HE STUDY of keramics, also the application of 
design, together with glazes and firing, is 
becoming more serious and far-reaching 
every year, consequently we are anticipating 
the coming exhibitions and sales with 
much interest and pleasure, expecting, of 
course, to mark this year's improvement upon'each of these lines. 
The New York Society of Keramic Arts will hold its 
annual exhibition and sale at the Waldorf-Astoria, just as this 
number comes out, and our next number will contain a 
description of it. The last exhibition was extremely beautiful 
and dignified, and it was a fair representation of what is being 
done by American decorators. 
The great need now is a market for this work: to make 
the public understand our aims and to be interested in them. 
By the public, we mean the buying public. Dealers who have 
tried to handle work done by American decorators, say that 
it is uneven and often carelessly done, that there is a woeful 
lack of originality. What an amateur would pass over lightly 
as a slight defect, a factory would not tolerate, (and sometimes 
vice versa.) Until some of our decorators study these points 
more seriously, their work will still be looked upon as ama- 
teurish — and it is from carelessness that this beautiful art suffers. 
Yet there are many decorators whose work compares with 
the finest from the other side, and it is this standard of excel- 
lence that should be seen and appreciated by the public. 
There should be some permanent place where work could be 
seen and obtained, where orders could be left and where our 
best decorators could feel the substantial encouragement of 
the people who can afford to buy good things. 
At present the studios and the club exhibitions furnish 
the only opportunities for displaying this work, and there are 
many who decorate well who have no studios. 
It is the aim of the KERAMIC STUDIO to establish just 
such salesrooms where china will be received and sold. We 
are not quite prepared to undertake it now, but the plan is 
being studied, and we hope to bring prominently before the 
buying public, work of the highest standard. There are hun- 
dreds of gentlewomen in this country supporting themselves 
by teaching and decorating, and the Keramic Studio hopes 
to be the means of finding a permanent place of sale and ex- 
hibition. 
It was with great delight that we heard a woman, who has 
very beautiful china, say, that she is making a collection of 
plates decorated by our leading artists. It is to be hoped 
that the same idea may be followed by others. 
Any of our readers, who are interested in collecting old 
and valuable china, are invited to contribute to our depart- 
ment for the "Collector," photographs and articles on any rare 
or interesting pieces they may own or be familiar with. In 
this way they may rouse a reciprocal interest that may prove 
of great value to them. 
The Reeling Figures, after Boutet de Monvel, in this 
number, are especially adapted to treatment in lustres, or they 
may be treated as black silhouettes on a colored ground, the 
drawing in the figures being carried out in the color of the 
ground. 
Everywhere is seen copying and misapplying of the re- 
ceived forms of beauty, of every by-gone style of art, with 
rarely an attempt to produce an art in harmony with our 
present needs and tastes. Can we not work into a thoroughly 
American, and at the same time, thoroughly artistic style of 
decoration ? In studying Historic Ornament, it occurs to us 
that almost every other country has a decorative style of its 
own, and, as a rule, the more barbaric, the more artistic. The 
commonplace, conventional world has a way of saying that 
artists and things artistic are, in a way, heathenish and bar- 
baric. Can we not demonstrate that we can be good citizens 
of the highest form of government and civilization, have good 
consciences, good morals and the highest refinement, and still 
have a decorative art of the highest type, at the same time 
thoroughly characteristic and American in character? We 
have myriad types of nature about us, easily adaptable- 
When we have made a thorough search over the field of 
Historic Ornament, and gathered all the honey of color and 
form and the principles that govern their combinations, then 
we can gather our own native fruits, flowers and animal life 
and form from them a decorative art, beautiful and individual 
and lasting. 
<& 
The octagon-shaped plate in the supplement was designed 
after the Arabian designs in the October number. 
In our New Year's number we will present our readers 
with another extra supplement, 1. e., a plate divider by Miss 
S. M. Wightman ; by this, one can easily and correctly divide 
any circle into 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 14, 15, and 16 parts. 
We feel confident that our subscribers will consider this one 
of the most useful helps we have yet offered. 
Miss Ida Johnson writes : "Will you allow me to make a 
correction? You speak of the Indian pipe as a fungus, which 
it is not. It belongs to the Heath family, and its botanical 
name is Monotropa Uniflora. We have quantities of the most 
beautiful ones around our cottage in the mountains, and I 
keep great bunches of them growing in jardinieres with ferns 
and vines. Often they are the most exquisite shade of pink. 
It is a regularly constructed flower." 
A Japanese merchant once told me that if such potteries 
as the Rookwood were located in Europe instead of Ohio, 
American millionaires would fight for their ware and pay 
fabulous prices. This gentleman told me furthermore that 
he had orders from Japanese collectors for this Rookwood 
pottery which was regarded as something remarkable by the 
best posted men in Japan. — China, Glass and Pottery Review. 
