In Mediæval England, when pottery making was at a low ebb, the monasteries and travelling guilds of potters produced splendid encaustic tiles. These were inlaid with simple yet striking geometric designs, or animal or bird forms, both heraldic and symbolic.
In Europe for many years the domestic pottery remained coarse and primitive, showing still the arresting hand of the barbarian conquerors of Rome. The first signs of the Italian Renaissance are to be found in the rare Henri Deux or Orion ware. Palissy’s desperate and romantic search for enamels was the prelude to the development of Rouen, Nevers, Lille, Moustiers, Sèvres, Marseilles, and other less important potteries. In France also early experiments led eventually to the fabrication of porcelain much on the lines of English porcelain, a frit being used instead of kaolin.
In Germany, as early as the fifteenth century, they produced fine stoneware highly decorated with relief patterns and colours. After long research Boettiger, by a lucky accident, discovered kaolin. Porcelain was made at Dresden in 1709, and many of the Dresden figures show a remarkably sympathetic alliance of potting, modelling and painting.
The success of the German ceramists led to a wide patronage of potters by kings and princes which quickly spread the knowledge of porcelain throughout Europe.
Long before this in the early part of the seventeenth century, potteries were established at Delft in Holland. Here was made the well-known ware painted in blue camaien on a fine white ground. This was for a time produced in great quantities,
and the process of painting directly on to an absorbent ground led to a surprisingly fresh and skilful style.
In the middle of the seventeenth century English wares commenced to rise from the stagnation in which they seemed sunk since Saxon times. Toft, with his tygs and platters, Dwight, and his bellarmines, and Elers, with turned shapes, started a movement which was eventually to send English wares into all parts of Europe, even into the far Russias, to be known everywhere for its excellent workmanship. And in this flood of production in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was much that was technically unrivalled despite the fact that the Art of the potter is sometimes far to seek. Dwight is said to have produced a fritted porcelain in 1671, before the discovery of kaolin. This is doubtful, but his persistent research eventually led up to the fine pastes of Chelsea and Bow and the unrivalled “fine earthenwares” of Staffordshire.
This European revival gained tremendous impetus from the importation by the Portuguese of the wares of China. The wide scope of its decoration, both painted and modelled, pointed the way to most potters of the West during the heyday of European pottery. The magnificent single-colour pieces were not introduced until later when the break-up of the Empire rendered them accessible to Europeans. It is
to them that the student must turn to see the summit of the potter’s art, which, it is logically contended, commences on the wheel and ends at the glost oven with the potter, the only attendant from the pot’s inception to its finish. Painting or modelling is not essential to its perfection and unless applied by a true disciple detracts rather than adds to the beauty of the piece.
In China, where tradition holds that earthenware was first made in 2698 B.C., the art of the potter, in body, shape, glaze, and colour, through centuries reached perfection. Porcelain is said to have been first made about 200 B.C., but this date is conjectural. What we do know unmistakably, however, is that the best work of their best periods is unrivalled. Depending primarily on form and colour, with here and there a subtle decoration in raised or incised line, in crackle or simple brushwork, it stands alone, and despite the omnipotent chemistry of to-day, defies imitation. Their forms are strong, bold, and dignified, yet subtle and delicate, too. Then, added to a wonderful range of colours, was a perfection of body that was for so long the despair of western imitators. It is here at the altar of perfection amidst the chaste richness of Tang and Sung and Ming that the true disciple must worship. And to those who must eat bread as well as make pots it is to be pointed out that these pieces at the time of