The Story of Porcelain

by Sara Ware Bassett

Theo's eyes opened very wide.

"Undoubtedly the Chinese deserved the good results they obtained, for they selected their clays with extreme care; ground and mixed them most skilfully; modeled each piece with the keenest feeling for its beauty and perfection; and decorated it in a truly artistic spirit.

"In the meantime they constantly became more and more expert. They began to learn the use of colors, and to perfect them. Some of the blues or cobalts they employed have never been surpassed. One for instance is the blue used on their Nankin china, and known as Nankin blue."

"Did the Japanese make pottery too?" questioned Theo.

"Yes, but we do not know exactly how early they began to make it. Probably some of the Japanese crossed to China and there learned the art. Some think pottery-making came into Japan through Korea. However that may be, long before other countries had to any extent perfected the manufacture of glazed pottery and porcelain China, Japan, Persia, and India had turned their attention to it. As far back as 1000 B. C. the Japanese were making porcelains similar to those of China. Then followed a long stretch of years when, because of various wars between China and Japan, the art of producing glazed pottery and porcelain was lost. All those workmen who possessed any knowledge of their manufacture perished. This was the period when the Greeks and Romans were making their red and black ware which, you recall, they did not know how to glaze, and therefore had no means of preventing liquids from leaking through it."

"I wish they had had the secrets of the Chinese and Japanese!" Theo said.

"I wish so too," echoed Mr. Croyden. "As it was, they struggled along with their beautiful pottery vases through which the water percolated just as it does through a flower-pot. And so it was for a time in China and Japan. It was not until centuries afterward that the Chinese and Japanese again rediscovered the art they had lost, and by that time the Greeks and Romans were no more, newer races having taken their places. Some of the wonderful old enamel work of the Chinese, however, was never reclaimed, and rare pieces of porcelain of a kind no one has yet been able to reproduce remain to tell us of the skill of those ancient Chinese workmen."

"If the Chinese kept everything so secret how did the art of glazed pottery-making ever get into Europe?" asked Theo.

Mr. Croyden smiled.

"It was a marvel that it ever did," he answered slowly. "Of course as people traveled little in those days one country did not know much about what another was doing. But there were wars when much booty was carried from one land to another; the pilgrimages of the Crusaders, too, helped to spread a knowledge of widely separated sections. Gradually bits of Chinese pottery and porcelain found their way into different parts of the East; and as a consequence men began to be highly dissatisfied with their red and black ware, and with the crude clay dishes they had previously thought so fine. They wanted to make white ware like that of the Chinese. But because they did not know what clays to use, or how to glaze their products, all their experiments failed. There did nevertheless appear throughout the Orient a ware of common clay over which a simple covering of white had been painted, and this slip or engobe of white gave to the variety the name of Oriental Engobe. This type of ware decorated with a conventional dull-hued design was many years later revived and imitated by Theodore Deck of Paris, one of the great French porcelain makers. But even this was not like the white Chinese ware everybody wanted so much to make."