Part 20
Every kind of potter's clay (the mixture of clay, sand, flint, &c., from which the potter shapes his wares) has its own type of glaze, and from the earliest time down to our own what the potter could produce in form or glaze or colour has been largely decided for him by the clay material at his command. With any good plastic clay which cannot be fired at the highest temperature, lead glazes have always proved the most practicable. A similar clay, to which large quantities of sand are added, may be glazed by the vapours of common salt; and mixtures rich in felspar, like Chinese or European porcelain, can be glazed by melting felspathic materials upon them. Naturally those species of pottery which are the hardest fired are the most durable--the glazes of hard porcelain are more unchangeable than lead glazes, and these in their turn than alkaline glazes.
The most important types of glaze are (1) alkaline glazes (e.g. Egyptian, Syrian, Persian, &c.), the oldest and most uncertain; (2) lead glazes, the most widespread in use and the best for all ordinary purposes; (3) felspathic glazes, the glazes of hard-fired porcelains, generally unsuited to any other material; (4) salt glaze, produced by vapours of common salt, the special glaze of stonewares. Many intermediate glazes have been devised to meet special needs, but these remain the only important groups. Fuller details on this important subject must be sought in the technical works.
_Colours._--The primitive potters of ancient and modern times have all striven to decorate their wares with colour. The simplest, and therefore the earliest, colour decoration was carried out in natural earths and clays. The clays are so varied in composition that they fire to every shade of colour from white to grey, cream, buff, red, brown, or even to a bronze which is almost black. One clay daubed or painted upon another formed the primitive palette of the potter, especially before the invention of glaze. When glaze was used these natural clays were changed in tint, and native earths, other than clays, containing iron, manganese and cobalt, were gradually discovered and used. It is also surprising to note that some of the very earliest glazes were coloured glasses containing copper or iron (the green, turquoise and yellow glazes of the ancient Egyptians and Assyrians). Marvellous work was wrought in these few materials, but the era of the finest pottery-colour dawns with the Persian, Syrian and Egyptian work that preceded the Crusades. By this time the art of glazing pottery with a clear soda-lime glaze had been thoroughly learnt. Vases, tiles, &c., shaped in good plastic clay, were covered with a white, highly siliceous coating fit to receive glazes of this type, and giving the best possible ground for the painted colours then known. With this rudimentary technique the potters of the countries south and east of the Mediterranean produced, between the 9th and 16th centuries of our era, a type of pottery that remains ideal from the point of view of colour: for, with nothing more than the greens given by oxide of copper and iron, the turquoise of pure copper, the deep yet vivid blue of cobalt, the beautiful uncertain purple of manganese, and in certain districts the rich red of Armenian bole, they achieved colour schemes that have never been surpassed in their brilliant yet harmonious richness.
When the coating of white siliceous clay was replaced by an opaque tin-enamel as in Spain, Italy, France, Holland, &c., a necessary change in the colour schemes resulted. At first only the copper-greens and cobalt-blues could be used on such a ground; the fine manganese purple turned to brown or black and the rich iron-reds to filthy shades of yellow. We cannot wonder that the Spanish-Arab potters paid more attention to their lustre decoration, for that was the natural thing to do. How strong and fine a palette could be evolved for use on a tin-enamel ground was shown by the Italian majolists of the 15th and 16th centuries; and when the later developments of tin-enamelled pottery took place in France, Holland, Germany, &c., their colour schemes are only echoes of Italian majolica crossed with Chinese porcelain. Delft, Nevers, Moustiers and Rouen may each charm us with its individuality; Nuremberg and other south German towns may show us that they too had mastered the use of tin-enamel; yet our minds always go back to the colour schemes of Italian majolica and of the Persian and Syrian pottery that lie behind and beyond them.
The colours already spoken of were either clay colours or what are known as "under glaze" colours, because they were painted on the pottery before the glaze was fired.
