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CERAMICS, or KERAMICS (Gr. Kfpauor, earthenware), a general term for the study of the art of pottery. It is adopted for this purpose both in French (ctramique) and in German (Keramik) ,and thus has its convenience in English as representing an international form of description for a study which owes much to the art experts of all nations, though ceramic and ceramics do not appear in English as technical terms till the middle of the i9th century.

The word pottery (Fr. poterie) in its widest sense includes all objects fashioned from clay and then hardened by fire, though there is a growing tendency to restrict the word to the commoner articles of this great class and to apply the word porcelain to all the finer varieties. This tendency is to be deprecated, as it is founded on a misconception; the word porcelain should only be applied to certain well-marked varieties of pottery. The very existence of pottery is dependent on two important natural properties of that great and widespread group of rocky or earthy substances known as clays, viz, the property of plasticity (the power of being readily kneaded or moulded while moist), and the property of being converted when fired into one of the most indestructible of ordinary things.

The clays form such an important group of mineral substances that the reader must refer to the article CLAY for an account of their occurrence, composition and properties. In this article we shall only deal with the various clays as they have affected the problems of the potter throughout the ages. The clays found on or close to the earths surface are so varied in composition and properties that we may see in them one of the vital factors that has determined the nature of the pottery of different countries and different peoples. They vary in plasticity, and in the hardness, color and texture of the fired product, through an astonishingly wide range. To-day the fine, plastic, white-burning clays of the south of England are carried all over Europe and America for the fabrication of modern wares, but that is a state of affairs which has only been attained in recent times. Even down to the 18th century, the potters of every country could only use on an extensive scale the clays of their own immediate district, and the influence of this controlling factor on the pottery of bygone centuries has never yet received the attention it deserves.i General Evolution of Potter y.The primitive races of mankind, whether of remote ages or of to-day, took perforce such clay as they found on the surface of the ground, or by some river-bed, and with the rudimentary preparation of spreading it out on a stone slab if necessary and picking out any rockyfragments of appreciable size, then beating it with the hands, with stones or boards, or treading it with the feet to render it fairly uniform in consistency, proceeded to fashion it into such shapes as need or fancy dictated. Fired in an open fire, or in the most rudimentary form of potters kiln, such pottery may be buff, drab, brown or redand these from imperfect firing become smoked, grey or black. How many generations of men, of any race, handed on their painfully acquired bits of knowledge before this earliest stage was passed, we can never know; but here and there, where the circumstances were favorable or the race was quick of observation, we can trace in the work of prehistoric man inmanycountriesa gradually advancing skill based on increased technical knowledge. For ages tools and methods remained of the simplestthe fingers for shaping or building up vessels, a piece of mat or basketwork for giving initial support to a more ambitious vase,until some original genius of the tribe finds that by starting to build up his pot on the flattened side of a boulder he can turn his support so as to bring every part in succession under his hand, and 10! the potters wheel is inventednot brought down from heaven by one of the gods to a favored race, as the myths of all the older civilizations or barbarisms, Egyptian, Chaldean, Greek, Scythian, and Chinese have fabled, but born from the brain and hand of man struggling to fulfil his allotted task.

Formerly every writer on the history of pottery seemed to imagine that the very rudest pottery must have been the invention of Egyptian, Chinese or some other distinct race from which the knowledge radiated to all the other races of the prehistoric world. No conception could be more erroneous. Since the middle of the 19th century research has established beyond doubt that wherever clay was found men became potters of a sort, just as they became hunters, carpenters, smiths, &c., by sheer force of need and slowly-gathered tradition. The not yet exploded view that Egypt or Assyria was the special cradle of this art, and that the pottery of the Greeks and Romans directly descended from such a parent stock, cannot survive in viewof the incontestable evidence that pottery was made by the prehistoric peoples of what we now call Greece, Italy, Spain and other countries, long before they were aware that any other peoples lived on the earth than themselves.

For centuries this simple hand-made pottery was hardened by drying in the sun, so that it would serve for the storage of dried grain, &c., but the increasing use of fire would soon bring out the amazing fact that a baked clay vessel became as hard as stone. Then, too, came the knowledge that even in one district all the clays did not fire to the same color, and color decoration arose, in a rude daubing or smearing of some clay or earth (a ruddle or bole perhaps), which was found to give a bright red or buff color on vessels shaped in a duller-colored claymost precious of all were little deposits of white clay which kept their purity unsullied through the fire,and by thesc primitive means the races of the dawn made their wares. On this substructure all the pottery of the last four thousand years has been built, for behind all Egyptian, Greek or Chinese pottery we find the same primitive foundations.

We now reach the beginnings of recorded history, and as the great nations of the past emerge from the shadows they each develop the potters art in an individual way. ~The Egyptians evolve schemes of glowing colorbrilliant glazes fired on objects, shaped in sand held together with a little clay, or actually carved from rocks or stones; the Greeks produce their marvels of some example of ancient potterywas it made in the district where it was found, or had it been imported from some other centre? When we possess a sufficient body of analytical data obtained by the use of one general chemical method, an analysis of a fragment will frequently enable such a question to be answered, where now all is doubt and speculation. ~ut the analytical results published hitherto are often not worth the paper they are printed on for stich a purpose, the older methods of silicate analysis being only approximate.

of plastic form, and then, excited by their growing skill in metal work, turn the plastic clay into imitations of metal forms. These nations are overthrown, and the Romans spread some knowledge only a tincture, it must be confessed-over all the lands they hold in fee; and from the Euphrates to the Atlantic, from Egypt to the Wall of Hadrian, they set alight potters fires that have never since been extinguished. The Roman empire falls, and over Europe its pottery is forgotten along with its greater achievements; yet still pottery-making goes on in a very simple way, to be slowly revived and modified once more by the communities of monks, who, in later centuries, replace the Roman legions as the great civilizing influence in Europe. Meantime Egypt and the nearer East continued, in a debased form, the splendours of their glorious past, and glazed and painted pottery was still made by traditional methods. What part the Byzantine civilization and the Persians played during this obscure time, we are only just beginning to realize; but we now know that many interesting kinds of decorated pottery were made at Old Cairo, at Alexandria, at Damascus, in. Syria, Anatolia and elsewhere (on which the later Moslem potters founded their glorious works), at a time when all over Europe crocks of simple red or drab clay, covered only with green and yellow lead-glazes, were the sole evidence of the potters skill. What the Arab conquests destroyed, and what their breath quickened into life, we can only guess; but the fact is indisputable that with the Mahommedan conquests there came a time when the potters art of the Occident reached its highest expression, and when methods and knowledge hitherto confined to Egypt, Syria and Persia were spread from Spain and the south of France to Indiaeven, it may be, into China.

