Triumphs of Invention and Discovery in Art and Science Part 12

The Potter's Art.

I.--LUCA DELLA ROBBIA.

II.--BERNARD PALISSY.

III.--JOSIAH WEDGWOOD.

The Potter's Art.

I.--LUCA DELLA ROBBIA.

There can be little doubt as to the antiquity of the pottery manufacture. It probably had its origin in that of bricks, which at a very early date men made for purposes of construction; but it is not impossible that he had previously contrived to fabricate the commoner articles of domestic economy, such as pans and dishes, of sun-dried clay.

Bricks, as everybody knows, are fashioned out of a coa.r.s.e clay, such as we meet with in very numerous localities. After mixing up with water a kind of paste out of these clayey earths, the moulder works up the paste into the shape of bricks, and they are then exposed to the heat of the kiln. Sometimes it was thought sufficient to dry these bricks in the rays of a burning sun; but, so dried, their solidity is very inconsiderable. Baked bricks owe their redness of colour to the oxide of iron which they contain. They are either moulded with the hand or cast in rectangular frames of wood, dusted with sand. To bake them, they are piled up in huge stacks, in which intervals are left for storing and kindling the fuel. They are also baked in kilns.

The commoner pottery wares are manufactured with the coa.r.s.e impure clays, which are allowed to rot in trenches for several years to render them more plastic. Flower-pots, sugar-pans, vases, and other and more graceful articles, are moulded on the potter's wheel.

Now, this potter's wheel is one of the most ancient instruments of human industry, one of the earliest inventions by which man utilized and economized his labour. It consists of a large disc of wood, to which a rotatory motion is given by the workman's foot. A second and smaller disc, on which is placed the paste for working, is fixed upon the upper extremity of the vertical axis to which the larger and inferior disc is attached. Seated on his bench, the workman places in the centre of the disc a certain quant.i.ty of soft moist clay, and turning the wheel with his foot, moulds the said paste with both hands, until it a.s.sumes the desired shape. You can imagine no prettier spectacle than that of a skilful potter causing the clay, under his nimble fingers, to a.s.sume the most varied forms. It seems as if by miracle the vase was created suddenly, and the rude clay sprang into a life and beauty of its own.

The Campanian potteries, improperly but commonly called the Etruscan, and the ancient Greek wares, belong to the cla.s.s of soft and l.u.s.trous potteries which are no longer manufactured. The Etruscan vases are the most remarkable specimens of the ancient potter's art; pure, simple, and elegant in form, they cannot be surpa.s.sed by any efforts of the modern potter. The paste of which they are made is very fine and h.o.m.ogeneous, coated with a peculiar gla.s.sy l.u.s.tre, which is thin but tenacious, red or black, and formed of silica rendered fusible by an alkali. They were baked at a low temperature. In this ware, which was in vogue between 500 and 320 B.C., the Aretine and Roman pottery originated. The former was manufactured at Arezzo or Arretium.

The knowledge of glazes, which was acquired by the Egyptians and a.s.syrians, seems to have been handed down to the Persians, Moors, and Arabs. Fayences, and enamelled bricks and plaques, were commonly used among them in the twelfth century, and among the Hindus in the fourteenth. The celebrated glazed tiles, or _azulejos_, which contribute so much to the beauty of the Alhambra, were introduced into Spain by the Moors about 711 A.D. In Italy, it is supposed, they were made known as early as the conquest of Majorca by the Pisans, in 1115 A.D. But Brongniart places their introduction three centuries later, or in 1415, and says this peculiar kind of ware was called _Majolica_, from Majorica or Majorca. This, however, seems to have been the Italian enamelled fayence, which was used for subjects in relief by the celebrated Florentine sculptor, Luca della Robbia.

Robbia had been bred to the trade of a goldsmith--in those days a trade of great distinction and opulence--but his artistic tastes could not be controlled, and he abandoned it to become a sculptor. A man of a singularly enthusiastic and ardent nature, he applied himself arduously to his new work. He worked all day with his chisel, and sat up, even through the night, to study. "Often," says Vasari, "when his feet were 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." Such devotion could hardly fail to secure success. Luca was recognised as one of the first sculptors of the day, and executed a number of great works in bronze and marble. On the conclusion of some important commissions, he was struck with the disproportion between the payment he received and the time and labour he had expended; and, abandoning marble and bronze, resolved to work in clay. Before he could do that, however, it was necessary to discover some means of rendering durable the works which he executed in that material. Applying himself to the task with characteristic zeal and perseverance, he at length succeeded in discovering a mode of protecting such productions from the injuries of time, by means of a glaze or enamel, which conferred not only an almost eternal durability, but additional beauty on his works in terra cotta. At first this enamel was of a pure white, but he afterwards added the further invention of colouring it. The fame of these productions spread over Europe, and Luca found abundant and profitable employment during the rest of his days, the work being carried on, after his death, by brothers and descendants.