The earliest glazes of the Egyptians appear not to have been white, but were coloured throughout their substance, and this use of coloured glazes as apart from painted colour was developed along with the painted decoration by the later Egyptian, Syrian and Persian potters. Green, yellow and brown glazes were almost the only artistic productions of the medieval European potters' kilns, and their use everywhere preceded the introduction of painted pottery. The most extensive application of coloured glazes was, however, that made by the Chinese, who developed this type of colour decoration before they used painted patterns in underglaze colour. The earliest Chinese porcelains, and the hard-fired stonewares out of which their porcelain arose, were decorated in this way, and the beauty of many of the early Sung coloured glazes has never been surpassed.
With the exceedingly refractory felspathic glazes of Chinese porcelain very few underglaze colours could be used; and the prevalence of blue and white among the early specimens of Chinese porcelains is due to the fact that cobalt was almost the only substance known to the potters of the Ming dynasty which would endure the high temperature needed to melt their glazes. Consequently the Chinese were driven to invent the method of painting in coloured fusible glasses on the already fired glaze. They adopted for this purpose the coloured enamels used on metal; hence the common term "enamel decoration," which is so generally applied to painting in those colours which are attached to the already fired glaze by refiring at a lower temperature. With the introduction of this many-coloured Chinese porcelain into Europe the same practice was eagerly followed by our European potters, and a new palette of colours and fresh styles of decoration soon arose amongst us. Painting in on-glaze colours, being executed on the fired glaze, resembles glass painting, and it generally offers a striking contrast both in technique and colour-quality to the painting executed in colours under the glaze. In the former the work can be highly finished and the most mechanical execution is possible, but the colours are neither so rich nor so brilliant as under-glaze colours, nor have they the same softness as is given by the slight spread of the under-glaze colour when the glaze is melted over it.
It must be pointed out that the colour possibilities in any method of pottery decoration are largely dependent on the temperature at which the colour needs to be fired. The clay colours are naturally more limited in range than the under-glaze colours, and these in their turn than the on-glaze colours.
When, about the middle of the 18th century, European pottery took on its modern form, of earthenware made after the English fashion, and porcelain like the French and German, the lead or felspathic glazes used brought about another revolution in the potter's palette. The growing ideal of mechanical perfection discounted the freedom of the earlier brushwork, and printed patterns, or painting that might almost have been printed, removed the mind still farther from the richness of painted faience or majolica. It is useless to look for the glorious colour of Persian faience, Italian majolica, or Chinese porcelain, in modern wares produced by manufacturing processes where mechanical perfection is demanded to a degree undreamt of before the 19th century. The finest modern pottery colour is only to be sought in the work of those enthusiasts and experimenters who are striving to produce work as rich and free as the best of past times.
_Metals_.--The noble metals, such as gold, platinum and silver, have, since the early years of the 18th century, been largely used as adjuncts to pottery decoration, especially on the fine white earthen-wares and porcelains of the last two centuries. At first the gold was applied with a kind of japanner's size and was not fired to the glaze, but for the last 150 years or so the metals have generally been fired to the surface of the glaze like enamel colours, by mixing the metal with a small proportion of flux or fusible ground glass. There can scarcely be a doubt that the ancient lustres of Persia, Syria and Spain were believed to be a form of gilding, though their decorative effect was much more beautiful than gilding has ever been. The early Chinese and Japanese gilding appears, like the European, to have been "sized" or water-gilt, not fired; and it seems probable that the use of "fired" gold was taught to the Oriental by the European in the 18th century. To-day "liquid" gold is exported to China and Japan from Europe for the use of the potter.
