STORY OF POTTERY.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 230, 29 September 1930, Page 5

STORY OF POTTERY.

GIFT OF EAST TO WEST. SLOW PROGRESS IN EUROPE. How tho art of pottery-making was first of all the gift of the East to the West was told by Miss Briar Gardner at the Museum yesterday in a lecture on "The art of the Potter." Mr. C. R. Ford presided. Miss Gardner said that while pottery was early known in the East it made but slow progress in the West. Even when tho finished ai'ticle found its way by queer bypaths from the East apross to the Germanic peoples they had no use for it. They were fond of their own horn and metalware, and the other was not wanted. People in the East knew the uso of clay 1,00 years before the people of the West. It was known in some parts of the East before others. For example, it was an art in China before Japan ever realised the use of clay. Miss Gardner touched on tho civilisation of the Egyptians on one side of the world, and of the Aztecs on the other. She illustrated her remarks on the work of the latter race by producing some of the pottery it had made. Of Grecian ware, she said that in common with everything else the Greeks touched, it showed the mark of the aesthetic mind. When the art was introduced into England, the articles made were crude in tho extreme, but during the lifetime of Wedgwood, fifty-five years, the progress was so marked that British clays were sought after from the Continent. Tho aid of scie'nce had been enlisted, and this was the feature which tipped the balance in favour of rapid advance. Miss Gardner mentioned some of her own experiments with various New Zealand clays. She explained the processes from washing the raw material to glazing, and demonsti-ated them with fresh clay with pots at different stages in the making, and -with the finished article. She said she thought that some of the local clays were as line as any found elsewhere* but before they could be generally known there was a vast amount of spade work to be done, and all the help that science could give was needed.