PLATE XXVIII.CHINESE
PLATE XXVIII.CHINESE
PLATE XXVIII.CHINESE
find any direct evidence of this commerce.[137]As for the English trade, porcelain is mentioned among the goods imported by the East India Company as early as 1631.
For the most part this porcelain exported from Canton or from Nagasaki was not carried directly to Europe, but found its way first to various intermediateentrepôtsof trade: in the case of the Dutch, to Batavia; with us, to certain Indian ports, or perhaps to Gombroon. This was one cause of the strange names by which the products of China and Japan were known, and of the confusion between the wares of the two countries, which has only been cleared up of late years. We hear of Batavian porcelain, and of East Indian orporcelaine des Indes.[138]No doubt this ambiguity of origin was encouraged by the rival traders, who were not eager to make too public the source of their goods.
As to the composition of the ‘purslayne’ brought from the Indies, the wildest stories were current. Whether it was even of the same nature as other kinds of pottery was disputed. Even so well-informed a man as Sir Thomas Browne had his doubts. ‘We are not thoroughly resolved,’ he says, ‘concerning porcellane or china dishes, that according to common belief they are made of earth.’ The quaint story of the clay being preserved for long ages before it was fit for use, we find for the first time apparently in some of the late versions of Marco Polo’s travels. From Marryat, who collected a wealth of quotations[139]referring to porcelain from writers of the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies, we take as an example the following (it is from a book written by Guido Pancirolli, a learned jurisconsult and antiquary of Padua, who died in 1599):—‘In former ages, porcelains were never seen. Now they are a certain mass composed of gypsum, bruised eggs, the shell of the marine locust [perhaps theLangustaor Mediterranean lobster], and other substances; and this, being well tempered and thickened, is hidden underground in a secret place, which the father points out to his children, etc.’ He then goes on to speak of the transparency of this ware, and of its property of breaking when any poisonous substance was placed in it.
We must remember that by this time attempts had already been made in Italy, both in Tuscany and probably still earlier in Venice, to imitate the porcelain of China. These experiments were soon abandoned, but the more practical Dutch, not long after this time, succeeded in making with their enamelled earthenware an imitation of the finer Chinese blue and white, closer to the original, as far as external aspect is concerned, than anything that has been produced in Europe since that time in ware of any description. The name of Albregt de Keizer (circa1661) it would seem is to be associated with these excellent copies. There are some brilliant specimens of this seventeenth century delft at South Kensington, both in the Keramic Gallery and in the Salting collection.
Early in the reign of Charlesii., the fashion of drinking tea and chocolate became fashionable, if not general, in England. Coffee had been introduced somewhat earlier—it came from Turkey by way of Venice. Along with these new infusions came the demand for the little cups from which they were to be drunk, and for the pots in which to brew them. The form and fashion of these came to us not from China but from Venice, from Constantinople, and perhapsultimately from Persia. One consequence of this was that the confusion between the wares of the East and of the Far East became for the time even greater. In the drinking-song quoted on page 243, we find ‘tea-cups and coffee’ associated with ‘the Turk and the Sophi,’ while not a word is said of China.
At the same time larger pieces,garnitures de cheminée,pots pourris, and fish-bowls began to find a place in the decoration of a nobleman’s house. Before the end of the century there came in a rage for quaint monsters and figures of Chinese gods, at first chiefly in white porcelain. Many such pieces may still be found on the mantels and in the china-closets of our country houses, but unfortunately we have in few cases any record of the date of acquisition or of theprovenanceof ware of this kind.
At Hampton Court there is a quantity of old china now well displayed in the rooms shown to the public. This is a collection that well repays a close examination. Let us see first what it doesnotcontain. Thefamille roseis unrepresented. I do not think that therouge d’orenamel is to be found on a single specimen. The ‘Old Japan’ or Imari is not found, at least not in characteristic specimens. On the other hand there are many interesting examples of Chinese enamelled ware which we may class with the five-colour group (the blue of courseunderthe glaze). They are roughly painted with figures in Ming costume, but in these pieces the green is scarcely prominent enough to allow of our placing them among thefamille verte. They belong rather to that class of late Wan-li or early Kang-he enamels which formed the starting-point of the earliest enamelled wares of Imari and Kutani. Of the three-colour glazes of thedemi grand feu, I would point to two interesting vases, about twelve inches in height, with a mottled decoration of green and dark purple, and with yellow handles. There are quite a numberof large fish-bowls of blue and white, but these pieces are not remarkable either for colour or design. Of more interest are two cylindrical vases decorated,sous couverte, with blue and pale copper red, and a curious vase of Persian shape covered with flowers in white slip over acafé au laitground. Again, the plain white figures of Quanyin, with the ‘Maintenon’ coif, and in some cases with the boy patron of learning at the side, are here as abundant relatively as at Dresden, and there is finally a well-executed figure of a Buddhist ascetic in white biscuit. Unless it be by the blue and white, Japan is represented solely by the ‘Kakiyemon’ enamelled ware, with the blueover the glaze.
But we must not pass over the little glazed cabinet filled with quaint pieces of Chinese porcelain. The contents of this cabinet have, it is said, remained untouched since the day, more than two hundred years ago, when they were arranged by Queen Mary. Among many curious pieces on its shelves may be seen two buffaloes of a pale celadon ware, four vases of ‘hookah-base’ form, with strange-shaped spouts, and some censers in the form of kilins.
