TERRA-COTTA, BRICK, ETC. 
99 
United States Centennial Commission for exhibition in 1876, 
and to be afterwards deposited in tbe Permanent Museum. 
Tbe enamelled plaques, panels, pilasters, and fillets ax - e 
beautiful. In the fagade, door-jambs and window-casings of 
tbe new university buildings in Vienna, tbey have been freely 
used, with fine effect. 
It is gratifying to note this modern revival of the ancient 
art, kept alive in tbe sixteenth Century by the genius of Luca 
della Robbia, and now capable of almost indefinite expansion, 
since the knowledge of the composition of colored enamels is 
lio longer a secret. Of the beauty of such enamelled terra- 
cottas there can be no question, and their durability is estab- 
lished by experience. Witness tbe ancient enamels of As- 
syria and Egypt, as well as the works of della Robbia, 
preserved in collections. The South Kensington Museum 
has more than fifty examples. One of tbe cboicest specimens 
is the medallion, eleven feet in diameter, supposed to have 
been made in the year 1453. It bears the arms of King 
Ren6 of Anjou, surrounded by a massive border of fruit and 
foliage. It was exposed to the action of the weather for 
more than four hundred years, fixed in the front wall of a 
villa near Florence. Good specimens of the della Robbia 
wäre aro to be found also in the Athemeum in Boston, and 
the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. 
The terra-cotta wäre, building Ornaments, majolica, etc., 
of the Vienna. Company is manufactured in a separate estab- 
lishment at Inzersdorf. The clay of that locality produces a 
wäre that not only has great strength and resists the weather, 
but has a pleasing stone color, which harmonizes so well with 
the usual tone of the buildings that the figures do not need 
colonng or painting. 
The variety of the figures and decorative objects is very 
great. The sample-book contains 242 pages of closely 
printed lithographic designs, about 2,000 in number. The' 
models, of which the Company has a great number, are all 
made from drawings by the most eminent architects, and are 
exquisite in design. The possession of such a stock of pat- 
terns insures, practically, a monopoly of the business. A 
large proportion of the decorative figures seeu in the fa^ades 
of the splendid buildings adorning the Ring Strasse and over