Table-services at this time cost from one hundred to one thousand guineas each, according to the number of pieces and the elaborateness of the decoration.
The figure-pieces, some fifteen inches high, were sold at from sixteen to twenty guineas; and the smaller figurines, five or six inches high, for as many pounds.
These Dresden figures of this early period now sell for very high prices, and are much sought for, as are also the figure-pieces of the Höchst and Chelsea factories.
But let us ask ourselves, “Why should we pay such great prices for work which, as art, has but a reflected value?” I am sure that no great sculptor will apply his best work to china, or to any material which is so liable to be spoiled in the baking, and to one which, after all, is not suited to what we term high or fine art.
These figures are of value, of course, as illustrations of the possibilities, and also as historical illustrations, of the growth and development of the fictile art. No man will wish to have an Ariadne in china made by an excellent artist, if he can have the same work of the same artist in marble.
We have the same feeling in regard to a fine painting: would any one wish to exchange the Dresden Madonna of Raphael on the canvas for a perfect copy in mosaic, or in the most exquisite Gobelin tapestry? None. And yet the mosaic or the tapestry has cost ten times more of human labor.
The artificialities of life come to be supreme at times, and the human mind, in some stages of development, loses all sense of what is good or bad, in an exaggerated appreciation of what is difficult or uncommon; and, in many cases, a fashion or whim of the hour rides down a sound judgment. Among the more intellectual peoples this prevails.
Assuming that the Orientals are races who perceive or feel, rather than reason—while the reverse of this is true of Europeans and Americans—we find our art often losing its way, which that of the Orientals seldom does. The natural or instinctive soul, by its native sense, is guided in matters of color and decoration more truly than we who attempt to reason out these things. Now, applying this to the facts of fictile art, we find that the Chinese and Japanese never attempted figure-work in porcelain, except in some few cases of burlesques, or of animals and birds. Their work was applied to that which comes into the uses of life—for the table first and mostly; after that for vases, which became works of pure ornament, but yet behind which lay the motive of use. In all this, it seems to me, the Orientals were right, and the Saxons wrong.
I believe, then, that the best and purest art will be found in porcelain when applied to the decoration of dinner and tea services, of vases, and of articles which do not attempt to rival sculpture or high art; and those may reach perfection, while the porcelain sculptures will not.
I believe, too, that the best style of decoration for porcelain is not imitative, but suggestive—that is, an elaborate and careful copy of a flower or a figure upon the clay is not so appropriate or so satisfactory as a free translation of the sentiment of the flower or the figure, which suggests it to the soul rather than tickles the eye.