The general impression, we may finally say, given by a somewhat close inspection of the porcelain at Hampton Court, confirms the little we know of the date of its origin. It represents a period anterior to the great renaissance at King-te-chen at the end of the seventeenth century, but only just anterior to that time, and it is the absence of the finer and more brilliant wares made subsequently to this renaissance, examples of which we are accustomed to see in our modern collections, that gives a certain air of poverty to this porcelain collected by our ancestors.
In some of the palaces and castles of Germany may still be seen collections of china made in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, crowded together in the porcelain cabinet. Of these the best known, perhaps, is thatat the ‘Favorite,’ near Baden, but there are others in the castle of the Waldstein family at Dux in Bohemia, and in Hungary in the castle of Prince Esterhazy. Many of these collections have remained unaltered since the time when they were first brought together, and it is in this fact that their principal interest lies.
These china-cabinets are, of course, all eclipsed by the vast collection brought together, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, by Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and (at intervals) King of Poland. But this collection has undergone many vicissitudes since the time when it was first established in the handsome palace in the Neustadt at Dresden. It escaped, indeed, with little damage from the Prussian cannons during the Seven Years’ War; at the end of the century, however, it was removed to a gloomy basement, but so carelessly was this done that we hear of whole chests packed with broken fragments. In this ill-arranged and dark room the collection remained for nearly a century, until at last it has found a home in the well-lit galleries of the Johanneum. Here it is now seen to full advantage, thanks to an arrangement which combines historical sequence with a regard to general effect.
Augustus the Strong died in 1733, and it is doubtful whether his successor, Augustii.(Augustiii.of Poland), who was above all a collector of pictures, added to the collection.[140]There were, it would seem, some examples of porcelain in the electoral collection at a much earlier date.[141]In an inventory of 1640 several pieces of porcelainare mentioned, and these are said to have been presented by theHerzog von Florentzin the year 1590. Among them (they cannot now be identified) we find a vase of porcelain (ein Pokal von Porcellana), blue and red with gilding, in the form of a crab; another in the form of a dragon, coloured green and blue; a lantern of porcelain, green and gold, adorned at the top with a standing figure; a small ‘pokal,’ gilt and painted with all kinds of colours; and finally some large eight-sided dishes decorated with blue. We should have expected to find some examples of the new Medici porcelain along with these, but in the inventory in question there is no mention of anything of the kind.
Augustus the Strong obtained most of his porcelain from Dutch dealers—a certain Le Roy at Amsterdam is specially mentioned. Already in 1709 we find him lending eight statuettes of white Chinese ware to Böttger, then engaged with his experiments on the Königstein. In the year 1717 he received from the King of Prussia nearly a hundred important vases and dishes. In return for these, it is said, the king obtained a regiment (or company) of tall dragoons, but this part of the bargain is not mentioned in the official receipt for the porcelain, which has been preserved.
I have more than once referred to individual specimens in this famous collection, and I shall not attempt to describe it now. Suffice to say that the general impression given is that it is of a somewhat later date than that at Hampton Court. Apart from a few early pieces which have been already mentioned, and from some specimens of thefamille rose(and on these the newrouge d’oris for the most part sparingly and, as it were, tentatively applied), the coloured enamel ware in the Dresden collection belongs in the bulk to thefamille verte, and upon intrinsic evidence might be attributed to the later years of Kang-he and to the reign of his successor Yung-ching, say from 1690 to1730. On the Japanese side, we notice a number of dishes and vases in blue and white, rather in the style of the later Ming ware exported to India and Persia, a few choice specimens of the enamelled ‘Kakiyemon,’ and then the vast series of ‘Old Japan’ or Imari porcelain—plates, vases, and bowls, many of large size. Much of this last class was made to order, and this part reflects the bad taste of the day. We find tall vases ‘adorned’ with figures and flowers modelled in full relief in a kind of stucco and gaudily painted with some oil medium or varnish. Some are converted into cages for birds or squirrels by an external railing of brass rods.
With the exception of a few finegarnituresin blue and white in ‘’t Huis ten Bosch’ at the Hague, there appear to be no public collections in Holland dating from the eighteenth century. But in spite of the repeated razzias of dealers, both native and foreign, many old families still retain collections of Chinese porcelain (of blue and white especially), some of which may date from the latter part of the seventeenth century, and many a rough-looking farmer, in country districts, prides himself on the china-cabinet that he has inherited from his ancestors.
Francisi.of France and his son Henriii.were, as is well known, great collectors of works of art, and their collections at Fontainebleau may be regarded as the foundation of the national museums of France. The Rev. Père Dan, who described these collections at a later date, in hisTrésors des Merveilles de Fontainebleau(1640) says—‘La étoient aussi des vases et vaisselles en porcelaines de la Chine,’ and in an eighteenth century notice we hear of a ‘vase de porcelaine de première qualité ancienne de la Chine,’ which is said to have come from the collection of Sully, the minister of Henriiv.In the second half of the seventeenth century, at the great yearly fairs held inthe neighbourhood of Paris, Portuguese travelling merchants set up their stalls for the sale ofles besognes de Chine.[142]In 1678 the Duchess of Cleveland’s porcelain was sold at the fair of St. Laurent. TheMercureof the day gives a list of the figures and mounted pieces. Louisxiv., we are told, was surprised at the knowledge of Oriental porcelain shown by Jamesii.
