The Anderson intelligencer. [volume] (Anderson Court House, S.C.) 1860-1914, 1889-04-11
The Natural History of Dinner Plate.
BY CHARLES BARNARD.

Some people have wondered how Eve
managed about dinner. What did she
do about the soup, and changing the
things for the second couraei The des.
sert was probably easy enough: some
fruit-cherries on the stone, strawberries
on big leaf, or some apples piled on the
grass, with a drink of spring water in a
gourd or a fresh.water mussel.shell.
Clam shells for plates could not be used,
because she spent THAT summerin in q garden,
and had not, at the time, been near any
seaside watering place. That came later,
after the family moved away.
Eating dinner is one ofthe oldest insti-
tutions in the world. The man who
invented ,dinner must have been quite a
remarkably man-no, person-it may
have been q woman, because dinner
means plates on which to eat it. Unfor.
tunately the records are all lost. and we
must fall back on scientific guessing.
Did you ever plant any seeds of the orna.
mental gourd? They are curious vines,
belonging to the cucumber family, bear
ing fruit that, when ripe, is very hard
and dry. By taking the seeds out the
miniature pumpkins can be used for
cups or pots. No doubt the first men
used caves and trees for houses, and ate
such wild fruits as they could find in
the woods, and the flesh of such wild
animals as they could manage to kill
with sticks and stones. They probably
knew about the wild gourd, and used it
for drinking cup, or, cut in two, for a
dinner plate. They also used it after
ward for pot in which to boil water
and make the prehistoric soup. How do
we know? We don't know. We can
only guess they did, because many Of our
pots and water bottles to-day, and all OF
those we have found in ancient tombs,
do suggest gourd. have Japanese
water.bottle on my table every day that ia
the 7ery image ofa gourd.
When these old cave dRellers began
to use gourds for soup pots they found
that when the bottom of the gourd is
smeared with clay it lasts much longer.
The eourd, unless very full of water,
would crack and burn. The clay hard,
ened in the fire and protected the gourd.
In time some bright cook found that il
the gourd burned out inside the clay. the
clay itself would keep the shape OF the
gourd, and thus the first clay pot was
born. Not invented, you see, but stum-
hled upon after millions of gourds had
been burned up and countless dinners
ruined. People used to think slow in
the old days, and it may have taken
thousands Of years to go from the plain
gourd to the clay soup pot modelled after
gourd.
Clam and oyster shells also furnished
plates for the early eaters of fish dinners.
This suggested another form, and to-day
many of our table sets of china contain
vessels plainly copied after bivalve shells.
Our word porcelain is from a Portu.
gueBe word, porcellana, which means a
fine white shell; and, while this does not
prove that porcelain plates were copied
from shells, it is curious, because the frat
plates were really sea shells.
Hold up china plate by one edge
before the window. See how translucent
it is. Tap it, and it rings clear like a
bell. 1t is clean, hard, beautifully smooth
and polished, and is not affected by hot
or cold water, and can only be destroyed
by powerful acids. See how light it is,
and yet how very cheap. Less than
three hundred years and porcelain was
hardly known ia Europe, aud was worth
its weight in gold. Wooden dinner
plates were everyday ware, with perhaps
silver dish for Sunday, ii you could
afford it. A million years may lie be-
tween the gourd split in half, or tbs clam
shell, and modern dinner plates. Things
grew slow in the old days, and thousands
Of years may have passed before men
began to search for clays in bogs and
river beds in the hope of finding pure
white clay. The first pots and plates
we're brick.red. A white dish cost years
of search, study, trial and experiment.
Only slow, patient people, like the
Chinese, could or would spend the time
and labor to find out how to make q
porcelain dinner plate. Only an exceed
ingly neat and careful people would take
the trouble to have white plates on their
tables. When, early in the fifteenth
century, pieces of porcelain ware began
10 come from China, they attracted a
great deal of attention, and many people
tried to find out the secret of their man.
ufacture. Men of science, artists, and
earnest workers in many trades spent
their lives in trying to make such a
simple thing as white china plate, and
to make it cheap. The old Egyptians
knew something about it, and could
make it in small way. Only within a
very few years has it been manufactured
on large scale, and sold SO cheap that the
house mother need not break her heart
every time the cook breaks a dinner
plate.
Clay is an earth. 1t came, as did the
soil under our feet, and all the sand on
the shore, from the rocks. Heat and
cold, the rain, wind and ice, ever wear
the rocks away, breaking and grinding
them up into small stones and gravel.
These in turn are swept away by brooke
and rivers, and rolled over and over
until they are ground up into sand, OF
the fine soft silt OF mud we call clay.
Now, clay has two curious properties.
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