Meantime, in the farther East, the Chinesethe greatest race of potters the world has ever seenwere quietly gathering strength, until from their glazed, hard-fired pottery there emerged the marvellous, white translucent porcelain, one of the wonders of the medieval world.

With the dawn of the x5th century of our era, the state of affairs was practically this :In European countries proper we find rudely fashioned and decorated wares in which we can trace the slow development of a native craft from the superposition of Roman methods on the primitive work of the peoples. The vessels were mostly intended for use and not for show; were clumsily fashioned of any local clay, and if glazed at all then only with coarse lead-glazes, colored yellow or green; in no case above the level of workmanship of the travelling brick- or tilemaker. The finest expression. of this native style is to be found in the Gothic tile pavements of France, Germany and England, where all the colors are due to the clays and there is no approach to painting. In the Moslem countriesincluding the greater part of Spain and Sicily, Egypt and the nearer East, probably even to the very centre of Asiapottery was being made either of whitish clay and sand, or of a light reddish clay coated with a white facing of fine clay or of tin-enamel, on which splendid decorative patterns in vivid pigments or brilliant iridescent lustres were painted.

As early as the 12th century of our era this superior artistic pottery of the Moslem nations had already attracted the notice of Europeans as an article of luxury for the wealthy; and we may well believe the traditional accounts that Saracen potters were brought into Italy, France and Burgundy to introduce the practice of their art, while Italian potters certainly penetrated into the workshops of eastern Spain and elsewhere, and gathered new ideas. In Italy certainly, and in the south of France probably, efforts were continuously in progress to improve the native wares by coating the vessels with a white slip and drawing on them rude, painted patterns in green, yellow and purplish black. The increasing intercourse with Spain, in war and peace, also introduced the use of tin-enamel after the fashion of the famous Hispano-Moresque wares, and by the end of the 14th century a knowledge of tin-enamel was widespread in Italy and paved the way to the glorious painted majolica of the 15th and 16th centuries. From Italy and Spain, France and Holland, Germany, and finally, though much later, England learnt this art, and the tin-enamelled pottery of middle and northern Europe, so largely made during the 17th and 18th centuries, was the direct offshoot of this movement of the Italian Renaissance.

During the I 5th and 16th centuries Chinese porcelain also began to find its way into ~urope, and by the whiteness of its substance and its marvellous translucence excited the attention of the Italian majolists and alchemists. The first European imitation of this famous orietital porcelain of which we have indubitable record was made at Florence (1575-1585) by alchemists or potters working under the patronage, and, it is said, with the active collaboration of Francesco de Medici. This Florentine porcelain was the first of those distinctively European. wares, made in avowed imitation of the Chinese, which form a connecting link between pottery and glass, for they may be considered either as pottery rendered translucent or as glass rendered opaque by shaping and firing a mixture containing a large percentage of glass with a very little clay. After the cessation of the Florentine experiments we know of no European porcelain for nearly a century, though the importation of Chinese porcelain had largely increased owing to the activity of the various India companies. The next European porcelain, made like the Florentine of glass and clay, was that of Rouen (1673) and St Cloud (1696); and during the 18th century artificial glassy porcelain was made in France and England largely, and in other countries experimentally. German experimenters worked in another direction, and the first porcelain made in Europe from materials similar to the Chinese was produced at Meissen. by Bottger (1710-1712). During the 18th century not only was there a very large trade in imported Chinese and Japanese porcelain, but there was a great development of porcelain manufacture in Europe; and in every country factories were established, generally under royal or princely patronage, for the manufacture of artificial porcelain like the French, or genuine porcelain. like the German. The English made a departure in the introduction of a porcelain distinct from either, through adding calcined ox-bones to the other ingredients; and this English bone-porcelaina well-marked speciesis now largely made in America, France, Germany and Sweden as well as in England.

By the end of the 18th century the risks and losses attendant on the manufacture of the French glassy porcelain had caused its abandonment, and a porcelain marie from natural materials like the Chinese has since been generally made on the continent of Europe.

The older tin-enamelled waresderived from the Hispano-. Moresque and the Italian majolicaso largely made in France, Holland, Germany and elsewhere during the 17th and 18th centuries, met with a fate analogous to that of the French porcelain. Tin-enamelled earthenware is always a brittle substance, soon damaged in regular use; so that, when, in the middle of the 18th century, the English potter first appeared as a serious competitor with a fine white earthenware of superior durability and precision of manufacture, the old painted faience gradually disappeared between the upper millstone of European porcelain and the nether millstone of English earthenware.

The I9th century witnessed a great and steady growth in the output of porcelain and pottery of all kinds in Europe and the United States. Mechanical methods were largely called in to supplement or replace what had hitherto remained almost pure handicraft. The English methods of preparing and mixing the materials of the body and glaze, and the English device of replacing painted decoration by machine printing, to a large extent carried the day, with a great gain to the mechanical aspects of the work and in many cases with an entire extinction of its artistic spirit. Even the hand-work that still remained was largely affected by the growing dominance of machinery; and the painting, gilding and decoration of pottery and porcelain, in. the first half of the I9th century, became everywhere mechanical and hackneyed. During the latter half of the I9th century another influence was fortunately at work. Side by side with the increasing mechanica perfection of the great bulk of modern pottery there grew up a school of innovators and experimentalists, who revived many of the older decorative methods that had fallen into oblivion and produced fresh and original work, in certain directions even beyond, the achievements of the past. The 20th century opened with a wider outlook among the potters of Europe and America. In every country men were striving once again to bring back to their world-old craft something of artistic taste and skill.