At the end of the seventeenth century it became the fashion among thegrands Seigneursof the court of Louisxiv.to collect theporcelaine des Indes, the Dauphin and the Duke of Orleans leading the way, and through the agency of the short-livedCompagnie de la Chine[143](1685-1719) the latter prince was able to obtain from the East vases decorated with his arms,[144]while of the Dauphin we hear that he arranged his collection of blue and white in cabinets constructed by the famous ebonist Boule. Unfortunately the gallery at Versailles where they were placed was burned down soon afterwards (Du Sartel,La Porcelaine de la Chine, p. 121). The porcelain of these princely collectors was sold at a later time, and most of it passed into the hands of the Vicomte de Fonspertuis; it was again dispersed when the works of art in that famous collection were sold by auction in 1747. The catalogue on this occasion was prepared by Gersaint,[145]the great dealer of the day, for whose shop on the Pont Notre-Dame Watteau painted his famousEnseigne. The notes in this catalogue are of some interest, in that they are,perhaps, the earliest attempt, at least from a Western point of view, at a critical description of Oriental porcelain. We can only call attention to the remarks of Gersaint on the new enamel colours, which in opposition to the blue and white ‘on voit seulement depuis quelques années’; on the white ware with its ‘ton velouté, doux et mat,’ which he tells us Spanish collectors prefer to all others, and on the figures, animals, and ornaments which the Dutch ‘souvent mal à propos’ painted over the beautiful white ware of China. Gersaint ridicules also the fashion that will have nothing to say to any piece without the brown line upon the lip or edge, so characteristic of the porcelain imported about this time, and finally he calls attention to the excellent imitation of the ‘Ancien Japon,’ madesome time sinceat Dresden. A few specimens of this Saxon ware are the only examples of European pottery in this extensive and varied collection.
Some twenty years later the collections of another friend and patron of Watteau, M. de Jullienne, were sold by auction in theSalon Carréof the Louvre, and a detailed catalogue of the Oriental ware was drawn up by the dealer Julliot. But for a more detailed account of the French collections and collectors of the eighteenth century, we must refer the reader to the chapter on this subject in M. Du Sartel’s already quoted work.
In the lengthy treatise of the Abbé Raynal on the history of theCommerce des Européens dans les Deux Indes, there is an interesting section treating of the porcelain of China and Japan, and of the relation of these Oriental wares to the porcelain of Saxony and France. The work was first published in 1770, but the remarks on porcelain were probably written several years earlier. We have already noticed the six classes into which he divides the wares imported from the East. We can only note here that Raynaldistinguishes the two classes ofporcelaine blanche—one of creamy tint, and the other cold and bluish. This ware, he says, was imitated at Saint-Cloud, but with ‘frit’ and lead glaze. His sympathies are all for the true porcelain of Dresden, and for the ware lately made in France by the Count Lauraguais.
We have attempted in this chapter, perhaps at too great a length for a work of this kind, to follow the steps by which the knowledge and appreciation of Oriental porcelain spread gradually through the West. It will be our next task to show, as briefly as possible, how on the ground thus prepared there arose on all sides a desire to imitate this beautiful ware.
WHAT, then, were the wares with which the porcelain of the Far East came into competition, when during the course of the seventeenth century it reached Europe in ever increasing quantity? It was not the ordinary lead-glazed pottery, or the salt-glazed stoneware in common use, that felt this competition. Crockery of this sort would always be protected by its cheapness. The rivalry was rather with the more artistic ware found on the tables of the richer sort of people, much of it made for ornament only. Now at this time, ware of this latter kind all came under the class ofenamelled fayence—earthenware, that is, whose dull surface was rendered bright and shining by a coating of stanniferous enamel; on this artificial surface the decoration, often pre-eminent in artistic merit, was painted. It is not our business here to show how this great ceramic family of stanniferous enamelled ware, which had now spread over Europe, had its origin in the nearer or Saracenic East, just as the porcelain, which in a measure was destined to replace it, can all be traced back to a Chinese source. Suffice to say that, starting from the Moorish potteries of Spain, this enamelled fayence gradually replaced the old lead-glazed slip ware of the Italianquattrocento, and in the sixteenth century was carried by Italian workmen to France,where important centres of manufacture were established at Rouen and at Nevers.
