io6 
RERAMIC STUDIO 
taste is alone to blame. Others place the responsibility on 
the dealers who demand cheap and trashy ware. Still others 
claim that we have produced the best that we are capable of 
making. 
Be this as it may, the fact remains that we are obliged to 
look to foreign manufacturers to furnish our tables, if we 
would have artistic china which is suitable for the use of cul- 
tured people. I once saw in a prominent crockery shop a 
table service which had been made in England. The covered 
dishes were oval in form, like an ostrich egg, scarcely larger 
and devoid of all relief ornaments. The decorative designs 
consisted entirely of large and boldly painted flowers in natural 
colors — a few simple blossoms and leaves artistically scattered 
over the creamy surface with sparing hand. 
Adjoining it was displayed one of the most pretentious 
of our American services, elaborately covered with scroll-work 
in relief and incongruous over-crowded color designs and 
cheap gilding. The contrast was most marked and all who 
saw the two, turned from the latter in disgust to the beauti- 
fully simple and appetizing exhibit beside it. 
One of our foremost ceramic modelers, while deploring 
the existing condition of affairs, recently volunteered the fol- 
lowing explanation: The average potter cares nothing for his 
art save what it will bring him in cash. The trained artist 
who spends weeks in the designing and modeling of artistic 
shapes, finds no demand for his drawings, because the manu- 
facturer is unwilling to pay him a fair price for his work. 
When a new design is desired, the moldmaker of the estab- 
lishment is instructed to make sufficient alterations in some 
of the old shapes to serve the purpose, at little or no addi- 
tional expense. The result is necessarily a nondescript series 
of pieces, of such size and character as will answer the varied 
purposes of a large hotel or a small family. By persisted 
advertising and the efforts of traveling salesmen the set is 
forced upon the public and a sufficient quantity sold to pay a 
handsome profit on the small investment. Harsh and sweep- 
ing as these statements may sound, they are, nevertheless, 
true, as every discerning, candid potter must admit, and are 
offered in a spirit of entire kindness, for the benefit of those 
who should be most interested. 
In the designing of tableware, several rules should be 
observed. First, the forms should be simple and graceful, 
and if possible carry some suggestion of their uses. There 
should be no relief ornamentation or but little, no straight 
lines or angles to offend the eye and collect dirt. 
Second — The relative size of the various pieces should be 
proportioned with a view to the purpose of each. The cov- 
ered dishes should not be large enough to serve as soup 
tureens, nor the latter so capacious as to supply the needs of 
a country tavern. 
Third — The decoration should be invariably beneath the 
glaze. Overglazing ornamentation is always out of place on 
tableware, and suggestive of grit and sand as the paintings 
wear away in time, even though thoroughly fired on. The 
decorative subjects should be appropriate and appetizing, 
delicate in coloring and sparingly applied. 
The character of the ware is not of such importance as 
the shapes and embellishment. Common cream-colored ware 
can be made as pleasing as the most expensive porcelain. In 
fact, the softer grades of ware will take the decorations more 
readily than the harder bodies. Inexpensive ivory-white ware 
can be made as attractive as the finest white porcelain, either 
soft or hard. 
The nearest approach to a really artistic table service that 
has yet been specially produced for American use was that 
manufactured by the Messrs. Haviland & Co. of Limoges, 
France, for the Executive Mansion at Washington, during 
the Hayes Administration, from designs drawn by Mr. Theo- 
dore R. Davis, an American artist, illustrating in shapes and 
decorations the flora and fauna of the United States. Mr. 
Davis secured a small bathing-house on the beach at Asbury 
Park, N. J., for a studio, and here he made the drawings from 
which the various pieces were reproduced. 
The plates of the service were modeled in imitation of 
the petals of the mountain laurel, on which were respectively 
painted a spray of the same plant, the figure of a crab floating 
on the beach at low tide, an Indian sitting beside a slain deer, 
the trunk and summit of a palmetto cabbage, a moonlight 
view showing stalks of waving corn and pumpkins ripening 
on the ground, and a view of an old log cabin, in front of 
which are shown some tomatoes ripening on a plank. 
The soup plates were equally suggestive, the subjects 
being the green turtle, canvasback ducks, a clambake scene, 
a frog perched on a lily pad, a fireside scene in which the 
boiling kettle is shown in the chimney corner, and an okra 
stalk. 
The other sets of plate were in keeping with the general 
scheme, being original in shape and more or less appropriate 
in subject-design. The only criticism which could be made 
on the service as a whole is the appearance of over-decoration, 
where the designs cover the entire surface. Yet this was a 
move in the right direction, the first attempt in this country 
to elevate the standard of tableware to the point of artistic 
excellence which decorative china had already reached. 
Can we wonder that people of refined taste, with the 
means to gratify them, should be driven to the use of silver 
and gold for table purposes? Is it not time that the public 
should rise in its might and demand of our potters a long- 
needed reform in the shapes of our tableware? Away with 
the thumbguards, the scrap rims, the bone ledges, which still 
disfigure our dinner plates and platters and reflect upon our 
20th century refinement. Give us the gracefully curving 
plaque as a receptacle for solid food of the slightly recurving 
edges for liquids, and we shall have, instead of the unsightly 
trencher-shapes of a century or two ago shapes in keeping 
with the advanced civilization and culture of the present day 
— pieces thoroughly adapted for artistic decoration, elegant 
for use, pleasing to the eye, worthy to receive the most beau- 
tiful ornamentation. 
Let us cultivate a taste for good art in table service 
among the people. Let us start a crusade against the offen- 
sive designs we have been so long accumstomed to seeing 
that we have come to accept them as the best that we can 
procure. Let us tear away the traditions of the past and 
build up new ideals for the future, keeping pace in ceramic 
progress with the improvement which has been reached in the 
other arts. Surely the beautifying of our dining tables around 
which we gather a thousand times a year, should receive as 
much attention as the ornamentation of our drawing-rooms, 
our libraries and our cabinets. 
We need a complete revolution in the shapes of our table- 
ware, and who is to bring this about if not our women model- 
ers. We need radical changes in the character and quality of 
the decorative designs which are placed upon them, and who 
shall undertake this if not our amateur and professional min- 
eral painters? This is a work which, above all others, needs 
the discriminating judgment of a woman's mind, the dainty 
touch of a woman's hand. 
