In the reign of the Emperor Justinian, a couple of Persian monks, on a religious mission to China, brought away with them a quantity of silkworms' eggs concealed in a piece of hollow cane, which they carried to Constantinople. There they hatched the eggs, reared the worms, and spun the silk,—for the first time introducing that manufacture into Europe, and destroying the close monopoly which China had hitherto enjoyed. From Constantinople the knowledge and the practice of the art gradually extended to Greece, thence to Italy, and next to Spain. Each country, as in turn it gained possession of the secret, strove to preserve it with jealous care; but to little purpose. A secret that so many thousands already shared in common, could not long remain so, although its passage to other countries might be for a time deferred. France and England were behind most of the other states of Europe in obtaining a knowledge of the "craft and mystery." The manufacture of silk did not take root in France till the reign of Francis I.; and was hardly known in England till the persecutions of the Duke of Parma in 1585 drove a great number of the manufacturers ofAntwerp to seek refuge in our land. James I. was very anxious to promote the breed of silkworms, and the production of silken fabrics. During his reign a great many mulberry-trees were planted in various parts of the country—among others, that celebrated one in Shakspeare's garden at Stratford-on-Avon—and an attempt was made to rear the worm in our country, which, however, the ungenial climate frustrated. Silk-throwsters, dyers, and weavers were brought over from the Continent; and the manufacture made such progress that, by 1629, the silk-throwsters of London were incorporated, and thirty years after employed no fewer than 40,000 hands. The emigration from France consequent on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes (1685) added not only to the numbers engaged in the trade, but to the taste, skill, and enterprise with which it was conducted. It is not easy to estimate how deeply France wounded herself by the iniquitous persecution of the Protestants, or how largely the emigrants repaid by their industry the shelter which Britain afforded them.
Although the manufacture had now become fairly naturalized in England, it was restricted by our ignorance of the first process to which the silk was subjected. Up till 1718, the whole of the silk used in England, for whatever purpose, was imported "thrown," that is, formed into threads of various kinds and twists. A young Englishman namedJohn Lombe, impressed with the idea that our dependence on other countries for a supply of thrown silk prevented us from reaping the full benefit of the manufacture, and from competing with foreign traders, conceived the project of visiting Italy, and discovering the secret of the operation. He accordingly went over to Piedmont in 1715, but found the difficulties greater than he had anticipated. He applied for admittance at several factories, but was told that an examination of the machinery was strictly prohibited. Not to be balked, he resolved, as a last resort, to try if he could accomplish by stratagem what he had failed to do openly. Disguising himself in the dress of a common labourer, he bribed a couple of the workmen connected with one of the factories, and with their connivance obtained access in secret to the works. His visits were few and short; but he made the best use of his time. He carefully examined the various parts of the machinery, ascertained the principle of its operation, and made himself completely master of the whole process of throwing. Each night before he went to bed he noted down everything he had seen, and drew sketches of parts of the machinery. This plot, however, was discovered by the Italians. He and his accomplices had to fly for their lives, and not without great difficulty escaped to a ship which conveyed them to England.
Lombe had not forgotten to carry off with himhis note-book, sketches, and a chest full of machinery, and on his return home lost no time in practising the art of "throwing" silk. On a swampy island in the river Derwent, at Derby, he built a magnificent mill, yet standing, called the "Old Silk Mill." Its erection occupied four years, and cost £30,000. It was five storeys in height, and an eighth of a mile in length. The grand machine numbered no fewer than 13,384 wheels. It was said that it could produce 318,504,960 yards of organzine silk thread daily; but the estimate is no doubt exaggerated.
While the mill was building, Lombe, in order to save time and earn money to carry on the works, opened a manufactory in the Town Hall of Derby. His machinery more than fulfilled his expectations, and enabled him to sell thrown silk at much lower prices than were charged by the Italians. A thriving trade was thus established, and England relieved from all dependence on other countries for "thrown" silk.
