Report.—The “Washington Pitchers.”—Lyman and Fenton, Vermont.—Rouse and Turner, New Jersey.—Potteries at Trenton.—In Ohio.—The Centennial Exhibition

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POTTERY   AND   PORCELAIN.

CHAPTER I.

UNGLAZED POTTERY.

Fig 1.—Bowl of the Stone Age.

SO ancient is the potter’s art that it may be said to have begun with the beginnings of man. A belief exists still in Silesia that there is a mountain out of which cups and jugs spring spontaneously, as the mushrooms shoot from the moist soil of the plains. Interwoven, then, as pottery is with the history of the race, having relations daily and hourly with man’s universal and greatest vocation—the preparation of the food which supports and continues life—it has had and will have an interest as vital as it is wide-spread.

Fig. 2.—Vase of the Stone Age.

Fig. 3.—Vase of the Bronze Age.

Man a Cooking Animal.—Man is the only cooking animal, so far as I know. It is easy to believe that archaic man, when he began to evolve from the animal state, at once began to invent, and that, after he had discovered the uses of fire, the first need was of vessels which could be used upon the fire to seethe and boil.

And what do we find?

The Reindeer Age—the Stone Age.—Of prehistoric times, when the reindeer roved free over Europe, even to the shores of the Mediterranean, in the Stone age, even when man lived in caves and was only able to fashion things with stones, a few pots have been found, showing how early his wants led him to fashion things of clay.