RERAMIC STUDIO 
261 
revealed by the fire of the furnace, can only be imagined. 
Mr. Moorcroft is as yet but a young man, but this initial effort 
with which his name has been associated leads us to hope for 
yet greater things. For over one hundred and fifty years no 
added precious secret in ceramics has been discovered. 
Florian ware suggests the question to our thoughts as to 
whether the man and the time have arrived. 
«p *• 
PATE SUR PATE 
THE process of decoration known as " pate sur pate " origi- 
nated with the Chinese. A Chinese vase, with white 
flowers in relief on celadon ground, induced the Manufacture 
of Sevres to make experiments with the view of obtaining 
similar effects. The result was a new style of decoration which 
has been carried to a high point of perfection by M. Solon, 
who studied the process at Sevres, but has been connected 
with the Mintons of England since 1870. We have illustrated 
in November, 1900, some of the fine vases made by that cele- 
brated artist and reproduce here his most famous production, 
the Queen's Jubilee vase. 
The process of pate sur pate differs completely from the 
process employed for the production of Wedgwood's jasper 
ware, in which every detail is pressed separately into a mould 
and subsequently applied to the surface to be thus decorated. 
Pate sur pate is all worked by the hand of the artist. By a 
careful treatment of the various degrees of thickness of clay 
applied on the colored body of the piece, the subjects are 
modelled in delicate transparency, standing out from the 
ground or gradually blending with it, recalling to the mind the 
sharp cutting and the mellow tints of antique cameos. 
On the plain ground the design is first sketched. Then 
with a brush dipped in china clay diluted with water, a first 
coating of white is deposited to delineate the subject. Gradu- 
ally and always waiting until one coating is dry before apply- 
ing another, the substance increases, the thinner or the higher 
reliefs are obtained according to the fancy of the worker, who 
must be somewhat both of a painter and modeler. He has to 
sharply mark the minute details which otherwise would be lost 
under the glaze, to scrape, incise, cut out his work with the 
metal tool of a chaser, and, before firing, the piece is a real 
bas relief but without the transparency afterward produced by 
virification. 
The vases are formed of clay colored in its bulk by the 
few metallic oxydes which will stand the high temperature to 
which they are submitted. In this manner an original is pro- 
duced each time, each piece of pate sur pate being unique. 
The process used now by M. Solon at Mess. Mintons' 
differs in some respects from the process used at Sevres, par- 
ticularly in the variety of colored clays used for the body of 
the vases, the bright red, the dark yellow, the deep black and 
other colors having never been attempted anywhere else in the 
bulk of the paste. 
Original photographs of figures and landscapes by Mr. 
Clarence H. White are on view in the art galleries of the Pratt 
Institute, in Brooklyn. 
