"Are the colors like those I have in my paint-box?" asked Willie.
"No. They put the color on, worked up with what is called a flux, and the mixture has the appearance of thin mud, showing no color at all; the different tints are seen only after 'firing.'"
"How can they tell what it's going to look like, if they don't see the color?"
"That is one of the nice points of the 'ceramic art,' and much skill and fine imagination are required to produce some of the wonderful combinations of color seen upon Italian majolica."
"Why do they call it majolica?" asked Al.
"The name is derived from the Spanish island of Majorca in the Mediterranean Sea, one of the places in Europe where glazed pottery was first made. About the twelfth century, some Moorish potters had settled there and carried their art with them."
"Did you ever see any of the old Italian majolica, uncle?" asked Al.
MAJOLICA PLATE FROM CASTELLANI COLLECTION.
"Yes; in the splendid Castellani collection there are some of the very best specimens of the finest majolica ever made,—that produced in the fifteenth century by Giorgio Andreoli of Gubbio, and others who followed him."