Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/655

DUTCH, SCANDINAVIAN.] strap-work, wreaths, grotesques, or human figures. _ A favourite design has reliefs of the twelve Apostles, little Cologne stone ware. FIG. 64. Stoneware jug or "greybeard" ; Flemish wave, early 17th century. (South Kensington, Museum.) more than an inch high, under flat architectural canopies ; a strong Gothic feeling in the treatment of such figures occurs on tankards made as late as the end of the 17th century. The coloured decoration of this ware is very brilliant ; the minute figures or ornaments are picked out in bright enamel colours red, green, blue, and yellow altogether producing a very striking but thoroughly unceramic effect. A quite plain stoneware, with surface slightly mottled with grey and brown, appears to have been one of the most esteemed varieties during the 16th century, judging from the beauty of the silver rims and lids with which wine -jugs of this kind were usually mounted. The mottling was produced by the brownish glaze running in the kiln into a granular surface, which formed a pleasant texture, something like that on an ostrich s egg. The best qualities were made at Cologne, and largely imported into England under the name of 5graffiato " Cologne " stoneware. A rude kind of sgraffiato ware ,vare. was a i so ma de in Germany and Holland during the 17th and 18th centuries. Coarse red-clay vessels were covered with a slip of white pipeclay, and rude figures, often of saints or kings, were scratched through the white down to the red body. The whole was then glazed with a yellowish lead glaze. Bottger, the first maker of Meissen porcelain, manufactured curious varieties of pottery at the beginning of the 18th century, especially Potter s mark. a ware like red jasper, which was so hard that ^ 0> it was cut and polished by the lapidary s wheel. It is usually marked with No. 18. Good collections of German pottery are in the museums of Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Lowenberg, Minden, and pri vate collections at Nuremberg ; the Kensington Museum has also a number of fine specimens. Holland. Holland, especially the town of Delft, 1 pro duced very large quantities of pottery covered with a fine white enamel. The early specimens date from the end of the 16th century. Much of this ware is very soft and plea sant in tone, and very decorative in effect, especially that in blue and white only. Designs of great variety occur, some copied from Persian or Chinese originals, others with Holland. See Havard, Faience de Delft, 1878. IVK No. 19. No. 20. Potters marks. 631 coats of arms surrounded by graceful borders, formed of medallions and wreaths. A clever arrangement of pea cocks feathers is a common and very effective motive, used especially for plates. Other sorts of very inferior artistic merit have paintings of flowers or human figures, coarsely executed in rather harsh colours yellow, green, and red mingled with the more har monious cobalt blues and man ganese purple. Many pieces of Delft ware are marked with maker s initials, as No. 19 or No. 20, probably two mem bers of the Kulick family, of about the middle of the 1 7th century. But little pottery of any real artistic value was produced in any Western country during the 18th century, with the exception of the commoner and cheaper sorts of wares, with little or no orna ment, which were still made after the old traditions. The fact is that the increasing introduction of Chinese and Japanese wares and the widely-spread manufacture of porcelain in the West gave the death-blow to the production of pottery designed and decorated after simple and natural methods. The enamelled pottery of the 18th century was mostly little better than a bad imitation of porce lain, a material which has a beauty quite its own, and requires forms and methods of decoration very different from those that are suited even to the most finely-enamelled earthenware. Literature. See Menaril van Hoorebeke, llecueildesAntiquites, 18G7; Weckber- lin, Vases en Gres des XVI e et XVII" Slides, I860 ; Jouveaux, Histoire de . . . Buttger, 1874. Sea ndinavian. The pottery of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden for the Scandi- most part resembles that of Germany. Sweden, especially navia - during the 1 8th century, was very active in the production of enamelled pottery, but little of it possesses any origin ality either in form or design. Perhaps the best variety is a ware made at Stockholm, covered with bluish white enamel, on which simple patterns are painted in white. The potteries of Marieberg and Rorstrand 2 also turned out large quantities, painted mostly with very weak designs ; some are imitations of Oriental wares, while other kinds are decorated in a realistic French style. SECTION XIV. ENGLISH FROM THE 16iH CENTURY. Little except the commonest sort of domestic pottery was made in England during the 16th century. The grey mottled stoneware described above, which was largely used for sack-jugs and tankards, appears to have been wholly a foreign import, mostly from Cologne. A common item in 16th-century inventories is "a stone jugge or pott, garnished with silver and double gylted." The silver- mounted lids were often added by English silver-workers, and are frequently very elaborately embossed and chased. It was not till quite the end of the century that certain Stone- Dutch potters started in London the making of stoneware. ware - This English-made ware is hardly to be distinguished from that of Cologne or Holland, as it was designed and manufactured in the foreign way. Large globular jugs, stamped in relief with a grotesque bearded face and other ornaments, were one of the favourite forms. Such were called " greybeards " or " bellarmines," from the unpopular cardinal of that name, of whom the bearded face was supposed to be a caricature (see fig. 64 above). Great numbers were made in the Low Countries and copied by the Dutch potters in London. In 1688 two German potters named Elers settled in Staffordshire, and there produced hard stoneware of very fine quality. Their pro cess, however, soon became known to other potters. The common wares of this time were mainly produced Stafford- in the Staffordshire potteries ; some were decorated in a sllire very rude but effective way by dropping fluid white slip through a quill on to the surface of vessels made of red

2 See C eramiques Suedoises du X III e Siecle, 1872.