POTTERY, PORCELAIN

(Eng. and Fr.; Steingut , Porzellan , Germ.) The French, who are fond of giving far-fetched names to the most ordinary things, have dignified the art of pottery with the title of ceramique , from the Greek noun κεραμος, an earthen pot, compounded of two words which signify, in that language, burned clay . In reference to chemical constitution, there are only two genera of baked stoneware. The first consists of a fusible earthy mixture, along with an infusible, which when combined are susceptible of becoming semi-vitrified and translucent in the kiln. This constitutes porcelain or china-ware; which is either hard and genuine, or tender and spurious, according to the quality and quantity of the fusible ingredient. The second kind consists of an infusible mixture of earths, which is refractory in the kiln, and continues opaque. This is pottery, properly so called; but it comprehends several sub-species, which graduate into each other by imperceptible shades of difference. To this head belong earthenware, stoneware, flint ware, fayence , delftware, iron-stone china, . The earliest attempts to make a compact stoneware, with a painted glaze, seem to have originated with the Arabians in Spain, about the 9th century, and to have pa ed thence into Majorca, in which island they were carried on with no little succe . In the 14th century, these articles, and the art of imitating them, were highly prized by the Italians, under the name of Majolica, and porcelana , from the Portuguese word for a cup. The first fabric of stoneware po e ed by them, was erected at Fayenza, in the ecclesiastical state, whence the French term fayence is derived. The body of the ware was usually a red clay, and the glaze was opaque, being formed of the oxides of lead and tin, along with potash and sand. Bernhard de Palli y, about the middle of the 16th century, manufactured the first white fayence , at Saintes, in France; and not long afterwards the Dutch produced a similar article, of substantial make, under the name of delftware, and delft porcelain , but destitute of those graceful forms and paintings for which the ware of Fayenza was distinguished. Common fayence may be, therefore, regarded as a strong, well-burned, but rather coarse-grained kind of stoneware. It was in the 17th century that a small work for making earthenware of a coarse description, coated with a common lead glaze, was formed at Burslem, in Staff ords hire, which may be considered as the germ of the vast potteries now established in that county. The manufacture was improved about the year 1690, by two Dutchmen, the brothers Elers, who introduced the mode of glazing ware by the vapour of salt, which they threw by handfuls at a certain period among the ignited goods in the kiln. But these were rude, unscientific, and desultory efforts. It is to the late Josiah Wedge wood, Esq. that this country and the world at large are mainly indebted for the great modern advancement of the ceramic art. It was he who first erected magnificent factories, where every resource of mechanical and chemical science was made to co-operate with the arts of painting, sculpture, and statuary, in perfecting this valuable department of the industry of nations. So sound were his principles, so judicious his plans of procedure, and so ably have they been prosecuted by his succe ors in Staff ords hire, that a population of 60,000 operatives now derives a comfortable subsistence within a district formerly bleak and barren, of 8 miles long, by 6 broad, which contains 150 kilns, and is significantly called the Potteries.