The Italians conceived a bitter hatred against Lombe for having broken in upon their monopoly and diminished their trade. In revenge, therefore, according to William Hutton, the historian of Derby, they "determinedhisdestruction, and hoped that of his works would follow." An Italian woman was despatched to corrupt her two countrymen who assisted Lombe in the management of the works. She obtained employment in the factory, and gainedover one of the Italians to her iniquitous design. They prepared a slow poison, and administered it in small doses to Lombe, who, after lingering three or four years in agony, died at the early age of twenty-nine. The Italian fled; the woman was seized and subjected to a close examination, but no definite proof could be elicited that Lombe had been poisoned. Lombe was buried in great state, as a mark of respect on the part of his townsmen. "He was," says Hutton, "a man of quiet deportment, who had brought a beneficial manufactory into the place, employed the poor, and at advanced wages,—and thus could not fail to meet with respect; and his melancholy end excited much sympathy."
In the Stocking Weavers' Hall, in Redcross Street, London, there used to hang a picture, representing a man in collegiate costume in the act of pointing to an iron stocking-frame, and addressing a woman busily knitting with needles by hand. Underneath the picture appeared the following inscription: "In the year 1589, the ingenious William Lee, A.M., of St. John's College, Cambridge, devised this profitable art for stockings (but, being despised, went to France), yet of iron to himself, but to us and to others of gold; in memory of whom this is here painted." As to who this William Lee was, and the way in which he came to invent the stocking-frame, there are conflicting stories, but the one most generally received and best authenticated is as follows:—
William Lee, a native of Woodborough, near Nottingham, was a fellow of one of the Cambridge Colleges. He fell in love with a young country lass, married her, and consequently forfeited his fellowship. A poor scholar, with much learning, but without money or the knowledge of any trade, he found himself in very embarrassed circumstances. Like many another "poor scholar," he might exclaim:—
"All the arts I have skill in,Divine and humane;Yet all's not worth a shilling;Alas! poor scholar, whither wilt thou go?"
"All the arts I have skill in,Divine and humane;Yet all's not worth a shilling;Alas! poor scholar, whither wilt thou go?"
His wife, however, was a very industrious woman, and by her knitting contributed to their joint support. It is said—but the story lacks authentic confirmation—that when Lee was courting her, she always appeared so much more occupied with her knitting than with the soft speeches he was whispering in her ear, that her lover thought of inventing a machine that would "facilitate and forward the operation of knitting," and so leave the object of his love more leisure to converse with him. "Love, indeed," says Beckmann, "is fertile in invention, and gave rise, it is said, to the art of painting; but a machine so complex in its parts, and so wonderful in its effects, would seem to require longer and greater reflection, more judgment, and more time and patience than could be expectedof a lover." But afterwards, when Lee, in his painfully enforced idleness, sat many a long hour watching his wife's nimble fingers toiling to support him, his mind again recurred to the idea of a machine that would give rest to her weary fingers. His cogitations resulted in the contrivance of a stocking-frame, which imitated the movements of the fingers in knitting.
WILLIAM LEE, THE INVENTOR OF THE STOCKING-FRAME.Page 226.
Although the invention of this loom gave a great impulse to the manufacture of silk stockings in England, and placed our productions in advance of those of other countries, Lee reaped but little profit from it. He met with neglect both from Queen Elizabeth and James I.; and, not succeeding as a manufacturer on his own account, went to France, where he did very well until after the assassination of Henri IV., when he shared the persecutions of the Protestants, and died in great distress in Paris.
