Fig. 66.—Assyrian tablet of clay, impressed with cuneiform inscription. With outer case.
Similar bricks, impressed with inscriptions, have been found in North America. The letters on these bricks, tablets, or cylinders were printed letter by letter by hand upon the clay when it was wet and soft, without ink, then the brick was dried either in an oven or in the sun, so that this earliest method of printing is diametrically opposite to the modern process, in which case the letters are inked and kept rigid, while the paper or other substance on which the impression is to come is lightly pressed upon them.
In the eleventh century the Chinese made types of clay or porcelain, and set them up in a frame and printed from them, and afterwards they cut the original types in wood and made impressions, or stereotypes from them in porcelain, and when this had been baked they cast leaden types from it. Chinese and Japanese letters are always most decorative, whether in the cursive or square seal characters.
Babylonian and Assyrian tablets, cylinders, and cones of baked clay impressed with cuneiform inscriptions have proved themselves to be the most permanent and reliable form of record that has yet been invented by mankind. The hammer alone seems to be able to destroy them.
The most precious faience in the world is that variously known as “Oiron,” “Henri Deux,” “Diane de Poictiers,” or “Faience de Saint Porchaire.” There are fewer than seventy pieces of this ware known, and each example is a masterpiece, no two being alike.
It is said to consist mainly of clay found at Saint Porchaire, a village in Poiton, and not far from Oiron, and at one of these places it was probably made.
Fig. 67.—Italian book stamps impressed upon the faience de St. Porchaire.
The pieces are often ornamented with armorials and devices of Francis I., Henri II., and Diane de Poictiers, as well as those of members of the French nobility of about the middle of the sixteenth century.