But it was rather the fayence of Delft, a ware of essentially the same class as the last, and one which, during the seventeenth century, was pushing its way into the markets of France and of England, that first felt the competition of the porcelain now imported from the Far East. The fact is that all these enamelled wares suffered from one great defect. It was not so much their lack of translucency or the softness of their paste that was at fault, but rather the fact that they made pretence to be something better than they really were ‘at heart.’ Compared to porcelain, they are as plated ware to real silver, and time and wear are apt only too soon to reveal the base nature of their body. Wherever the enamel is chipped off, the dirt lodges, and greasy matter finds its way into the porous paste, causing a wide spreading stain. This is a practical, and, we may also add, a hygienic defect, that is now sometimes forgotten, the more so as nowadays our common table ware is free from this fault, and resembles fine porcelain in so far that the white, compact body is covered by nothing but the transparent glaze. In fact, as far as European experience is concerned, we may say, broadly, that the merits of porcelain compared with those of fayence are rather of a practical than of an artistic nature.[146]
It will be convenient to divide the history of European porcelain into two periods. The first, with which we are alone concerned in this chapter, deals with a time of isolated and tentative experiments. We are concerned in Italy with the experiments of the Venetian alchemists which form an introduction to the porcelain made by the Tuscan Grand-Duke; inEngland with the early researches of Dr. Dwight and others; and finally, in France with the more successful efforts of the potters of Rouen and Saint-Cloud. The second period opens with the great discovery of Böttger at the beginning of the eighteenth century. The porcelain made subsequent to this may be divided conveniently into three groups: (1) the true porcelain of Germany; (2) the artificial soft paste of France; and (3) the so-called natural soft paste of England. These are the most important types; and other wares such as the ‘mixed or hybrid pastes’ of Italy and Spain, and the hard, true porcelains of England and France, can be most conveniently treated in connection with the second and third divisions.
Early Venetian Porcelain.—Of all the cities of Europe we might, on theoretical grounds, expect to find in Venice the place above all others where the question of the composition of porcelain would at an early date attract attention, and indeed, the evidence brought to light by the Baron Davillier (Les Origines de la Porcelaine en Europe, 1882) and by the late Sir William Drake (Notes on Venetian Ceramics, London, 1868, privately printed) fully proves that more than one alchemist or ‘arcanist’ of that city, in one case as early as the fifteenth century, produced specimens worthy to be called ‘porcellane transparente e vaghissime,’ and this by contemporaries who had some opportunity of seeing the real porcelain of China.[147]
This ‘transparent and beautiful porcelain’ was made in 1470 by Master Antonio, the alchemist, at his kiln by San Simeon, and the writer of a notice that has been preserved sends two specimens of this ware to his friend in Padua. Again, in 1518 we hearof ‘a new artifice not known before in this illustrious city, to make all kinds of porcelain like to the transparent wares of the Levant’; and a year later the ambassador of the Duke Alfonso writes to his master at Ferrara, sending him specimens of theporcellana fictamade by a certain Caterino Zen, whom he has persuaded to emigrate to the latter city.
There cannot be the slightest doubt that in all these instances the writers are referring to attempts at the manufacture of something resembling, in its transparency at least, the porcelain of China. There is no question of any confusion with the majolica of the day, with whose properties these men were well acquainted, and we may therefore reasonably regard the Venetian ‘archimisti’ as the first in Europe to make a soft-paste porcelain. As in the case of later experimenters, translucency, rather than hardness or refractory qualities, was the point aimed at; and from the few hints we get as to the substances employed, we may infer that these old ‘archimisti’ started with the idea of combining the properties of glass and of fayence by mixing a ‘frit,’ or glassy element, with various kinds of pure white clay.
It is unfortunately true that we can point to no single existing specimen of Italian porcelain that can safely be referred to so early a date; but it must at the same time be remembered that it was only in the year 1857 that the first piece of Medici porcelain was identified by Signor Foresi, and that as late as 1859 a flask-shaped vase of this ware was sold at the Hôtel Drouot as a specimen of Japanese porcelain!
Medici Porcelain.—The first mention of this now well-known ware is probably to be found in Vasari’sLives of the Painters. It is in his account of Bernardo Buontalenti, painter, sculptor, architect, and mechanical genius, who, in all these capacities,
PLATE XXIX.MEDICI, BLUE AND WHITE
PLATE XXIX.MEDICI, BLUE AND WHITE
PLATE XXIX.MEDICI, BLUE AND WHITE
was in great favour with Cosmo, the first Grand-Duke of Tuscany, and still more with his son Francesco. ‘Bernardo,’ says Vasari, who was a contemporary, ‘applies himself to everything, as may be seen by the vases of porcelain which he has made in so short a time—vases which have all the perfection of the most ancient and the most perfect.’ He could make objects of all kinds in porcelain. ‘Of all these things our prince [Francesco the Grand-Duke] possesses the methods of manufacture.’
Francesco Maria, the second Grand-Duke of Tuscany, was neither a good prince nor a faithful husband. He was, however, by nature an enthusiastic and patient experimenter, and a chemist after the manner of the day. Soon after his accession, in 1576, the Venetian envoy writes of him—I abbreviate here and there: ‘He has found the way to make the porcelain of India; he has equalled them in transparence, in lightness, and in delicacy. With the help of a Levantine he worked for more than ten years, spoiling thousands of pieces, before producing perfect work. He passes his whole day in hiscasino[in the Boboli Gardens] surrounded by alembics and filters, making, among other things, false jewels, and fireworks.’