Joseph Marie Jacquard, the inventor of the loom which bears his name, and to whom the extent and prosperity of the silk manufacture of our time is mainly due, was born at Lyons in 1752, of humble parents, both of whom were weavers. His father taught him to ply the shuttle; but for education of any other sort, he was left to his own devices. He managed to pick up some knowledge of reading and writing for himself; but his favourite occupationwas the construction of little models of houses, towers, articles of furniture, and so on, which he executed with much taste and accuracy. On being apprenticed to a type-founder, he exhibited his aptitude for mechanical contrivances by inventing a number of improved tools for the use of the workmen. On his father's death he set up as a manufacturer of figured fabrics; but although a skilful workman, he was a bad manager, and the end of the undertaking was, that he had to sell his looms to pay his debts. He married, but did not receive the dowry with his wife which he expected, and to support his family had to sell the house his father had left him,—the last remnant of his little heritage. The invention of numerous ingenious machines for weaving, type-founding, &c., proved the activity of his genius, but produced not a farthing for the maintenance of his wife and child. He took service with a lime-maker at Brest, while his wife made and sold straw hats in a little shop at Lyons. He solaced himself for the drudgery of his labours by spending his leisure in the study of machines for figure-weaving. The idea of the beautiful apparatus which he afterwards perfected began to dawn on him, but for the time it was driven out of his mind by the stirring transactions of the time. The whirlwind of the Revolution was sweeping through the land. Jacquard ardently embraced the cause of the people, took part in the gallant defence of Lyons in 1793, fled for hislife on the reduction of the city, and with his son—a lad of sixteen—joined the army of the Rhine. His boy fell by his side on the field of battle, and Jacquard, destitute and broken-hearted, returned to Lyons. His house had been burned down; his wife was nowhere to be heard of. At length he discovered her in a miserable garret, earning a bare subsistence by plaiting straw. For want of other employment he shared her labours, till Lyons began to rise from its ruins, to recover its scattered population, and revive its industry. Jacquard applied himself with renewed energy to the completion of the machine of which he had, before the Revolution, conceived the idea; exhibited it at the National Exposition of the Products of Industry in 1801; and obtained a bronze medal and a ten years' patent.
During the peace of Amiens, Jacquard happened to take up a newspaper in acabaretwhich he frequented, and his eye fell on a translated extract from an English journal, stating that a prize was offered by a society in London for the construction of a machine for weaving nets. As a mere amusement he turned his thoughts to the subject, contrived a number of models, and at last solved the problem. He made a machine and wove a little net with it. One day he met a friend who had read the paragraph from the English paper. Jacquard drew the net from his pocket saying, "Oh! I've got over the difficulty! see, there is a net I've made." After thathe took no more thought about the matter, and had quite forgotten it, when he was startled by a summons to appear at the Prefectal Palace. The prefect received him very kindly, and expressed his astonishment that his mechanical genius should so long have remained in obscurity. Jacquard could not imagine how the prefect had discovered his mechanical experiments, and began vaguely to dread that he had got into some shocking scrape. He stammered out a sort of apology. The prefect was surprised he should deny his own talent, and said he had been informed that he had invented a machine for weaving nets. Jacquard owned that he had.
"Well, then, you're the right man, after all," said the prefect. "I have orders from the emperor to send the machine to Paris."
"Yes, but you must give me time to make it," replied Jacquard.
In a week or two Jacquard again presented himself at the palace with his machine and a half manufactured net. The prefect was eager to see how it worked.
"Count the number of loops in that net," said Jacquard, "and then strike the bar with your foot."
The prefect did so, and was surprised and delighted to see another loop added to the number.
"Capital!" cried he. "I have his majesty's orders, M. Jacquard, to send you and your machine to Paris."
"To Paris! How can that be? How can I leave my business here?"
"There is no help for it; and not only must you go to Paris, but you must start at once, without an hour's delay."
"If it must be, it must. I will go home and pack up a little bundle, and tell my wife about my journey, I shall be ready to start to-morrow."
"To-morrow won't do; you must go to-day. A carriage is waiting to take you to Paris; and you must not go home. I will send to your house for any things you want, and convey any message to your wife. I will provide you with money for the journey."
There was no help for it, so Jacquard got into the carriage, along with a gendarme who was to take charge of him, and wondered, all the way to Paris, what it all meant. On reaching the capital he was taken before Napoleon, who received him in a very condescending manner. Carnot, who was also present, could not at first comprehend the machine, and turning to the inventor, exclaimed roughly, "What, do you pretend to do what is beyond the power of man? Can you tie a knot in a stretched string?" Jacquard, not at all disconcerted, explained the construction of his machine so simply and clearly, as to convince the incredulous minister that it accomplished what he had hitherto deemed an impossibility.
Jacquard was now employed in the Conservatory of Arts and Manufactures to repair and keep in orderthe models and machines. At this time a magnificent shawl was being woven in one of the government works for the Empress Josephine. Very costly and complicated machinery was employed, and nearly £1000 had already been spent on it. It appeared to Jacquard that the shawl might be manufactured in a much simpler and less expensive manner. He thought that the principle of a machine of Vaucousin's might be applied to the operation, but found it too complex and slow. He brooded over the subject, made a great many experiments, and at last succeeded in contriving an improved apparatus.
