THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 67 



the prince of potters, Bernard Pallisy, a short biography of this 

 illustrious man was read and reference made to his struggles and the 

 present prices of his wares ; only a few months since a small salt 

 cellar being sold for $1,010. 



French Ware. — The " Oiron " or " Henri Deux " ware is the 

 most chaste of any yet made ; there are but 86 known pieces, and 

 each is worth $5,000 — present prices. Very marvellous works in 

 Porcelain, especially flowers and bouquets, were made early in the 

 17th century at Vincennes, under the patronage of Louis XV. An 

 amusing incident which occurred, at the residence of Madame de 

 Pompadour, with these porcelain flowers was given, showing how 

 perfect was the imitation, even to their being perfumed. 



English Potters. — The English potteries were next briefly de- 

 scribed. The first earthenware made after the time of Josiah Spode 

 was far from being so good as that at present produced, and several 

 attempts were made to bring out pottery which should be interme- 

 diate between earthenware and porcelain. The most successful was 

 that made by Mr. Mason, at Fenton, who, in 18 13, took out a patent for 

 "ironstone-china," the body of which was fluxed by the scoriae of iron- 

 stone and the ordinary Cornish stone, but eventually the latter was 

 found sufficient for the purpose. The name " ironstone " remained 

 attached to that class of pottery, which is strong and resistive, but 

 since then earthware has so much improved that iro?istone has 

 gone out of fashion. The nearest approach to this ware is the white 

 granite made for the Canadian and American markets. This ware is 

 richly glazed, is thick, and is manufactured to compete with the 

 French hard porcelain. About fifty manufacturers are specially enga- 

 ged in making it, and those worked by Messrs. Powel, Meakin, Shaw, 

 Bishop and G. Jones may be considered the largest. It is a curious 

 state of things that the best earthenware is still made for the English 

 home market, while as yet but small quantities of it have been in 

 demand in Canada, the other British colonies and the United 

 States. This statement was made in 1877 by Monsieur Arnoux, the 

 chief director of Messrs. Minton's works at Stoke on Trent. At the 

 present time some of the English ware is so perfect that if it were 

 not opaque it might be mistaken for porcelain, when richly decora- 

 rated and gilt like that by Messrs. Minton, Wedgwood, Copeland, 

 Furnival, and Brown-Westhead. To give some idea of the extent of 

 the potteries the lecturer said that Messrs. Minton alone employ two 



