*o 
FLERAMIC STUDIO 
enamel or with glaze, was one of the earliest of arts. Re- 
cently, through the Egypt Exploration Society, the burial 
place of the kings of the first Egyptian dynasty has been 
discovered to the surprise of students of Egyptology. But 
underlying this most ancient of burial places were found 
ruins, and in them were discovered stores of prehistoric pot- 
tery, some of which, I am happy to say, find a resting place 
in the Carnegie Museum, and examples of which are on the 
table before me. So, before history in its modern acceptation 
was begun, before men had attempted to chronicle the birth 
and death of kings, or the founding of dynasties, the potter 
was at work fashioning rudely, and yet effectively, the plastic 
clay which he found at hand on the banks of lakes and rivers, 
or deposited in great beds in the earth. The ancient Egyp- 
tian pottery, which is unmistakably prehistoric in its origin, 
is rude compared with the products of subsequent times. It 
is mostly unglazed, and consists of soft, porous terra-cotta. 
Some of it gives evidence that it was fashioned by the hand 
alone, without the agency of the wheel. Much, however, 
which has been discovered shows that already the use of the 
horizontal revolving wheel was known. It is not in Egypt or 
in Assyria that to-day we find preserved the best examples of 
what may strictly be called primitive pottery. The art of 
the primitive potter is being plied at this very hour, as no 
doubt it was plied thousands of years ago in the haunts of an 
elder civilization, by the savage or semi-savage tribes of Africa, 
Malaysia and America. The Stone Age, as it has been called, 
has been in all historic times up to the present in a measure 
coeval with the Age of Bronze, of Iron, and even of Steel. 
Contemporary with the civilization which gave us the Parthe- 
non, the Arch of Trajan, St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's 
in London, were savage tribes in distant parts of the earth 
who fashioned their flint arrow-heads, as flints had been fash- 
ioned by the lake-dwellers in Switzerland ; and whose pottery 
was even more crude and primitive in the methods of its 
manufacture than much of the pottery fashioned by men who 
lived long before the Pharaohs, before the age of Homer, 
Caesar, Michael Angelo, or Christopher Wren. The study of 
primitive pottery is not, strictly speaking, an archaeological 
pursuit, though it may be this in part. It is rather the study 
of the potter's art in its infancy as practiced by tribes of men 
with whom all art is in its infancy. Without therefore 
attempting in the brief time that is before me to more than 
refer to the primitive pottery of the ancient Egyptians, Assy- 
rians, Greeks and Romans, of which fragments are treasured 
up in the museums of the world, let me rather call your atten- 
tion to the development of the art in primitive form as it has 
been in comparatively recent times, and is to-day practiced 
among the aboriginal races of the two Americas. 
In various localities upon the eastern sea-board of the 
United States, among the ruins of the flimsy structures in 
which the red men lived, sometimes associated with the rude 
stone implements of the chase and warfare, are found the 
remains of earthen vessels. These give evidence of having 
been fashioned out of the clay directly by the fingers of the 
potter, who molded the vessel into shapes of use. The com- 
mon method of fashioning vessels for use which was and is 
still employed by the Indian tribes in the southwest, is to 
build up the vessel out of ropes of clay fashioned in the hand 
and carried around coil after coil until the vessel has been 
built up to the desired size and shape. Much of the ancient 
Zuni pottery preserves upon its exterior the evidence of 
having been thus constructed. The interior was deftly 
smoothed and molded by the hand of the primitive potter, 
while the roughness of the exterior, showing the method of 
structure, appears in some cases to have been valued as having 
a sort of rude decorative effect heightened frequently by the 
touch of simple implements by which the coils were made to 
assume indented or waved outlines. A sample of such ware 
I have brought with me, and it is on the desk before me. 
Almost ali Zuni pottery is made in this way at the present 
day. The ropes of clay, of varying thickness according to the 
size and capacity of the vessel, are coiled one upon the other; 
then both interior and exterior are carefully shaped and fash- 
ioned by the hand. The vessel is allowed to dry, and then 
with a piece of stone it is ground down and polished, when 
it is at last ready for the kiln. 
So far as my observation and my studies extend there is 
no evidence that any of the genuinely antique pottery which 
has been exhumed from mound and burial places in either 
of the Americas shows that the use of the potter's wheel 
was known to the worker in clay. He relied solely upon 
his fingers and rude implements of wood, bone, or stone 
which were improvised by him, and while exceedingly 
symmetrical forms were produced and highly artistic shapes 
were evolved, it was almost entirely in reliance upon manipu- 
lative skill. The greatest difference exists in the degree of 
skill in workmanship shown by various tribes. The keramic 
products of the Indian races and mound-builders of the At- 
lantic seaboard and the Mississippi valley of North America 
represent perhaps the lowest stages of proficiency in the art 
of the potter. While many curious and interesting vessels 
have been discovered, few of them compare in beauty of form 
and perfection of finish with those which are found in the 
southwestern portion of the United States and notably of 
Tusayan origin. The work of the ancient potters whose 
labors antedated those of the modern Zuni does not compare 
unfavorably with the most refined keramic wares of Mexico 
and Central America in which the art of the potter seems to 
have reached its highest development. When we pass into 
the northern portion of South America we find, as we proceed 
further and further from the influence of the Mexican and 
Central American civilization, cruder and less artistic results. 
Nevertheless the skill displayed in the production of fictile 
wares by the ancient races which inhabited the northwestern 
portion of the South American continent was not small. I 
have within recent days with much interest been engaged in 
unpacking a considerable collection of pottery gathered in the 
province of Santa Marta, Colombia. This collection was 
mainly taken from ancient graves in the remoter and wilder 
parts of the country. Among the more remarkable objects 
which were obtained by those collecting for our Museum were 
the funeral urns, or coffins, in which the remains of the dead 
were placed. These are huge earthen-ware pots from two to 
two and a half feet in depth and about two feet in diameter 
at their equator, opening at the mouth, which is about 
eighteen inches across, sufficiently wide to admit of deposit- 
ing in them the body of a man in sitting posture, with the 
knees brought up to the chin. These receptacles are un- 
doubtedly the largest pieces of pottery-ware known to have 
been made by the aboriginal tribes of America, and served 
the purpose of the barrel into which the Japanese at the 
present day put their dead in the same sitting attitude. 
None of these vessels give evidence, so far as I can discover, 
that they were fabricated upon the wheel, though when 
broken all parts seem to be perfectly homogeneous in struc- 
ture, and there is no evidence, so far as I have been able to 
see, of the use of the method of coiling clay, as I have already 
