152 Josiak Wedgwood CHAP. 



abroad, and nearly every museum possesses specimens, 

 showing the state of the fictile art in England at that 

 period. 



The painted Etruscan ornaments were becoming 

 familiar to the public eye, as the large demands for 

 vases made them comparatively common, and as then- 

 sale began to decline, Wedgwood availed himself of his 

 large supply of artists to start a new manufacture. His 

 discovery of the Jasper porcelain enabled him to copy 

 another branch of ancient art that of modelling 

 Cameos, or heads, and artistic figures engraved in relief. 



Professor Church, in his admirable paper on Josiah 

 Wedgwood, in Hamerton's Portfolio for March 1894, 

 says that it was Wedgwood's " appreciation of antique 

 gems cut in onyx and niccolo that led him to invent 

 the most original and the most beautiful of all the 

 ceramic materials with which he worked. This was 

 the jasper body, or jasper paste. Though it may be 

 roughly described, when in its simplest form, as opaque 

 and white, its opacity ; and whiteness were susceptible 

 of considerable variation. Sometimes it has the dead- 

 ness of chalk, but the finer varieties possess the delicate 

 hue and faint translucency of ivory or vellum. Wedg- 

 wood and his artists took advantage of this translucent 

 character of the white jasper, as it allowed the colour 

 of the ground to appear in a slight degree through the 

 thinner parts of the cameo reliefs, and thus suggested, 

 as in some draperies, the idea of a fine and light texture. 

 On the other hand, there were many subjects and styles 



