RERAMIC STUDIO 
>S 
CHARCOAL STUDY— MARSHAL FRY, LONDON, 1907 
SOME of us have always had the feeling that Henry 
Wadsworth Longfellow rang true — that "he lived up to 
his old blue china", as one New England housewife puts it, 
and so we were glad to see, in the recent celebration held 
in honor of his centenary anniversary, that,- — in spite of 
the blue stockings who have set the fashion of receiving 
any praise awarded him with a deprecating shrug, — sociol- 
ogist and philosopher vied with the Philistine and the 
school girl to do him honor. 
Deep down in our hearts most of us love this true 
hearted poet for one or another of his simple songs. For 
me it was not through the musical cadences of Hiawatha, 
nor. the Tale of Love in Acadia, that I opened my heart 
to Longfellow, but after I had read his "Keramos" for the 
first time. Here was proof positive that the gentle poet 
not only loved his own ancestral willow plate and Wedgwood 
tea cup, but that the whole realm of the potter was dear to 
him; — and for any of us who has fondled a lump of clay 
into even the most misshapen bowl, this is a tie not to be 
lightly broken. He is one with us and he has made us one 
with all the race of potters. 
"Turn, turn, my wheel! The human race 
Of every tongue, of every place, 
Caucasian, Coptic or Malay, 
All that inhabit this great earth, 
Whatever be their rank or worth, 
Are kindred and allied by birth, 
And made of the same clay." 
His sympathy toward our craft is felt from the very 
first line. 
"Thus sang the Potter at his task 
Beneath the blossoming hawthorn tree. 
Like a Magician he appeared, 
A conjurer without book or beard ; 
And while he plied his magic art — 
For it was magical to me — 
I stood in silence and apart, 
And wondered more and more to see 
That shapeless, lifeless mass of clay 
Rise up to meet the master's hand, 
And now contract and now expand, 
And even his slightest touch obey." 
And his appreciation of the elusiveness of the art and 
the hardships and disappointments a potter is heir to ! — 
"Who is it in the suburbs here, 
This potter working with such cheer, 
In this mean house, this mean attire, 
His manly features bronzed with fire, 
Whose, figurines and rustic wares 
Shall find him bread from day to day? 
This madman, as the people say, 
Who breaks his tables and his chairs 
To feed his furnace fires, nor cares 
Who goes unfed, if they are fed, 
Nor who may five if they are dead? 
This alchemist with hollow cheeks 
And sunken, searching eyes, who seeks 
By mingled earths and ores combined, 
With potency of fire, to find 
Some new enamel, hard and bright, 
His dream, his passion, his delight? 
O Palissy! Within thy breast 
Burned the hot fever of unrest; 
Thine was the prophet's vision, thine 
The exultation, the divine 
Insanity of noble minds 
That never falters nor abates, 
But labors and endures and waits 
Till all that it foresees it finds, 
Or what it cannot find, creates!" 
But the best of all is his discrimination. He has 
caught the spirit of each, the jolly bourgeois Dutch tile, 
the enchanting mystery of the Egyptian enamel, the 
colorful porcelain of "the flowery kingdoms of Cathay." 
Reach up to your book shelf while your tint is getting 
dry, and read it — the whole of it — and see if the pulse 
does not beat quicker when you put on that border on 
your next plate. But if your Longfellow is up four long 
flights of stairs and you are waiting for that stubborn cone 
to go down, and dare not leave the kiln, I shall give you 
one more bit here: 
"All the bright flowers that fill the 
land, 
Ripple of waves on rock and sand, 
The snow of Fusiyama's cone, 
The midnight heaven so thickly sown 
With constellations of bright stars, 
The leaves that rustle, the reeds that 
make 
A whisper by each stream and lake, 
The saffron dawn, the sunset red, 
Are painted on those lovely jars; 
Again the skylark sings, again 
The stork, the heron and the crane 
Float through the azure overhead, 
The counterfeit and counterpart 
Of Nature reproduced in Art. 
Art is the child of Nature; yes, 
Her darling child in whom we trace 
The features of his mother's face, 
Her aspect and her attitude, 
All her majestic loveliness, 
Chastened and softened and subdued 
Into a more attractive grace, 
And with a human sense imbued." 
F. B. 
