The Black Hills union. [volume] (Rapid City, Pennington County, Dakota [S.D.]) 1889-1904, 1896-11-20

MUM oms
discreet, cheerfuI. ne bSrossT
with merchandise Heats beside il.
there Is no clutter q boots, no rumblo
of wheels moi clouds Of dust. The
movements Of life are slow and silent:
the neighboring steeple the
hour with a food of harmony. sweet
and constant as old custom and do
nestle affection"
The house will be exquisitely clean.
the door knobs polished as if but lately
from the shop, though Worn smooth by
two centuries of service; the staircase
dark with age, but with a surface that
reflects. Everywhere are quantities OF
china-jars and cups, plates and vases.
candlesticks and ewers. plaques and
urns and saltcellars. and along every
ledge and vertical strip of wall, against
a shining shelf, rows of plates. Pic
ture tiles about the mantel, panels, tiny
crockery stoves, all in the palest vel
low biscuit decorated in shaded blues.
the delight and despair of the collector
of Delft!
For here is a piece dated 1911, marked
Will JIG Auo61N AA1tSANL, SAC4C duOIQGT
with the elaborate sign of the Fortune
factory. In some recess, guarded like
the jade gem of a Chinese mandarin.
a ~polychrome violin case or tall jar by
Albrecht de Keller, who is famous for
his marvellous limitations of the Japan
csc. Or here is a plaque showing the
gateway of The Hague, with shipping
and Windmills and oriental a~rabesque-
RE OF borders-perhaps the very first
departure from limitations and the be-
ginning of the national school in this
center of the old Dutch school of paint
ing.
1t was Delft that subscribed one-sixth
OF the stock of the Dutch East India
company, and the good BOAT that rode
every sea-, the Devil of Delft, that
brought back in it's hold the blue a
mieu faience Of Corea, to ~corroborate
the tales of Marco Polo.
What a marvel that must have been
to the good burghers! They were a
commercial people. The opulence Of
the brewers of Delft had passed into a
proverb. Three hundred breweries
lined the delft. or ditch, as the canal
was called in the vernacular. Silver
and gold ratified in their ample pock-
cts. Their good beer deserved better
cups than the coarse, red underglaze
crockery made by Dutch Dotters.
The marvellous skill of the Corean.
the beautiful shape and luster sudden
! developed a hitherto unsupported
faculty. Every brewer became a con-
nolsseur In ceramics, the profits Of his
brewery went into experiments with
clays and glazes, his son, instead Of
going into the counting-house, mixed
colors, copied the Corean models on ma.
i've clay, fired and tried by fire.
Within fifty years the world wit
messed a transformation-the most
commercial city of Europe had become
the most artistic. Three hundred brew
cries, whose wealth was fabulous, had
Deen closed and thirty potteries grad
ually absorbed the accumulated wealth.
For pieces now worth $500 were then
worth a hundred Dutch sous. Educa-
ton IN art did not keep pace with tho
works of art. Holland was flooded
with pieces of exquisite shape and raw
lshlng colors at the price of common
crockery. One-third of all the 5000
men of Delft were at work in the pot
teries.
The first results. indeed, produced
but coarse, porous pottery, covered With
a heavy coating Of opaque enamel or
stanlterous (tin) glaze. Aside from it's
decorations this thick, pasty enamel
IS the chief characteristic. If a piece
OF the old Delft is broken, the thick
enamel will be seen to lie in the porous
underlayer in a flaky body. The earli-
est pieces were invariably ornamented
in blue. but later it appeared in poly
chrome decorations-in red, brown.
yellow, purple and green, blended after
the r u oriental method by laying on
the primary colors. Albrecht de Kei-
Ter was the most famous of all the
faience decorators in ~polychrome, but
even he preferred the blue camieu gen.
orally.
increasing Value OF Whalebone.