PRIMITIVE POTTERY
We can group together that great and widely-spread class of vessels made by the primitive races of mankind, whether before the dawn of civilization or at the present day, for it is interesting to note that many modern races still make pottery by the same rude method as the Neolithic races of Europe and Asia, and with striking similarity of result. In fact, the knowledge of the methods and practices of the primitive potters of our own time furnishes the best possible guide to the methods of fabrication and ornamentation of the ancient specimens that are dug up from barrows, grave mounds, and tumuli. It is only natural that the materials and methods of such pottery are always of the simplest. The clay is used with very little preparation, and it is no unusual thing to find bits of stone, gravel, &c., embedded in the paste of such wares, though at a later stage of development they would have been removed. It must be remarked, however, that no race of potters practised the art for long without discovering that their vessels were not so liable to crack in drying, or lose their shape in firing, if fine sand or pounded "potsherds" were mixed with the clay; and when we are dealing with the work of races that have passed beyond the Stone Age and have learned the use of metals we find this custom universal.
There are three methods of shaping which seem to be common to almost every primitive race:--
1. The scooping out of a vessel from a ball of clay.
2. The building up of a form, often on a piece of basket-work or matting, gradually raising the walls higher by applying and smoothing down successive layers of clay.
3. Coiling; in which the clay is rolled out into thin ropes, and these are coiled round and round upon each other and smoothed down with the hands and with simple tools of bone, wood or metal.
The use of the potter's wheel is unknown, while it is remarkable how beautifully true and finely-fashioned much primitive pottery is. The primitive red and black vases discovered by Flinders Petrie in Egypt, and the somewhat similar vessels of prehistoric date from Spain, are remarkable instances of this. Some primitive races leave their pottery without decoration, especially when they have a fine red-burning clay to work in, but, generally speaking, primitive pottery of every race and time is elaborately decorated, but only with the simplest patterns. Such decorations consist of lines, dots or lunette-shaped depressions arranged in crosses, chevrons, zigzags or all-over repeated pattern. All this ornament is scratched or impressed into the clay before it is fired. Simplest of all is, perhaps, the pattern which has so obviously been produced by pressing a twisted thong round the neck or bowl of a vase; though the thong may have been used in the first instance merely to serve as a support while the vessel was dried. At a later stage the ornament is generally obtained by scratching with a tool, by pressing the end of a hollow stick into the clay to form rows of circles, by using a stick cut at the end into the shape of a half-moon, or other equally simple decorative device. In certain tropical countries this rudimentary pottery becomes hard enough for a certain amount of use when merely dried in the sun, but in all northern and temperate countries it must have been fired, probably in the most imperfect way, in an open fire or in such a kiln as could be formed by sinking a hole into the ground and erecting round it a screen of stones. How imperfect the firing was is shown by the ashen-grey colour due to smoke. In those countries where the ware has been more perfectly fired the pieces naturally become buff, drab, brown or red.
The primitive vessels that have been found in the grave-mounds of England and the northern countries generally have received a number of fanciful names for which there is very little warrant except in the case of the cinerary urns. These are generally the largest vessels of this class, and as they were used to contain burnt bones there seems sufficient warrant for the supposition that they were made for this and for no other purpose.
Our knowledge of primitive pottery has been greatly improved during recent years by the labours of a number of American students connected with the United States Geological Survey, who have carefully recorded the present-day practices of those native tribes who make and use pottery in various parts of North America and Mexico; while, in the same way, Peruvian, Brazilian and other South American pottery has been as closely investigated by European observers. It should be noted that no primitive pottery reveals any trace of a knowledge of glaze, though much of it has been highly polished after firing, and in some cases a varnish has been applied which may perhaps be regarded as the earliest kind of "glazing" ever applied to pottery vessels.
