THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 6 1 



press of the individual minds that have invented them. We have 

 thus had revivals in Majolica, Faience, Lustred-ware, etc., and with 

 all we may say truly, that as examples of pottery, that is, more 

 especially in the mechanical and material construction of the new 

 wares, they greatly excel the old ones in perfect finish, durability and 

 chemical composition of their parts, both in body and glaze. But 

 this is not everything, and it is well known and seen that the ancient 

 works and those of the Renaissance excel our own in their taste, 

 artistic freedom and wealth of ideas. In these particulars we have 

 much to do to equal, and still more to do to excel, these old world 

 productions of the potter's art. 



What Pottery is. — At the risk of saying what nearly all already 

 know, I wish to make clear what pottery is. A pot is a vessel made 

 of clay, and clay is that natural substance produced by the grinding 

 and washing down into hollows, or places where it can settle, of 

 many sorts of rocks, and as the rocks are of many qualities and con- 

 sistencies, so are the clays. But to take a familiar example — the 

 clay which I have in my hand if thrown on the potter's wheel, then 

 made into a flower pot, for instance, and allowed to dry, would keep 

 its form in every particular, except having shrunk by the evaporation 

 of the moisture from the clay. This pot if exposed to the sun, in a hot 

 climate, would have still more water drawn from it, and in conse- 

 quence would become harder and closer in texture, and might be used 

 for many indoor purposes, but would not allow of any use that involved 

 the contact with water as it still would be a mere clay pot ; if, 

 however, it be put in the fire so that so much more of the water be 

 driven out as will change its hardness to that of a tile or brick, then 

 fluid might be put into it without any risk of its receding to the clay 

 state, or crumbling into bits or flakes. When water has once been 

 driven out of clay by the action of fire it remains a piece of pottery 

 for ever. It is not, however, the mere expelling of the water from the 

 clay which turns it into pottery, but the action of fire fuses some of 

 the more readily fusible particles of the clay formation into an indis- 

 solvable homogeneous mass ; but with most clays this ware is absorb- 

 ent, a brick, for example, will suck up a pint of water and not dissolve. 



A bit of clay, after firing, may be either white, yellow, red, grey, 

 bluish, black, or any or all of these together — color being a condition 

 solely due to the presence of other qualifying minerals or metals in 

 the vicinity of the clay bed. For example — clay from an iron district 



