Year: 1861

as Others do of old pictures. Horace Walpole
and the people Of our great-grand- mothers time
did so and now, when the news of the e'loot-
ing" or plundering of the Emperor of China's
palace at Pekin, has lately arrived, curiosity
hunters are anxiously expecting the arrival of
specimens of the famous 'egg-shell china" of
which not a single particle has been allowed
to leave the imperial capital for the last two
hundred years.


Why are all our cups and saucers called
china ?" Because the first specimens of the
manufacture came from that country. 1t is
also called porcelain" because the word par
eellana in Portuguese means little cup, and
the first traders in the article came from Por-
tugal. The first china-ware brought 10 Eng
land was in Portuguese ship taken as prize
in 1902.


In manufacture :. the workman takes a
certain stone called fedspar, breaks it up.
washes it, and preserves the finest portion,
which, sinking to the bottom of the water,
forms hard, white mass that can be reduced
to fine powder. This is mixed with water
till it is like thick cream. Then pieces of flint
which are very hard. are burnt in great kiln
fire, thrown red-hot into cold water and after
ward ground fine. Next, the flint and the clay
mixtures are brought together, when they form
q sort of mortar or dough.


This dough is now trampled on by men, with
naked feet, to squeeze out the air bubbles. 1t
is afterward placed in damp cellar to ferment,
and thus get rid of any animal or vegetable
matter it may contain. The longer it is kept
the better the clay is, The Chinese keep it
over fifteen or twenty years, and a parent will
often provide sufficient stock for his sons
life.


Most pieces of machinery become improved
and altered in course of time but the potters'
wheel is much the same now in 1861 as it is
known to have been nineteen hundred years
before Christ. This potters wheel is small
circular board made to revolve very rapidly,
and on this the clay is measured, and its in
tended shape given to it by the pressure of the
fingers and palms of the potters' hands In
the catacombs of Thebes in Egypt, which are
proved to have existed more than three thous-
and seven hundred years, there have been dis
covered paintings representing various processes
of the potters' art, and among them delinea-
tion of potters' wheel, exactly like those now
in use. When the clay wheel is moulded, it is
partially dried, smoothed on turning lathe,
and fitted with spouts, handles, etc.-those ir-
soped pieces being cast in mold
then they are all baked hard in great fierce
oven.


But when they leave the oven they look
dull, and some ladies buy them in this state
(called "biscuit ware" because they resemble
ships biscuit) and paint their own designs or
patterns on them. The painting is done with
peculiar metallic colors which are afterward
burnt in.


The exquisite group of flowers often found
on china ware is painted by an artist who
makes it bis sole business to decorate china


The gold round the edges is laid on in the
metallic leaf, then burned in, and FURNISHED by
rubbing it with very smooth tool.


After painting the vessels, they are glazed
by being dipped in mixture of lead and
ground nints, which looks like cream When
taken out of this mixture the paintings are
quite covered by it, it is SO thick but on being
fired in an oven the heat converts the pasty-
looking covering into a thin coating of glass


Although the Chinese made the first china,
their manufactures are neither as elegant nor
useful as those of America and England. But
they are more curious. They ornament their
porcelain in very queer style and the division
of labor being great among them, and carried
even into their designs, different workmen,
any concert or plan, paint successive
parts of the same group or picture which con-
tributes to the grotesque effect of their work,
They are also ignorant of perspective SO that
you see the strangest effects in what they call
landscapes. They make besides common china
several others-a black kind much esteemed
in the East; kind which appears as though
it were cracked all over one in which the
colors show only when the vessel is filed with
liquid and still another variety, in which va
rious figures appear raised on pure white por-
ceain, and yet the surface is smooth. They
have even built tower at Nankin which is
nearly three hundred feet high, and entirely
covered with porcelain tiles, which look as
when they were first put on four hundred years
ago.


The first attempts to make porcelain in Eu-
rope was by the Moors in Spain-then a ware
called "majohea" was made at Majorca, from
whence the manufacturer was removed to Italy.
About the middle of the sixteenth century,
Bernard Palsy, Protestant, after many tri-
ais, produced beautiful enamel glazed vase.
Palissys life which you should all read, is very
and shows what patience and per-
severance will accomplish. In the seventeenth
century iD England, there was only common
earthen-ware, but two German brothers of the
name Of Ellers discovered a superior clay, and
after this gentleman named Ashbury, who
was engaged in the manufacture, having occa-
sion to employ some calcined fints as poul-


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