Fig. 88.—Delft.
In the decorative work of the Delft potters it seems to me the things to desire are the fine plates and dishes painted, as many of them are, with luminous blues almost equal to the celestial blues of China, such as we see in Fig. 88; and the vases, the flagons, the cups and mugs, in every style and shape; the same things in polychrome, with those bold groups of flowers, equal in their way to the work of the Orientals. Besides, there are the figures of peasants, etc.; also their cows and horses, which have a quaint interest not easily explained.
The Dutch potters ran into many things, such as small foot-stoves, barbers’ basins, casters, salt-cellars, etc. About much of the good delft is that same quaint, countrified beauty of which I have spoken. It is good, because it is real and native to the people and its painters. When they left this and went to imitating the Chinese and the Japanese, their work seems to me almost worthless; because it was an imitation, and it was inferior.
In one of the largest workshops, or fabriques, a custom prevailed that one should read portions of the Bible, which all might hear and all might discuss. This was a time when religious heat was fervent; when the great questions of church direction and free thought were rife; when Catholic and Protestant often went from the assault of the tongue to that with the arquebuse. This practice no doubt made good Protestants, but also without doubt poor potters.
The most curious pieces of delft known are four violins, still extant, very carefully made and very carefully painted. One is (or was) in the museum at Rouen, one at the Conservatoire at Paris, the third in the collection of M. Demmin, and the fourth in a private collection at Utrecht. The story still lives that these four violins were made by the master-modelers for marriage-gifts to the four daughters of the master of the fabrique, about to marry four young potters; and that the music for the dance was drawn from them. It was a pretty conceit.
Some elaborate dinner-services were made at Delft, which required much skill and much work. The covers of the dishes were modeled in the likeness of birds or fish, indicating whatever was to be served in them; these were painted carefully to imitate Nature, so that the guest, in seeing the table, would know if it were a turkey, a pheasant, a ptarmigan—whatever luxury had been provided for his delectation.
Tea-Services.—It is possible there are persons who believe that tea has always been known, and that the lovely tea-services out of which, we sometimes drink it have existed from the time of Noah and the Deluge; not so.
Pepys, in his “Diary,” speaks of it in 1661 as “a China drink of which I had never drunk before.” And at that time it sold in England at fifty or sixty shillings a pound—an enormous price.
Tea and coffee pots were first brought to Holland from China, and do not appear earlier than about 1700; so that those which came over in the Mayflower and the Half-Moon and the Ark must have been made by Elder Brewster and Henry Hudson and Leonard Calvert from the “depths of their moral consciousness.”