Practice of the Art in England—The Celtic Period—Classes of Vessels—Cinerary Urns—Food Vessels, Drinking Cups, &c.—Modes of Ornamentation—Food Vessels—Immolation Urns or Incense Cups—Handled Cups.
The history of the ceramic art in our own country is one of intense interest and of paramount importance. I open my present work, which I intend to devote to its consideration, with this assertion, and before it is done I hope I shall have proved its truth.
It is a subject which may be treated in more ways than one. It may be considered technically, i.e. with regard to manipulation, to the mixing of bodies and glazes, and the practical parts of the potter’s art; or historically, so as to treat of the introduction and progress of the art in this country, its gradual extension and improvement, the chief seats of its operations, and the characteristics of the productions of each age and place. To neither of these do I purpose confining myself; but to the latter I shall, here and there, mix up just sufficient of the former to render it more intelligible and useful. The main ingredients of the “body”—to use a potter’s term—of my work will be history, description, and biography, with just sufficient technicology to temper it and give it its proper tenacity and consistency. For the facts relating to the earliest examples of that art, from which I shall deduce my narrative, I rely upon actual researches into grave-mounds and otherwise, undertaken by myself or by others; and for the rest—those relating to the art in mediæval and later times—upon constant inquirings and searchings and readings carried on, with this special end in view, during the course of many years.
It is impossible to show when the potter’s art was first invented or when it was first brought into use in this island; but that it was practised here in the very earliest days of its being inhabited by its savage population can be abundantly proved. To this pre-historic period, then, I shall first direct attention; and then endeavour to trace the history of the art down from the Celtic to the Romano-British period; from the time of the Romans to the Anglo-Saxons and Normans; and so gradually come downwards through mediæval to modern times, giving, under each separate seat of the more modern manufacture, historical notices of the works and their founders, and descriptive particulars of the more characteristic of their productions.
Fig. 1.—Celtic Pottery in the Norwich Museum.
The practice of the fictile art in England dates back, as I have already said, to a very remote period—that of its Celtic or ancient British population, by whom there is abundant evidence it was much esteemed. It is pleasant to know, and to be able indisputably to prove, that from those early days down to the present time the art has, through a long succession of ages, continued with more or less skill, to be observed among us, and that thus in pottery, as in nothing else, an unbroken chain, connecting us in our present high state of civilisation with our remote barbarian forefathers of the stone age, exists. The weapons and other implements of imperishable stone and flint have, long ages ago, died out, and any possible connection between them and the weapons or tools of our own day has died with them; but the vessels of simple clay have an abiding-place with us which has lasted without a break until now, and will yet last for ever. Hitherto the course of the potter’s art has been one of constant and gradual improvement; but its capabilities for further development are almost unbounded, and another generation will witness advances of which we can now but dimly dream.
Among the ancient Britons, vessels of clay were formed for sepulchral and other uses, and it is entirely to their grave-mounds that we are indebted for the examples which have survived to our time. It is in the course of examination of these mounds that these fictile remains have been brought to light; and it is by a careful examination of these alone, and by constant comparison of the “finds” of one locality with the discoveries of another, that a proper estimate of their character has been, or can be, drawn.
Fig. 2.—Monsal Dale.