He returned to Lyons to superintend the introduction of his machine for figure-weaving and the manufacture of nets. The former invention was purchased for the use of the people, and was brought into use very slowly. The weavers of Lyons denounced Jacquard as the enemy of the people, who was striving to destroy their trade, and starve themselves and families, and used every effort to prevent the introduction of his machine. They wilfully spoiled their work in order to bring the new process into discredit. The machine was ordered to be destroyed in one of the public squares. It was broken to pieces,—the iron-work was sold for old metal, and the wood-work for faggots. Jacquard himself had on one occasion to be rescued from the hands of a mob who were going to throw him into the Rhone.
Before Jacquard's death in 1835, his apparatus had not only made its way into every manufactory in France, but was used in England, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, and America. Even the Chinese condescended to avail themselves of this invention of a "barbarian."
Jacquard's apparatus is, strictly speaking, not a loom, but an appendage to one. It is intended to elevate or depress, by bars, the warp threads for the reception of the shuttle, the patterns being regulated by means of bands of punched cards acting on needles with loops and eyes. At first applied to silk weaving only, the use of this machine has since been extended to the bobbin net, carpets, and other fancy manufactures. By its agency the richest and most complex designs, which could formerly be achieved only by the most skilful labourers, with a painful degree of labour, and at an exorbitant cost, are now produced with facility by the most ordinary workmen, and at the most moderate price.
Of late years the silk manufacture has greatly improved, both in character and extent. The products of British looms exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1862 vied with those of the Continent. Every year upwards of £2,300,000 worth of silk is brought to England; and the silk manufacture engages some £55,000,000 of capital, and employs eleven to twelve hundred thousand of our population.
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 coarse 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 manufacturedwith the coarse 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 quantity of soft moist clay, and turning the wheel with his foot, moulds the said paste with both hands, until it assumes the desired shape. You can imagine no prettier spectacle than that of a skilful potter causing the clay, under his nimble fingers, to assume 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 class of soft and lustrous potteries which are no longer manufactured. The Etruscan vases are the most remarkable specimens of the ancient potter's art; pure, simple, and elegantin form, they cannot be surpassed by any efforts of the modern potter. The paste of which they are made is very fine and homogeneous, coated with a peculiar glassy lustre, 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 320B.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 Assyrians, 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, orazulejos, which contribute so much to the beauty of the Alhambra, were introduced into Spain by the Moors about 711A.D.In Italy, it is supposed, they were made known as early as the conquest of Majorca by the Pisans, in 1115A.D.But Brongniart places their introduction three centuries later, or in 1415, and says this peculiar kind of ware was calledMajolica, 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.
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 noble, 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 glass. 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 ofenamelling 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 God had gifted me with some knowledge of drawing, and I took courage in my heart, and besought him to give me wisdom and skill."
PALISSY THE POTTER.Page 242.
He lost no time in commencing his experiments. He bought a quantity 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 besacrificed. "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 passed 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 wasno 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. "God willed," he says, "that when I had begun to lose my courage, and was gone for the last time to a glass-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, burstinto 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 faggots are cast on the fire. The night falls, and the sun rises on the third dayof 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 scrap 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 assist 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 thanallow 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 nobleman, as well as of the king. He now found profitable employment for himself and food for his family. "During the space 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 God, 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 assembling 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 massacre 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.
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 assistance and enlarge his establishment. The pottery manufactures of this country were then in a very primitive condition. Only the coarsest sort of articles were made, and any attempt to give elegance to the designs was very rare indeed. All the more ornamental and finer class of goods came from the Continent. Wedgwood saw no reason whywe 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 coarseness 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 humblestof 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 passion 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 passed 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 title 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 theDuchess 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 duchess 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 Canal 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 in1795, 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.
It is a twofold memorial: a bronze statue at Stoke-upon-Trent, and a memorial institute, erected close to the birth-place of the Great Potter at Burslem. The foundation-stone was laid on the 26th of October by the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, M.P., then Chancellor of the Exchequer, in the presence of a very large and enthusiastic assemblage. The Chancellor delivered a public address, which in eloquent terms did homage to Wedgwood's great mental qualities and his services to his country.
