8
EXPOSITION AT VIENNA.
CERAMIC ART AT THE VIENNA EXPOSITION.
By WILLIAM P. BLAKE.
I. General Stjrvey.
The potter’s art, one of the most ancient and the most
universal of all, connects itself on the one hand with geology
and chemistry, and on the other with painting and sculpture.
It is the outgrowth of one of tho primal necessities of mau’s
existence,—the preparation and distribution of food,—and
is thus intimately identified with domestic and social life.
Its productions, though so fragile, are perhaps the most en-
during of man’s handiwork. The objects that have outlived
history are to be viewed not only as specimens of the condi
tion of the art at the time of their productiou, but as expo-
nents of the habits, the domestic life, and the festhetics of
races long since passed away. There is no other material
which can be so readily impressed with the conception of the
artist as "clay in the hands of the potter.”
Progress and Capacity of the Akt.
Such an art should progress measurably in the same ratio
as civilization. That it has so progressed is evident to all
who saw its representation in the halls of the great Exhibi
tion at Vienna in 1873. The most general and striking im-
pression produced by a systematic survey of what was shown
there, was the vitality of the art and the high degree of
excellence it has reached, not only in one or two countries,
but in many. The rapid progress in the manufacture of por-
celain and earthenware in several countries since the com-
mencement of the era of industrial exhibitions, shows the
capacity of the art for development in any country. Excel
lence is by no means confined to any section or to any special