640 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1909. 
in the era of polished stone which followed this, art was first mani- 
fested solely in the form of ceramic objects. The forms of pre- 
historic pottery evidence an extraordinary artistic sense in their 
designers. In spite of our schools of fine arts we do not equal them 
to-day. Our designs, so complicated and generally so ungraceful, 
as a general rule are only poor derivations and consequently mere 
alterations of these prehistoric designs. But we need not believe 
that it was the lack of all decorative material that suppressed orna- 
mentation among primitive peoples. The plasticity of the clay 
itself pointed out the road to the first artists. The imprint of the 
potters’ fingers gave birth to the intaglio decoration, and in the cop- 
per age succeeding that of polished stone, we find designs engraved 
by means of a cord, or a bit of wood or bone, or with imprints of the 
leaves of ferns or other plants. 
After these engraved vases came the incrusted vases, with the in- 
taglio design filled up with a white or a colored clay, a process in 
-common use during the middle ages. The most beautiful of these 
specimens are the splendid faiences ascribed to Henry the Second, 
made at Saint-Porchaire (Charente-Inferieure) in the sixteenth 
century. 
However, besides this, we find in the neolithic age an ornamenta- 
tion made by gluing the bark of trees or small pieces of tin to the 
pot with a sort of pitch. During this long period, though civiliza- 
tion was more advanced than is generally realized, yet man was still 
in a half-savage state, and struggles between tribes were no doubt 
frequent. It is for this reason that the custom arose of building 
villages in the center of lakes to give better defense in case of attack. 
We have to-day proof that engraved ceramic ware was used for the 
decoration of the rude dwellings of these lacustrine villages. In 
the lake of Bourget (Savoy) have been found lining panels of graven 
clay still carrying the imprint of the wood partition to which they 
had been applied. At the same time were discovered the clay 
matrices which had been used to make certain of the intaglio im- 
prints observed on the panels. These precious objects are deposited 
in the Museum of Chambéry. 
Along with the graven and incrusted neolithic pottery we find 
also painted pottery, not painted with artificially prepared metallic 
colors, however, but with colored earths. This application of one 
earth to another to obtain an artistic effect was the beginning of the 
“engobe” which itself gave birth, many centuries later, to decoration 
with hard enamel, which we will now consider. 
What is known as “engobe” is a layer of one sort of clay applied 
over another clay to conceal its color and to furnish a surface capable 
of receiving certain decorations. In “engobing” a piece of pottery 
it is plunged quickly into a paste made of the engobe clay or it may 
