Vol. XX, No. 3-4. 
SYRACUSE, NEW YORK 
July-August 1918 
UR July and August numbers are 
combined in one single issue, 
which we trust will be found full 
of useful and instructive designs. 
Summer is the dull season and it 
seems to us that both subscribers 
and advertisers will find it quite 
satisfactory to receive during 
vacation time only one well filled 
number rather than two separate 
smaller Magazines. The combining of two summer issues 
in one may become a permanent feature of the Magazine. 
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Since the scarcity of china has paralyzed the china 
decoration business, decorators are finding substitutes 
which will keep them busy until conditions become normal 
again. Not only the firing of china is replaced by the firing 
of decorated glass, but many ways are found to decorate 
various objects without firing. We call attention to the 
article by Miss Sharrard in this number on the unfired 
decoration of glass, French ivory, etc. In next issue we 
will give an article by Mrs. Weisskopf on the unfired decora- 
tion of glass with other pigments than those used by Miss 
Sharrard. 
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We again suggest that there is an opening for enter- 
prising women in the sale of color prints, such as we ad- 
vertise, reproductions of famous paintings, etc. Not only 
these excellent reproductions are useful in schools and 
studios, but the number of people who become interested 
in collecting them is growing rapidly. Their low price 
makes it possible for people of moderate means to have at 
home works of art which, if they have not the money 
value of the original paintings, have the same instructive 
and decorative value. 
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LOOKING BACKWARD 
Henrietta B. Paist, Assistant Editor 
I HAVE been cleaning my attic, and have dragged out 
into the light of 1918 Art Magazines which date back 
to 1890 and "then some," and which constitute a history of 
keramic art, practically from its introduction into this 
country. 
There were old Art Interchange and Art Amateur also, 
and some of these had included notices of early keramic 
work, but it is in our own Keramic Magazines that we can 
trace step by step the progress of the "Cinderella Art." 
The China Decorator was, so far as I know, our first 
medium of communication and inspiration. It was edited 
by Mrs. A. L. Bramuller of New York. This was before 
the naturalistic floral craze had struck us, and most of the 
drawings were copies of historic ornament in the style of 
the old world factories. There was much rococo work and 
small roses, swarms of Cupids and garlands, much 
enamelling in dots, pendants, etc. There were many sug- 
gestions and some instruction as to methods, materials, etc., 
but little that was really instructive in a broad sense. 
Soon after Mrs. Bramuller's death the Magazine col- 
lapsed and was followed by the Ceramic Monthly, a Chicago 
publication, which flourished for a while, then went! fiasjj \) [_ j g jgfy <#tj 
for its health and finally succumbed to a fatal malady kfluwjp 
V 
as pernicious anemia." 
It was at this stage, in 1899, that Keramic Studio took 
up the work, rallied the forces of the regulars and went 
after new recruits, with the result that keramic art has 
enjoyed twenty years of prominence and stability that no 
other one branch of decorative art has attained in this 
country. 
However, to return, I have had a good, old fashioned 
visit with friends of former days through the pages of these 
old Magazines. Some of them are, like myself, still "on the 
job," but many have passed to their reward, where "each in 
his separate star" is, let us hope, "painting the thing as he 
sees it for the God of things as they are." 
They were a goodly bunch of pioneers, and furnished 
for the work that sincerity and enthusiasm that overcame 
all obstacles, and it was from the ranks of these early 
pioneers that the roots finally came which penetrated the 
soil of Artdom, and made keramic art an organic part of the 
life of America. 
It is largely due to that early craze for "china paint- 
ing" that Art has been brought into the life of the people 
in this country, for the Fine Arts were and are largely 
confined to a special class, who occupy a niche of their own 
and speak a special language. To take to pictorial art is 
almost like going into a convent and renouncing the outer 
world, while the decorative arts are by the people and for 
the people and flourish best as a part of the life of the 
people. They are iron in the blood and breath in the lungs. 
They create an unconscious atmosphere in which we live 
and move and have our being. 
But to come back again to our early inspiration, the 
Magazines. In October, 1894, we find the China Decorator 
alluding to Marshal Fry, Jr., as the "boy artist" and frankly 
admitting a skepticism as to the authenticity of work ex- 
hibited by him as his own. In the light of Mr. Fry's sub- 
sequent career this note is most amusing. 
Mr. Frederick L. Grunewald's kindly face looks out at 
us from a page of the Ceramic Monthly and brings back the 
days when we congregated in Chicago under the roof of the 
old "Western Decorating Works" for our own annual ex- 
hibitions. Mr. Grunewald looms large in my memory as a 
real factor in the growth of keramic art in this country. 
He was an artist by nature and furnished much inspiration 
and many ideals at this stage of the art. As early as 1895 
we find a plea from him in the Ceramic Monthly for more 
original work, for a higher standard and more sincerity. 
And these exhibitions held in Chicago under his direction 
were the beginning of a real propaganda in keramic art, 
preceding the organization of the National League of Min- 
eral Painters which was formed in 1895 or 1896, and which 
held the work together for a number of years. 
Some idea of the interest and extent to which the work 
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C/J a j 
