An American Potter 
THE 
DRAGON 
AND 
WHEEL 
TILES 
CASTLE ACRE PRIORY 
to a half-dried or non-plastic vase or bowl, to 
the mechanical moulds made upon exact lines ! 
There also in the farm villages was found 
the “quern,” a very primitive stone hand mill 
used for grinding the glazes. There were little 
tablets of glazed clay called “ tests ” which 
when put into the kiln would measure the 
heat by their melting. The clay syringe was 
made of a hollowed bough ot a tree through 
which ran a rod to press out the soft clay 
which was cut into sections and curved into 
mug handles. The turnstile for mixing up 
the clay was found as we often see it in old- 
fashioned brickyards. Homemade and rude 
were all of these tools of the rural potters 
like the farmers’ implements in the early years 
of the last century. Undisturbed upon the 
fertile foothills of the Blue Ridge these peas¬ 
ant potters clung to their old habits and cus¬ 
toms, and saved something of an art which 
modern activity—supposedly progressive- 
had destroyed. 
The sgrajjiato and the “slip” decoration 
—two important and ancient methods em¬ 
ployed in adorning pottery—were familiar to 
the German settlers, though nowadays the 
knowledge of the former has wellnigh passed 
from their memory. By that method the de¬ 
sign was scratched through the surface color 
into the base below. These bases by their 
simple range of hues gave an excellent ground 
for decoration. In the “ slip ” method the 
design was run upon the base and afterward 
covered by the glaze. The tones of blues, 
blacks, cream whites, browns and yellows, ob¬ 
tained by these primitive workers were re¬ 
markably rich ; and the frequent greens, more 
difficult to manage than the other tones, were 
peculiarly warm and brilliant. Without ad¬ 
mixture of anything American their designs 
r 4 
