentially different
from the lion of the Palatinate.
Porcelain rather dark, remarkable polychrome decoration
in the German style.
Pot with handle, German porcelain, with flowers.
In the paste of a teapot of very translucent porcelain,
delicately decorated- with bouquets, Saxon style, executed in
iron-red camaieu.

Dark, argillaceous, heavy porcelain, with reliefs in the
paste; decoration of flowers in the Thuringian style. Would
nM the crowned cipher be Hesse Darmstadt ?
Porcelain of the same kind, in relief, and subjects in the
style of Hochst. We have seen this mark again upon a
charming teapot, with figures and landscapes of a delicacy
worthy of Meissen.
Common ribbed porcelain, dark, and decorated in ca
maieu of a violet rose.

N.6".

Cup with flowers, and detached bouquets, resembling the
French soft paste.
Group of little peasants, common porcelain of inferior
workmanship.

/"""*> This mark, taken by us for the first time upon a specimen
£<T- barely legible, has since been attributed to Hoxter, and the
German Z has been explained as the initial of the painter

HARD PORCELALN. -ITALY. 613

Zieseler. The foundation of the manufactory at Hoxter has been an
ephemeral attempt, and we do not think that Zieseler had time to
perfect his works so as to produce the magnificent specimens which
we have seen with this mark. Besides, the P is here the capital letter,
and it is under this initial we must seek for the German manufactory.
,MJj Another figure, belonging to the Marquis d'Azeglio.
- Landscape, with the figure of a woman in Swiss costume ;
JS_ painting rather dry. Switzerland ?
Vt>£, Mr. Marryat gives this mark as belonging to Frankenthal,
]3 and signifying Franz Bartolo. We would also remark, the
same author assigns the fork to Rudolstadt.
A German porcelain, attributed to Anspach without any
certainty.

0 v 1

Same attribution ; here we should rather see the arms
of the city of Strasburg.
Urn graved in the paste under a magnificent porcelain
in the style of Nymphenburg.
German porcelain, decorated in pale blue and iron-red.
I Cup with hunting scenes finely executed in bistre-
camaieu.
Y> f-\ Creampot, in fine porcelain with reliefs, well decorated in
gold and flowers, delicately painted.

INDEX.

A.

Abaquesne, Masseot, potter of Rouen ; made
tiles for the Constable Anne de Mont
morency, 318
Agen (Lot-et-Garonne) ; made faience, 438
Agostino da Duccio ; see Duccio
Aire (Pas-de-Calais) ; made faience, 377
Albissola (States of Genoa) ; branch of Sa
vona, majolica, 309 ; country of the Con
rade, ib.
Alcora, near Valencia ; manufactory of the
Duke of Aranda, school of Moustiers, 432,
528 ; appears to have made soft porcelain,
572
Alcoy (Valencia) ; made faience, 529
Alfonso II., Duke of Ferrara ; his experi
ments to make porcelain, 296
Alhambra, vases of, 178 ; descr., 179
Amboise (Indre-et-Loire) ; ceramic centre of
fa'ience in Touraine, 462
America, 188 ; faience of Central America,
190 ; Incas of Bolivia and Quichuas of
Peru, ib. ; remarkable vessel in the form
of a human head, 191 ; drinking vases with
syphons, 192
Amphora; jars to contain wine and grain,
descr., 198 ; of Nicosthenes, 212
Amstel ; hard porcelain manufactory, trans
ferred from Weesp to Loosdrecht, and
thence to Amstel, 609
Amsterdam ; rival in faience of Delft, 484 ;
hard porcelain ; see Loosdrecht
Ancy-le-Franc (Yonne) ; made fa'ience, 424
Anduze (Gard) ; glazed garden- ware, 439
AngoulSme (Charente) ; made fa'ience, 443
Angouleme, porcelaine du due d' ; see Paris,
rue de Bondy
Anspach (Bavaria) ; fa'ience, Rouen style,
491 ; hard porcelain, 605
Anspach (Saxe Meiningen, Thuringia); hard
porcelain, 602
Antwerp ; ceramic centre of the Netherlands,
470

Aplustrum; palmette-shaped ornament of
the stern of a ship, 207
Apremont (Vendue); faience, 445
Aprey (Haute Marne) ; fa'ience manufactory
of its lords, 408
Apt (Vaucluse); yellow glazed faience of
Castellet and Apt, 463
Arbois (Jura) ; fa'ience, 424
Arcesilaus, cup of; descr., 212
Ardes (Puy-de-Ddme) ; faience, 461
Arnkem (Holland) faience, 484 ; hard porce
lain, 609
Arnstadt (Saxe Coburg Gotha), Thuringia ;
hard porcelain, 601
Arras (Nord) ; soft porcelain, 561
Artois, porcelaine du Comte d'; see Paris,
Faubourg St. Lazare
Aryballos ; flask for oil, 224
Asciano (Tuscany) ; botega where Luca della
Robbia executed one of his works, 255
Asia Minor ; see glazed wares
Assyria ; see Coffins
Aubagne (Bouches-du-Rhone) ; faiences imi
tating Marseilles, 437
Auch (Ger.) ; fa'ience, 441
Auxerre (Yonne) ; faiences imitating Nevers,
424
Avignon (Vaucluse); artistic brown glazed
wares, 463
Avon (Seine-et-Marne), near Fontainebleau ;
its statuettes, 333, 404
Azulejo, 177

Babylon; its enamelled bricks, 111
Baden ; its fa'ience, 491 ; hard porcelain, 603
Bagnolet; laboratory of duke of Orleans,
where Guettard makes hard porcelain, 577
Bagnorea (States of the Church); its ma
jolica, see Monte Bagnolo ; later products,
514
Bailleul (Nord); faience imitating Rouen,
380

6i6

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Bamboo, Japanese porcelain cups covered
with minute slips of, 90
Bassano (Venetian States) ; botega of the
sixteenth century, 307 ; majolica, ib. ;
works of the Terchi family, 516
Bayreuth (Bavaria) ; faience, 491 ; hard
porcelain, 605
Bazas (Gironde) ; faience unknown, 440
Beaker, Fr. cornet ; form of jar so called,
39
Beauvais (Aisne) ; its " poteries azurees,"
236, 407 ; gifts to sovereigns, 236
Bellevue (Meurthe); fa'ience, 413; Cyffle'
worked there, 414 ; list of objects made,
ib.
Benedetto, Maestro; ceramic artist (Siena),
252
Benthal ; Jackfield pottery transferred there,
507
Bergerac (Dordogne) ; faience unknown, 440
Berlin ; hard porcelain, 605
Berne; fa'ience, 490
Besancon (Doubs) ; fa'ience, 423
Blue ; favourite colour of Orientals, 138 ;
' bleu fouette", 61 ; of Nevers, 353 ; ' turr
quoise ' and ' de roi ' of Sevres, 552
Biscuit de Nancy, 417
Boch brothers, potters (Luxemburg), 474
Bois-d'Espence (Marne) ; fa'ience, 410
Bois-le-Comte (Nievre) ; faience, 460
Boissette or Boisselle-le-Roy (Seine-et
Marne) ; faience, 404 ; hard porcelain,
587
Bologna (the Marches); its majolica little
known, 265
Bordeaux (Gironde) ; royal manufactory of
faience, 440 ; hard porcelain, 583
Borgo- San Sepolcro (Urbino duchy); faience
lamp of Rolet, 511
Bottcher, J. F. ; discoverer of hard porcelain
at Meissen, 596
Boulogne (Pas-de-Calais) ; faience, 377
Bourg (Ain) ; faience, 426
Bourg-la-Reine ; faience, 400 ; Jacques and
Jullien transfer the Mennecy works to
this place, ib. ; soft porcelain, 561
Bow ; soft porcelain, 565
Bradwell ; works of the Elers, 503
Briot, Francois ; his works in pewter, 330
Bristol ; salt glazed wares, 506 ; Champion
made hard porcelain, 567
Brizambourg (Charente-Inferieure) ; sealed
faience, 442
Broussa (Bithynia) ; tomb of Mahomet, 115
Bruges ; faience, 473