Technical Methods. All primitive pottery, whether of ancient or of modern times, has been made by the simplest methods. The clay, dug from the earths surface, was or is prepared by beating and kneading with the hands, feet or simple mallets of stone or wood; stones and hard particles were picked out; and the mass, well tempered with water, was used without any addition. From this clay, vessels were shaped by scooping out or cutting a solid lump or ball, by building up piece by piece and smoothing down one layer upon another or by squeezing cakes of clay on to some natural object or prepared mould or form. The potters wheel, though very ancient, was a comparatively late invention, arrived at independently by many races of men. In its simplest form it was a heavy FIG. 1.Potter mould- FIG. 2.Potters wheel of ing a vessel on the wheel the time of the Ptolemies, (from a painting in a tomb moved by the foot (from a at Thebesabout 18ooB.c.). wall-relief at Philae). Corn- Compare the wheel on the pare fig. 5, the wheel on the left in fig. 5. right.

disk pivoted on a central point to be set going by the hand, as the workman squatted on the ground; and it may be seen to-day in India, Ceylon, China or Japan, in all its primitive simplicity (see fig. I). This form of potters wheel was the only one known until about the Christian era, and then, in Egypt apparently, the improvement was introduced of lengthening the spindle which carries the throwing-wheel and mounting on it near the base a much larger disk which the potter could rotate with his foot, and so have botl~ hands free for the manipulation of the clay (fig. 2). No further advance seems to have been made before the 17th century, when the wheel was spun by means of a cord working over a pulley; and though a steam-driven wheel was introduced in the middle of the I 9th century, this form remains the, best for the production of fine pottery.

A prevalent misconception with regard to the potters wheel needs correction. For anything beyond very simple shapes it is impossible to carry the work to completion on the wheel at one operation as is generally imagined. Ail that the potter can do while the clay is soft enough to throw on the wheel is to get a rough shape of even thickness. This operation completed, the piece is removed from the wheel and set aside to dry. When it is about leather-hard, it may be re-centred carefully on the wheel (the old practice), or placed in a horizontal lathe (since 16th century) and turned down to the exact shape and polished to an even, smooth surface. The Greek vase-makers were already adepts in what is often reckoned a modern, detestable practice. Many Greek vases have obviously been thrown in separate sections, and when these had contracted and hardened sufficiently they were luted together with slip, and the final vase-shape was smoothed and turned down on the wheel, and even polished to as fine a degree of mechanical finish as the modern potter ever attains. So too with the Chinese; many of their forms have been made in two or three portions, subseguently joined together and finished on the outside as one piece. Indeed, ft is remarkable how the Greeks and Chinese had discovered for themselves many devices of this kind which are generally held up to opprobrium as the debased niethods of a mechanical age.

Always it should be borne in mind that the shaping of pottery by pressing cakes of clay into moulds is much older than the potters wheel, and has always been the method of making shapes other than those in the round. The modern method of casting pottery by pouring slip, a fluid mixture of clay and water, into absorbent moulds seems to have originated in England about the middle of the 18th century; and this too is a genuine potters method which does not merit the disapproval with which it has been generally regarded by writers on the potters art.

In all ages the work of the thrower or presser has been largely supplemented by the modeller, who alters the shape, and applies to it handles, spouts or modelled accessories at will.

Firing.The firing of pottery has become in modern times such a specialized branch ot the manufacture that the student can only be referred here to the technological works mentioned in the bibliography at the end of this article. It is, however, (~~~2

necessary that we should briefly describe the earlier forms of potters kilos / ~ ,~

used by the nations whose pottery counts among the ~

treasures of the collector and the antiquary. Here ,~7 __________ -~

again we now know that ~-

the primitive types of kiln -ft--,

ancient Egypt Poortt~r:ee~ ~ have not vanished from the earth; it is only in the civilized countries of the modern world that they have been replaced by improved and perfected devices. The potters of the North-West Provinces of India use to-day a kiln practically identical with that depicted in severest silhouette on the rocktombs of Tihebes; and the skilful Japanese remain content with a kiln very similar to the one shown in fig. 3. This Greek type of kiln was improved and FIG. 3.Early Greek pottery-kln, enlarged by the Romans, about 700600 B.C. (from a painted and its use seems to have votive tablet found at Corinth, now in been introduced wherever the Louvre). The section shows the pottery was made under probable construction of the kil9.

their sway, for remains of Roman kilos have been found in many countries (see fig. 4). With the end of Roman dominance we have ample evidence that their technical methods fell into disuse, and the northern European potter of the period from the 6th to the 12th century had to build up his methods -~~~----~- -

- s~ -

~ - ~.,. I,,, . /

-Ti ____

FIG. 4.Roman kiln found at Castor. The low arch is for the insertion of the fuel; the pots rested on the perforated floor, made of clay slabs; the top of the kiln is missing,it was probably a dome.

afresh, and improved kilns were invented. The general type of medieval potters kiln is illustrated for us in the manuscript of an Italian potter of the 16th century, now in the library of the Victona and Albert Museum i (fig. 5). Kilns ,of a different type, horizontal reverberatory kilns, were used for making the hard-fired pottery of Europe (Rhenish stoneware, &c.), as well as for Chinese porcelain and the earliest German porcelains. With the organization of pottery as a factory industry in the 18th century, improved kilns were introduced, and the type of kiln now so largely used in civilized countries is practically a vertical reverberatory furnace of circular section, from 10 to 22 ft. in diameter and of similar height, capable, therefore, of containing at one firing a quantity of pottery that would have formed the outptlt of a medieval potter for a year. Every device that can be thought of for the better utilization of heat and FIG. 5.Two forms of Italian potters wheels, about 1540.

its even distribution throughout the kiln or oven has been experimented with; and, though the results have been most successful from the point of view of the potter, even the most recent coal-fired ovens remain very wasteful types of apparatus, the amount of available heat being relatively small to the fuel consumption. Gasfired kilos and o~ens are now being used or experimented with in every country, and their perfection, which cannot be far distant, will improve the most vital of the potters processes both in certainty and economy.

Glazes.We are never likely to known when glaze (i.e. a coating of fired glass) was first applied to pottery, though the present state of knowledge would incline us to the opinion that the earliest glazed objects we possess are those of ancient Egypt,i but the practice may have been originated independently wherever a knowledge of the elements of glass-making had spread, as all the early glazes were of the alkaline type, which must first be fused into a glass before they can be applied to pottery.