II.--BERNARD PALISSY.

The next great master in the art was Bernard Palissy,--a man distinguished not only for his artistic genius, but for his philosophical attainments, his n.o.ble, manly character, and zealous piety. Born of poor parents about the beginning of the sixteenth century, Bernard Palissy was taken as apprentice by a land-surveyor, who had been much struck with the boy's quickness and ingenuity.

Land-surveying, of course, involved some knowledge of drawing; and thus a taste for painting was developed. From drawing lines and diagrams he went on to copy from the great masters. As this new talent became known he obtained employment in painting designs on gla.s.s. He received commissions in various parts of the country, and in his travels employed his mind in the study of natural objects. He examined the character of the soils and minerals upon his route, and the better to grapple with the subject, devoted his attention to chemistry. At length he settled and married at Staines, and for a time lived thriftily as a painter.

One day he was shown an elegant cup of Italian manufacture, beautifully enamelled. The art of enamelling was then entirely unknown in France, and Palissy was at once seized with the idea, that if he could but discover the secret it would enable him to place his wife and family in greater comfort. "So, therefore," he writes, "regardless of the fact that I had no knowledge of clays, I began to seek for these enamels as a man gropes in the dark. I reflected that G.o.d had gifted me with some knowledge of drawing, and I took courage in my heart, and besought him to give me wisdom and skill."

[Ill.u.s.tration: PALISSY THE POTTER. Page 242.]

He lost no time in commencing his experiments. He bought a quant.i.ty of earthen pots, broke them into fragments, and covering them with various chemical compounds, baked them in a little furnace of his own construction, in the hope of discovering the white enamel, which he had been told was the key to all the rest. Again and again he varied the ingredients of the compositions, the proportions in which they were mixed, the quality of the clay on which they were spread, the heat of the furnace to which they were subjected; but the white enamel was still as great a mystery as ever. Instead of discouraging, each new defeat seemed to confirm his hope of ultimate success and to increase his perseverance. Painting and surveying he no longer practised, except when sheer necessity compelled him to resort to them to provide bread for his family. The discovery of the enamel had become the great mission of his life, and to that all other occupations must be sacrificed. "Thus having blundered several times at great expense and through much trouble, with sorrows and sighs, I was every day pounding and grinding new materials and constructing new furnaces, which cost much money, and consumed my wood and my time." Two years had pa.s.sed now in fruitless effort. Food was becoming scarce in the little household, his wife worn and shrewish, the children thin and sickly. But then came the thought to cheer him,--when the enamel was found his fortune would be made, there would then be an end to all his privations, anxieties, and domestic unhappiness, Lisette would live at ease, and his children lack no comfort. No, the work must not be given up yet. His own furnace was clumsy and imperfect,--perhaps his compositions would turn out better in a regular kiln. So more pots were bought and broken into fragments, which, covered with chemical preparations, were fired at a pottery in the neighbourhood. Batch after batch was prepared and despatched to the kiln, but all proved disheartening failures. Still with "great cost, loss of time, confusion, and sorrow," he persevered, the wife growing more shrewish, the children more pinched and haggard. By good luck at this time came the royal commissioners to establish the gabelle or tax in the district of Saintonge, and Palissy was employed to survey the salt marshes. It was a very profitable job, and Palissy's affairs began to look more flourishing. But the work was no sooner concluded, than the "will o' the wisp," as his wife and neighbours held it, was dancing again before his eyes, and he was back, with redoubled energy, to his favourite occupation, "diving into the secret of enamels."