We learn also, from a contemporary manuscript, that the paste of this porcelain was formed by mixing certain white earths from Siena and from Vicenza with a frit, itself made from pounded rock crystal fused with soda and glassmakers’ sand. The Vicenza clay, at all events, was probably of a kaolinic nature. After shaping on the wheel and drying, the decoration was painted on the raw paste, and the vessel subjected to a preliminary firing; the plumbiferous glaze was then applied to the biscuit. This Medici ware is decorated for the most part with cobalt blue alone, but occasionally a little purple, and still more rarely other colours are added. The design is made up of sprigs of conventionalisedflowers and leaves connected by fine stalks, suggesting, on the whole, a Persian rather than a Chinese influence. In a few cases we find the renaissance arabesques (or, more properly, grotesques) of the time combined with masks in relief. The usual mark is a hasty outline of the dome of the Cathedral of Florence, and below it the letter F; on a few pieces, those especially which are decorated with the grotesques, we find the six roundels, or ‘palle,’ of the Medici, surmounted by the ducal coronet. A few pieces are dated. The earliest date that has been discovered—1581—is on a bottle of square section, rudely painted, under a crackle glaze, with the arms of Spain.
As might be expected in the case of an experimental ware of amateurish origin, the extant pieces differ much in technical merit. Some are heavily moulded, with a rough decoration of dark blue (I refer to some pieces now in the Louvre); while on others, as on the fine but damaged bowl at South Kensington, a delicate design is carefully painted (Pl. xxx.). The ground, however, of this Medici porcelain is seldom of a pure white, and the colours have a tendency to run. Now that the specimens from the Davillier and Rothschild collections have found their way into the Louvre, this ware is best represented in that gallery. There are, however, several pieces at Sèvres, and some good examples at South Kensington. The later history of this ware is obscure. The kilns appear to have been removed to Pisa, and their existence cannot be traced later than 1620.
Rouen Porcelain.—For a period of two generations and more after this date it would seem that little was attempted. The vague assertions found in patents taken out during this time in England and in France are of slight value for us, for the claim is only made to animitationof the Eastern ware, and such an expression might apply to many kinds of enamelled fayence.
PLATE XXX.MEDICI, BLUE AND WHITE
PLATE XXX.MEDICI, BLUE AND WHITE
PLATE XXX.MEDICI, BLUE AND WHITE
In France,[148]Claude Reverend, in 1664, is authorised to ‘contrefaire la porcelaine à la façon des Indes.’ A more serious interest attaches to the letters-patent granted in 1673 to Louis Poterat of Rouen. This Poterat was a man of some position; he belonged to a family that had long been connected with the manufacture of enamelled fayence at St. Sever, near Rouen. In the diploma of 1673 facilities are granted him by the king for making vessels of porcelain similar to those of China by means of the secret process that he had discovered for manufacturing ‘la véritable porcelaine de la Chine.’ There exist certain little pieces of soft-paste porcelain, sparely decorated with arabesques andlambrequinsin bluesous couverte, in the style of Louisxiv., and marked with the letters A.P. surmounted by a small star.[149]These are now generally classed as Rouen ware of the time of Poterat; in that case, we must see in them the earliest specimens of the French family ofporcelaines tendres. We have seen specimens at Sèvres and at Dresden, in both cases little cylindrical boxes divided into compartments. A similarly decorated cup, of very translucent ware, in the Fitzhenry collection, is also attributed to Rouen.
There were probably at this time and later many others,arcanistesor practical potters, working at the problem in France. M. Vogt quotes, from theComptes des Bâtiments du Roifor 1682, two singular payments for the transport of ‘terre de porcelaine’ from Le Havre to Rouen and thence to Paris. This porcelain earth had, it is stated, been previously shipped to Civita Vecchia. Ithas been suggested that this might refer to a cargo of kaolin sent from the East (La Porcelaine, p. 34).
In 1695 the king granted to the Chicoineau family the privilege of making porcelain, by means of a secret process, reserving only the right previously granted to Poterat of Rouen.
With the establishment, however, of the Saint-Cloud kilns we pass out of the stage of tentative experiment, and the porcelain of Saint-Cloud forms the proper introduction to the soft-paste wares of France.
Early Experiments in England.—The potters art was at a very low ebb in England in the seventeenth century. The Dutch with their Delft ware had taken up a position comparable to that held by our Staffordshire potters a century and a half later. They supplied us for many years with the ordinary crockery in use among the middle classes (indeed, in parts of Ireland such ware is still known as ‘delf’). From the scattered local potteries were produced only the roughest kinds of earthenware. But in this rude ware we see at times a certain barbaric, almost Oriental feeling for colour and decoration, giving more promise of artistic possibilities than we can find in the tame imitative work of the eighteenth century porcelain maker.
Quite early in the seventeenth century, however, certainly by the time of Charlesi., pottery works were established by the banks of the Thames at Lambeth and elsewhere, where successful imitations of Delft were made, probably with the assistance of Dutch workmen. Not far off, at Fulham, Dr. John Dwight experimented upon various clays and glazes, in the reign of Charlesii.His is the earliest name that occurs in the history of English ceramics. In the letters-patent granted to him in 1671, he claims that ‘at his own proper costs and charges he hath invented and set up at Fulham ... several new manufactories.’ Not only was he prepared to deal with ‘the misterie of the stoneware vulgarly calledCologne ware,’ but he also lays claim to ‘the mysterie of transparent earthenware, commonly knowne by the name of porcelaine or china, and Persian ware.’ This claim is made even more definitely by his friend Dr. Plot, in theHistory of Oxfordshire, which he published in 1677. Dr. Dwight, he tells us, ‘hath found ways to make an earthwhite and transparent as porcelane, and not distinguishable from it by the eye or by experiments which have been purposely made to try wherein they disagree.’