Many primitive races seem to have burnished their pottery after it was fired, in order to get a glossy surface; and in other cases the surface was rendered shining and waterproof by coating it with waxy or resinous substances which were often colored. It is possible that the black varnish of Greek vases was obtained by such a method, and though that point is not settled, we have many types of primitive pottery, both modern and ancient, which are coated in this way. Such a coating is only a substitute for glaze in the work of peoples who do not know or have not mastered the technical secrets of true glazes. We can only consider as glazes those definite superficial layers of molten material which have been fired on the clay substance. Glazes are as varied as the various kinds of pottery, and it must never be forgotten that each kind of pottery is at its best with its appropriate glaze. The earliest known glazes (Egyptian and Assyrian) were silicates of soda and lime containing very little alumina and no lead. Such glazes are very uncertain in use, and can only be applied to pottery unusually rich in silica (i.e. deficient in clay). Consequently these alkaline glazes cannot be used on ordinary clay wares, and when they have been used successfully, the clay has always been coated with a surface layer of highly siliceous substance (e.g. the so-called Persian, Rhodian, Syrian and Egyptian pottery of the early middle ages). The fact that glazes containing lead-oxide would adhere to ordinary pottery when alkaline glazes would not was discovered at a very early period; for lead glazes were extensively used in Egypt and the nearer East in Ptolemaic times, and it is significant that, though the Romans made singularly little use of glazes of any kind, the pottery that succeeded theirs, either in western Europe or in the Byzantine empire, was generally covered with glazes rich in lead. Throughout Europe, and over the greater part of the world, leaded glazes have been continuously used and improved for all ordinary pottery, and it is only with certain special hard-fired types of ware that they have yet been successfully replaced. Chinese porcelain and all the European porcelains made by analogous methods are fired at so high a temperature that a glaze by felspar softened by lime and silica is found most suitable for them, and the hard-fired stonewares, rich in silica, are often glazed with a salt glaze, or a melted earth rich in oxide of iron.

Every kind of potters clay (the nnxture of clay, sand, flint, &c., from which the potter shapes his wares) has its own type of glaze, and from the earliest time down to our o~n what the potter could produce in form or glaze or color has been largely decided for him by the clay material at his command. With any good plastic clay The earliest glazed objects found in Egyptian tombs (once dignified by the name of Egyptian porcelain) are hardly to be called pottery at all, though we have no other name for them. The material is largely sand held together by a little clay and glass.

which cannot be fired at the highest temperature, lead glazes have always proved ,the most practicable. A similar clay, to which large quantities of sand are added, may be glazed by the vapours of common salt; and mixtures rtch in felspar, like Chinese or European porcelain, can be glazed by melting felspathic materials upon them. Naturally those species of pottery which are the hardest fired are the most durablethe glazes of hard porcelain are more unchangeable than lead glazes, and these in their turn than alkaline glazes.

The most important types of glaze are (1) alkaline glazes (e.g. Egyptian, Syrian, Persian, &c.), the oldest and most uncertain; (2) lead glazes, the most widespread in use and the best for all ordinary purposes; (3) felspathic glazes, the glazes of hard-fired porcelains, generally unsuited to any other material; (4) salt glaze, produced by vapours of common salt, the special glaze of stonewares. Many intermediate glazes have been devised to meet special needs, but these remain the only important groups. Fuller details on this important subject must be sought in the technical works.

Colors.The primitive potters of ancient and modern times have all striven to decorate their wares with color. The simplest, and therefore the earliest, color decoration was carried out in natural earths and clays. The clays are so varied in composition that they fire to every shade of color from white to grey, cream, buff, red, brown, or even to a bronze which is almost black. One clay daubed or painted upon another formed the primitive palette of the potter, especially before the invention of glaze. When glaze was used these natural clays were changed in tint, and native earths, other than clays, containing iron, manganese and cobalt, were gradually discovered and used. It is also surprising to note that some of the very earliest glazes were colored glasses containing copper or iron (the green, turquoise and yellow glazes of the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians). Marvellous workwas wrought in these few materials, but the era of the finest pottery-color dawns with the Persian, Syrian and Egyptian work that preceded the Crusades. By this time the art of glazing pottery with a clear soda-lime glaze had been thoroughly learnt. Vases, tiles, &c., shaped in good plastic clay, were covered with a white, highly siliceous coating fit to receive glazes of this type, and giving the best possible ground for the painted colors then known. With this rudimentary technique the potters of the countries south and east of the Mediterranean produced, between the 9th and 16th centuries of our era, a type of pottery that remains ideal from the point of view of color: for, with nothing more than the greens given by oxide of copper and iron, the turquoise of pure copper, the deep yet vivid blue of cobalt, the beautiful uncertain purple of manganese, and in certain districts the rich red of Armenian bole, they achieved color schemes that have never been surpassed in their brilliant yet harmonious richness.

When the coating of white siliceous clay was replaced by an opaque tin-enamel as in Spain, Italy, France, Holland, &c., a necessary change in the color schemes resulted. At first only the copper-greens and cobalt-blues could be used on such a ground; the fine manganese purple turned to brown or black and the rich iron-reds to filthy shades of yellow. We cannot wonder that the Spanish-Arab potters paid more attention to their lustre decoration, foi that was the natural thing to do. How strong and fine a palette could b,e evolved for use on a tin-enamel ground was shown by the Italian majolists of the 15th and 16th centuries; and when the later developments of tin-enamelled pottery took place in France, Flolland, Germany, &c., their color schemes are only echoes of Italian majolica crossed with Chinese porcelain. Delft, Nevers, Moustiers and Rouen may each charm us with its individuality; Nuremberg and other south German towns may show us that they too had mastered the use of tin-enamel; yet our minds always go back to the color schemes of Italian majolica and of the Persian and Syrian pottery that lie behind and beyond them.

The colors already spoken of were either clay colors or what are known as under glaze colors, because they were painted on thi pottery before the glaze was fired.

The earliest glazes of the Egyptians appear not to have been white, but were colored throughout their substance, and this use of colored glazes as apart from painted color was developed alon with the painted decoration by the later Egyptian, Syrian an Persian potters. Green, yellow and brown glazes were almost the only artistic productions of the medieval European potters kilns, and their use everywhere preceded the introduction of painted pottery. The most extensive application of colored glazes was, however, that made by the Chinese, who developed this type of color decoration before they used painted patterns in underglaze color. The earliest Chinese porcelains, and the hard-fired stonewares out of which their porcelain arose, were decorated in this way, and the beauty of many of the early Sung colotired glazes has never been surpassed.