Two years of unremitting, anxious toil, of grinding and mixing, of innumerable visits to the kiln, sanguine of success, with ever new preparations; of invariable journeys home again, sad and weary, for the moment utterly discouraged; of domestic bickerings; of mockery and censure among neighbours, and still the enamel was a mystery,--still Palissy, seemingly as far from the end as ever, was eager to prosecute the search. He appeared to have an inward conviction that he would succeed; but meanwhile the remonstrances of his wife, the pale, thin faces of his bairns, warned him he must desist, and resume the employments that at least brought food and clothing. There should be one more trial on a grand scale,--if that failed, then there should be an end of his experiments. "G.o.d willed," he says, "that when I had begun to lose my courage, and was gone for the last time to a gla.s.s-furnace, having a man with me carrying more than three hundred pieces, there was one among those pieces which was melted within four hours after it had been placed in the furnace, which trial turned out white and polished, in a way that caused me such joy as made me think I was become a new creature." He rushed home, burst into his wife's chamber, shouting, "I have found it!"

From that moment he was more enthusiastic than ever in his search. He had discovered the white enamel. The next thing to be done was to apply it. He must now work at home and in secret. He set about moulding vessels of clay after designs of his own, and baked them in a furnace which he had built in imitation of the one at the pottery. The grinding and compounding of the ingredients of the enamel cost him the labour, day and night, of another month. Then all was ready for the final process.

The vessels, coated with the precious mixture, are ranged in the furnace, the fire is lit and blazes fiercely. To stint the supply of fuel would be to cheat himself of a fortune for the sake of a few pence, so he does not spare wood. All that day he diligently feeds the fire, nor lets it slacken through the night. The excitement will not let him sleep even if he would. The prize he has striven for through these weary years, for which he has borne mockery and privation, is now all but within his grasp; in another hour or two he will have possessed it.

The grey dawn comes, but still the enamel melts not. His boy brings him a portion of the scanty family meal. There shall soon be an end to that miserable fare! More f.a.ggots are cast on the fire. The night falls, and the sun rises on the third day of his tending and watching at the furnace door, but still the powder shows no signs of melting. Pale, haggard, sick at heart with anxiety and dread, worn with watching, parched and fevered with the heat of the fire, through another, and yet another and another day and night, through six days and six nights in all, Bernard Palissy watches by the glaring furnace, feeds it continually with wood, and still the enamel is unmelted. "Seeing it was not possible to make the said enamel melt, I was like a man in desperation; and although quite stupified with labour, I counselled to myself that in my mixture there might be some fault. Therefore I began once more to pound and grind more materials, all the time without letting my furnace cool. In this way I had double labour, to pound, grind, and maintain the fire. I was also forced to go again and purchase pots in order to prove the said compound, seeing that I had lost all the vessels which I had made myself. And having covered the new pieces with the said enamel, I put them into the furnace, keeping the fire still at its height."

By this time it was no easy matter to "keep the fire at its height." His stock of fuel was exhausted; he had no money to buy any more, and yet fuel must be had. On the very eve of success--alas! an eve that so seldom has a dawn--it would never do to lose it all for want of wood, not while wood of any kind was procurable. He rushed into the garden, tore up the palings, the trellis work that supported the vines, gathered every sc.r.a.p of wood he could find, and cast them on the fire. But soon again the deep red glow of the furnace began to fade, and still it had not done its work. Suddenly a crashing noise was heard; his wife, the children clinging to her gown, rushed in. Palissy had seized the chairs and table, had torn the door from its hinges, wrenched the window frames from their sockets, and broken them in pieces to serve as fuel for the all-devouring fire. Now he was busy breaking up the very flooring of the house. And all in vain! The composition would not melt.

"I suffered an anguish that I cannot speak, for I was quite exhausted and dried up by the heat of the furnace. Further to console me, I was the object of mockery; even those from whom solace was due, ran, crying through the town that I was burning my floors. In this way my credit was taken from me, and I was regarded as a madman," if not, as he tells us elsewhere, as one seeking ill-gotten gains, and sold to the evil one for filthy lucre.

He made another effort, engaged a potter to a.s.sist him, giving the clothes off his own back to pay him, and afterwards receiving aid from a friendly neighbour, and this time proved that his mixture was of the right kind. But the furnace having been built with mortar which was full of flints, burst with the heat, and the splinters adhered to the pottery. Sooner than allow such imperfect specimens of his art to go forth to the world, Palissy destroyed them, "although some would have bought them at a mean price."

Better days, however, were at hand for himself and family. His next efforts were successful. An introduction to the Duke of Montmorency procured him the patronage of that n.o.bleman, as well as of the king. He now found profitable employment for himself and food for his family.