LITERATURE.--On primitive pottery the following works may be specially mentioned. W. Greenwell, _British Barrows_ (1877); Boyd-Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_ (1880); Mortimer, _Forty Years' Researches in British and Saxon Burial-mounds of East Yorkshire_ (1905); Abercromby, "The Oldest Bronze-age Ceramic Type in Britain," _J. Anth. Inst._ vol. xxxii. (1902), 373; _Guide to Antiquities of the Bronze Age_ (British Museum, 1904); Koenen, _Gefässkunde der vorrömischen, römischen und fränkischen Zeit in den Rheinländern_ (1895); Wosinsky, _Der inkrustierte Keramik der Stein- und Bronze-zeit_ (1904); Walters, _History of Ancient Pottery_ (Greek and Roman) (1905); Holmes, _Aboriginal Pottery of the Eastern United States_ (Bureau of Ethnology, Washington, 1899); also Holmes and Cushing in _Report_ of Bureau of Ethnology for 1882; Wiener, _Pérou et Bolivie_ (1880); Von der Steinen, _Natur-Völkerei Central Brasiliens_ (1894); Hartman, _Archaeological Researches in Costa Rica_ (1905); Strebel, on "Mexican Pottery" in _Publications_ of Museum für Völkerkunde (Berlin, vol. 6, 1899); Werner, _British Central Africa_ (1907); Füllborn, _Deutsche Ost-Afrika_, vol. ix. (1907); Macluer, "Kabyle Pottery," _Journ. Anth. Inst._ vol. xxxii. p. 245, and "Upper Egypt," _ibid_. xxxv. p. 20; Myres, "Early Pottery Fabrics of Asia Minor," _Journ. Anth. Inst._ xxxiii. p. 367; Turveren Museum, _Notes analytiques sur les collections ethnographiques du Congo_, tome ii. (1907); Cupart, _Debuts de l'art de l'ancienne Égypte_ (1903). (W. B.*)
EGYPT AND WESTERN ASIA
_Egyptian Pottery_.--Egypt affords us the most striking instance of the development of the potter's art. As in other countries pottery was made even in Neolithic times, for the Nile mud forms a fine plastic clay and sand is of course abundant. With these materials various kinds of pottery, often extremely well made and of good form, have been continuously produced for common domestic requirements, but such pottery was never glazed.
The wonderful glazes of the Egyptians were applied to a special preparation which can hardly be called pottery at all, it contained so little clay. Yet as early as the 1st Dynasty the Egyptians had learnt to shape little objects in this tender material and cover them with their wonderful turquoise glazes. We have therefore to study the development of two independent things: (1) the ordinary pottery of common clay left without glaze; (2) the brilliant glazed faience which appears to be special to Egypt, though it may have been the groundwork for the technique of the slip-faced painted and glazed pottery of the nearer East.
We probably do not possess any specimens of the most primitive Neolithic pottery; the oldest type known to us, the black and red ware of Ballas and Nagada (1), dates from the later Neolithic age, when copper was just beginning to be used. This ware is very hard and compact and the face is highly burnished. The red colour was produced by a wash of fine red clay; the black is an oxide of iron obtained by limiting the access of air in the process of baking, which was done, Professor Petrie suggests, by placing the pot's mouth down in the kiln, and leaving the ashes over the part which was to be burnt black. Both red and black colour go right through in every case. All-red and all-black vases are occasionally found, the red with geometrical decorations in white colour, and the black with incised decoration. The forms are usually very simple, but at the same time graceful, and the grace of form is more remarkable when it is remembered that none of this early pottery was made on the wheel. Pottery of almost similar technique was found in Crete in 1905 during the American excavations at Vasiliki near Hierapetra. The general appearance of the Cretan pottery is much the same as that of the Egyptian, and the duller red and black decoration (which here has a spotted or mottled appearance) was probably obtained in the same way, the black spots being due to the action of separate fragments of the baking material. This discovery is important in view of the probable early connexion of the Cretan and Egyptian culture-centres.
A very similar red and black ware, usually of thinner and harder make, and often with a brighter surface, was introduced into Egypt at a later date (XIIth Dynasty), probably by Nubian tribes who were descended from relatives of the Neolithic Egyptians. From their characteristic graves these people are called the Pan-Grave people, and their pottery is known by the same name.
