IDENTIFICATION OF THE ARTISAN AND ARTIST. 317 



they were made by the potter, and not by a fine artist only. This 

 has been fully proved. It used to be thought at one time that they were 

 all funereal, or of symbolical use, being found almost entirely in tombs ; 

 but it has been proved that the greater part of them were for the common 

 domestic purposes of the table and the household; that some, indeed, 

 were given as prizes at the games, tilled v;ith oil; others were marriage 

 presents, kept with more care in houses, but still they were the work of 

 the potter, and must have been ijroduced entirely by hand. Pottery 

 was so much considered as a branch of art, that in early Eome, in the 

 time of Numa, there was a college of potters ; they were ennobled by 

 being made a s^jecial guild. Any one who went through the exhibition 

 must have been particularly struck with the elegance of forms which 

 prevailed in all the Indian and also in the Turkish pottery; and the 

 common vessels, used to carry water on the head by the peasantry of 

 Italy and Spain, have the same elegance of form which very little of our 

 china, or of our finest pottery, can exhibit ; and the question naturally 

 suggests itself, how is this, that in many countries there should be such 

 beautifal productions, and at the same time that we should not be able 

 to give the same beauty of form? The answer to this is given, I think, 

 very correctly by Mr. Digby Wyatt, in his beautiful work on the late 

 exhibition. He observes that "there can be no doubt that the reason 

 of this beauty in the old pottery and in that of the East is, that it is made 

 entirehi J)y the tcorlxman himself.'^ There can be little doubt that the most 

 beautiful forms of Greek and Etruscan vases have been generated by a 

 simple process of formation, and by the refiued delicacy of touch acquired 

 by the potter during years of practice. The perfect outline of some of 

 the commonest objects of pottery from India, Tunis, Turkey, and the 

 rest, demonstrate the methods by which contours equal in grace to the 

 Etrurian and those of Magna Graecia have been produced. In the finer 

 work of pottery among us, a distinct person is employed to design from 

 him who makes the object ; the one makes the pattern, and a mold 

 is then made of the same figure as is given. But in the ancient and 

 oriental objects, the beauty of form is attributed to the art deing literally 

 in the potter'' s fingers ; and he acquires by the maniiuilation a fineness of 

 touch, a delicacy of eye, which enables him to produce beautiful forms, 

 which no one in the abstract could imagine." This is corroborated by the 

 fact that in the British Museum, in the great gallery where the Etruscan 

 vases are kept, you will find two — aw^ if you search the Vatican and 

 Bourbon Museum, and all the collections in Europe, you will not find 

 two — perfectly alike ; there is a difference in them, which shows they 

 were not produced by a model, but simply out of hand ; and I have no 

 doubt that the influence of this working in clay without a pattern is to 

 be traced in all the works in metal and in glass of the ancients; because, 

 no doubt, the eye of the mau who worked in bronze had been formed 

 by his familiarity with the beautiful patterns which came forth every 

 day from the hands of the workmen in clay. I find, too, it is mentioned 



