International studio (33.1907/1908(1908))

Martin Pottery


surface with a brush. Salt glaze
in connection with coloured
enamels is judiciously employed,
and the makers have been es-
pecially successful in the pro-
duction of a very fine dullish
black, which has all the excellent
qualities of the best Chinese
prototypes. The quaint and
irregular shapes given to the
various objects are uncommon
without being bizarre. The
decoration is, for the most part,
intimately connected with the
manufacture of the object, and
not, as it were, an afterthought.
In this respect their later work
differs materially from some of
their earlier, and is proportion-
ately the more commendable.
When Nature decorates her
“slip” decoration own productions, such as an egg,
a shell, a flower or a fruit, she
does not reproduce the forms of other natural objects. She
does not paint a lily on an egg, a bird on a shell, a fish
on a flower, or the portrait of a man on a fruit. Each



FIG. 9. INCISED DECORATION

FIG. 8. MODELLED DECORATION
one of these objects has a simple type of decoration of probably
more or less use to its existence, or it may be the outcome of form
and growth.
It would seem to us that the Martin Brothers, consciously or
unconsciously, have endeavoured to follow these precepts of Nature,

FIG. IO. MODELLED DECORATION

and in doing so have borrowed many ideas
from eggs and shells and other natural
forms, not in strict imitation, but as
suggestions for suitable ornament. For
example, the “slip” decoration on Fig. 1,

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