The Oldest Art

Pottery is the oldest, the longest, and the most widely diffused, of human arts. Its history, if it could be recorded, would be as old as the history, of man: its recorded history begins with the building of Babel.

The oldest pottery known is Egyptian; but every people, civilized or barbarian, has practised the art in one or another form.

All study in every department of art begins at a period not long after the Mosaic deluge. All art-history, when traced towards its beginning, is found to commence at a time less than five thousand years ago. There is no work of human hands, no result of human thought, now known, whose date is fixed at more than 3000 B.C., the earlier dates assigned by some able men to the Egyptian monuments of ancient dynasties being theoretical. The tombs at Beni Hassan in Egypt, which date from about 2000 B.C., contain pictures of various Egyptian trades and industries, including a pottery, in which appears the potter's wheel in use for forming cups. The Egyptians, therefore, made soft pottery in forms at this early period. They possessed also an art which belongs to the class of pottery, though not actually the baking of clay. They carved small articles from steatite, or soapstone, which they covered with a vitreous substance, and baked in furnaces, producing a resemblance to enamelled pottery. This art was of very early origin, and specimens are known bearing the names of kings who reigned before 2000 B.C.

The ceramic art probably went eastward as well as westward from the Euphrates valley, but its course cannot be traced. Westward, the Phoenicians appear to have possessed the art at a period prior to 1500 B.C.

The best period in the history of pottery was from 400 to 300 B.C. After the latter date the art declined, and before the date of the Roman empire was practically abandoned. The Greeks imported into Italy, both the splendid works of their potteries and the potters themselves, who produced similar fabrics in that country For a long time these works were attributed to the Etruscans, but it is now known that the Etruscans never excelled in the ceramic art.

The Saracens possessed a knowledge of pottery as early as the eighth century A.D., and it was carried by them into Spain. Whether Germany derived knowledge of the art from Saracen sources, it is impossible to affirm. But the first work in glazed pottery in Christian Europe, of which we have any knowledge, is found at Leipsic, where the Convent of St. Paul, finished in 1207, had a frieze of glazed or enamelled bricks, with raised figures of Christ and the apostles.

The most celebrated specimens of the potter's art are found in Henri Deux ware, or faience d'Oiron, which is very rare, and of which only fifty-three specimens are known; Palissy ware, which is of French manufacture (q.v.); and Wedgwood, which was manufactured by the Wedgwood family in England. The importance of the ceramic art as an aid to ethnological research is not less than its importance as an aid to the historian, because it is frequently the bearer of historical facts, inscribed on it in lasting characters. The Babylonian and Ninevite libraries were pottery: their books were tablets of clay, on which the letters were impressed; and the tablets, being baked, became enduring pages of history, that, in the nineteenth century after Christ, we find as legible as when printed: and learned men of to-day are translating them into the modern languages.

The Arab-Moors of the mediaeval period excelled in beautiful tiling, made into dados and wainscoting, called azulejos, of which fine specimens filled with arabesque designs are perfectly preserved in the Alhambra of Granada.