PORCELAIN AND FAIENCE. 
43 
ment was removed to Sevres. The first success is said to 
date from 1768. 
Hard and Soft Porcelain. 
From 1753 to 1768, only tliepale tendre, or soft porcelain, 
was made'; but, from that time, both the soft and the hard 
were made. About 1804, the production of the soft porce 
lain ceased, M. Brongniart, the director of the works, decid- 
ing to give his attention wliolly to the hard,—the pale dure. 
But the use of the soft paste was resumed in 1847 by M. 
Ebelman, he taking some of the old paste, which had rested 
undisturbed in covered tanks for lnrty-five years. The pecu- 
liarities of these two varieties of porcelain are described by 
M. Arnoux in his report on the pottery and porcelain at the 
Paris Exhibition of 1867, as follows :— 
“ France furnishes the largest amount of hard porcelain, and it is 
there, also, that it is best manufactured. France is highly favored 
for its production from the quarries of kaolin which abound in the 
centre and south. This material suffices, without any addition, to 
constitute the body ; it is white, easy to work, and takes, in flring, a 
fine transparency. The glaze, which is fired at the same time as 
the paste, is also entirely composed from felspathic rocks, and 
vitrifies on the surface by the sole intensity of the heat required in 
the firing. Such a product presents, after cooling, great consistency, 
and the hardness of this glaze will defy the best tempered Steel In 
struments. But defects arise from the very excess of these qualities. 
This hardness leaves little resource fof decoration ; the fine colors 
for grounds are banished, and the painting, unincorporated into the 
glaze, lies upon the surface and looks hard and unfinished. This is 
so thoroughly acknowledged that the Paris decorators now often 
prefer, to paint upon French cream-color wäre instead of porcelain. 
“ The manufacture of soft porcelain has always been limited, for 
it is the most difficult of all pottery. Its inventors, persuaded that 
Chinese porcelain was a kind of glass, persisted in composing a 
paste of the same ingredients. Sand, lime, and some alkaline ma- 
terials were therefore vitrified in the proportion considered desirable 
to give a white half-translucent substance. But, as after being 
grouud it had not the least plasticity, and could not be worked, 
they added as small a quantity as possible of the calcareous earth 
found in the plaster-quarries in the neighborhood of Paris, so as not 
to injure'the whiteness or transparency. We cannot describe here