During the i 5th and 16th centuries, Chinese porcelain also began to find its way into Europe, and by the whiteness of its substance and its marvellous translucence excited the attention of the Italian majolists and alchemists. The first European imi tation of this famous oriental porcelain of which we have indubi table record was made at Florence (1575-85) by alchemists or potters working under the patronage, and, it is said, with the active collaboration of Francesco de' Medici. This Florentine porcelain was the first of those distinctively European wares, made in avowed imitation of the Chinese, which form a connect ing link between pottery and glass, for they may be considered either as pottery rendered translucent or as glass rendered opaque by shaping and firing a mixture containing a large percentage of glass with a very little clay.
During the i8th century not only was there a very large trade in imported Chinese and Japanese porcelain, but there was a great development of porcelain manufacture in Europe.
The 19th century witnessed a great and steady growth in the output of porcelain and pottery of all kinds in Europe and the United States. Mechanical methods were largely called in to supplement or replace what had hitherto remained almost pure handicraft. The English methods of preparing and mixing the materials of the body and glaze, and the English device of re placing painted decoration by machine printing, to a large extent carried the day, with a great gain to the mechanical aspects of the work and in many cases with an entire extinction of its artistic spirit.
The loth century opened with a wider outlook among the potters of Europe and America. In every country men were striving once agai1 to bring back to their world-old craft some thing of artistic taste and skill.
All pottery, whether of ancient or modern times, is made by the simplest method. The clay, dug from the earth's surface, is prepared by beating and kneading with the hands, feet or simple mallets of stone or wood. Care is taken that all stones and hard particles are picked out. In ancient pottery, the clay, well tempered with water, was almost invariably used without any additional material. From this pure clay, vessels were shaped by scooping cut or cutting a solid lump or ball, by building up piece by piece or by squeezing cakes of clay on to some natural object or prepared mould or form. The potter's wheel, though very ancient, was a comparatively late invention, arrived at inde pendently by many races of men. In its simplest form it was a heavy disk pivoted in a central point to be set going by the hand, as the workman squatted on the ground. About the Chris
tian era, and in Egypt apparently, a much larger disk, which the potter could rotate with his foot, was introduced; this gave the potter an opportunity to use both hands in the manipulation of the clay. In the i 7th century the wheel was spun by means of a cord working over a pulley, and in the 19th century the steam driven wheel was introduced.
The rotating process completed, the piece is removed from the wheel and set aside to dry. When it is about leather-hard, it may be recent:red carefully on the wheel (the old practice), or placed in a horizontal lathe (16th century) and turned down to the exact shape and polished to an even, smooth surface. Many Greek vases have obviously been "thrown" in separate sections. So too with the Chinese; many of their forms have been made in two or three portions, subsequently joined together and finished on the outside as one piece. (See TERRA-COTTA.) Firing.—The type of kiln used by the potters of ancient Egypt or Greece have not entirely vanished from present day use; it is only in the civilized countries of the modern world that they have been replaced by improved and perfected devices. The potters of certain sections of the Near East and of Japan remain coptent with the crudest and most primitive types of kilns.
With the organization of the pottery as a factory industry in the i8th century, improved kilns were introduced, and the type of kiln now used in civilized countries is a verticle furnace from 10 to 22 ft. in diameter and of similar height, capable, therefore, of containing at one firing a quantity of pottery that would have formed the output of a mediaeval potter for a year. Gas-fired kilns and ovens are now being used or experimented with in every country, and their perfection, which cannot be far distant, will improve the most vital of the potters' processes both in certainty and economy.
Glazes.—We can only consider as glazes those definite super ficial layers of molten material which have been fired on the clay substance. Glazes are as varied as the various kinds of pottery, and it must never be forgotten that each kind of pottery is at its best with its appropriate glaze. The most important types of glaze are (I) alkaline glazes, e.g., Egyptian, Syrian, Persian, etc., the oldest and most uncertain; (2) lead glazes, the most wide spread in its 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 stone-wares.