Beside that think of the
waste. Suppose you lost half the water you needed for your journey by
having it evaporate. Think in addition what it meant if a large part
of your food dried up in the cooking."

Theo looked grave.

"I should not like that at all."

"Nor did your ancestors," laughed Mr. Croyden. "Well, it was to
these Mohammedan Arabs, or Saracens, as they are termed, that Europe
fundamentally owed its knowledge of the use of glaze, and its
consequent beginning in the art of pottery-making. The Saracens did
not, however, remain in Spain. There was an uprising of the Christians
and they were either driven out or slaughtered, almost every relic of
their civilization being destroyed. A stray temple or palace alone
remains as a monument to them and this was more the result of chance,
probably, than of intention. For two centuries following came an
interval known as the Dark Ages, when none of the arts flourished.
But before the Moors had fled from Spain the Italians who lived near
at hand and whose territory the invaders often plundered had tired of
their pillaging and in return had made an expedition into the
Saracens' country bringing back with them to Italy some of the
Majolica ware of the Arabs. When the nations began to awaken out of
their two hundred years of warfare and strife, and Genoa, Venice, and
Leghorn became great commercial centres, then the Renaissance came and
the Italians, who were ever an ingenious people, began among other
things to attempt to copy the glaze on this Majolica ware. As a result
in the fifteenth century Luca della Robbia, who was both a sculptor
and a potter, contrived to perfect his wonderful glazed terra cotta."

"Not the Delia Robbia who did the Singing Boys we have on the wall at
school!"

"The very same. He made great blue and white enameled tiles for wall
decoration too; figures of babies and children, as well as whole
altars fashioned entirely from this beautiful enamel. Whether he used
a plumbiferous, or lead glaze; or a stanniferous, or tin glaze, we do
not know. Probably it was of tin. But the important fact is that he
got a fine durable surface, very shiny and very hard, which wrought a
revolution in pottery-making. If you visit Florence some time you can
still see set in the walls of some of the public buildings the
identical enameled terra cottas made by Luca della Robbia."

"I'd like to see them."

"Then tell your dad to take you to Italy after this war is ove