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THE

LADIES' REPOSITORY.

SEPTEMBER, 1857.

CONFLICT AND CORONATION OF THE ART-
DISCOVERER.

L

period acquainted with the art. Little figures, covered with a fine deep blue glaze, and numerous vases, specimens of which may be seen in the British Museum, were deposited with their mummies. Representations of earthen vessels, closely resembling those made in Egypt at present, are found in Egyptian paintings. The next in antiquity to Egyptian vases are in Etruscan, familiar to you all by their black figures and red clay ground. They are found in northern and central Italy, especially in tombs, where they were probably deposited as the most precious things of their owners, or to contain their ashes, or the wine and milk offered to their manes; and in such myriads that if the Etruscans were what Napoleon said we were, "a nation of shopkeepers," almost every shop must have been consecrated to earthenware. The Romans come next; and, as in every other artistic excellence, they imitated the Greeks without equaling them; and when the empire fell, the already degraded art was buried in its ruins.

But the most remarkable development of the art pertains to those queer, incarnate types of an

IKE the history of all other arts, the history of pottery has not escaped the blending with it of a large amount of apocryphal anecdote and romance. Perhaps pottery-the art of molding and hardening clay-may claim to be the mother of all the arts. Necessity would soon prompt the attempted manufacture of a vessel to hold liquids; for neither of the methods of satisfying thirst adopted by Gideon's men would long suffice. Convenience and refinement would alike urge an improvement; and the first foot-mark in the clay, hardened by a Mesopotamian sun, would suggest the material and manner of its construction; and from Eve's first rude pipkin to the latest production of Wedgewood or Copeland, it would gimply be a series of improvements. Thus to draw upon the apocrypha of pottery, a servant boils brawn in an earthen pipkin, and carelessly permitting it to boil over the fierce fire, the alkali combines with the earthenware, and the result is a vitreous surface-the first specimen of glass-tiquity, the Chinese. While the art of tempering glazing. The first historic records of fictile clay are the bricks of Babel; the next the brick-making of the Israelites, indicating an advanced and systematic art. The inventor of pottery, artistically so called, was Corabus of Athens, in whose honor the aesthetic Greeks struck models and erected statues. Phidias himself designed vases for the Athenian potters. Dibutades of Sicyon, observed upon a wall the profile of his daughter's lover, traced by her from the outline of his shadow. He filled it with clay, which he hardened with fire, and this was the first specimen of modeling in relief. Talus of Athens is said to have invented the potter's wheel, and so to have provoked thereby the jealousy of Dadalus, that he threw him from the Acropolis and killed him. The Egyptians were at a very early

VOL. XVII.-33

and glazing was disappearing in Europe, the Chinese, and their neighbors, the Japanese, had been for centuries making that peculiar porcelain with which, in its grotesque determination to put down all tyrannical laws of proportion and perspective, our readers are all familiar. How many thousands of myriads of years, according to Chinese chronology, they have been manufacturing porcelain, it is impossible to say; it is an institution of the empire, and, of course, therefore, like all its other institutions.

The first reappearance in Europe of the lost art of pottery, was in the fourteenth century, when glazed earthenware was used in the pavement of the Alhambra, and in the Moorish mosques in Spain; and this was the condition of the art a few years before Palissy lent his genius

and his labor to it, when a Florentine sculptor, Lucca della Robbia, the first of European potters, became famous for his terra cotta productions. Like Palissy, he was the discoverer of his own enamel. "He studied," says Vasari, "with so much zeal, that when his feet were often frozen with cold in the night time, he kept them in a basket of shavings to warm them, that he might not be compelled to discontinue his drawings;" | another instance of the way in which men are made. After years of patient experiment he produced a beautiful white enamel, "which gave almost eternal durability" to his terra cotta figures, and became so famous that it laid the foundation of the commercial greatness of Florence. His secret, however, died with him, and only his productions remained, a specimen of which, as we have seen, fell into Palissy's hands, and stimulated his inquisitive genius.

stood in opposition to the certain-the ideal to the real; the filling of his furnace involved the emptiness of his cupboard. His new and fervent love provoked the not unnatural jealousy of the old. The wife was neglected, and the children cried for bread; domestic upbraiding took the place of domestic endearment; the enamel of conjugal love-politeness and delicate ministration-was toughly scratched and broken. "Poverty raised the latch, and love flew out of the window." Victorine lost all faith, both in his genius and his love. No doubt, if discovered, the enamel would make them rich; but how was he, ignoramus that he was, to discover it? There was not a potter in France who would not have laughed at his best attempt to make a pipkin, and yet, forsooth, he will emulate Lucca della Robbia. A sad hair-brained notion this! And even should he ultimately succeed, how were they to obtain support in the mean while; "while the grass was growing the horse would starve.”

Then, be

When, therefore, Palissy was mending painted windows at Saintes, Europe was without porcelain. Every dust-heap now contains fragments But let us listen to Palissy. 66 "Without having that would then have been treasured in cabinets. heard of what materials the said enamels were The shilling China mug which, as its inscription composed, I pounded in those days all the subdeponeth, you purchase as "a present for Eliza- stances which I could suppose likely to make beth," would have been a fitting present for Glo- any thing; and, having pounded and ground riana herself, and such was indeed the actual gift them, I bought a quantity of earthen pots, and, of a princely subject. China was hermetically after having broken them in pieces, I put some scaled against Europeans, who were in such a of the materials that I had ground upon them; state of social barbarism, as to be ignorant even and, having marked them, I set apart, in writing, of the existence of tea; so that the very idea of what drugs I had put upon each, as a memorana teacup was wanting to the mental philosophy dum; then, having made a furnace to my fancy, of Europe. The only pottery, therefore, that I set the fragments down to bake, that I might French art could achieve, was a common earth-see whether my drugs were able to produce some enware; and all that Palissy achieved was to whitish color; for I sought only after white him pure discovery. enamel, because I had heard it said that white enamel was the basis of all others. cause I had never seen earth baked, nor could I tell by what degree of heat the said enamel should be melted, it was impossible for me to get any result in this way, though my chemicals should have been right; because, at one time, the mass might have been heated too much, at another time too little; and when the said materials were baked too little or burnt, I could not at all tell the reason why I met with no success, but would throw blame on the materials, which sometimes, perhaps, were the right ones, or at least could have afforded me some hint for the accomplishment of my intentions, if I had been able to manage the fire in the way that my materials required. But, again, in working thus I committed a fault still grosser than that above named; for in putting my trial picces in the furnace, I arranged them without consideration, so that if the materials had been the best in the world, and the

To discover Lucca della Robbia's enamel, therefore, was henceforth the purpose for which he lived, and to which he consecrated all his labor and substance, and sacrificed many years of peace. "Had I employed," he says, "a thousand reams of paper in writing for you all the accidents that have occurred to me upon my search, you may assure yourself that, however clever you might be, there would occur to you a thousand other crosses, which could not be taught by letters, and which, even if you had them written, you would not believe, till you should have been thrust by experience among a thousand troubles."

The problem with Palissy was, how to discover enamel without either teacher or knowledge of its ingredients; how to discover, amid icebergs and polar frosts, a north-west passage. Here, then, began his trial; the pursuit of the enamel involved the neglect of his surveying, and the consequent destitution of his family. The possible

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