With the making of simple glazes and colours will awaken an intelligent curiosity concerning the nature of minerals and metals, their actions and reactions in the fire; a lively sympathy only awaiting a touch to turn it into a love for chemistry and
physics. Then as power and ambition and craftsmanship develop, there must needs be a study of the history of ornament. This impinges too closely upon history and geography to fail to increase the student’s attraction towards these more remote but allied fields.
Finally, is it not in the realm of æsthetics that there looms the ultimate reward? The proper pursuit of pottery must eventually lead us “towards that idealization of daily life ... and the road that connects the love of the beautiful with the love of the good is short and smooth” (President Eliot). In the hurried curricula of to-day art plays a rather sorry part. Little time indeed is left for contemplation, for the realization of all that beauty and harmony in our surroundings may mean to us in our everyday work.
The making of a bowl, with the concentration required to shape it in a manner at once beautiful and serviceable, must quicken the perception of beauty and sharpen the quality of judgement, not only for things fictile, but in far wider fields. Thus the things of everyday contact—the tableware, the chairs, the doors, the windows, pictures, ornaments, hangings, and fittings—will all come in for intelligent scrutiny and criticism. This in turn will be carried on and over into matters civic. This must result in a careful estimation, selection, and appreciation
of our surroundings, bringing them into harmony with our cultivated thoughts and so enabling us to get through the day’s work with the least amount of useless friction and with the greatest possible measure of enjoyment, well-being, and well-doing.
APPENDIX I
The Equipment