With the exceedingly refractory felspathic glazes of Chinese porcelain very few underglaze colors could be used; and the prevalence of blue and white among the early specimens of Chinese porcelains is due to the fact that cobalt was almost the only substance known to the potters of the Ming dynasty which would endure the high temperature needed to melt their glazes. Consequently the Chinese were driven to invent the method of painting in colored fusible glasses on the already fired glaze. They adopted for this purpose the colored enamels used on metal; hence the common term enamel decoration, which is so generally applied to painting in those colors which are attached to the already fired glaze by refiring at a lower temperature. With the introduction of this manycoloured Chinese porcelain into Europe the same practice was eagerly followed by our European potters, and a new palette of colors and fresh styles of decoration soon arose amongst us. Painting in onglaze colors, being executed on the fired glaze, resembles glass painting, and it generally offers a striking contrast both in technique and colotir-quality to the painting executed in colors under the glaze. In the former the work can be highly finished and the most mechanical execution is possible, but the colors are neither so rich nor so brilliant as under-glaze colors, nor have they the same softness as is given by the slight spread of the under-glaze color when the glaze is melted over it.

It must be pointed out that the color possibilities in any method of pottery decoration are largely dependent on the temperature at which the color needs to be fired. The clay colors are naturally more limited in range than the under-glaze colors, and these in their turn than the on-glaze colors.

When, about the middle of the 18th century, European pottery took on its modern form, of earthenware made after the English fashion, and porcelain like the French and German, the lead or felspathic glazes used brought about another revolution in the potters palette. The growing ideal of mechanical perfection discounted the freedom of the earlier brushwork, and printed patterns, or painting that might almost have been printed, removed the mind still farther from the richness of painted faicnce or majolica. It is useless to look for the glorious color of Persian faience, Italian niajolica, or Chinese porcelain, in modern wares produced by manufacturing processes where meehanical perfection is demanded to a degree undreamt of before the 19th century. The finest modern pottery color is only to be sought in the work of those enthusiasts and experimenters who arc striving to produce work as rich and free as the best of past times.

Metals.The noble metals, such as gold, platinum and silver, have, since the early years of the 18th century, been largely used as adjuncts to pottery decoration, especially on the hne white earthenwares and porcelains of the last two centuries. At first the gold was applied with a kind of japanners size and was not fired to the glaze, but for the last 150 years or so the metals have generally been fired to the surface of the glaze like enamel colors, by mixing the metal with a small proportion of flux or fusible ground glass. There can scarcely be a doubt that the ancient lustres of Persia, Syria and Spain were believed to be a form of gilding, though their decorative effect was much more beautiful than gilding has ever been. The early Chinese and Japanese gilding appears, like the European, to have been sized or water-gilt, not fired; and it seems probable that the use of~ fired gold was taught to the Oriental by the European in the 18th century. To-day liquid gold is exported to China and Japan from Europe for the use of the potter.

PRIMITiVE POTTERY

We can group together that great and widely-spread class of vessels made by the primitive races of mankind, whether before the dawn of civilization or at the present day, for it is interesting to note that many modern races still make pottery by the same rude method as the Neolithic races of Europe and Asia, and with striking similarityof result. In fact, the knowledgeof themethods and practices of the primitive potters of our own time furnishes the best possible guide to the methods of fabrication and ornamentation of the ancient specimens that are dug up from harrows, grave mounds, and tumuli. It is only natural that the materials and methods of such pottery are always of the simplest. The clay is used with very little preparation, and it is no unusual thing to find bits of stone, gravel, &c., embedded in the paste of such wares, though at a later stage of development they would have been removed. It must be remarked, however, that no race of potters practised the art for long without discovering that their vessels were not so liable to crack in drying, or lose their shape in firing, if fine sand or pounded potsherds were mixed with the clay; and when we are dealing with the work of races that have passed beyond the Stone Age and have learned the use of metals we find this custom universal.

There are three methods of shaping which seem to be common to almost every primitive race:

1. The scooping out of a vessel from a ball of clay.

2. The btiilding up of a form, often on a piece of basket-work or matting, gradually raising the walls higher by applying and smoothing down successive layers of clay.

3. Coiling; in which the clay is rolled out into thin ropes, and these are coiled round and round upon each other and smoothed down with the hands and with simple tools of bone, wood or metal.

The use of the potters wheel is unknown, while it is remarkable how beautifully true and finely-fashioned much primitive pottery is. The primitive red and black vases discovered by Flinders Petrie in Egypt, and the somewhat similar vessels of prehistoric date from Spain, are remarkable instances of this. Some primitive races leave their pottery without decoration, especially when they have a fine red-burning clay to work in, but, generally speaking, primitive pottery of every race and time is elaborately decorated, but only with the simplest patterns. Such decorations consist of lines, dots or lunette-shaped depressions arranged in. crosses, chevrons, zigzags or all-over repeated pattern. All this ornament is scratched or impressed into the clay before it is fired. Simplest of all is, perhaps, the pattern which has so obviously been produced by pressing a twisted thong round the neck or bowl of a vase; though the thong may have been used in the first instance merely to serve as a support while the vessel was dried. At a later stage the ornament is generally obtained by scratching with a tool, by pressing the end of a hollow stick into the clay to form rows of circles, by using a stick cut at the end into the shape of a half-moon, or other equally simple decorative device. In certain tropical countries this rudimentary pottery becomes hard enough for a certain amount of use when merely dried in the sun, but in all northern. and temperate countries it must have been fired, probably in the most imperfect way, in an open fire or in such a kiln as could be formed by sinking a hole into the ground and erecting round it a screen of stones. How imperfect the firing was is shown bythe ashen-grey color due to smoke. In those countries where the ware has been more perfectly fired the pieces naturally become buff, drab, brown or red.

The primitive vessels that have been found in the gravemounds of England and the northern countries generally have received a number of fanciful names for which there is very little warrant except in the case of the cinerary urns. These are generally the largest vessels of this class, and as they were used to contain burnt bones there seems sufficient warrant for the supposition that they were made for this and for no other purpose.