Brussels; faience figures, 471 ; hard porcelain
of Crette-, 609
Bucaro ; see Stoneware.
Buen Retiro (Madrid) ; soft porcelain, 572
Buontalenti, Bernardo; assists in discovery
of porcelain at Florence, 253
Burgau, Turbo marmoratus; a univalve
shell which formerly supplied the mother-
of-pearl, 101
Burgaute", Fr. ; see Burgau.
Burslem; Shaw its first potter, 503

Caaba ; sacred mosque of Mecca, repre
sented on a Persian tile, 139
Caen (Calvados) ; faience, 376 ; hard porce
lain, ib.
Cailloutage, Fr. ; pipe-clay, 6
Calata-Girone (Sicily) ; lustred wares, 311
Caldas (Portugal) ; faiences in relief, 534
Cambrai (Nord) ; " poterie blance," 386
Camillo, Maestro, da Urbino, ceramic artist ;
worked at Ferrara, his tragic end, 299
Camillo Fontana ; see Fontana
Candellieri ; style of decoration descr., 271
Cantharos ; wine-cup, 223
Capo di Monte (kingdom of Naples) ; mag
nificent faiences, 523 ; manufactory of soft
porcelain founded by Charles III., 571
Casa Pirota ; botega at Faenza, 259
Cassel (Electoral Hesse) ; hard porcelain, 601
Castel Durante (Urbino duchy) ; majolica,
270 ; style of decoration, 271 ; artists, 272 ;
see Urbania
Castellet ; see Apt
Castelli (kingdom of Naples) ; majolica manu
factory, 311 ; later works, 523
Grue family, ceramic artists (Castelli), 523
Castilhon (Gard) ; fa'ience, style of Mous
tiers, 439
Caughley ; soft porcelain, 566 ; Rose transfers
manufactory to Coalport, 567
Celadon, earliest Chinese pottery known, 47 ;
descr., ib. ; crackle, see; celadon of Wanti,
48; tchoui or flowered, 49; polychrome,
ib. ; bleu empois, ib. ; articulated vase of,
72 ; in Persia, 151
Celebe; vase, like crater, for mixing wine
and water, 223
Chaffagiolo or Caffagiolo (Tuscany); majo
lica, 246 ; Villa of the Medici, 247 ; cha
racteristics of its wares, ib. ; two styles,
251 ; impresa of the Medici, ib. ; marks, ib.

INDEX.

617

Chaffers, R., potter (Liverpool), 504
Chair . de poule, Fr. ; style of decoration
descr., 97
Chandiana or Candiana (Venetian States) ;
majolica, imitated Persian style, 307, 518
Chantilly (Oise) ; soft porcelain made by
Ciquaire Cirou, patronised by the Prince
de Conde, 545
Chapelle-des-Pots, La (Charente-Inferieure),
315 ; its " poteries azurdes," 442
Chartres, due de (afterwards Louis Philippe) ;
patronises manufactory of Vincennes, 591
Chateaudun (Eure-et-Loire) ; faience, 456
Chatel-la-Lune (Eure), e"pis, 331
Chatellerault (Vienne) ; faience, 444
Chatironner, Fr.; to surround the figures
with a deep outline
Chaumont-sur-Loire (Loir-et-Cher) ; medal
lions of Nini, 455
Chef-Boutonne (Deux Sevres); common
ware, 445
Chelsea, manufactory of soft porcelain, 565
Chicanneau family make soft porcelain at St.
Cloud, 539
China ; theogony, 22 ; symbols, 28 ; govern
ment and language, 32 ; manners and use
of the vases, 39 ; ancient pottery, 45 ;
porcelain, see
Chinese porcelain : celadon, see; crackle, see;
turquoise blue and violet, 51 ; " souffle',"
52 ; blue, 53 ; white, 56 ; blue camaieu,
ib. ; " fouetteV' 61 ; celadonoide, 62 ; vases
for magistrates, see Konen-ki ; polychrome,
64; fables respecting Chinese porcelain,
75 ; chrysanthemo-peeonian family, see ;
green family, see ,- rose family, see ; reticu
lated, see ; " grains de riz," see
Chinese bottles in Theban tombs, 45
Choisy-le-roi (Seine) ; hard porcelain, 591
Chrysanthemum ; see Guik-mon
Chrysanthemo-Pseonian family, Chinese ;
its decoration, 64 ; furnishes the ware in
general use in China, 65 ; reticulated, 71 ;
Japanese, 86 : Persian, see Persian porce
lain.
Cirou, Ciquaire, potter (Chantilly), 545
Citta di Castello (Urbino duchy), 287 ; a la
Castellane style, ib. ; graffito, ib.
Clerissy, A. ; potter of Saint Jean du Dezert,
Marseilles, 434
Clerissy, Pierre; ceramic artist (Moustiers),
his works after Tempesta, 428 ; son and
successor, 429
Clermont-en-Argonne(Meuse) ; glazed wares
like Avignon, 419

Clermont (Puy-de-D6me) ; faience imitated
Moustiers, 461
Clignancourt (Paris); hard porcelain by
Pierre Deruelle, patronised by Monsieur,
Comte de Provence (afterwards Louis
XVIII.), 585
Coffins ; green glazed of Warka, 111
Coimbra (Portugal) ; its black wares, 534
Confucius or Koung-Tseu ; his doctrines, 26
Congius ; amphora of given capacity, 222,
225
Conrade, family ; ceramic artists (Albissola),
456
Copenhagen ; hard porcelain, 610
Cookworthy, W. ; makes hard porcelain,
567
Corea; its porcelain, 105 ; style^imitated in
early French manufactories, 108
Cornaro (Venetian States) ; majolica, 305
Come, a la; Rouen decoration so called, 352
Cottabus; kind of bowl, 224 ; game so called,
ib.
Courcelles (Sarthe) ; faience, 451
Crackle porcelain ; Chinese, 47 ; truite, 48 ;
different kinds, ib. ; certainty of the pro
cess, 51 ; Japanese, see Japanese porcelain
Crater ; vase for mixing wine and water, 223
Creussen (Bavaria) ; apostles' mugs, 344
Croisic, Le (Loire-lnfe'rieure) ; faience made
by Italian potters, 450
CyfAe", Paul Louis ; ceramic artist and mo
deller (Lorraine), at Luneville, 413; at
Bellevue, 414; his "terre de Lorraine"
works and statuettes, 583
Cypress ; symbolic tree of Zoroaster, 120