We may compare this claim with the similar statements made about the same time in the petitions of Poterat and others. In neither case is there any sign of an acquaintance with the Chinesematerials. In France the aim was to make something that should combine the properties of earthenware and glass; while in the case of Dr. Dwight’s ware, hardness and infusibility were the points sought for.
The portrait busts and statuettes in the British Museum, and a famous piece at South Kensington, are all that remain of Dr. Dwight’s wares. These were until lately in the hands of his descendants, and are, therefore, thoroughly authenticated.[150]In the former collection are two figures, a sportsman and a girl with two lambs, which in spirit and sharpness of execution compare favourably with our later imitations of Meissen porcelain in soft paste. A thin, apparently non-plumbiferous glaze covers a white body, which is undoubtedly of great hardness and possibly just translucent (‘approaching in some cases to translucency,’ says the writer of the ‘Jermyn Street’ Catalogue). Unfortunately there has survived nothing to illustrate his imitations of Chinese and Persian ware. Dr. Dwightwas a man of some social position, and a Master of Arts of Christ Church, Oxford. The very considerable merit of his stoneware figures (and we may add, the pathetic interest attaching to the little figure of a dead child, at South Kensington, inscribed ‘Lydia Dwight, dyed March 3rd, 1673’) have established his position as the father of English ceramics, and on this ground he has found a place along with Duesbury and Wedgwood in theDictionary of National Biography. For us his stoneware has a special interest. It is perhaps the only ceramic ware in existence that has so many of the characteristics of true porcelain—its hardness, its resistance to high temperatures, and to some extent also its translucency and whiteness of paste—but which in origin and chemical composition differs so entirely from the normal type.
Dr. Place of York was a contemporary of Dwight; he devoted much time to experiments on various kinds of clay. Although he has some claim to rank as an artistic potter, I do not think that there is any proof that he ever made porcelain of either hard or soft paste.
It is certainly remarkable that during the following fifty years and more we hear nothing in England of any attempt to manufacture porcelain, nor is there any patent or contemporary notice bearing on the subject during the interval between Dr. Dwight’s specification of 1684 and the date of Frye’s first patent. A claim to make porcelain by working up the ground fragments of Oriental ware with some gummy materials is perhaps the only exception.
But in England, as elsewhere, the ‘ware of the Indies’ was coming more and more into favour, and its partial victory over foreign and native stoneware and pottery is, as we said above, closely connected with the increasing popularity of tea and coffee. Sack and claret were still served in bottles of Delft ware, and beer in stoneware jugs and tankards. A certain suspicion of effeminacyand degeneracy came to be associated both with tea and coffee, and with the ware in which they were served.[151]Even now, any ridicule to which the china-collector is exposed is generally associated with a teapot.
We have in this chapter traced the early attempts made in Italy, as well as those in France and England, to imitate the porcelain of the Far East. We must now turn aside to Saxony, where, at the dawn of the eighteenth century, the problem was solved by the genius of a poor chemist’s assistant. We will then run rapidly through the many centres where hard-paste porcelain was made in Germany, before returning to the soft-paste wares of England and France.
WE have already more than once come across the famous Elector of Saxony, who found time, between his Polish wars and his innumerable amours, to bring together the nucleus, at least, of more than one of the great collections that have since his time attracted visitors to Dresden. In the historical collections of the Johanneum and in the Grüne Gewölbe, we find his name associated with many things of great beauty—arms and armour, silver plate and jewellery; but still, even after making every allowance for the strange taste of the time, the general impression of the man which we get from the objects brought together by him is not exactly that of a refined amateur. In fact, the German phase of the school that had its origin in the Rome of Bernini and in the Versailles of Louisxiv.found in the court of Augustus the Strong its true home. Nowhere else can we find more characteristic examples of that mixture of pomposity and childishness, that absence of all feeling for purity of line, which distinguishes the German ‘rococo,’ than in these collections and in the buildings that hold them.
Now, it was under the direct patronage of this prince that the manufacture of porcelain was first established in Europe, and what we may call thetaint of its original home has hung about the ware ever since. Of the porcelain of Europe as a whole—and this is especially true of the earlier and more interesting period—we may say that it belongs to the rococo school, tempered now and again by a more or less ill-understood imitation of Chinese and Japanese shapes and designs.
Augustus collected works of art of nearly every kind, with the important exception, indeed, of pictures and sculpture—these branches were at this time comparatively neglected. But his heart was set, above all, upon gathering to his new palace in the Neustadt, every fine specimen of the Oriental porcelain that reached Europe. What more natural than that he should be seized with the ambition of himself producing in his own capital something that would rival the wares of China and Japan? No one had better opportunities—if not himself in direct communication with the East, his agents were in a position to glean and to bring to him whatever meagre information about the manufacture of porcelain might reach Europe. His court was a Catholic centre, and he must have taken interest in the accounts of the industries of China sent home by the Jesuit missionaries. The first of the famous letters of the Père D’Entrecolles on the porcelain of King-te-chen is indeed of just too late a date for us to think of it in this connection. By that time (1712) Böttger was already making true porcelain. But what would seem more probable than that other private letters, with valuable information about the manufacture in which the Elector took so great an interest, may have reached him a few years earlier? The Père D’Entrecolles, we know, had already for several years previous to 1709 (the approximate date of Böttger’s discovery) been living at Juchou, in the neighbourhood of King-te-chen.