Our knowledge of primitive pottery has been greatly improved during recent years by the labors of a number of American students connected with the United States Geological Survey, who have carefully recorded the present-day practices of those native tribes who make and use pottery in various parts of North America and Mexico; while, in the same way, Peruvian, Brazilian and other South American pottery has been as closely investigated by European observers. It should be noted that no primitive pottery reveals any trace of a knowledge of glaze, though much of it has been highly polished after firing, and in some cases a varnish has been applied which may perhaps be regarded as the earliest kind of glazing ever applied to pottery vessels.

LITERATURE.On primitive pottery the following works may be specially mentioned. W. Greenwell, British Barrows (1877); Boyd. Dawkins, Early Man in Britain (1880); Mortimer, Forty Years Researches in British and Saxon Burial-mounds of East Yorkshire (1905); Abercromby, The Oldest Bronze-age Ceramic Type in Britain, J. Auth. Inst. vol. xxxii. (1902), 373; Guide to Antiquities of the Bronze Age (British Museum, 1904); Koenen, Gefasskunde der vorromischen, romischen und frankischen Zeit in den Rheinldndern (1895); Wosinsky, Der inkrustierte Keramik der Stein- und BronzezeiTt (1904); Walters, History of Ancient Pottery (Greek and Roman) (1905); Holmes, Aboriginal Pottery of the Eastern Uni ted States (Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1899); also Holmes and Cushing in Report of Bureau of Ethnology for 1882; Wiener, Pirou et Boljvie (1880); Von der Steinen, Natur- Volkerei Central Brasil-iens (1894); Hartman, A rchaeological Researches in Costa Rica (1905); Strebel, on Mexican Pottery in Publications of Museum fr Vdlkerkunde (Berlin, vol. 6, 1899); Werner, British Central Africa (1907); Fullborn, Deutsche Ost-Afrika, vol. ix. (1907); Macluer, Kabyle Pottery, Journ. Anth. Inst. vol. xxxii. p. 245, and Upper Egypt, ibid. xxxv. p. 20; Myres, Early Pottery Fabrics of Asia Minor, Journ. Auth. Inst. xxxiii. p. 367; Turveren Museum, Notes znalytiques sur les collections ethnographiques du Congo, tome ii. (1907); Cupart, Debuts de tart de lancienne Egypte (1903). (W. B.*)

EGYPT AND WESTERN ASIA

Egyptian Potlery.Egypt affords us the most striking instance 2f the development of the potters art. As in other countries pottery was made even in Neolithic times, for the Nile mud forms a fine plastic clay and sand is of course abundan.t. With these materials various kinds of pottery, often. extremely well made and of good form, have been continuously produced for common domestic requirements, but such pottery was never glazed.

The wonderful glazes of the Egyptians were applied to a special preparation which can hardly be called pottery at all, it contained so little clay. Yet as early as the 1st Dynasty the Egyptians had learnt to shape little objects in this tender material and cover them with their wonderful turquoise glazes. We have therefore to study the development of two independent things: (I) the ordinary pottery of common clay left without glaze; (2) the brilliant glazed faience which appears to be special to Egypt, though it may have been the groundwork for the technique of the slip-faced painted and glazed pottery of the nearer East.

We probably do not possess any specimens of the most primitive Neolithic pottery; the oldest type known to us, the black and red ware of Ballas and Nagada (1), dates from the later Neolithic age, when copper was just beginning to be used. This ware is very hard and compact and the face is highly burnished. The red color was produced by a wash of fine red clay; the black is an oxide of iron obtained by limiting the access of air in the process of baking, which was done, Professor Petrie suggests, by placing the pots mouth down in. the kiln, and leaving the ashes over the part which was to be burnt black. Both red and black color go right through in every case. All-red and all-black vases are occasionally found, the red with geometrical decorations in white color, and the black with incised decoration. The forms are usually very simple, but at the same time graceful, and the grace of form is more remarkable when. it is remembered that none of this early pottery was made on the wheel. Pottery of almost similar technique was found in Crete in 1905 during the American excavations at Vasiiki near herapetra. The general appearance of the Cretan pottery is much the same as that of the Egyptian, and the duller red and black decoration (which here has a spotted or mottled appearance) was probably obtained in the same way, the black spots being due to the action of separate fragments of the baking material. This discovery is important in view of the probable early con.nexion of the Cretan and Egyptian culture-centres.

A very similar red and black ware, usually of thinner and harder make, and often with a brighter surface, was introduced into Egypt at a later date (XIIth Dynasty), probably by Nubian tribes who were descended from relatives of the Neolithic Egyptians. From their characteristic graves these people are called the Pan-Grave people, and their pottery is known by the same name.

Perhaps rather later in date than the early red and black wares, but by no means certainly ~o, the second characteristic type of primeval Egyptian pottery is a ware of buff color with surface decorations in red. These decorations are varied in character, including ships, birds and human figures; wavy lines and geometrical designs commonly occur. The whole fades of this ware seems very un-Egyptian, and it has been compared with the decorated Kabyle pottery of modern times. To call the people who made this ware Libyans on the strength of this resemblance of their pottery to that of the modern. Kabyles, six thousand years later, seems, however, rash. The prehistoric Egyptians were not Kabyles or Libyans, but Niotes, and the peculiar decoration of their pottery, which seems so strangely barbaric, is in reality merely the most ancient handiwork of the Egyptian painter, and marks the first stage in the development of I~ictorial art on the banks of the Nile (2). Other types of pottery (3), in color chiefly buff or brown, were also in use at this period; the most noticeable form is a cylindrical vase with a wavy or rope band round it just below the lip, which developed out of a necked vase with a wavy handle on either side. This cylindrical type outlived the red and black and the red and buff decorated styles (which are purely Neolithic and predynastic) and continued in use in the early dynastic period, well into the Copper age. The other unglazed pottery of the first three dynasties is not very remarkable for beauty of form or color, and is indeed of the roughest description (4), but under the IVth Dynasty we find beautiful wheel-made bowls, vases and vase-stands of a fine red polished ware (4). This fine ware continued in use at least as late as the XVIIIth Dynasty, though the forms of cot~rse differed from age to age. Under the XIIth Dynasty, and during the Middle Kingdom generally, either this or a coarser unpolished red ware was in use. The forms of this period are very characteristic (5); the vases are usually footless, and have a peculiar globular or drop-like shapesome small ones seem almost spherical. At this period the foreign Pan. Grave black and red pottery wa~ also in use (see above).