D.
Dangu (Eure) ; fa'ience, Rouen style, 376
Darnet, Madame ; discovers kaolin, 578
Davenport ; potter (Longport), 506
Delft; its manufactories of faience, 474;
registered marks, 476
Denia (Valencia) ; fa'ience, 529
Dentelle, Fr. ; Rouen decoration described,
363
Demaratus ; carries art and artists to Etruria,
209
Derby ; soft porcelain, 566
Desvres (Pas-de-Calais) ; ordinary wares, 377
Dibutades of Corinth ; inventor of the plastic
art, 195
Dieu-le-Fit (Drome) ; faience, 426
Digne ; potter of Paris, 394

6i8

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Digoin (Saone-et-Loire) ; faience, 424
Dijon (Cdte d'Or) ; faience, 424
Diruta or Deruta (States of the Church) ;
majolica, 290 ; el Frate worked there, 291 ;
characteristics of the ware, ib. ; marks,
293 ; modern products, 514
Doccia, La (Tuscany), near Florence ; soft
magnesian porcelain, 568
Dog of Fo; sacred in China, 29 ; Japan, 83
Don Pottery ; of Green, 507
Donino, Giovanni, de Garducci ; potter (Ur
bino), 273
Douai (Nord) ; fa'ience, 385
Dragons of the Chinese, 28 ; five-clawed im
perial, 29; four-clawed, 30; three-clawed
Japanese, 82
Dresden ; see Meissen.
Dressoir, Fr. ; the sculptured high-backed
sideboard upon which the " piatti da
pompa " were set out, 248
Du Paquier; founder of the Vienna porce
lain manufactory, 606 ; sells it to Maria
Theresa, 607
Dwight ; potter at Fulham, 503
Duccio, Agostino da ; ceramic modeller (Flo
rence), pupil of Luca della Robbia, 245
Dunkirk (Nord) ; Saladin set up a manu
factory of faience, but compelled to go to
St. Omer, 379
Dutch Embassy to Japan, 99

E.

Egg-shell ; porcelain so called, 69
Egypt ; theogony, 11 ; symbolism, 12 ;
pottery, 15
England ; its potteiy, 502 ; porcelain manu
factories, 564
Engobe, Fr. ; " slip " used to coat pottery
before the invention of the tin glaze, 234,
246
Epernay (Marne) ; glazed faience in relief,
410
Epi, Fr. ; spiked ornament of pottery or
metal placed in the gables of houses in
Normandy, 330
Epinal (Vosges) ; fa'ience, 417
Espelette (Basses-Pyrdne"es) ; fa'ience un
known, 439
Este (Venetian States) ; fine modern faience
in relief, 515 ; soft magnesian porcelain in
relief, 570
Etiolles, near Corbeil ; soft, 560 ; hard porce
lain, 582

P.
Fabriano (States of the Church) ; majolica,
294
Faenza (The Marches); majolica manufac
tories, 257 ; pavement, ib. ; characteristics
of its wares, 258 ; artists, 259 ; wares sent
to Rome and France, 262 ; modern faience
of F. Vecchij, 511
Fayence (Var) ; never made faience, 434
Fan-tao ; Chinese miraculous peach, 26 ; on
a teapot, 51
Fauquez ; founder of the faience manufac
tory at Tournay, 471 ; at St. Amand,
388 ; and of the porcelain manufactory at
Valenciennes, 591
Ferrara (Northern Duchies) ; 295 ; Alfon
so I. invents a white glaze, ib. ; majolica,
ib. ; artists, 296 ; porcelain made, 298
Fircone ; form of ancient Diruta vases, 292
Flaxman ; (sculptor) works with Wedgwood,
504
Florence (Tuscany) ; Flaminio Fontana sent
to work there, 253 ; porcelain made by
Francesco Maria, 254
Fo-hi ; first Chinese legislator, 23 ; traced
the Pa-kwa, see ; his dog, 29, 83
Fo, hand of; a Chinese plant, of the orange
tribe, so called, 66
Foligno (States of the Church) ; majolica,
294
Fong-hoang ; sacred bird of Chinese, 29 ;
symbol of Empress, ib. ; of Japanese, 83 ;
India, 101
Fontana family of potters ; established at
Urbino, 274
Fontana, Camillo; ceramic artist (Urbino),
278
Fontana, Flaminio ; ceramic artist (Urbino),
sent for to Florence to work at porcelain,
279
Fontana, Guido; ceramic artist (Urbino),
275
Fontana, Nicolo or Pellipario ; ceramic artist
(Castel Durante), 274
Fontana, Orazio; ceramic artist (Urbino),
275
Fontenay (Vendue); marbled wares, 445
Forges-les-Eaux (Seine-Inferieure) ; faience,
375
Forli (The Marches) ; majolica manufactory,
263 ; artists, ib.
Francois vase ; descr., 213
Frankenthal (Palatinate) ; Paul Antoine
Hannong transfers his fa'ience works here

INDEX.

619

from Strasburg, 492; and makes hard
porcelain, 604
Frate, el ; ceramic artist (Diruta), 291
Fulda (Electoral Hesse) ; hard porcelain,
600
Fulham ; Dwight's pottery, 503
Furstenberg (Brunswick) ; hard porcelain,
599
Fusi-yama; sacred mountain of the Japa
nese depicted on their porcelain, 89

Galiano (Tuscany) ; a branch of majolica of
Caffaggiolo, 251
Gatti, Giovanni, Lucio, and Tiseo, brothers ;
ceramic artists (Castel Durante), went to
Corfu, 272
Gennef (Luxemburg) ; faience, 493
Genoa, States of; Genoa, see ; Savona, see ;
Albissola, see
Genoa (States of Genoa) ; majolica, 308
Gentili family ; ceramic artists (Castelli),
524
Gera (Reuss), Thuringia; hard porcelain,
603
Gerona, near Milan ; soft porcelain of doubtful
origin, 572
Gey-chani of Asia Minor ; resembles Maghreb
pottery, 117, 174
Gien (Loiret) ; faience, 455  -— -
Giorgio, Maestro; ceramic sculptor and
painter (Gubbio), 280; his brothers and
assistants, 285 ; his son Cencio, ib.
Girolamo da le Gabice; potter (Pesaro), 269
Glazed wares ; of Assyria, 110 ; Babylon, ib. ;
Asia Minor, 112 ; ribbed phial of Rhodes,
113 ; Mahomet's tomb at Medina, 114 ;
at Broussa, ib. ; lamps of enamelled glass,
115 ; egg of suspension, 116 ; fa'ience lamp,
Mr. D. Fortnum, 117 ; Persian tiles, 13S
Glot ; ceramic artist (Sceaux), 398
Goggingen (Bavaria) ; faience, 493
Gombron ware of Horace Walpole, 144
Gotha (Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) ; Thuringia,
hard porcelain, 601
Gouffier, Claude ; see Oiron
Goult (Vaucluse); faience, style of Mou
stiers, 463
Gourd of Noah ; descr., 116
Graffito decoration ; descr., 287
Grains de riz ; Chinese decoration so
called, 71
Greece, Greek ceramics, 194; historic sketch,

