30 
heramic studio 
At the recent meeting of the N. Y. S. K. A. the following 
note was read by Mr. Belknap and is an answer to the criticisms 
made by some members in regard to the severity of the Jury. 
It has been suggested that the members of the^Society would be inter- 
ested in an expression from the jury on the recent exhibition, of their feehng 
and the point of view from which not only the work of members but of con- 
tributors from the outside were judged. 
The jury are fully cognizant of the radical stand taken as to acceptances 
and rejections and that inevitably there are those who disagree with them, 
but much as they regret this fact they are sure that their view is in accord 
with the feeling of the most competent judges of such work to-day. 
The exclusion of naturalistic design is, except from one point of view 
as surely to encourage a more dignified and cultivated style and therefore a 
more desirable one as can be conceived. The one and only reason for con- 
tinuing to produce work which is a reflection of a period during which taste 
was lacking, chiefly from an opportunity to cultivate it, is that there still 
exists a large public which will purchase such work because they themselves 
are as yet uncultivated to an appreciation of what is better. In other words, 
it is largely a commercial reason. This may force even those who desire to 
advance and improve to execute such things, since in many cases they must 
exist upon the proceeds of their work, but it can be no argument for their 
exhibition in a place in which they are presented as the expression of those 
aspirations for better things which it must be assumed all the members of 
your Society surely feel. 
It is to be regretted that there was a feeling of sameness and monotony, 
a lack of variety of style, color and effect in the exhibition of over-glaze 
work. This will right itself in time and is doubtless due to the fact that many 
of those contributing are pupils of a few very strong instructors whose own 
work is strongly reflected in that of their pupils, but as these pupils' own in- 
dividuality begins to assert itself, their work will broaden out while yet retain 
ing the conservative and studied design which is so much a part of their 
master's teaching. 
It has been said by some that the jury were prejudiced by a desire to 
obtain an harmonious and artistic effect in the exhibition as a whole and so 
excluded good work in this effort. This was not the case. True there was 
great technical excellence in some of the pieces not shown but they were shut 
out on the score of ill-conceived and ill-applied ornament and with the earnest 
hope that their exclusion would prove a help to their owners in indicating 
mistakes which study and thought might avoid in the future. 
Perhaps the most striking tribute to the wisdom of the selection made 
has been the wholly unconscious .and unbiased opinion often expressed by 
casual visitors that the work was a revelation to them and that they had 
no idea that such work was being done by decorators here, while the fact 
that three invitations have been received to transport the whole affair 
bodily, to the Lewis and Clarke Exposition in Seattle, to Montreal, and to 
the Academy of Arts and Sciences in Broolvlyn, testifies to a feeling that 
the exhibition stands for something worth while. 
There is not an atom of doubt that the Society will profit in the end 
by it in a way it could never have done had the jury accepted work which 
would have lowered the standard of excellence, and the Society will live to 
appreciate the fact. 
GLASS MAKING AMONG THE ANCIENTS. 
THE Phoenicians made vases throughortt of crystalline 
glass and their skill excited the wonder of the ancients, 
says a clever writer in the Pottery Gazette. Herodotus men- 
tions two columns in the temple of Hercules at Tyre, one of gold 
and the other of emerald, "shining brightly in the night/' 
the latter being referred to also by Theophrastus, and, much 
later, by Pliny, who does not understand at all how an emer- 
ald could be so large, without however disputing the fact. 
It must have been glass, of a marvelously perfect texture, 
like the (probably) similar hollow columns of green glass at 
Gades, in which lamps were kept perpetually burning, the 
columns of glass in the temple of Aradus; the emerald (of 
rmknown origin), six feet long and four and a half feet broad, 
presented by a king of Babylon to an Egyptian Pharaoh; 
the obelisk in the temple of Jupiter (in Egypt), which was 
60 feet high, and from three to six feet broad, composed of 
four emeralds; the statue of Serapis, in the Egj'ptian labyrinth, 
13^ feet high, of one entire emerald; and the like. 
To the skill of the Sidonians, in times past, Pliny spec- 
ially refers. He says that they first invented looking glasses. 
And in the British Museum are a number of small bottles of 
clear glass of various forms, blown in molds, " which have been 
chiefly found in Syria and the neighboring islands. The 
specimens are in the shape of dates, grapes, heads, etc. A 
handle, once forming part of a small cup, is stamped with the 
signature of its maker, Artas the Sidonian, in Greek and Latin 
letters." There is also, in the Slade collection, a jug of molded 
glass with vases and musical instruments in relief, from the 
Greek Archipelago, and a molded bottle imitating basket work, 
believed to have been made at Sidon. These beautiful ob- 
jects are, however, of comparatively late date, and we have not 
unfortunate^, any specimens of the earliest Phoenician clear 
glass except the vases, the date of which is probabty not later 
than the eighth century B.C. 
The Assyrians were powerftd rivals of the Phoenicians 
in mental power and taste, in artistic genius and multiform 
ingenuity, as well as in the common arts and appliances of 
life; excelling not only the Egyptians, but, as a high author- 
ity thinks, even all the Orientals. It can hardly be doubted 
that the glass they used was manufactured by themselves, 
and not imported from abroad. There is a well known ex- 
ample, actually bearing the name of Sargon, King of Assyria, 
circ. B. C. 721, in the British Museum. It is of an exquisite 
sea-green tint, and admirable manufacture, as, indeed, are all 
the specimens that have been brought from Nimroud. 
