CERAMICS. 455 



prepared paste, very much like porcelain, and, like it, receives a 

 transparent glazing. The fragment is white or yellow, close, hard, 

 opaque, and of earthy fracture. Faience^ in Japan, as with us, 

 plays a large part in art pottery. The celebrated Satsuma wares, 

 Awata-yaki, Awaji, Ota crockery, and other kinds belong to this 

 group of pottery. As they are not exposed to so great a heat 

 as porcelain, they offer a wide field for artistic polychrome 

 decoration. 



The second large division of ceramic productions embraces the 

 hard, compact clay-wares. In burning they are subjected to such 

 great heat that the clay mass is thereby fused or verfrittet'^ with- 

 out being smelted. In cooling it becomes so hard that it cannot 

 be scratched with a knife, and has a clear sound. The fragments 

 show a smooth, conchoidal fracture. The confused mass of small 

 crystalline needles, which may be seen with a microscope on the 

 glazed crack, or the embedding of such needles in the amorphous, 

 glassy mass is so close, that the article, even without glazing, 

 would be impervious to water. Porcelain, stone-ware, and jasper 

 or Wedgewood-ware, belong to the dense, hard clay-ware. 



Stone-ware (see note) is made of ordinary material, and with less 

 care than porcelain. It is greyish white, often yellow, red, and 

 brown, even to black in colour, dense, highly vitrified, hard and 

 resonant and transparent only at the edges. The glaze is a 

 genuine glass, and is usually produced in the furnace by allow- 

 ing the steam of the salt to operate upon the hot earthenware, 

 whereby the muriatic acid thus engendered escapes. Germany 

 was especially distinguished among European countries in the i6th 

 century for its stone-ware or flint-ware industry. The towns of 

 Hohr and Grenzhausen in the " Kannenbackerland," near Monta- 

 baur, still carry on the industry extensively. Mineral-water jugs 

 and drainage pipes also belong to flint-ware. In England it in- 

 cludes the celebrated Wedgewood-ware, especially jasper and 

 Egyptian black or basalt-ware, likewise the larger part of the so- 

 called jasper or red porcelain which Bottger manufactured at 

 Meissen in 1707-17 12, after Chinese patterns. In Japan, the 

 Banko-yaki in Ise and the Imbe-yaki of Bizen are the chief pro- 



^ In many German collections and books we find a remarkable confusion of 

 naming in regard to Faience, stone-ware, and flint-ware, though the chief 

 Faience manufacturers in Germany, such as Boch in Metlach, Guillaume in 

 Bonn, and Wessel in Poppelsdorf, are clear enough in their distinctions. They 

 call their goods " Steingut," knowing that there is no difference between it 

 and fine Faience, while the word " Steinzeug," or stone-ware, should be con- 

 fined to the productions of the "Kannenbackerland" (the pottery district of 

 Hohr and Grenzhausen, near Coblenz), and similar hard-burnt crockery, which 

 strike fire with steel. Steingut, or Delft-ware, has not been known in Japan 

 longer than porcelain. But the origin of stone-ware is almost as ancient as 

 that of ceramics in general. 



- Verfritten is derived from the Italian fritta (roasted). Fritie means the 

 mixture, e.g.^ of the components of the glass in the preliminary smelting. 

 Fritta colours. Fritta porcelain. 