ib. ; Greek vases and their inscriptions,
197 ; ostracism, 200 ; ostrakenon, a Greek
game, 201 ; use of Greek vases, ib. ; urn
of Cimon, son of Miltiades, ib. ; pan
athenaic vases, see ; names of potters,
204 ; ornamentation of vases, 205 ; fable
of Corinthian capital, ib. ; classification
of vases, 207 ; primitive, ib. ; Asiatic, ib. ;
Corinthian, 209 ; Lydian tomb at Csere,
ib. ; black vases of Chiusi, ib. ; Italo-
Greek, 210 ; cup of Arcesilaus, see ; Fran
cois vase, see ; of- Nola, 216 ; rhytons,
217 ; decline of art, 219 ; terra cotta vases
of Magna GrEecia, 220; denomination of
vases, 222
Green Family ; Chinese, its hieratic cha
racter, 66 ; Japanese, see Japanese porce
lain ; Persian, see Persian porcelain.
Grenoble (Isere) ; faience, 426
Gres de Flandres, 345
Grosbreitenbach (Schwartzburg) Thuringia ;
hard porcelain, 602
Gros-Caillou (Seine) ; faience, 401 ; hard
porcelain, 583
Grotaglia (kingdom of Naples) majolica,
311
Groteschi ; style of decoration so called, 271
Grue Family; ceramic artists of Castelli,
523
Gualdo (Urbino Duchy) ; majolica, 287 ; its
ruby lustre, ib.
Gubbio (Urbino Duchy) ; majolica, 280 ;
its lustred pigments, 282; Giorgio Maestro,
see
Guido Durantino ; see Fontana.
Guido di Savino ; ceramic artist (Castel
Durante), carries the art to Antwerp, 470
Guik-mon, chrysanthemum flower, arms of
the Mikado, 80

H.

Hague ; faience, 476 ; hard porcelain, 609
Haguenau (Bas-Rhin) fa'ience, worked suc
cessfully by Charles, Balthasar and Paul
Anthony Hannong, 422
Hamburg ; faience, 494
Hangest, Helene de ; see Oiron
Hanley ; Mayer worked in style of Wedg
wood, 506
Hannong, Charles Francois ; founds, 1709,
a pipe manufactory at Strasburg, con
verted ioto one for faience, 420; and
makes porcelain, 573; opens a second

620

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

faience manufactory, 1724, at Haguenau,
420 ,- resigns them to his sons, Balthasar
and Paul Antoine, dies 1739, ib.
Hannong, Balthasar; potter (Strasburg),
son of Charles Francois, works Haguenau
manufactory, 420
Hannong, Charles Stanislas ; potter, founds
pipe manufactory works at Baden, 491
Hannong, Joseph Adam ; potter (Strasburg),
son of Paul Antoine, succeeds to Franken
thal works, 421, 492 ; works of the Lower
Rhine ceded to him by his brother Paul
Antoine, 421 ; makes faience and porce
lain, 573 ; ruined and flees to Germany,
421, 605 ; where he dies, 422
Hannong, Paul Antoine ; potter (Strasburg),
son of Charles Francois, succeeds to Stras
burg manufactory, 420 ; fine painting of
his faience, ib. ; discovers gilding, ib. ;
makes hard porcelain, 573 ; offers his
secret to Sevres, 573 ; persecuted by
Sevres and moves to Frankenthal in the
Palatinate, 421 ; where he makes faience
and hard porcelain, 492, 573, 604
Hannong, Pierre Antoine ; potter (Stras
burg), son of Paul Antoine, took up the
manufactories of the Lower Rhine, 421 ;
sold the secret of hard porcelain to Sevres,
ib. ; cedes the Alsatian manufactories to
his brother Joseph Adam, ib. ; obtains
privilege for making fa'ience and hard
porcelain at Vincennes, but produced none,
578; tries Paris, at the Faubourg St.
Lazare, 582 ; directs Duke de Chartres'
porcelain works at Vincennes, 591
Harburg (Hanover) ; faience of John
Schapper, 493
Havre, Le (Seine-Inf^rieure),i faience like
Rouen, 375
Hesdin (Pas -de-Calais) ; faience, 378 ; here
Jehan le Voleur worked, 240
Henri Deux, fa'ience ; name given to products
of Oiron, see
Hesse Darmstadt ; hard porcelain, 600
Hildburghausen (Saxe Meiningen) Thu
ringia ; hard porcelain, 602
Hirschvogel, Veit ; potter (Nuremberg),
336
Hispano-Moresque pottery, 176 ; historic
sketch, 177 ; Malaga, 178 ; Alhambra
vases, see ,- Valencia, 182 ; Manises, see ;
Majorca, 186
Hbchst-on-the-Main (Nassau) ; faience, 494 ;
groups, ib. ; hard porcelain, 599
Honorific vases ; descr., 41

Horse, sacred, of Chinese, 29
Hoxter (Brunswick) ; hard porcelain, 599
Hydria ; vase to contain water, 222

He d'Elle (Vendue) ; fa'ience, 445
lie de France (Seine) ; its potteries, 391
He Saint-Denis (Seine) ; hard porcelain, 587
llmenau (Schwartzburg) Thuringia ; hard
porcelain, 602
Imari in Fizen (Japan) ; produces the finest
porcelain, 90
Imola (The Marches) ; majolica, 266
India ; manners, 153 ; potteries, 155 ; terra
cottas from the topes of Saldahra, Ojepore,
and Andher, 156 ; porcelain, 160 ; poly
chrome, 163 ; " frotte d'or " and other
decorations, 167
Istoriato, term applied to historic pieces;
sacred, profane, mythological or others

Jackfield pottery, 506
Jacoba's Kannetjes ; name given to the
stoneware pots, reputed to have been
made by Jacqueline of Bavaria, 343
Jacques and Jullien ; proprietors of the
Mennecy, 547 ; Bourg-la-Eeine, 400 ; and
Sceaux works, 397
Japan ; its feudal organisation, manners, and
government, 78 ; religion, 82 ; pottery,
83 ; porcelain, see Japanese porcelain
Japanese porcelain ; polychrome, 86 ; chry-
santhemo-pa;onian, ib. ; rose family, 88 ;
vitreous porcelain, ib. ; saki cups, 89 ;
artistic, 91 ; mandarin, 93 ; five styles of
decoration, 95 ; Indian porcelain, so called,
98 ; " burgaute," see ; cloisonne" enamel,
102 ; crackle, 103 ; Satsuma, ib.
Judaja ; its potteries, 19

Kaschau (Hungary) fa'ience said to be by
Italian workmen, 495
Keltersbach (Hesse Darmstadt) ; hard
porcelain, 600
Kertch, ancient Panticapaeum, vases found
there, 216
Kiel (Denmark) ; faience, 509
King-te-chin, town and its porcelain works,
56

INDEX.

621

Kiri-mon ; arms of the Mikado, 80 ; on
Corean porcelain, 107
Kloster Veilsdorf (Saxe-Meiningen) Thu
ringia ; hard porcelain, 602
Korzec (Volhynia) ; hard porcelain, 611
Kouan-ki, vases of magistrates, 56 ; descr.,
62.
Kouen-ou ; first Chinese potter, 45
Koung-Tseu ; see Confucius
Kraut, Hans, potter (Nuremberg), 335
Kronenburg ; see Louisburg
Kunersberg (Sweden) ; faience, 509
Kylin ; symbolic animal of the Chinese,
29 ; Japanese, 83

L.

