ANCIENT AND MODERN.

Western Star, 11 June 1935, Page 4

ANCIENT AND MODERN.

ART OF THE ENGLISH POTTER

The humble teapot takes pride of place at an exhibition of English pottery from 1350 to 1935 which was open, ed at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, last month.'

Among the exhibits is what is probably the oldest teapot in exsistence, a| diminutive red and gilt affair of paint*ed Staffordshire stoneware with a beautiful and certainly wealthy lady of 250 years ago brewed half cups' in this doll's pot at half-a-guinea an ounce. She wash, ed it herself, of course, which is why it stands without a flaw in its case for people to look at to-day. Let those who think we take outpleasures sadly, writes Lpusie Morgan, a_ London journalist, observe in the eighteenth century room how high spirits can be immortalised in a soup., dish. Here are enchanting tureens in| the shape of waggish rabbits, who seenil to be cocking their highly-glazed cans to catch the jokes in the table-talk. Tlie pottery of to-day makes wonderful patterns against severe, lhien.covered backgrounds, from the stream-lined kitchen and laboratory utensils of massproduction to the signed work of studio potters, the artists of the craft. The, machine, I was told by Mr Packham, Curator of Ceramics, has not learned to. capy tha flowing brush strokes of the| artist.

The seven beautifully arranged rooms in the exhibition explain why there has; never been a slump in the "British pottery market. The cream-coloured ware of Josiah Wedgwood and the bone china dishes of Josiah Spode captured tha world's markets 150 years ago because they could bo washed for a generation without being scratched. No foreign manufacturer has ever approached the technical perfection of English ware.

A German scientist says that Germans, in the event of war. could cat sawdust, drink wood sap and dross in birch bark, wood being convertible into food and clothing under a new process. —lt looks as if we will havo the woocj * on Germany in. the uest wa,^