252
EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
all the difficulties that the manipulation of such a mixture presented. It could neither be thrown nor pressed into moulds in the ordinary wa}'; and the shapes were got by casting it in thick plaster moulds, and carefully turning and pushing it by hand afterwards. Moreover, as in the process of firing this porcelain, so property called pate tendre , the pieces were veiy apt to sink and lose their shape, the way of propping them was of the utmost importance ; but when the biscuit stage was safely attained, the rest was comparatively eas}\ From its composition, this biscuit had the greatest affinity for combination with the vitreous mixture forming the glaze, and the result was that this glaze, not being hardened by the biscuit on which it had been melted, retained all its softness and so thoroughly incorporated the colors of the painting that, after firing, they looked sunk into it. An equal advantage w r as, that the alkaline nature of the biscuit and the low temperature required enabled those soft and beautiful ground-colors to be used which are not to be met with on any other pottery : the green, made from copper of an unequalled transparency ; the turquoise, so attractive to the eye that a single piece placed in a room seemed to take all the light to itself; the bleu-de- roi, so well named from its richness ; and that warm, delicate color, the rose du Barry. We purposely mentioned the low heat required to incorporate the colors with the glaze, because the experienced potter knows their richness decreases with the rise of temperature, and this is the reason wiry, for grounds in hard porcelain, hardly more than two colors can be depended on,—the blue from cobalt, and the opaque, heav}’-looking green, from chrome.”
A large number of vases in hard porcelain, of Sevres manufacture, were exhibited in 1867, and M. Arnoux said ot them that the forms recently adopted were less beautiful than in 1851 and 1855, when Messrs. Dieterle and Klagmann gW e their assistance to the establishment. Among the best weie a large vase from Dieterle, the figures painted by M. Rousseb with the decorations by M. Avise, and all those executed by M. Barry at.
Sevres pate-sur-pate.
And of that variety of hard porcelain known as pdte-sW' pate (paste upon paste) to which great attention has been given at Sevres, Mr. Arnoux observes :
" The name of pate-sur-pate explains sufficiently the p roC ess, which consists iu staining the body of the hard p 0ice