La Chapelle-des-Pots (Charente-InfeYieure) ;
same faience as at Saintonge, 442
La Charitd (Nievre) ; faience, 460
La Courtille (Paris) ; hard porcelain by
Locre", 584
Laforest (Savoy) ; faience, 314
Lagsena ; wine bottle, figured, 145
La Grange (Moselle) ; fa'ience, 419
Lambeth, pottery, 502
Lambrequin, Fr. mantling ; national deco
ration of Rouen described, 362
Lamps, oriental glass, 115 ; faience, 117
Lancelle, Fr.; form of vase so styled,
Plate I.
Lane End or Longton ; Turner imitator of
Wedgwood, 506
Lanfranchi fam., ceramic artists (Pesaro), 269
Lanfranco, Jacomo ; ceramic artist (Pesaro),
first lays gold on majolica, 269
Langres (Haute-Marne) ; faience, 410
La Nocle (Nievre) ; fa'ience, 460
Lao-tseu ; Chinese philosopher, 24 ; author
of the Tao-te-king, 25
La Plume (Lot-et-Garonne) ; faience, 440
La Rochelle (Charente-Infeneure) ; faience,
443
La Seinie ; hard porcelain, 585
La Tour d'Aigues (Vaucluse), faience, 464 ;
soft porcelain, 560
Lauraguais, Comte de Brancas ; makes hard
porcelain, 574
Lecythus; cylindrical cruet for the toilet,
224
Leeds ; Hartley, Greens & Co., various fa
iences, 507 .
Le Nove, near Bassano ; faiences of Antoni
bon 516 ; soft magnesian porcelain, 568

Le Puy (Haute-Loire) ; faience, 439
Les Islettes (Meuse) ; faience, 419
Les Pourpres (Var) ; fa'ience, 433
Ligron (Sarthe) ; " epis," but inferior to
Normandy, 451
Lille (Nord) ; faience, 381 ; Dorey makes
soft porcelain, 544 ; hard porcelain, 589
Limbach (Saxe-Meiningen) ; hard porcelain,
601
Limoges (Haute- Vienne) ; faience, 461 ;
hard porcelain, 584
Ling-tchy ; fungus, emblem of immortality,
26
Lisbon, faience ; manufactory of Rato, 533
Little Fenton; Wheildon, 506
Liverpool ; transfer printing, 504
Lodi (Lombardy) ; faiences like Treviso,
521
Longevity ; Chinese symbols of, 30, 51
Longport ; works of Davenport, 506
Loosdrecht (Holland) : hard porcelain trans
ferred from Weesp, 609
Louisburg or Ludwigsburg (Wurtemberg) ;
faiences, 495 ; hard porcelain by Ringler,
same as Kronenburg, 603
Lowestoft ; manufactory of porcelain, 507
LuneVille (Meurthe) ; faience, 412 ; " terre
de Lorraine" of Cyffle\ 583
Lustres, metallic, 9, 246 ; Caffagiolo, 249 ;
Pesaro, 268; Gubbio, 280; Gualdo, 287;
Deruta, 290
Luxemburg ; its faiences, 474
Lyons (Rh6ne); ceramic establishment of
sixteenth century, 317 ; royal manufactory
of fa'ience, 426 M.
Machecoul (Loire-lnfe'iieure) ; ceramic works
of Ridolfi, 317, 450
Macon (Sa6ne-et-Loire) ; faience, 424
Macquer makes hard porcelain at Sevres,
578
Madrid, Chateau de ; in the Bois de Bou
logne, decorated by Girolamo della Robbin,
245
Maghreb, Arab empire on the North African
shores ; its potteries, 170 ; tiles at Fez,
171 ; mosque near Keirouan, ib.; col
lection of Arab pottery of M. Martin,
172 ; forms and description, 174
Malaga ; see Hispano-Moresque pottery
Malicorne (Sarthe); epis, 331 ; brown glazed
ware, 451
Malines ; faience, 472

622

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Mallifevre (Vendee) ; faience, 445
Manara, Baldasara ; ceramic artist (Faenza),
259
Mandarin ; costume of various orders, 94
Manerbe (Calvados) ; epis or spikes of
faience, 331
Manises (Valencia) ; its golden works, 186
Mantes (Seine-et-Oise) ; probably made
fa'ience, 404
Marches, The ; manufactories, 257 ; Faenza,
see ; Forli, see ; Rimini, see ; Ravenna,
see ,- Bologna, see ; Imola, see
Marans (Charente-Infeiieure) ; faience, 442
Marieberg, near Stockholm ; faience, 508 ;
soft porcelain, 563
Marignac (Haute-Garonne) ; faience, 437
Marseilles (Bouches-du-Rhone) ; extensive
manufactories of faience, 434 ; exported
largely, ib. ; hard porcelain, 577
Martres (Haute-Garonne) ; fa'ience, 437
Marzacotto ; lead and glass glaze, 252
Mathaut (Aube) ; faience, 408
Maurienne (Sardinia) ; faience, imitation of
Nevers, 525
Medici family; their villa at Caffaggiolo,
247 ; Francesco de' Medici makes porce
lain, 253
Meillonas (Ain) ; faience works of Madame
Marron, 425
Meissen (Saxony) ; hard porcelain, 596 ;
history of its discovery and of the
manufactory, ib.
Melun (Seine-et-Marne) ; fa'ience unknown,
404
Memmingen (Bavaria); faience stoves, 495
Mennecy Villeroy ; Barbin makes soft porce
lain, 546
Meudon (Seine-et-Oise) ; fa'ience, 403
Mezza majolica ; descr., 246
Middle Ages, 231; incrusted tiles, ib. ;
pottery decorated with engobe, 234 ;
funeral fir cones with green glaze, 235 ;
potters made to furnish ' yearly contri
butions of pots, ib. ; pots of Beauvais
mounted in silver, 236 ; poteries azurees,
ib. ; dish with Gothic inscription, 237 ;
another with motto of Philip, Duke of
Burgundy, 238 ; potters of Plene"e Jugon,
ib. ; enamelled tiles of Jehan le Voleur,
240
Mikado, Emperor of Japan, 79 ; his arms, 80
Milan ; fa'ience, in oriental style, 518
Mirebeau (Cote-d'Or) ; glazed wares, 424
Modena (Northern Duchies) ; ceramic artists,
514

Mones (Haute-Garonne) ; faience unknown,
437
Mont Louis (Seine) ; fa'ience, 401
Montaigu (Vendue) ; fa'ience unknown, 445
Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne) faience un
known, 440
Montbernage (Vienne) ; faience, 444
Monte Bagnolo (States of the Church);
known by one majolica dish, 294
Monte Lupo (Tuscany) ; brown glazed wares,
heightened with gold, 255, 511
Montenoy (Meurthe) ; fa'ience, 417
Montereau (Seine-et-Marne) ; English faience,
404
Montigny (Meuse) ; faience, 418
Montmorency, Constable Anne de ; hunting
bottle with his arms, 316 ; patronises
Abaquesne, 318 ; protects Palissy, 327
Montpellier (Herault) ; fa'ience, royal manu
factory, 438
Montreuil-sur-Mer (Pas-de-Calais) ; brown
ware, 378
Moscow; hard porcelain, 611
Moulins (Allier) ; faience resembling Rouen,
460
Moustiers (Basses- Alpes) ; important ceramic
centre, 427; Cle'rissy family, see; Olery,
see; style of decoi ation, 430; said to have
made soft porcelain, 562
Moyen, near Luneville (Meurthe) ; fa'ience,
417
Murano (Venetian States) ; modern faience,
515

H.