When we consider the rapidity with which Böttger’s experiments were brought to a successful issue, and compare this with the long and fruitless research in other countries, it is impossible to resist a suspicion of some such infiltration from Chinese sources, and this suspicion is enhanced by the somewhat suspicious story of Böttger’s career. But, on the other hand, no confirmation has, so far, been found for any such theory. On the contrary, I understand that researches made of late in the State archives of Saxony have rather tended to show that some injustice has been done to Böttger in the common tradition; that we must look upon him as a man of considerable scientific attainments for his age and as a born experimenter, and it must also be remembered that at that time no great distinction was made between the chemist and the alchemist.
Johann Friedrich Böttger was born in the year 1685 at Schleiz, in the Voigtland, where his father had a charge connected with a local mint. He was early apprenticed to an apothecary at Berlin, and here he was initiated into the secrets of alchemy by no less a master—so at least the story goes—than the Greek monk Lascaris, a man who is mentioned with admiration by Leibnitz, and who is claimed as one of the ‘five adepts.’ In 1701 Böttger fled from Berlin—it is not quite clear for what reason—and placed himself under the protection of the Elector of Saxony. At Dresden and, later on, the rock fortress of the Königstein, he continued his search for the philosopher’s stone, and about this time, probably in conjunction with the mathematician and physicist Walther von Tschirnhaus, began making experiments upon clay—in search, at first at least, of a refractory material for his crucibles. Tschirnhaus had already been occupied with improvements in the manufacture of glass in Saxony, and as early asthe year 1699 had made attempts to imitate Chinese porcelain.[152]
In spite of an unsuccessful attempt at flight we find Böttger, in the years 1705 to 1707, established in a laboratory in the old castle of Meissen. Here, after another effort to escape, for which he narrowly missed being hanged—at any rate so we are told—Böttger, when experimenting on some red fireclay from the neighbourhood of Okrilla, fell upon the famous red ware that resembles so closely the Chinese ‘boccaro.’ This was in 1707. The next year Tschirnhaus died, and by 1709, if we are to trust the statement of Steinbrück, the brother-in-law of Böttger and his immediate successor, the latter had succeeded in making a true white porcelain.
Shortly before this time he had been working, in company with Tschirnhaus, in a laboratory constructed for them on the Jungfern-Bastei at Dresden, and it must have been about the time of the death of the latter that the critical experiments were made that led to the production of a white translucent paste. If this be so, it would seem that it was, after all, at Dresden, and not at Meissen, that the first true porcelain was made. It was not till the year 1710 that Böttger was again removed to the old castle of Meissen, where the requisite secrecy could be more effectually preserved.
In any case, in the year 1709 Böttger was able to show some specimens of a true porcelain—somewhat yellowish in tint, indeed—to the royal commissioner, and at the Leipsic Fair in 1710 not only was the red ware offered for sale for the first time, but a few specimens of the white porcelain were on view.
Soon after this we find Böttger established in the Albrechtsburg at Meissen as administrator of the newly established porcelain works. Even now he was little better than a prisoner, and in 1712 he requested the elector-king to allow him to resign. He was consoled, however, by a substantial present, and, so says one account, he was at the same time ennobled—at any rate he was offered the title of Bergrath. But Böttger’s extravagant way of life led to his being constantly in need of money, and in the year 1716 he entertained proposals to sell his great secret to a syndicate of Berlin merchants. In 1719, on the discovery of this treachery, he was again imprisoned. In the same year Böttger died at the age of thirty-four. To the end, it would appear, he held out hopes to his master that he was on the way to success in his gold-making experiments, and his brother-in-law, in a solemn memorial, asserted that he was actually in the possession of thelapis philosophorum. How far Böttger, in making these claims, was playing a double game in order to obtain money from Augustus, it is impossible to say, but we must remember that at the same time Tschirnhaus, a man of culture and high intellectual attainments, was engaged in a search for the ‘universal medicine.’
The red stoneware which was turned out already in 1708—it is now generally known as Böttger ware—resembles closely the boccaro imported at that time from China. Besides the red varieties, of two shades, there is a third kind, in which the surface, as it comes from the kiln, has been left untouched, and such pieces the Germans know asEisen-porzellan. It is wonderful what a number of forms and applications Böttger was able to give to this stoneware during the short period during which it was produced. Of the red ware some of the carefully modelled pieces were polished on the lapidary’s wheel. A child’s head at South Kensingtonis a good specimen of this polished stoneware. In the Franks collection, now at Bethnal Green, is a remarkable series of the different varieties of Böttger ware. A tankard of polished marbled paste is marked with the year 1720, showing that the stoneware continued to be manufactured for some time alongside of the true white porcelain.À proposof a beautiful little head of Apollo, we are reminded in the catalogue that in 1711 there were sixty of theseApollo-köpfein stock. They were priced, unpolished, at nine groschen, or polished at sixteen. The difference, seven groschen, does not seem a high charge for the labour and skill involved in this polishing. In other cases the body is covered with a dark brown glaze, in which a design is traced in incised lines, brought out by gold. This glazed stoneware was afterwards imitated at Berlin and elsewhere in Germany. There are some curious pieces at Dresden, which show that Böttger also attempted, not very successfully, to apply enamelled colours over his dark glazes.