Perhaps rather later in date than the early red and black wares, but by no means certainly so, the second characteristic type of primeval Egyptian pottery is a ware of buff colour with surface decorations in red. These decorations are varied in character, including ships, birds and human figures; wavy lines and geometrical designs commonly occur. The whole _facies_ of this ware seems very un-Egyptian, and it has been compared with the decorated "Kabyle pottery" of modern times. To call the people who made this ware "Libyans" on the strength of this resemblance of their pottery to that of the modern Kabyles, six thousand years later, seems, however, rash. The prehistoric Egyptians were not Kabyles or Libyans, but Nilotes, and the peculiar decoration of their pottery, which seems so strangely barbaric, is in reality merely the most ancient handiwork of the Egyptian painter, and marks the first stage in the development of pictorial art on the banks of the Nile (2). Other types of pottery (3), in colour chiefly buff or brown, were also in use at this period; the most noticeable form is a cylindrical vase with a wavy or rope band round it just below the lip, which developed out of a necked vase with a wavy handle on either side. This cylindrical type outlived the red and black and the red and buff decorated styles (which are purely Neolithic and predynastic) and continued in use in the early dynastic period, well into the Copper age. The other unglazed pottery of the first three dynasties is not very remarkable for beauty of form or colour, and is indeed of the roughest description (4), but under the IVth Dynasty we find beautiful wheel-made bowls, vases and vase-stands of a fine red polished ware (4). This fine ware continued in use at least as late as the XVIIIth Dynasty, though the forms of course differed from age to age. Under the XIIth Dynasty, and during the Middle Kingdom generally, either this or a coarser unpolished red ware was in use. The forms of this period are very characteristic (5); the vases are usually footless, and have a peculiar globular or drop-like shape--some small ones seem almost spherical. At this period the foreign "Pan-Grave" black and red pottery was also in use (see above).
The art of making a pottery consisting of a siliceous sandy body coated with a vitreous copper glaze seems to have been known unexpectedly early, possibly even as early as the period immediately preceding the Ist Dynasty (4000 B.C.). Under the XIIth Dynasty pottery made of this characteristic Egyptian faience seems to have come into general use, and it continued in use down to the days of the Romans, and is the ancestor of the glazed wares of the Arabs and their modern successors (6). The oldest Egyptian glazed ware is found usually in the shape of beads, plaques, &c.--rarely in the form of pottery vessels. The colour is usually a light blue, which may turn either white or green; but beads of the grey-black manganese colour are found, and on the light blue vases of King Aha (who is probably one of the historical originals of the legendary "Mena" or Menes) in the British Museum (No. 38,010) we have the king's name traced in the manganese glaze on (or rather in) the blue-white glaze of the vase itself, for the second glaze is inlaid. This style of decoration in manganese black or purple on copper-blue continued till the end of the "New Empire" shortly before the XXVIth (Saite) Dynasty. It was not usual actually to inlay the decoration before the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty. The light blue glaze was used well into the time of the XIIth Dynasty (British Museum, No. 36,346), but was then displaced by a new tint, a brilliant turquoise blue, on which the black decoration shows up in sharper contrast than before. This blue, and a somewhat duller, greyer or greener tint was used at the time for small figures, beads and vases, as well as for the glaze of scarabs, which, however, were usually of stone-schist or steatite --not faience. The characteristically Egyptian technique of glazed stone begins about this period, and not only steatite or schist was employed (on account of its softness), but a remarkably brilliant effect was obtained by glazing hard shining white quartzite with the wonderfully delicate XIIth Dynasty blue. A fragment of a statuette plinth of this beautiful material was obtained during the excavation of the XIth Dynasty temple at Deir el-Bahri in 1904 (British Museum, No. 40,948). Vessels of diorite and other hard stones are also found coated with the blue glaze. A good specimen of the finest XIIth Dynasty blue-glazed faience is the small vase of King Senwosri I. (2400 B.C.) in the Cairo Museum (No. 3666) (6). The blue-glazed hippopotami of this period, with the reeds and water-plants in purplish black upon their bodies to indicate their habitat, are well known. Fine specimens of these are in the collection of the Rev. Wm. MacGregor at Tamworth (8).