ake
it. Probably some of the Japanese crossed to China and there learned
the art. Some think pottery-making came into Japan through
Korea. However that may be, long before other countries had to any
extent perfected the manufacture of glazed pottery and porcelain
China, Japan, Persia, and India had turned their attention to it. As
far back as 1000 B. C. the Japanese were making porcelains
similar to those of China. Then followed a long stretch of years when,
because of various wars between China and Japan, the art of producing
glazed pottery and porcelain was lost. All those workmen who possessed
any knowledge of their manufacture perished. This was the period when
the Greeks and Romans were making their red and black ware which, you
recall, they did not know how to glaze, and therefore had no means of
preventing liquids from leaking through it."

"I wish they had had the secrets of the Chinese and Japanese!" Theo
said.

"I wish so too," echoed Mr. Croyden. "As it was, they struggled along
with their beautiful pottery vases through which the water percolated
just as it does through a flower-pot. And so it was for a time in
China and Japan. It was not until centuries afterward that the Chinese
and Japanese again rediscovered the art they had lost, and by that
time the Greeks and Romans were no more, newer races having taken
their places. Some of the wonderful old enamel work of the Chinese,
however, was never reclaimed, and rare pieces of porcelain of a kind
no one has yet been able to reproduce remain to tell us of the skill
of those ancient Chinese workmen."

"If the Chinese kept everything so secret how did the art of glazed
pottery-making ever get into Europe?" asked Theo.

Mr. Croyden smiled.

"It was a marvel that it ever did," he answered slowly. "Of course as
people traveled little in those days one country did not know much
about what another was doing. But there were wars when much booty was
carried from one land to another; the pilgrimages of the Crusaders,
too, helped to spread a knowledge of widely separated sections.
Gradually bits of Chinese pottery and porcelain found their way into
different parts of the East; and as a consequence men began to be
highly dissatisfied with their red and black ware, and with the crude
clay dishes they had previously thought so fine. They wanted to make
white ware like that of the Chinese. But because they did not know
what clays to use, or how to glaze their products