PORCELAIN AND FAIENCE.
251
ment was removed to Sevres. The first success is said to date from 1768.
Hard and Soft Porcelain.
From 1753 to 1768, only lh.e pâte tendre, or soft porcelain, was made ; but, from that time, both the soft and the hard were made. About 1804, the production of the soft porcelain ceased, M. Brongniart, the director of the works, decking to give his attention wholly to the hard,—the pâle dure. Fut the use of the soft paste was resumed in 1847 by M. Ebelnian, he taking some of the old paste, which had rested undisturbed in covered tanks for forty-five years. The peculiarities of these two varieties of porcelain are described by Arnonx in his report on the pottery and porcelain at the Paris Exhibition of 1867, as follows :—
“ France furnishes the largest amount of hard porcelain, and it is there, also, that it is best manufactured. France, is highly favored tor its production from the quarries of kaolin which abound in the centre and south. This material suffices, without any addition, to constitute the body ; it is white, easy to work, and takes, in firing, a fine transparency. The glaze, which is fired at the same time as the paste, is also entirely composed from felspathic rocks, and Nitrifies on the surface by the sole intensity of the heat required in the filing. Such a product presents, after cooling, great consistency, aQ d the hardness of this glaze will defy the best tempered steel in- s hurnents. But defects arise from the very excess of these qualities. Phis hardness leaves little resource for decoration ; the fine colors foi grounds are banished, and the painting, unincorporated into the glaze, lies upon the surface and looks hard and unfinished. This is s ° thoroughly acknowledged that the Paris decorators now often liefer to paint upon French cream-color ware instead of porcelain.
. 4 The manufacture of soft porcelain has always been limited, for fij Is the most difficult of all pottery. Its inventors, persuaded that inese porcelain was a kind of glass, persisted in composing a _Paste of the same ingredients. Sand, lime, and some alkaline ma- ^lals were therefore vitrified in the proportion considered desirable £ 1Ve a white half-translucent substance. But, as after being Mound it had not the least plasticity, and could not be worked, 1 added as small a quantity as possible of the calcareous earth the plaster-quarries in the neighborhood of Paris, so as not ln Jure the whiteness or transparency. We cannot describe here