The Pottery of the Stone Age.—The Lacustrine Dwellings.—Vases of the Bronze Age.—Peruvian Pottery.—Mexican Pottery.—Pottery of Western Mounds.—The Cesnola Collections.—Roman Pottery.—Saxon and Scandinavian Pottery.—The Pottery of Ancient Gaul—of Ancient Germany.
Fig 1.—Bowl of the Stone Age.
SO ancient is the potter’s art that it may be said to have begun with the beginnings of man. A belief exists still in Silesia that there is a mountain out of which cups and jugs spring spontaneously, as the mushrooms shoot from the moist soil of the plains. Interwoven, then, as pottery is with the history of the race, having relations daily and hourly with man’s universal and greatest vocation—the preparation of the food which supports and continues life—it has had and will have an interest as vital as it is wide-spread.