Nancy (Meurthe) ; faience, 417 ; biscuit de
Nancy, ib.
Nantes (Loire- Inferieure) ; white faience of
Italian origin, 448
Naples (Kingdom of) ; Naples, see ; Castelli,
see; Grotaglia, see; Sicily, see
Naples (Kingdom of) ; majolica artists and
marks, 309 ; see Capo di Monte
Narhonne (Aude) ; lustred pottery, 438
Narghili ; porcelain recipients of, 149
Nast ; porcelain makers (Paris), 589
Nelumbo ; sacred Buddhist lily, 68 ; repast
of the Chinese Emperor, 68 ; Feast of
Nelumbos, 70
Neuhaus (Brunswick) ; hard porcelain, 599
Nevers (Nievre) ; importance of its ceramic
works, 456 ; influence of the Conrade, 459 ;
classification of its styles, ib.

INDEX.

623

Nicola da Fano; ceramic artist (Faenza),
260
Nicola da Urbino ; ceramic artist (Urbino),
279
Niculoso, Francesco ; ceramic modeller
(Pisa), goes to Seville, 245
Niderviller, or Niederviller (Meurthe) ;
manufactory of faience founded by
Beyerld, 410 ; acquired by Count Custine,
411 ; hard porcelain made, 581
Nien-hao, a temple name after death of
the Chinese Emperors, 35 ; of Japanese,
called Nengo, 87
Nimes (Gard) ; coarse faience imitating
Marseilles, 439
Nini, J. B., modeller (Chaumont) ; his terra
cotta portraits, 455
Nottingham; stoneware, 507.'
Nove, Le ; see Le Nove
Nourouz ; Persian festival of the vernal
equinox, 121
Nuremberg (Bavaria) ; enamelled Renais
sance stoves, 495 ; dish with confession of
Augsburg, ib. ; uncertain whether made
soft porcelain, 563
Nymphenburg (Bavaria) ; hard porcelain,
604
Nyon (Vaud) ; hard porcelain, 610

0.

GUnochoe ; vase for libations, 223
Ognes (Aisne) ; faience unknown, 407
Ohrdruf, Posneck, and Eisenberg (Saxe-
Coburg-Gotha), Thuringia; made hard
porcelain, 601
Oiron (Deux-Sevres) ; history of its faience
called Henri deux, 337 ; jaspered fa'ience,
444
Olery, Joseph; ceramic artist (Moustiers),
429 ; called to Spain by the Duke of
Aranda, (~'J ; brings back polychrome
style, ib.; is ruined, ib.; Italian artists
formed by him, 432
Olpe ; vase for pouring out wine, 224
Onda (Valencia) ; common wares, 530
Opium pipe, 74
Orleans (Loiret) ; faience of " terre blanche
purifie'e," 451 ; soft porcelain, 559 ; hard
porcelain, 576 ; statuary, ib.
Overtoom, near Amsterdam ; faience, 483
Oxybaphon ; cruet for sauce, or vinegar,
225.

P.

Padua (Venetian States) ; majolica, 306
Pa-kwa; or eight diagrams of Fo, 23;
brought by sacred horse, 29 ; how figured,
24
Palermo (Kingdom of Naples) ; albarelli of
seventeenth century, 525
Palissy, Bernard ; his biography, 323 ; works,
327 ; pupils and imitators, 330
Panathenaic vases; descr., 202; inscriptions,
203, 214
Pancirolli ; on Chinese porcelain, 75
Paraphe, Fr. ; a flourish ; term applied to
a stroke through a capital letter, as seen
in majolica marks, the letter being said
to be " parafe" "
Paris ; Middle Ages, 234 ; sealed and jaspered
wares, 334 ; Claude Reverend obtains
letters patent, 391 ; Count Lauraguais
makes hard porcelain, 574
Paris, Barriere de Reuilly ; hard porcelain,
Chanon, 590
Paris, Faubourg Saint Antoine, soft porce
lain, 547
Paris, Faubourg Saint Antoine, hard porce
lain, Morelle, 584
Paris, Faubourg Saint Honore" ; Rue de
la Ville 1'EvSque ; Marie Moreau's manu
factory of soft porcelain, 545
Paris, Faubourg Saint Lazare ; hard porce
lain " de Monsieur " Hannong, 582
Paris, Petite Rue Saint Gilles, hard porcelain,
592
Paris, Rue Amelot au Pont aux Choux ;
patronised by Louis Philippe Joseph,
Duke of Orleans ; hard porcelain, 590
Paris, Rue de Bondy, Dihl and Guerard, hard
porcelain called " Angoulgme," 588
Paris, Rue des Boulets ; transferred to Pont
aux Choux, 590
Paris, Rue de Charonne ; Dartes frferes ; hard
porcelain, 595
Paris, Rue de Crussol ; Potter, hard porcelain,
called " Prince de Galles," 592
Paris, Gros Caillou ; see Gros Caillou
Paris, Rue Fontaine au Roi ; see La Courtille
Paris, Rue de la Roquette ; Souroux, hard
porcelain, 584
Paris, Rue de la Roquette ; hard porcelain,
" Trois levrettes," 585
Paris, Rue du Petit Carrousel ; hard porcelain,
586

624

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Paris, Rue de Reuilly ; Lassia, hard porcelain,
585
Paris, Rue Thiroux ; patronised by the Queen,
hard porcelain, Lebceuf, called " porcelaine
de la Reine," 587
Paris, Rue de Popincourt ; Nast, hard por
celain, 589
Passeri, earliest writer on Italian enamelled
pottery, 266
Pastillage, term explained, 235
Patanazzi family ; ceramic artists (Urbino) ;
279
Paullownia imperialis, see Kiri-mon
Pavia (Lombardy) ; graffito dishes of an
amateur artist, 289, 520
Pen-in, Veuve; potter (Marseilles), 436
Persia ; history and manners, 118 ; love of
Persians for flowers, 121 ; tulip, rose and
vine, ib. ; Maison du vin of Shah's
palace descr., 123 ; porcelain, see Persian
porcelain ; fabulous animals of the fire-
worshippers, 136
Persian porcelain, divisions, 124 ; enamelled
porcelain, 125; soft, 126; faience, 130;
wall tiles, 131 ; rich pottery esteemed in
Persia, 133 ; tiles, 138 ; plaque with the
Caaba, see ; in church at Pisa, 143 ; hard
porcelain, &; blue decoration under the
glaze, 145 ; polychrome painting, 148 ;
Chrysanthemum paaonian, ib. ; green, ib. ;
and rose families, 149
Pesaro (Urbino duchy), 266; Passeri's
history, ib. ; pieces with portraits and
mottoes, 267 ; madreperla lustre, 268 ;
in eighteenth century imitated French
fa'ience, 512
Peterynck, ceramic artist (Tournay), 562
Phiale, shallow saucer or patera, 224
Piccolpasso, Cavaliere ; his treatise on ma
jolica, 272
Pisa (Tuscany) ; centre of exports to Spain,
252 ; majolica, ib.
Pithos ; large earthen jar, 225 ; dwelling
of Diogenes, ib. ; of the poor at Athens,
ib.
Plymouth ; Cookworthy makes hard porce
lain, 567
Poitiers (Vienne) ; faience, 443
Pontailler (Sarthe) ; faience, 424
Pont-de-Vaux (Ain); monumental faience,
425
Pontenx (Landes) ; hard porcelain, 592
Porcelain tower of Nankin, descr., 53
Porto (Portugal) ; faience, 534
Poterat, Louis, Sieur de Saint Etienne;

obtains letters-patent for making porce
lain, 537
Potiche Fr. ; form of jar so termed, 66 ;
figured, 97
Potsherds, used for ostracism, 200
Pousa, Chinese god, name given to Poutai,
god of contentment, 28
Pre" d'Auge (Calvados) ; perfection of its
spikes (epis), 331
Premieres (Cote d'Or), faiences, 424
Prestino ; ceramic artist (Gubbio), 286
Proskau (Prussia) ; brown glazed wares,
498
Pyrometer of Wedgwood; a clay cylinder
which, by its contraction, indicates the
temperature of the furnace, 4

a.

