[Newspaper]
Publication: Brooklyn Daily Eagle
Brooklyn, NY, United States
vol. 46, no. 240, p. 5, col. 1-2
GEEENPOINT POECELAIN.
Unfounded Prejudice Against American "Ware,
Fine Specimens—English and French Articles.
The Brooklyn Manufacture.
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American porcelain is like Dresden—the genuine article—and Brooklyn porcelain is the best manufactured and the best decorated native ware in the market. The mark of the Union Porcelain Works, of Greenpoint, is the head of an eagle, holding in its beak the letter S., the firm being Smith & Son. This, however, is only the mark of fabrication and it has been found necessary to add another mark for decoration, because the firm is compelled to make large quantities of undecorated ware, and decorators have found a profit in buying the white goods and decorating themselves. But as their efforts were more showy than substantial, more pleasing than lasting, the decoration often wore away under the influences of boiling water and a brush, and then complaints were made to the Greenpoint men, and they to protect their customers were forced to add the additional mark. The chief market of the Brooklyn porcelain is among hotel men, who buy it because of its strength and the durability of its decoration. It is the pride and ambition of waiters in every large hotel to produce on awful crash semi occasionally, by allowing all the porcelain dishes and plates on a tray to descend to the floor. Such is the value of the Brooklyn porcelain that it refuses to break under those trying circumstances. Pieces may be dinted off the edges, but as the body is thoroughly vitrified, these exposed surfaces do not become dirty. An ordinary plate under the same conditions could not he used, because the part unprotected by glaze absorbs dirt instantly, and becomes as black as a hat. The large hotels, therefore, find the use of porcelain an actual economy, and restrict the decorative arts to a band of color and the name of the house thereby obtaining a cheap advertisement and a superior service ware upon the most moderate terms. Under such economical conditions there has been little temptation to the manufacturers to make much progress in the decorative aide of their manufacture. Their customers wanted from them an article that would restrict the item of breakages to Its lowest term. And they have answered this want by making a pure porcelain of wonderful tenacity and purity. The latter, however, goes without saying, because the tenacity depends upon the purity. Perfectly pure kaolin and perfectly pure feldspar [sic] feldspar for body and glaze give a homogeneous article that must be tenacious. But the obtaining this homogeneousness is no joke, for kaolin, which is in part feldspar [sic] feldspar decomposed by nature under conditions that make it unctuous [sic] ???, has always some impurities from which it must be freed by various ingenious devices. And feldspar [sic] feldspar, the mother rock, has the bad habit of concealing infinitesimal particles of iron among its molecules. These are arrested in the fluid condition of the glaze by a series of magnets. When a particle escapes detection it parades itself as a speck in the glaze, and no doubt feels the pride of the fly that gets baked as a currant in a cake.
Although Smith & Son have not been asked to develop the ornamental side of porcelain by any ex pressed and general clamor of the community, and although they knew that there was a general prejudice in favor of foreign wares among those who claimed to be instructed in such matters, yet no man is a ceramist for nothing, and no ceramist can escape the allurement of color; and therefore they have produced from time to time some ware of a purely decorative character. Notably they have made within the past six months a tea set, so beautiful in design, so perfect in execution, so peerless in one of the colors that it is a fitting subject for more than local pride, for even national enthusiasm. The shapes are quaint, even to oddness, but not unsuitable to porcelain, and the decoration is a combination of the use of enamel colors in the style of jeweled Sevres and gold, burnished dull, etched and of several colors in the style made familiar to connoisseurs by Worcester ivory ware and modern crown Derby rather than Dresden. The lids of the sugar bowls and the handles of the cups and jugs are of coral red, imitating the use of the real article in silver ware. In no previous porcelain has a red been obtained which can vie with, the coral red of the Brooklyn porcelain. Spode, of England, was the first man who came near the red of the old Kaga and Imari ware, which had been Imported into Europe as Chinese, although made in Japan. Later on the ceramists of the Royal Dresden porcelain works made reproductions of the Oriental fabrics, which were marvelously fine in color. But by the general consent of connoisseurs it has been admitted that the finest coral red was that of Capo di Monte porcelain, made in the palace of that name in the City of Naples, under the Bourbon dynasty in the Eighteenth Century, and recently reproduced by the Marquis Ginori, of La Doccia, who bought the molds from the Amadei royal family. But his red is not even—watery in some places and pasty in others. Still more recently Haviland, of Limoges and Anteuil, has produced a very admirable red which comes quite close to old Kaga. But in the opinion of the writer, whose good fortune it has been to see the finest examples of modern ware and to form the acquaintance of many leading ceramists, the Greenpoint coral red is the brightest and the most even and the most lustrous.
The gold working is singularly fine, but the enamel decoration surpasses it. There is a fullness about each spot of color which is highly satisfactory. It must be explained that in the use of enamels for jewel decoration the style is necessarily cloisonne, the object being to imitate incrustation with turquoises and rubles. The highest merit is therefore to obtain as much relief and plumpness as possible, so as to produce the material effect as well as the color of precious stones, and to intensify the sense of Incrustation. The body is very even, very white and free from flaws. The glaze is admirable in quality, but seems to the writer to be a trifle thick so that wherever there Is a change of surface it produces a vitreous glistening and a sense of fluidity. The latter is not without its charm, and in fluted articles would create enthusiasm. But where it comes into combination with a red as overpowering as the coral handles the glaze must suppress itself and be nothing more than a varnish. To the connoisseur who knows and to the amateur who appreciates, there is almost something sublime in the fact that in the great competitive race after the coral red a native manufacturer in an obscure suburb of Brooklyn has attained the highest honors and won the prize. The firm, a little grieved by the prejudiced eyes with which real connoisseurs have regarded their work in the past years, have shown their latest achievement to no one and have said nothing about it, waiting for a time when they may spring It upon a startled world. But Smith Sire and Smith Son know that they have got there all the same.
