CERAMIC MANUFACTURES. The manu facture of porcelain, earthenware, etc., is an art which has for hundreds of years been per fected by the Chinese and Japanese, and has also been acquired to some extent by the Asiatic races who have embraced Mahomedanism. But the Hindu races, though making many beautiful models in clays, have never finished off their work by costly glazing. Their action in this matter has becu owing to their views as to ceremonial impurity, which necessitates the destruction of earthenware from many ideal pollutions ; and as to break up or throw away valuable porcelain would be ruinous, they use largely copper and brass utensils, which can be purified by fire or water,, and common unglazed clay-ware of little money value, which can be thrown away. Urns of elongated shapes have been discovered in ancient Chaldxa; and in British India, fine speci mens of common earthenware, ancient funereal, domestic, and cooking vessels, are dug out of the old tombs in the districts of Coimbatore and South Arcot. This kind of pottery has been found in many parts of India in tombs usually arranged in circles, each tomb being built of six slabs of stone, and occasionally sur mounted by large mounds of loose stones and earth. They have been thought to resemble the Druidical tombs of England, and are supposed to be of great antiquity, there being no records of them extant. The pottery found in them usually consists of tall narrow cinerary urns of 18 or 20 inches in length, with three or four clumsy feet four inches in length, and of a variety of round, oval, and flattened vessels of different shapes and sizes, some having apparently been used for cook ing and others as drinking vessels. The tall urns usually contain burnt human bones, teeth, and ornaments of brass or copper ; they are made of a coarse clay, which have not been finished with care. Some of the flattened oval and rounded vessels are made of a fine dense clay that has been carefully prepared ; the surfaces are variously ornamented with wavy or crossed lines of red and yellow, carefully painted. The pottery appears
also to have been smeared, and it resembles the potteric antique vernisseo et lustree figured by M. Brongniart. There is great purity of form in most of the vessels, which resemble the Etruscan in the precision of the curves and in the angles at which the different surfaces meet. The art of pottery appears to have deteriorated in India since these articles were made, and one branch of it, viz. the smearing or thin glazing on the surface, is rarely practised. Nearly all the porcelain used in India by Mahomedans and Christians is imported from China and Great Britain.
In Egypt, the pyramids of Abu Rowash, which may very well date from the so-called second dynasty of Manetho, are surrounded by heaps of broken vessels. Beside this, the pottery made at Thing Thao in China, in 2255 s.c., is modern. Scarabs made of earthenware, finely glazed with a turquoise colour, and bearing the names of such old kings as Cheops, Chephren, and others of the pyramid-building dynasties, are not at all un common. The potter's wheel is said to have been first used in Japan by a priest named Giyogi, a native of Idzumi, in 721 of the Christian era; and it is stated that the art of making pure porcelain was introduced into Japan about A.D. 1513.
The rarity of pottery all over Europe after the fall of the Western Empire is a curious fact. The practice of making encaustic tiles, which became one of the most beautiful of mediaeval arts, betrays a revival ; and by the beginning of the 8th cen tury the Moorish wares of Spain had become famous. It is from an offshoot of the Moorish manufactories in the Balearic Islands that Majo lica or Majorca ware gave its name to all kinds of glazed pottery. German stoneware, much of it very beautiful, reached perfection towards the end of the 16th century ; but simultaneously the delicate Oiron pottery, or Henri it. ware, was begun by Helene de Hangest, a widow of noble family, in her castle of Oiron. Only about sixty seven specimens remain ; but it has been decep tively imitated of late years.