He described as his most signal and characteristic merit, the firmness and fulness of his perception of the true law of what we term industrial art, or, in other words, of the application of the higher art to industry—the law which teaches us to aim first at giving to every object the greatest possible degree of fitness and convenience for its purpose, and next at making it the article of the highest degree of beauty, which compatibly with that fitness and convenience it will bear—which does not substitute the secondary for the primary end, but recognizes as part of the business the study to harmonize the two.
Mr. Gladstone observed, that to have a strong grasp of this principle, and to work it out to its results in the details of a vast and varied manufacture, was a praise high enough for any man, at any time and in any place. But he thought it was higher and more peculiar in the case of Wedgwood than it could be in almost any other case. For that truth of art which he saw so clearly, and which lies at the root of excellence, is one of which England, his country, has not usually had a perception at all corresponding in strength and fulness with her other rare endowments. She has long taken a lead among the European nations for the cheapness of her manufactures, not so for their beauty. And if the day should arrive when she shall be as eminent for purity of taste as she is now for economy of production, the result will probably be due to no other single man in so remarkable a degree as to Josiah Wedgwood.
We conclude with a lively extract from the Chancellor's exhaustive and interesting address:—
"Wedgwood," he says, "in his pursuit of beauty, did not overlook exchangeable value or practical usefulness. The first he could not overlook, for he had to live by his trade; and it was by the profit derived from the extended sale of his humbler productions that he was enabled to bear the risks and charges of his higher works. Commerce did for himwhat the King of France did for Sèvres, and the Duke of Cumberland for Chelsea, it found him in funds. And I would venture to say that the lower works of Wedgwood are every whit as much distinguished by the fineness and accuracy of their adaptation to their uses as his higher ones by their successful exhibition of the finest arts. Take, for instance, his common plates, of the value of, I know not how few, but certainly of a very few pence each. They fit one another as closely as cards in a pack. At least, I for one have never seen plates that fit like the plates of Wedgwood, and become one solid mass. Such accuracy of form must, I apprehend, render them much more safe in carriage....
"Again, take such a jug as he would manufacture for the wash-stand table of a garret. I have seen these made apparently of the commonest material used in the trade. But instead of being built up, like the usual and much more fashionable jugs of modern manufacture, in such a shape that a crane could not easily get his neck to bend into them, and the water can hardly be poured out without risk of spraining the wrist, they are constructed in a simple capacious form, of flowing curves, broad at the top, and so well poised that a slight and easy movement of the hand discharges the water. A round cheese-holder or dish, again, generally presents in its upper part a flat space surrounded by a curved rim; but the cheese-holder of Wedgwood will make itself knownby this—that the flat is so dead a flat, and the curve so marked and bold a curve; thus at once furnishing the eye with a line agreeable and well-defined, and affording the utmost available space for the cheese. I feel persuaded that a Wiltshire cheese, if it could speak, would declare itself more comfortable in a dish of Wedgwood's than in any other dish."
The worthiest successor to Wedgwood whom England has known was the late Herbert Minton, who was scarcely less distinguished than his predecessor for perseverance, patient effort, and artistic sentiment. We owe to him in a great measure the revival of the elegant art of manufacturing encaustic tiles.
The principal varieties of ceramic ware now in use are:—1. Porcelain, which is composed, in England, of sand, calcined bones, china-clay, and potash; and, at Dresden, of kaolin, felspar, and broken biscuit-porcelain; 2. Parian, which is used in a liquid state, and poured into plaster-of-paris moulds; 3. Earthenware, theFayenceof the Italians, and theDelftof the Dutch, made of various kinds of clay, with a mixture of powdered calcined flint; and, 4. Stoneware, composed of several kinds of plastic clay, mixed with felspar and sand, and occasionally a little lime.
It is estimated that our English potteries not onlysupply the demand of the United Kingdom, but export ware to the value of nearly a million and a half annually. The establishments are about 190 in number; employ 75,000 to 80,000 operatives; and export 90,000,000 pieces.