The art of making a pottery consisting of a siliceous sandy body coated with a vitreous copper glaze seems to have been known unexpectedly early, possibly even as early as the period immediately preceding the 1st Dynasty (4000 B.C.). Under the XIIth Dynasty pottery made of this characteristic Egyptian faience seems to have come into general use, and it continued in use down to the days of the Romans, and is the ancestor of the glazed wares of the Arabs and their modern successors (6). The oldest Egyptian glazed ware is found usually in the shape of beads, plaques, &c.rarely in the form of pottery vessels. The color is usually a light blue, which may turn. either white or green; but beads of the grey-black manganese color are found, and on the light blue vases of King Aha (who is probably one of the historical originals of the legendary Mena or Menes) in the British Museum (No. 38,010) we have the kings name traced in the manganese glaze on (or rather in) the bluewhite glaze of the vase itself, for the second glaze is inlaid. This style of decoration in manganese black or purple on copper-blue continued till the end of the New Empire shortly before the XXVIth (Saite) Dynasty. It was n.ot usual actually to inlay the decoration before the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The light blue glaze was used well into the time of the XIIth Dynasty (British Museum, No. 36,346), but was then displaced by a new tint, a brilliant turquoise blue, on which the black decoration shows up in sharper contrast than before. This blue, and a somewhat duller, greyer or greener tint was used at the time for small figures, beads and vases, as well as for the glaze of scarabs, which, however, were usually of ston.e-schist or steatite not faien.ce. The characteristically Egyptian technique of glazed stone begins about this period, and not only steatite 01 schist was employed (on account of its softness), but a remarkably brilliant effect was obtained by glazing hard shining white quartzite with the wonderfully delicate XIIth Dynasty blue. A fragment of a statuette plinth of this beautiful material was obtained during the excavation of the XIth Dynasty temple at Deir el-Bahri in 1904 (British Museum, No. 40,948). Vessels of diorite and other hard stones are also found coated with the blue glaze. A good specimen of the finest XIIth Dynasty blueglazed faience is the small vase of King Senwosri I. (2~oo B.c.) in. the Cairo Museum (No. 3666) (6). The blue-glazed hippopotami of this period, with the reeds and water-plants in purplish black upon their bodies to indicate their habitat, are well known. Fine specimens of these are in the collection of the Rev. Wm. MacGregor at Tamworth (8).

The blue glaze of the XIIth Dynasty deepened in. color under the XIIIth, to which the fine blue bowls with designs (in the manganese black) of fish and lotus plants belong (8) (British Museum, Nos. 4790, &c.). The finest specimens of XVIIIth Dynasty blue ware have come from Deir el-B ahri, in the neighborhood of which place there may have been a factory for the manufacture of votive bowls, cups, beads, &c., of this fine faience, for dedication by pilgrims in the temple of Hathor (good collection in British Museum). Towards the end of this dynasty polychrome glazes came into fashion; white, light and dark blue, violet, purple, red, bright yellow, apple-green and other tints were used, not only for smaller objects of faience, such as rings, scarabs, kohl-pots, &c., but also for vases, e.g. No. 3965 of the Cairo Museum(Amenophislll.wmn.e-bottle), the ground color of which is white with a decoration of flower wreaths in blue, yellow and red, with an inscription in delicate blue (6). This polychrome faience was also now used for the ushabti figures which were placed in the tombs; hitherto they had been made exclusively of stone or wood, never of glazed stone or pottery; henceforward they were made exclusively of faience, but the polychrome glazes (eg. British Museum, Nos. 34,180, 34,185) were soon. abandoned, and the plain blue and black of the ordinary vases was adopted. The ushabtis of King Seti I. (British Museum, No. 22,818, &c.) (9) are fine specimens of this type. Under the XXth Dynasty the blue paled and became weak in quality, but the priest-king family of the XXIst used for their ushabtis a most brilliant blu~ glaze, an extraordinary color which at once distinguishes the faience of this period from that of all others (9). The same brilliant glaze was used for vases of various kinds as well. The polychrome ware had developed into a style of inlaying with glazed faience, which we see at Tel el-Amarna under the XVIIIth Dynasty (1400 B.c.) (10), and at Tel el-Yahudiya under the XXth (1200 B.c.), used for wall decoration. After this time polychrome ceramic decoration seems to have died out in Egypt, but was retained in Asia (see below).

The technical skill of the New Empire potters is shown by such a remarkable object as the gigantic Uas-sceptre of blue glazed faience, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (12, 8). This is the largest known piece of Egyptian glazed faience; really large vases of faience are not found. Faience vases were very commonly built up or carved out of a ball of the dried material, perhaps held together by some mucilaginous substance it seems impossible that such a substance could ever have been fashioned on the wheel. Sometimes even small vases were made of separately moulded pieces united by a glassy material (6). Under the XXIInd Dynasty small glazed vases with figures of deities or animals in relief became common; these were made in moulds (6). In the matter of form the faience pottery of the New Empire follows the lead of the new earthenware types. Forms had altered considerably from those of the XIIth Dynasty. In place of the simple flowing lines of that period, we now find egg-shaped bodies with cylindrical necks, with or without handles; great amphorae with almost pointed bases, sometimes with the handles perched upon the shoulders of the vase; flattipped, squat jugs; little handleless vases somewhat resembling the modern kulla, mit mehrfach eingezogenem Bauch (V.B.), and the common flat flask-like type known as the pilgrim bottle (6, 13, 14, 15).

Owing to the extended foreign relations of Egypt at this time, imported vases from Greece and Asia, including Mycenaean Bugelkannen and Cypriote black base ring jugs, have been found in the tombs and deposits of this age (14). Imitations of foreign forms, especially the Bugelkannen, are found i chiefly in faience (British Museum, 22,731, is an imitation of a Minoan jug from Crete). The faience forms of t the XVIIIth and XXIInd Dynasties include also the kulla shape, the pilgrim bottle, miniature amphorae, &c (see fig 6) and miscellaneous 4 ~ forms not found in common pottery, imitating metal and stone vases e.g.

FIG. 6.Egyptian pottei-y made of fine blue paste, the blue-green ribbed pots of the XXIInd Dynasty, imitating bronze originals, and the alabastron of the XVIIIth; these last go back to the XIIth Dynasty. Very pretty cups in the shape of lotus flowers (see fig. 7) are to be seen in most museums; they are of the XIXth Dynasty, and mostly came from Tuna (6, 8).