"During the s.p.a.ce of fifteen or sixteen years in all," he said afterwards, "I have blundered on at my business. When I had learned to guard against one danger, there came another on which I had not reckoned. All this caused me such labour and heaviness of spirit, that before I could render my enamels fusible at the same degrees of heat, I verily thought I should be at the door of my sepulchre.... But I have found nothing better than to observe the counsel of G.o.d, his edicts, statutes, and ordinances; and in regard to his will, I have seen that he has commanded his followers to eat bread by the labour of their bodies, and to multiply their talents which he has committed to them."

When the Reformation came, Palissy was an earnest reformer, on Sunday mornings a.s.sembling a number of simple, unlearned men for religious worship, and exhorting them to good works. Court favour exempted him from edicts against Protestants, but could not shield him from popular prejudice. His workshops at Saintes were destroyed; and to save his life and preserve the art he had invented, the king called him to Paris as a servant of his own. Thus he escaped the ma.s.sacre of St.

Bartholomew. Besides being a skilful potter, Palissy was a naturalist of no little eminence. "I have had no other book than heaven and earth, which are open to all," he used to say; but he read the wondrous volume well, while others knew it chiefly at second-hand, and hence his superiority to most of the naturalists of the day. He was in the habit of lecturing to the learned men of the capital on natural history and chemistry. When more than eighty years of age he was accused of heresy, and shut up in the Bastille. The king, visiting him in prison, said, "My good man, if you do not renounce your views upon religious matters, I shall be constrained to leave you in the hands of my enemies." "Sire,"

replied Palissy, "those who constrain you, a king, can never have power over me, because I know how to die." Palissy died in prison, aged and exhausted, in 1590, at the age of eighty.

Before his death his wares had become famous, and were greatly prized.

The enamel, which he went through so much toil and suffering to discover, was the foundation of a flourishing national manufacture.

III.--JOSIAH WEDGWOOD.

Josiah Wedgwood, whose name in connection with pottery-ware has become a household word amongst us, was the younger son of a potter at Burslem, in Staffordshire, who had also a little patch of ground which he farmed.

When Josiah was only eleven years old, his father died, and he was thus left dependent upon his elder brother, who employed him as a "thrower"

at his own wheel. An attack of smallpox, in its most malignant form, soon after endangered his life, and he survived only by the sacrifice of his left leg, in which the dregs of the disease had settled, and which had to be cut off. Weak and disabled, he was now thrown upon the world to seek his own fortune. At first it was very uphill work with him, and he found it no easy matter to provide even the most frugal fare. He was gifted, however, with a very fine taste in devising patterns for articles of earthenware, and found ready custom for plates, knife-handles, and jugs of fanciful shape. He worked away industriously himself, and was able by degrees to employ a.s.sistance and enlarge his establishment. The pottery manufactures of this country were then in a very primitive condition. Only the coa.r.s.est sort of articles were made, and any attempt to give elegance to the designs was very rare indeed.

All the more ornamental and finer cla.s.s of goods came from the Continent. Wedgwood saw no reason why we should not emulate foreigners in the beauty of the forms into which the clay was thrown, and made a point of sending out of his own shop articles of as elegant a shape as possible. This feature in his productions was not overlooked by customers, and he found a growing demand for them. The coa.r.s.eness of the material was, however, a great drawback to the extension of the trade in native pottery; and it seemed almost like throwing good designs away to apply them to such rude wares. Wedgwood saw clearly that if earthenware was ever to become a profitable English manufacture, something must be done to improve the quality of the clay. He brooded over the subject, tested all the different sorts of earth in the district, and at length discovered one, containing silica, which, black in colour before it went into the oven, came out of it a pure and beautiful white. This fact ascertained, he was not long in turning it to practical account, by mixing flint powder with the red earth of the potteries, and thus obtaining a material which became white when exposed to the heat of a furnace. The next step was to cover this material with a transparent glaze; and he could then turn out earthenware as pure in quality as that from the Continent. This was the foundation not only of his own fortune, but of a manufacture which has since provided profitable employment for thousands of his countrymen, besides placing within the reach of even the humblest of them good serviceable earthenware for household use.