Quartiere, a; style of decoration descr.,
262
Queen's ware ; made by Wedgwood, 504
Quimper (Finistere) ; fa'ience, Rouen style,
450
Quimperle" (Finistere) ; faience resembling
Rennes, 450

Rambervillers (Vosges) ; faience, 417
Ratisbon (Qer. Regensburg); hard porce
lain, 603
Rato ; see Lisbon.
Ravenna (The Marches) ; majolica, 265
Rauenstein (Saxe Meiningen) Thuringia;
hard porcelain, 602
Reaumur's porcelain, 548
Renac (Ille-et-Vilaine) ; fa'ience Rennes
style, 447
Renaissance, French, brought to France by
the Italian wars, 314; its green glazed
pottery, 315; immigration of Italian
artists, 317; tiles of Abaquesne, see;
Palissy, see ; " Epis " of Normandy, 331
Renaissance, Italian, its first ceramic works,
241 ; tin enamel of Luca della Robbia,
ib. ; disks encrusted in the Italian
churches, ib. ; plaque of St. Crispin and
St. Crispinian, 242 ; Entombment in
terra-cotta, 243 ; notice of the della
Robbia family, see; development of the
Italian enamelled wares, 246
Rennes (Ille-et-Vilaine) ; fa'ience, 445

INDEX.

625

Reticulated porcelain, Chinese, 71 ; Indian
and figure, 101 ; Persian, 151
Regensburg ; see Ratisbon
Reverend, Claude, at Paris sets up a manu
factory of "faience facon d'Hollande,"
535 ; tries to make porcelain, ib.
Rhodes ; Persian potters transplanted there,
131
Rhyton ; drinking cup descr., 217
Ridolfi, brothers ; ceramic artists (Caffag-
giolo) settle at Machecoul, 317
Rigne" (Deux-Sevres) made tiles for chateau
of Thouars, 444
Rimini (The Marches) ; majolica, 264
Ringler ; German arcanist establishes porce
lain manufactories at Hochst, 600 ; Lud
wigsburg, 603
Rioz (Doubs) ; faience, 423
Roanne (Loire) ; faience, 427
Robbia, Luca della ; Florentine sculptor and
ceramic artist, notice of, 243 ; and his
works, ib. ; other members of his family,
244 ; Girolamo decorates the Chateau de
Madrid, 245
Robert ; potter (Marseilles), 436
Rohn (Morbihan), see Quimper.
Rolet Mart. ; French ceramic artist, Borgo
San Sepolcro, 511, and Urbino, 513
Roman ceramics, 226 ; red wares of Arezzo,
227 ; terra-cotta used for architectural
decoration, 228 ; and for statuettes, 230
Ronneburg (Reuss) ; Thuringia ; hard por
celain, 603
Rorstrand, near Stockholm; first manu
factory of faience in Sweden, 507
Rose family, Chinese, distinguished by its
carmine red, 69 ; egg-shell, ib. ; Japanese,
see Japanese porcelain ; Persian, see Per
sian porcelain.
Rotterdam ; faience, 484
Rouen (Seine-Inferieure), works of Aba
quesne and his successors, 318 ; national
style of its decorations, 350 ; lambrequins
and dentelles, 351 ; its manufactory, 359;
" mise en faience " of Louis XIV., 369 ;
potter's marks, 372
Rouy ( Aisne) faience like that of Sinceny, 406
Rudolstadt (Schwartzburg) Thuringia ; hard
porcelain, 602

Sadirac (Gironde) ; its " potherie de ver-
derie," 316

Saint Adrien (Seine-Inferieure) ; faience, 375
Saint Amand-les-Eaux (Nord) ; history of
its faience and porcelain manufacture, 388
Saint Blaise (Haut-Rhin) ; faience, 423
Saint Brice ; hard porcelain, 590
Saint CMment (Meurthe) ; faience, 417
Saint Cloud (Seine-et-Oise) ; faience, 402 ;
manufactory of Chicanneau, 539 ; makes
soft porcelain, 541
Saint Denis en Poitou, hard porcelain, 590
Saint Denis He (Seine) ; faience, 401
Saint Denis-sur-Sarthon, faience, 376
Saint Di^ (Loir et Cher), fa'ience, 455
Saint Georges (Bavaria), faience, 498
Saint John the Evangelist, patron saint of
Valencia, 183
Saint Marceau (Loiret), faience, 455
Saint Omer (Pas de Calais); Saladin sets
up a manufactory of fa'ience, facon d'Hol
lande, 378
Saint Petersburg ; hard porcelain, 610
Saint. Porchaire (Deux Sevres); wares with
brown backs, 445
Saint Vallier (Drome) ; faience, 426
Saint Verain (Nievre) ; stoneware, 460
Saint Yrieix, near Limoges ; kaolin dis
covered first in France, 578
Sainte Foy (Normandy ?) ; fa'ience, 375
Saintes (Charente - Inferieure) illustrious
from the works of Palissy see ; other
wares, 442
Samadet (Landes); faience, 440
San Marco ; laboratory of Francesco Maria
de' Medici, where porcelain was made, 253
San Quirico (Urbino duchy) modern ma
jolica works of Cardinal Chigi, its products
not sold, 511
San Miniatello (Tuscany) ; majolica, 256
Sarreguemincs (Moselle), great development
of its faience, 419
Sassuolo, near Modena ; produced pieces in
Japanese style, 514
Savignies (Aisne), 235 ; 407
Satsuma, Japan ; stonewares, 103
Savona (States of Genoa) majolica, 308 ;
French artists bring their style, 522
Savy, H., potter (Marseilles), 435
Scarabams ; in Egypt, the symbol of crea
tion, 14
Sceaux (Seine) ; manufactory of faience,
protected by the Duchesse de Maine, 396 ;
Glot develops the manufacture of soft por
celain, placed under the patronage of the
Due de Penthievre, 559 ; hard porcelain
one specimen, 589
2 s

626

HISTORY OF THE CERAMIC ART.