Not till the Easter Fair of 1713 was the white porcelain offered for sale at Leipsic, and even then the specimens on sale were far from faultless. Only in the year 1716—in the interval a new description of white paste had been discovered—was the ware exhibited technically perfect.
Thus in the space of some eight years, Böttger had not only succeeded in making an excellent imitation of the Chinese boccaro ware, of which the special merit was to withstand rapid changes of temperature, but he had once for all solved the great problem: he had produced a hard white porcelain, which has remained since that day the type for the whole of Europe.[153]
Where, we may ask, did Böttger acquire the technical knowledge and the practical experience, so essential in work of this kind? All the other men who have made a name for themselves as breakers of new ground in the art of the potter—Palissy, Poterat, Wedgwood, and to these we may add the great Chinese superintendents at King-te-chen and the Japanese artists Ninsei and Zengoro—were either working potters themselves or directors of large factories. What opportunities had this youth—he was only sixteen when he came to Dresden, and already, it would seem, ‘well known to the police’—of acquiring the practical details of the kilns, the mixing vats, and the wheel?[154]
So again with regard to the materials he employed. Not much light has so far been thrown on this point. We have a somewhat childish story about a certain hair-powder—theSchnorrische Erde—which turned up at the psychological moment and solved the question once for all. But porcelain is not to be made from kaolin alone. That is only the skeleton, as the Chinese say. We must find also the right kind of flesh to make the bones hang together. No mention, however, is made in the current narrative of any experiments on felspathic rocks. We know at least that this famous ‘hair-powder’ was a very pure white kaolin, found at Aue, near Schneeberg, in the Erzgebirge, and that china-clay from this source was the principal ingredient in the earliest porcelain produced. So in later accounts we find mention merely of different qualities of kaolin from Aue, from Seilitz, and other sources.[155]A few years ago the Meissen paste, itis stated, was composed of kaolin from three different sources 72 per cent., of ‘felspar’ 26 per cent., and of old clay worked up again 2 per cent. In this and in most other cases where felspar is mentioned as a constituent of a porcelain paste, we must probably understand some kind of petuntse or china-stone containing quartz and perhaps other minerals in addition to the felspar. The following figures show the composition of the paste at the beginning of the last century: silica 59 per cent., alumina 36 per cent., and potash 3 per cent. The glaze was at that time composed of calcined quartz 37 per cent., Seilitz kaolin 37 per cent., limestone 17·5 per cent., and porcelain pot-sherds 8·5 per cent. From this it will be seen that the Meissen porcelain is of a somewhat ‘severe’ type. To judge from its composition it must require a high temperature in firing; on the other hand, the paste should possess considerable plastic qualities. The absence of lime from the paste and its presence in considerable quantity in the glaze is a point of interest. In this, the Saxon ware resembles the porcelain that is made in the Owari district of Japan. At Sèvres, on the other hand, we shall see that the glaze of the hard porcelain contains no lime, while that substance is an essential constituent in the paste.
The Meissen porcelain, and indeed the German porcelains generally, form a typically hard and refractory group. But they have in a full measureles défauts de leurs qualités. Among them we may look in vain for that blending of the glaze and body that gives to the best Chinese porcelain a surface like that of polished marble; still less do we find in the enamel decoration the brilliancy and transparence of Oriental wares. In place of this we see a chalky surface of a cold, neutral tone, over which is painted, in dull opaque tints, elaborately executed pictures that look often as if they had beenstuck onas an afterthought.Apart from the influence of the taste of the time, and the general absence of the colour sense among the German race, this dulness and opacity is the result of the high temperature required in the muffle-stove to enable the coloured enamels to adhere to the refractory glaze beneath them. As a consequence of this the choice of colours is limited, and even the enamels that are available never become thoroughly incorporated with the glaze.
To return to the porcelain made by Böttger in the few remaining years of his life, it is surprising in what a number of directions we find him making experiments; for indeed all the many varieties of porcelain made during his lifetime may be classed together as experimental. It is only in the museum at Dresden that we can study this interesting period. The moulds that had been used for the red stoneware served at first for the new porcelain. The ornaments in relief were modelled by hand and laid on the surface. Böttger attempted at one time to replace the enamel colours, so difficult to use with effect, by employing a kind of lacquer or mastic as a vehicle. His greatest triumph in this department was the so-called mother-of-pearl glaze, a thin wash of rosy purple with a slight lustre,[156]and this he combined with a free use of metallic gold and silver. The plain white of the Chinese was copied closely, but the early attempts at the decoration with bluesous couvertewere strikingly unsuccessful. The larger pieces made at this, and even later times, have generally suffered from overfiring or from imperfect support in the kiln, and would now be regarded as ‘wasters.’
After the death of Böttger in 1719 there follows an intermediate period, still in a measure experimental, during which the factory was under the charge of four