The success of his white stoneware was such, that he was able to quit the little thatched house he had formerly occupied, and open shop in larger and more imposing premises. He increased the number of his hands, and drove an extensive and growing trade. He was not content to halt after the discovery of the white stoneware. On the contrary, the success he had already attained only impelled him to further efforts to improve the trade he had taken up, and which now became quite a pa.s.sion with him. When he devoted himself to any particular effort in connection with it, his first thought was always how to turn out the very best article that could be made--his last thought was whether it would pay him or not. He stuck up for the honour of old England, and maintained that whatever enterprise could be achieved, that English skill and enterprise was competent to do. Although he had never had any education himself worth speaking of, his natural shrewdness and keen faculty of observation supplied his deficiencies in that respect; and when he applied himself, as he now did, to the study of chemistry, with a view to the improvement of the pottery art, he made rapid and substantial progress, and pa.s.sed muster creditably even in the company of men of science and learning. He contributed many valuable communications to the Royal Society, and invented a thermometer for measuring the higher degrees of heat employed in the various arts of pottery.

Again his premises proved too confined for his expanding trade, and he removed to a larger establishment, and there perfected that cream-coloured ware with which Queen Charlotte was so delighted, that she ordered a whole service of it, and commanding that it should be called after her--the Queen's Ware, and that its inventor should receive the t.i.tle of the "Royal Potter."

A royal potter Wedgwood truly was; the very king of earthenware manufactures, resolute in his determination to attain the highest degree of perfection in his productions, indefatigable in his labours, and unstinting in his outlay to secure that end. He invented altogether seven or eight different kinds of ware; and succeeded in combining the greatest delicacy and purity of material, and utmost elegance of design, with strength, durability, and cheapness. The effect of the improvements he successively introduced into the manufacture of earthenware is thus described by a foreign writer about this period: "Its excellent workmanship, its solidity, the advantage which it possesses of sustaining the action of fire, its fine glaze, impenetrable to acids, the beauty and convenience of its form, and the cheapness of its price, have given rise to a commerce so active and so universal, that in travelling from Paris to Petersburg, from Amsterdam to the furthest port of Sweden, and from Dunkirk to the extremity of the south of France, one is served at every inn with Wedgwood ware. Spain, Portugal, and Italy are supplied with it, and vessels are loaded with it for the East Indies, the West Indies, and the continent of America." Wedgwood himself, when examined before a committee of the House of Commons in 1785, some thirty years after he had begun his operations, stated that from providing only casual employment to a small number of inefficient and badly remunerated workmen, the manufacture had increased to an extent that gave direct employment to about twenty thousand persons, without taking into account the increased numbers who earned a livelihood by digging coals for the use of the potteries, by carrying the productions from one quarter to another, and in many other ways.

Wedgwood did not confine himself to the manufacture of useful articles, though such, of course, formed the bulk of his trade, but published beautiful imitations of Egyptian, Greek, and Etruscan vases, copies of cameos, medallions, tablets, and so on. Valuable sets of old porcelain were frequently intrusted to him for imitation, in which he succeeded so well that it was difficult to tell the original from the counterfeit, except sometimes from the superior excellence and beauty of the latter.

When the celebrated Barberini Vase was for sale, Wedgwood, bent upon making copies of it, made heavy bids against the d.u.c.h.ess of Portland for it; and was only induced to desist by the promise, that he should have the loan of it in order that he might copy it. Accordingly, the d.u.c.h.ess had the vase knocked down to her at eighteen hundred guineas, and Wedgwood made fifty copies of it, which he sold at fifty guineas each, and was thus considerably out of pocket by the transaction. He did it, however, not for the sake of profit, but to show what an English pottery could accomplish.

Besides copying from antique objects, Wedgwood tried to rival them in the taste and elegance of original productions. He found out Flaxman when he was an unknown student, and employed him, upon very liberal terms, to design for him; and thus the articles of earthenware which he manufactured proved of the greatest value in the art education of the people. We owe not a little of the improved taste and popular appreciation and enjoyment of the fine arts in our own day to the generous enterprise of Josiah Wedgwood, and his talented designs.

In order to secure every access from the potteries to the eastern and western coasts of the island, Wedgwood proposed, and, with the aid of others whom he induced to join him, carried out the Grand Trunk Ca.n.a.l between the Trent and the Mersey. He himself constructed a turnpike road ten miles in length through the potteries, and built a village for his work-people, which he called Etruria, and where he established his works. He died there in 1795, at the age of sixty-five, leaving a large fortune and an honoured name, which he had acquired by his own industry, enterprise, and generosity.

A remarkable memorial to the genius and artistic labours of Wedgwood was erected in 1863, and some reference to it should undoubtedly be made in these pages.