CERAMIC ARTS—GENERAL SURVEY.
223
grotesque daubs which have so long seemed inseparable from all low-priced decorated ware.
Photography also is now tributary to the decoration of porcelain. The beautiful examples exhibited by Julius Leith, of Vienna, may here be specially referred to. A series of plates were ornamented by photographs, apparently from life, as perfect as upon paper, and seemingly so well fixed on or under the glaze as not to be liable to injury by use. When we think upon what has been accomplished by the Woodworth process of relief printing from photographs, it seems more than probable that transfers in indelible colors of such pictures may be made upon porcelain at no greater cost than for ordinary crude engravings. All that appears to be necessary is to have a very fine metallic pigment and a surface sufficiently smooth to receive the most delicate films when transferred from the relief plate to a suitable paper, which can be impressed upon the porcelain, and then removed with water and friction, leaving the ink adhering to the w T are, exactly as is now practised with copperplate engravings.
Pottery in the United States.
For the manufacture of pottery in the United States there is no lack of the best materials. Not only are extensive deposits of clay already known and worked, but it is probable that when attention is more generally given to the subject, other deposits will be brought to light.
The art in America is of extreme antiquity amongst the aboriginal tribes, especially in"Mexico, Central America, and in the western part of the United States. At the Delaware V r ater Gap specimens of cups, of good form and rudely decorated, have been washed out, with stone implements.* The °iay images of Mexico and the remarkable pottery of Peru are well known. It is important to note that in these exam- PK as in the ancient pottery of Arizona and Mexico, great attention was given to decoration, tti the early attempts at the manufacture of porcelain in
by p 1(5 Vesse ^ s found in the ancient mounds of the Mississippi Valley arc considered ' 1 ofessor Cox to be formed of a calcareous cement, and not of burned clay,
y are not, therefore, pottery in the usual sense of the word.