[Newspaper]
Publication: Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Brooklyn, NY, United States
vol. 48, no. 182, p. 8, col. 1-3
OUR INDUSTRIAL CENTER
Variety as Well as Volume Its Characteristic.
Pottery as an Illustration—Twelve Establishments Where the Ceramic Art Which Flourished Among the Egyptians, Greeks and Romans Centuries Ago Is Practiced in Brooklyn To-day.
It is a characteristic feature of the manufacturing industrial life of Brooklyn that It has great variety. It is not all of one kind. The industries are many, and they are as distinctive as they are numerous. In the new world, as in the old, there are communities which are identified with one industry only, which owe their origin to that industry and which depend for their existence upon the same. Such are sometimes extremely prosperous communities, great and wealthy cities. Lyons is famous for its silk, Sevres for its porcelain, Biringham for its iron work, Manchester for its cotton, and so of some of the cities of our own Union.
The drawback to such a state of things is that there is too much dependence upon ono branch of Industry—so much so that when the industry le affected the whole community is affected. The failure of a trade or industry moans the ruin of the place, for the time at least; and, unless new life comes with some now industry, it moans death. Brooklyn is in no such condition of dependence, and, therefore, she is in danger of no such collapse.
Young, too, as Brooklyn is, she has won distinction in some of the very oldest departments of industry. Of those prominent mention must be made of her numerous potteries. Of these she can boast of no fewer than twelve separate establishments—all well occupied in the different departments of the ceramic art. They are Francis Roos & Son, 58 North Eleventh street; Frederick Schaeffer, 95 Clay street; Henry Bieg, 66 Wallabout; J. J. Declark, 57 Walton street; Charles Graham, 110 Metropolitan avenue; Faience Manufacturing Company of Now York, 98 West street; James L. Jansen, 150 Greene avenue; Alexander Machutta, 212 Union street; B. Prinz & Son, 142 Third avenue; Shock & Meg, Smith street, corner of Bash; Cornelius Vanpel, 388 Wallabout, and the Union Porcelain Works, 800 Eckford street. In these different works may be seen the potter's task in almost all its phases; and the productions of the same range from the coarsest stoneware, such as jugs, jars, crocks, flower pots, Umbrella stands, etc., up to the higher forms, such as kitchen utensils, line dishes for the dinner and tea table, as well as various kinds of ornaments for the parlor and dressing room.
Before giving more minute details of the Brooklyn works, it may be of some service to the reader to recall a few fasts connected with the history of pottery, and in a brief way indicate its growth and the order of its development. The art, it is hardly necessary to Bay Is a very ancient one; and among all the earlier races who have made any figure in history, it was more or less extensively practiced. In both its coarser and less pretentious forms, as well as in the higher and ornamental, it was known and practiced by the ancient Egyptians. They made bricks for building purposes; and they made numerous articles for domestic use. Some of the lesser pyramids wore built of brick Vases of baked earthenware, for culinary and other purposes, and urns of the same material, covered with a thick delicious glaze of blue, green, white, purple and yellow, were made in the Nile Valley and exported to all the neighboring countries. The Egyptians had the potter's lathe or wheel, moulds for stamping, and metal tools of various kinds. Specimens of their skill exist in plentiful quantities, and are to be seen in all the great museums of art. To the rougher kind of work slaves and captives wore put; and Bible readers will remember how Hebrews were compelled to labor in the brick fields. Brick making was known and practiced in the contemporary empires of Assyria and Babylon, 2,000 years before Christ. The glazed brick, in the form of cylinders, hexagonal prisms and such like, was used for what we would call book purposes, writings being impressed upon them. The art took a higher form among the Greeks. Bricks were not extensively used by them, but they made all kinds of useful and fancy articles of sun dried clay, of terra cotta and of glazed ware. Greek vases attained a high order of excellence, and revealed all the fine artistic quality of the Greek mind. In the later days of Grecian greatness—In the days which followed the conquests of Alexander, and before clay began, to give way to metal—the pottery was molded, sometimes glazed entirely black, and sometimes variegated with opaque white figures and ornaments. Roman pottery may be considered a sort of inheritance from the Greeks. although It has to be admitted that the Etruscans, at a very early period, worked independently of the Greeks. Later the Etruscans imitated the Greeks. An improved kind of pottery was developed at Arrezo or Arratium and was called Arratine; and, in the first Christian Century it was produced extensively at Capua and Cumae, as well as at Arrezo. It is supposed to have been the fruit of an attempt to imitate chased cups, in gold and silver, which had become common in Italy. The vases of this later order were of a bright red, or black, color, covered with a lustrous delicious glaze. The ornaments were produced by mould, or by placing bas reliefs, taken from moulds, on the vases. It was called Lamian ware. Under the twelve Caesars it deteriorated, and by the time of the Antonfues it had given place to a red ware, glazed with red lead and copper. There is no reason to doubt that the native British had some knowledge of pottery. Urns and vases have been found, supposed to date back to the first Christian Century. But there is abundant evidence that it took a new form and acquired a new impetus after the advent of the Romans.
Pottery was known to the Northern nations—to the Celts and Scandinavians—long before the Roman conquests of Gaul and Britain. As far back as the Stone and Bronze periods large and small vases were in use; and they are found to-day among the cromlechs, the tumuli and graves of the Norsemen. The material is coarse, and bears evidence of having been feebly burned with flres made of hay, dried ferns and other such vegetable products. Pottery was known in India, in China, in Japan in times far remote; and in the soil of Mexico and along the Pacific slope abundant evidence has been found that the art was not unknown to the more advanced tribes of the American aborigines. The Mexican and Peruvian wares never reached the excellence of glazing, but in modeling the old Peruvian wares rival the best specimens of European art. The Fijis had come to a knowledge of pottery at an early time, and they glazed with the resin of a tree. It is suspected, however, that this knowledge was derived from Europe. It is somewhat curious to note that although the potter's art is mentioned in scripture very few specimens of Hebrew wares have been found.
Much of the beauty of the ceramic art is dependent upon the glazed or enameled surface of the wares. The history of the higher grades of the art is the history of this glaze. In other words the art has approached perfection very much as the secret of glazing has been thoroughly mastered. The knowledge of glazes originally acquired by the Egyptians and Assyrians was still a possession when the Romans governed Alexandria, and from the potters of that city the secret was obtained by the Persians, the Moors and the Arabs. There is proof that faience's and enameled bricks wore in use among these peoples in the Twelfth Century, and among the Hindus a. century or a century and a half later. For some centuries glazing seems to have been a lost art in Europe. In the general decay and ruin which overtook the old Roman empire, this special knowledge had perished. In the early years of the Eighth Century, the secret was carried by the Moore into Spain. Early in the Twelfth Century the knowledge of glazing or enameling had come into the possession of the Italians, no doubt from Spanish sources. From Italy, where it was soon turned to excellent account, it found its way into France, and flourished under the patronage of Catharine de Medicis, through the persevering labors and brilliant discoveries of Bernard Palissy, the grand old Huguenot, who escaped the massacre of St. Bartholomew, only to be sentenced to death by burning, and who, although saved from so horrible a fate, was permanently cut off from his labors and allowed to rot in the Bastille. It is hardly possible to overestimate the value of Palissy's labors. By the discovery of a special kind of paste or enamel, as well as by his general taste and skill in the other departments of his trade, he raised the potter's art to an eminence never formerly known. In his hands pottery took on the most beautiful adornments, both as to form and color; and his tiles, his rustic pieces, his basins, his stands, his statuettes, which
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