Schaffhausen ; graffito fa'ience, 491
Schifanoia ; private botega of Sigismond
d'Este, at Ferrara, 297
Schlestadt, glaze not invented here, 233
Schreitzheim (Wurtemberg); faience, 498
Segovia (Old Castile), 530
Seigne, Jacques ; potter Nevers, 457
Seville ; faience, 530
Sevres (Seine-et-Oise) had a manufactory of
fine faience, 403 ; Vincennes soft porce
lain works transferred here, 550 ; king
becomes sole proprietor, ib. ; history of the
manufactory, ib. ; list of artists, 553 ;
Macquer makes hard porcelain, 578
Sgraffiato, see graffito
Shah Abbas, supposed effigy on Persian
tile, 138
Shelton ; Astbury establishes himself there,
505
Siam ; its enamelled porcelain, 168
Sicily ; its Arab potters, 311
Siena (Tuscany); majolica manufactory,
252 ; Fra Benedetto, ib. ; modern faience,
510
Simorg; fabulous bird of the Persians, 136
Sinceny (Aisne) ; fa'ience, first imitated Rouen .
style, afterwards the Lorraine, 405
Sitzerode (Schwartzburg) Thuringia; hard
porcelain, 602
Solobrinus, Leochadius ; ceramic artist
(Forli), 264
Spice-box with impresa of Cosmo de' Me
dici, 256
States of the Church, 290; Deruta, see;
Monte Bagnolo, see; Fabriano, see; Fo-
ligno, see ; Viterbo, see
States of Genoa ; see Genoa.
Steckborn (Switzerland), remarkable stove,
490
Stoke-upon-Trent ; Minton and Spode's pot
tery and porcelain manufactories, 506
Stoneware ; Chinese, 73 ; bucaro, ib.
Stoneware ; German, 343 ; Canettes of the
potters of Cologne, 344; Apostles mugs,
ib. ; gres de Flandres, 345 ; French, Beau
vais, 235
Stove ; German descr., 335
Stralsund ; faience, 498
Strasburg (Bas Rhin) ; manufactory of
fa'ience and porcelain, 420 ; Hannong
family, ib. ; hard porcelain, 573
Surahe" ; wine bottle of Persia, 145
Style rayonnant, Fr. of Rouen, descr.,
363
Styles of French fa'ience, 347 ; Italian, 349

Rouennais, 350 ; Nivernais, 353 ; South
ern, ib. ; Strasburg, 354 ; porcelain, ib.
Surtout de Table, Fr. ; pieces answering to
our epergnes used to decorate the centre
of the table
Swastika ; Buddhist symbol, 27
Swinton, near Rotherham, Rockingham
works, 507

T.

Talavera (New Castile); faience, 530
Tavernes (Var) ; fa'ience, 433
Tea, ode upon, by Emperor Kien-long, 44,
note
Terchi ; roving ceramic artists (Rome),
worked at Siena, see; San Quirico, see;
Bassano see; Savona, see.
Terhimpel ; Dutch ceramic painter, 482
Terre-Basse (Haute Garonne) ; faience, 438
Tervueren, near Brussels ; faience, 472
Thionville (Moselle); fa'ience, 419
Thouars (Deux Sfcvres), pieces " avec his
toires " referred to an inventory, 444 '
Toft, Thomas, potter of Burslem, 502
Tomb of Mahomet at Medina, 114 ; at
Broussa, ib.
Tortosa (Catalonia) ; faience, 531
Toul (Meurthe) ; faience, 416
Toulouse (Haute Garonne) ; grotesque fai
ence, 437
Tour-d'Aigues, La, see La Tour d'Aigues
Tournay, Belgium ; faiences of Fauquez, 470 ;
soft porcelain, 563
Tours (Indre-et-Loire) ; faience, 462 ; hard
porcelain, 589
Treviso (Venetian States) ; ceramic work
shop in sixteenth century, 305 ; modern
products, 515
Trou, potter St. Cloud, marries the widow
of Chicanneau, 542
Triana (Andalusia) ; fa'ience, 531
Truite, Fr. ; term applied to fine crackle, 48
Tulip, favourite flowers of the Persians,
121
Troyes (Aube), white ware ; 408
Tunstall, Adams; imitation of Wedgwood
worked here, 506
Turin ; majolica, 314
Tuscany, its manufactories, 246 ; Caffag-
giolo, see ,- Galiano, see ; Siena, see ,- Pisa,
see; Florence, see; Asciario, see; Monte
lupo, see ; San Miniatello, see.
Tycoon, lieutenant of the. Emperor of Japan,
79

INDEX.

627

Urbania, modern name of Castel Durante,
its wares, 513
Urbino, Dukes of, patrons of the majolica
manufactures, Guidobaldo II., and Fran
cesco Maria, 11, 269
Urbino, Duchy of, Pesaro, see ,¦ Gubbio, see ;
Gualdo, see ; Castel Durante, see ; Urbino,
see; Citta di Castello, see; Borgo San
Sepolcro, see ; San Quirico, see.
Urbino (Urbino duchy) ; history of its
majolica manufactory, and its artists, 266 ;
modern products, 512
Urn, vessel to contain the ashes of the dead,
225
Utrecht, tiles like Delft, 484

Valencia ; most important centre of the
Hispano-Arabic manufactories, 182 ; mo
dern, 531
Valenciennes (Nord) ; history of its faience
manufactories, 386; specimen of soft
porcelain, 561 ; hard porcelain, 591
Vauuert (Gard) ; glazed wares, 439
Varages (Var) ; faience imitated Moustiers,
433
Varzy (Nievre) ; faience works of Auxerre
transferred there, 460
Vaucouleurs (Meuse); faience, 417
Vaux ; hard porcelain, 583
Venetian States ; Venice, see ; Cornaro, see ;
Treviso, see ; Padua, see ; Bassano, see ;
Verona, see ; Chandiana, see
Venice; its majolica, 301 ; Alfonso I. sends
for its wares, ib. ; style of its decline, 304 ;
modern faience, 514; soft magnesian
porcelain, 569
Verneuil (Eure) ; faience, 376
Verona (Venetian States) ; specimen of its
products, 307
Vienna ; porcelain manufactory founded by
Du Pasquier, sold to Maria Theresa, 606 ;
developed under Baron Sorgenthal, ib.
Villa Feliche (Aragon) ; its wares, 532
Villeroy ; probable faience, 465 ; see Men
necy
Villers-Cotterets (Aisne) ; fa'ience, 407
Vincennes (Seine) ; its faience manufactories,
402 ; Gravant makes soft porcelain, 548 ;
hard porcelain, 578, 591

Vineuf, near Turin ; soft, magnesian porce
lain, 568, 611
Vista- Allegre, near Oporto ; hard porcelain,
611
Viterbo (States of the Church); majolica,
294
Volkstadt (Schwartzburg) ; hard porcelain,
602 W.
Wall, Dr. ; founds the Worcester manu
factory, 566
Wallendorf (Saxe Coburg) Thuringia ; hard
porcelain, 601
Waly (Meuse) ; fa'ience, 419
Wedgwood, Josiah ; his life and products,
504
Weesp, Holland ; hard porcelain founded by
Count Grosfeld, 609
Wegeli ; founds a manufactory of hard por
celain at Berlin, 605
Wheildon, potter, Little Fenton, 506
Wintherthur (Zurich Canton); stoves and
monumental fa'ience, 490
Worcester, manufactory of soft porcelain,
566
Writing, Chinese ; at first figurative, 32 ;
eight diagrams, see Pa-kwa ; Kouwen, 32 ;
Ta-tchouan, or characters of Tcheou, 33 ;
examples, 39 ; Siao-tchouan, or sealed
character, 33 ; examples, 38 ; Lichou, or
office writing, 33 ; Thsao-chou, or cursive
character, ib. ; counterfeited, 64 ; Kiai-
chou, character in present use, 33
Wrotham (Kent); engobed earthenware,
503 X.
Xanto, Francesco Avelli ; ceramic painter
and poet (Urbino), 273 ; his " istoriato "
pieces, ib.

Yang and yn ; according to the Chinese the
active and passive forces of nature, 24,
31 ; how figured, 24
Yarmouth potteries by Absalon, 507
Z.
Zoroaster, Persian philosopher, 118; his
dogmas, 119
Zurich ; faience, 489 ; hard porcelain, 610

LONDON :
PRINTKD BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS,
STAMIOUI) STliGICT AND CHARISO CIJOSS.

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