Vol. Ill, No. 4 
NEW YORK AND SYRACUSE 
August J 901 
OMING in contact all the time with students, 
one is astonished to find such a lack of 
interest in anything outside of the mere 
piece or pieces of porcelain they are work- 
ing upon. No wonder there is so little 
originality, so little that is remarkably 
good in the overglaze decorations. The one idea seems to 
be to have a showy piece for a studio or home, with no 
thought of the fundamental principles that underly decorative 
art. Besides drawing inspiration from other artistic pursuits 
or departments, one, worn out with work in a particular 
channel, finds rest and diversion. Mr. Dow says designers 
should know more of picture making and picture makers, 
should be more conversant with designing. One helps the 
other. 
One meets hundreds of students in New York each win. 
ter who say they are here for the purpose of studying keramic 
art. We know them to be faithful, steady " plodders," but 
with no interest in the arts in general. They will sit in a 
studio and copy some worn-out study of roses or rococo 
design, when the city is full of fine exhibitions and most 
important collections of keramics within a stone's throw of 
the same studio, — collections that are teeming with beautiful 
color schemes and brilliantly executed designs, that might 
afford material for thought and design for many months to 
come. But these gems are usually passed by unnoticed by 
the average keramic student. 
Even keramic clubs keep to themselves too much. They 
should be foremost in every art movement, keeping in touch 
with artists, interior decorators and designers. All this has 
an indirect bearing upon keramics, and broadens one's point 
of view. Those who go out into the artistic world and use 
their eyes and brains are the ones usually that have the clever 
ideas and the courage to carry them out. 
While one is imbibing, in a sense, these thoughts and 
suggestions from others, one may at the same time be giving 
something to some one else. It is the interchange of thoughts 
and impressions that counts. Therefore it may seem to one's 
credit to have pupils and friends say, "Poor thing, she works 
so hard, is never away from her studio," but ten to one, in the 
long run, she will be worked out in a few years, behind the 
times in ambitions and thoughts, and altogether a back 
number. 
If decorators would go into the world more, and see and 
know the things that are demanded, there would not be so 
much useless stuff on the market. Aside from the enjoyment 
of seeing and knowing about artistic things and people, this 
advice is a simple business proposition. 
THE members of the Brush Guild, an association of young 
women who studied sculpture under Messrs. Daniel 
French and Augustus St. Gaudens, are now producing art 
potteries under the supervision of Mr. George de Forest Brush. 
Many of the potteries are capital in design and color, Indian, 
Etruscan and Greek designs, all simple and good. The work 
is purely handwork without the use of mould or wheel, and 
the finish is such as to give many of the pieces the effect of 
Japanese- bronze. Vases, flower-pots, water-bottles, candle- 
sticks, incense boxes, etc., look as if they might have been 
used in Etruria two thousand years ago. Some large pots of 
white terra cotta are copies or adaptations of the gigantic 
flower pots with figures in relief found in Roman gardens. 
One aim of the Guild is to interest architects in hand-made 
terra cotta work, both for buildings and gardens. Meantime 
it is doing its best with smaller ware, even bronze buckles 
modeled after antique designs and set with colored marbles, 
agates, coral, etc. 
THE VALUE OF EXHIBITIONS 
[Paper readat the meeting at Buffalo of the National League of Mineral Painters.] 
ART exhibitions are of value to all classes of people. To 
the public they are factors in cultivating a taste for the 
beautiful, and to artists and students are indispensable — the 
educational benefits and inspiration to be derived from them 
being unlimited. The exhibitor himself is one of the chief 
beneficiaries, as he enjoys the advantage of seeing the results 
of his own efforts side by side with the best that is being 
done, and perhaps at no other time is he able to place such a 
just valuation upon his own doings. 
One of the first exhibitions, whose influences were 
brought to bear upon American Keramics, was the Columbian 
Exposition of 1892, which did much to kindle enthusiasm 
over this art craft and enable us to become more familiar 
with the fine ware of other countries. A great impetus of 
artistic effort always succeeds a great exposition, and, with 
more experience and greater powers of appreciation, we were 
able to profit even more by the recent Universal Exposition 
at Paris; and in my personal experience this great concentra- 
tion of the world's art has proved one of the turning points 
in my life. 
We, American Keramists, have been wholly absorbed in 
decoration, and little attention has been paid to the potter's 
craft. In the estimation of an artist-potter one is not a 
keramist who has no knowledge of clay bodies and glazes, 
and who cannot design, mould and fire his ware as well as 
decorate it. As the jury at Paris considered the exhibits 
from this standpoint, overglaze work on ware not made by 
the decorator did not rank high, but the disappointment we 
felt at not receiving greater recognition in the matter of 
awards, has created within us a new and fine ambition to 
raise the standard of our work to a plane which will enable us 
to achieve recognition and a placing in the art world. The 
desire for greater knowledge in the different phases of the 
art-craft of pottery is being met by increasing opportunities 
and facilities for the study of clay-working and underglaze, 
and we shall soon expect interesting results. 
Considering the keramics at Paris from a designer's point 
of view, we were afforded an excellent opportunity for com- 