The continuance of the old red polished ware of the IVth Dynasty during the Middle Kingdom to the time of the XVIIIth Kahun ) and the Cypriote (?) punctuated black ware from the same site, and from Khataanah (17). The date between the XIIth and XIIIth Dynasties is certain (14), but the Middle Kingdom Egyptians do not seem to have imitated these earlier foreign forms.

British Museum, No. 17,046, is, however, probably an instance of an Egyptian idea imitated by the foreign potter (17).

Dynasty has already been mentioned. Characteristic of the latter period of this ware are long jugs with attenuated body and single handle, which, because they have been found with Mycenaean objects in Cyprus, have been considered to be ~ of foreign, probably of Syrian origin. They .~

may, however, be Egyp- ~ e tian. Vases of the same -

ware in the shape of men and animals are not un- .

common (17). Another FIG. 7.Egyptian blue-glazed pottery. ware of this period has a highly polished yellow face, sometimes becoming ruddy, and passing off into a pinkish red; in this ware the pilgrim bottles are common. An unpolished, brittle, and thin yellow ware was also used largely for winevases. The rougher, commoner red and brown ware at this period became decorated with designs, chiefly of lily wreaths, &c., in paint of various colors (13). This new development hid the ugly color of the common pottery and was a cheaply obtained imitation of the expensive, polychrome glazed ware of the period (see fig. 8). This painted pottery continued in use until about the time of the XXIInd Dynasty. From this time onwards, till the Ptolemaic period, the commonest pottery was a red ware, usually covered with a white slip. Under the XXVIth Dynasty a finer homogeneous white ware occurs, usually for vases with a rude representation of the face of the god Bes on their bodies.

The XXVIth Dynasty marks a new period of development in the history of Egyptian faience. The old deep blue color had gradually deteriorated into an ugly green (British Museum, No. 8962), which was replaced by the Saite pott ~rs with a new light blue of very delicate tint, imitated, in accol-dance with the archaistic spirit of the time, from the old light blue of the earliest Dynasties. The glaze itself is very thin and sugary in texture. The old decoration of the blue with designs and inscriptions in manganese-black is abandoned; on the ucha b/is the inscriptions are now incised. Side _______

by side with this light blue glaze f was used an unglazed faience, a ~-

sort of composition paste with the ~..

color going right through.2 It /: ~ ~

has more variety of color than o~ ~ i~ ,

the glazed faience, light green and ~ i a dark indigo blue being found as ~ . ~ - -

well as the Saite light blue. Some- / -

times it is of a very soft, almost ~ -

chalky consistency. It was used FIG. 8.Egyptian pottery for vases, but more generally for w1~th pain I ornament and small figures and scarabs (6). The commonest vase-form of this period is the pilgrim bottle, now made with the neck in the form of a lily flower, and with inscriptions on the sides wishing good luck in the New Year to the possessor. These flasks appear to have been common New Years gifts.

Under the Sebennyte kings of the XXXth Dynasty a further new development of glaze began, of a more radical character than ever before. The color deepened, and the glaze itself became much more glassy, and was thickly laid on. The new glaze was partly translucent, and differed very greatly from the old opaque glaze. It first appeared on usha b/is at the end of the Saite period. A curious effect was obtained by glazing the head-dress, the inscription &c., of the ushabtis in dark blue, and then covering the whole with translucent light blue glaze. This method was regularly used during the succeeding Ptolemaic and Roman periods, when the new style of glaze came into general use. A yellowish green effect was obtained by glazing parts of the body of the vases in yellow and covering this with the translucent blue glaze. This method was used to touch up the salient portions of the designs in relief, imitated from foreign originals, a style which now became usual on vases. The usual decoration is mixed Egyptian and classical, the latter generally predominating. A large range of colors was employed; purple, dark blue, bluegreen, grass-green, and yellow glazes all being found. The glaze is very thickly laid on, and is often crazed (6, 8). A remarkable instance of this Romano-Egyptian faience is the head of the god Bes in the British Museum (No. 35,028). A hard, light blue, opaque glaze like that of the XXVIth Dynasty is occasionally, but rarely, met with in the case of vases (British Museum, Nos. 37,407, 37,408).

We know something of the common wares in use during this period from the study of the ostraka, fragments of pottery on which dated tax-receipts, notes, and so forth were written. From the ostraka we see that during the Ptolemaic period the commonest pottery was made of red ware covered with white slip, which has already been mentioned. At the beginning of the Roman period we find at Elephantine a peculiar lIght pink ware with a brownish pink face, and elsewhere a smooth dark brown ware. About the 3rd century A.D. horizontally ribbed or fluted pots, usually of a coarse brown ware, came into general use. These were often large-sized amphorae, with very attenuated necks and long handles (see fig. 9). During the Byzantine (Coptic) period most of the pottery in use was ribbed, and usually pitched inside to hold water, as ~ the ware was loose in texture and p During the Coptic period, a lighter ware was alsO in use, decorated with designs of various kinds in white, brown or red paint on ~ the dull red or buff body. In Nubia a peculiar development of this ware is characteristic of the later period (Brit. Mus. No. 30,712).

A polished red ware of Roman origin (imitation Arretine or - I Samian ) was commonly used as ~ well.

FIG. 9Egyptian pottery The heavily glazed blue faience under the Ptolemies, ~show- continued in use until replaced in ing Greek influence in the shapes. the early Arab period by the wellknown yellow and brown lead- glazed pottery, of which fragments are found in the mounds of Fostat (Old Cairo).

Western AsiaPalestine. The most ancient Palestinian pottery is the rough Amorite ware from Lachish (Tel el-Hesi) which sometimus has wavy handles like the prehistoric Egyptian (18). Later we find actual Mycenaean pottery in Philistia (19), an interesting testimony to the truth of the legend which brings the Philistines from Crete; the fourth and fifth cities of Lachish (1200-1000 B.C.) show us the first ordinary Phoenician or. Israelite potterybuff or red lamps and bowls, the latter with the handles sometimes painted in bistre, and vases showing strong Egyptian influence; while pottery from Cyprus and elsewhere is found as in Egypt.

The only remarkable later development of Palestinian pottery