t of
porcelain and pottery of all kinds in Europe and the United States.
Mechanical methods were largely called in to supplement or replace what
had hitherto remained almost pure handicraft. The English methods of
preparing and mixing the materials of the body and glaze, and the
English device of replacing painted decoration by machine printing, to a
large extent carried the day, with a great gain to the mechanical
aspects of the work and in many cases with an entire extinction of its
artistic spirit. Even the hand-work that still remained was largely
affected by the growing dominance of machinery; and the painting,
gilding and decoration of pottery and porcelain, in the first half of
the 19th century, became everywhere mechanical and hackneyed. During the
latter half of the 19th century another influence was fortunately at
work. Side by side with the increasing mechanical perfection of the
great bulk of modern pottery there grew up a school of innovators and
experimentalists, who revived many of the older decorative methods that
had fallen into oblivion and produced fresh and original work, in
certain directions even beyond, the achievements of the past. The 20th
century opened with a wider outlook among the potters of Europe and
America. In every country men were striving once again to bring back to
their world-old craft something of artistic taste and skill.

_Technical Methods._--All primitive pottery, whether of ancient or of
modern times, has been made by the simplest methods. The clay, dug
from the earth's surface, was or is prepared by beating and kneading
with the hands, feet or simple mallets of stone or wood; stones and
hard particles were picked out; and the mass, well tempered with
water, was used without any addition. From this clay, vessels were
shaped by scooping out or cutting a solid lump or ball, by building up
piece by piece and smoothing down one layer upon another or by
squeezing cakes of clay on to some natural object or prepared mould or
form. The potter's wheel, though very ancient, was a comparatively
late invention, arrived at independently by many races of men. In its
simplest form it was a heavy disk pivoted on a central point to be set
going by the hand, as the workman squatted on the ground; and it may
be seen to-day in India, Ceylon, China or Japan, in all its primitive
simplicity (see fig. 1). This form of potter's wheel was the only one
known until about