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                [Illustration: WEDGWOOD PORTLAND VASE]




                                POTTERY

                                  AND

                              PORCELAIN,

                           _FROM EARLY TIMES
             DOWN TO THE PHILADELPHIA EXHIBITION OF 1876_.

                                  BY

                        CHARLES WYLLYS ELLIOTT.

WITH ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FIVE ILLUSTRATIONS, AND THE MORE IMPORTANT MARKS
                            AND MONOGRAMS.

                               NEW YORK:
                       D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
                          549 & 551 BROADWAY.

                                 1878.

                             COPYRIGHT BY
                       D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
                                 1877.




PREFACE.


What we have attempted has been to gather and present, in a way to be
easily understood, the most important facts respecting "Pottery and
Porcelain."

The study of this interesting subject has for more than a century been
constant in Europe, and notably so during the last twenty-five years. A
correct knowledge of it may now almost be called a liberal education. In
the United States something has been done; and the public mind is now
asking, "What is it that makes 'pottery and porcelain' so attractive to
scholars, statesmen, women, and wits?"

In some degree we have answered this question. My part of the work has
been to gather where I could such historical and technical facts and
such illustrations as seemed most valuable, not only to the student but
to the collector.

Many of these came from Europe, of course, where since Queen Anne's day
the love of "old china" has at times risen to enthusiasm. But I have
drawn from our own collections whenever it has been possible. In the
preparation and engraving of the illustrations I hope the judicious
critic, as well as the judicious public, will give due credit to the
publishers and their artists, who, it seems to me, deserve great praise
for having so well done what they have undertaken to do. Permit me to
say a word for _collectors_.

Busy men who are making railways and coal-pits, under the pleasing
illusion that they are developing the country more than the rest of us,
are apt to think a man with any hobby except that of making money is
wasting his time.

I would like to remind the reader that there are a few--many of them
young men and young women too--who have money enough for all reasonable
wants, and who do not care to waste time and life in getting _more_
money, for which they have no special uses; these persons find a
perennial occupation in the study, the comparison, the purchasing, the
collecting, of all that will illustrate their subject of study--their
hobby. Around this subject of pottery and porcelain may be grouped, if
one so pleases, all the habits, the wants, the inventions, the growths,
of human society.

Some have yet a notion that the study of the politics and the fightings
of man is most important; others, how man came to be an Arminian or an
Augustinian; others, whether the sun is or is not gradually cooling
down, and must finally cease to be, or whether, on the contrary, its
flames are fed by the self-sacrificing stars.

Without detracting from their labors, I beg leave to say that my great
hobby or central fact being the _home_, I hold that whatever makes that
interesting, beautiful, or useful, is, or should be, interesting,
beautiful, and useful, to all the world. I believe that what we call
politics, or government, is only valuable in that it helps to create and
to protect desirable homes; all the rest--all the speeches, and
processions, and crownings, and court-balls, and receptions, and
dinners--are "leather and prunella."

Therefore I believe the "art of living" is first and foremost; to know
how to make _this_ life comfortable and beautiful is all-important. Yet
there is not a teacher of this great art in all the land, although
"professors" are legion.

We may well ask, when we go to a house: "What have they there to tell
us--what to show us? What have they collected to interest, to please, to
instruct?"

If a person has only many bonds bearing coupons locked up in his
safe--del