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EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
CERAMIC ART AT THE VIENNA EXPOSITION.
By WILLIAM P. BLAKE.
I. General Survey.
The potter’s art, one of the most ancient and the most universal of all, connects itself on the one hand with geology and chemistry, and on the other with painting and sculpture. It is the outgrowth of one of the primal necessities of man’s existence,—the preparation and distribution of food,'—and is thus intimately identified with domestic and social life. Its productions, though so fragile, are perhaps the most enduring of man’s handiwork. The objects that have outlived history are to be viewed not only as specimens of the condition of the art at the time of their production, but as exponents of the habits, the domestic life, and the aesthetics of races long since passed away. There is no other material which can be so readily impressed with the conception of the artist as "clay in the hands of the potter.”
Progress and Capacity of the Art.
Such an art should progress measurably in the same ratio as civilization. That it has so progressed is evident to all who saw its representation in the halls of the great Exhibition at Vienna in 1873. The most general and striking im- pression produced by a systematic surve}^ of what was shown there, was the vitality of the art and the high degree of excellence it has reached, not only in one or two countries, but in many. The rapid progress in the manufacture of porcelain and earthenware in several countries since the commencement of the era of industrial exhibitions, shows the capacity of the art for development in any country. Excellence is by no means confined to any section or to any special