International studio (36.1908/1909(1909))

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mental branches, this artist set himself to the task of
acquiring aii the technical detaiis, the secrets of the
profession as they have been too often considered;
not thinking it necessary to guard them, as so many
of his professionai brethren have done, he com-
municates frankiy to his pupiis ali these details—not
onlv those which have long beenknown in the art but
allthosewhich his long experience has accumulated.
Indeed, it is partly to the diffusion throughout the
West by Mr. Volkmar's pupils (who become teachers
in their turn) of this intimate knowledge of the art
that has been attributed the activity and the
progress made in it in this country since the Chi-
cago Columbian Exhibition of 1893. As this is an
art, as well as a science, it is but a portion of it that
can be acquired by education; the mere mastery of
technical details never made an artist. The most
complete knowledge of the chemistry, of the wheel,
of the kiln, of the manipulation, will not save if the
elusive and incommunicable instinct, the feeling,
the artistic instinct, is not behind the knowledge.
In the hring, for example, the appreciation of the
exact degree of heat in the kiln is of the utmost im-
portance, and for this purpose a learned Gerrnan
chemist has provided a very ingenious test, a cone,
composed of various substances fusible at varying
temperatures. These can be procured by the pot-
ters in this country at the University of Columbus,
Ohio; they were originally furnished in a scale of
twenty-five numbers, beginning at Number One,
the usual hring temperature of the kiln, 2102 de-
grees Fahrenheit, and scaling up by jumps of thirty
or fortv degrees each to Number Twenty-hve, 2966
degrees Fahrenheit. Fater, a newset wasprovided,
scaling down to Number Twenty-two, only 1094
degrees Fahrenheit. The potter decides on the
temperature he wishes for this particular firing,
selects the appropriate cone, sets it in the kiln
where he can see it through his isinglass peephole,
and when it begins to topple over he knows that the
desired temperature has been reached. Ifut even
this device does not fully avail; the potter who was
born potter and not merely made one, can tell in
some way, much nearer than thirty degrees, the ex-
act point of his heat, and supplements the test of
his cone with one which the chemists never made.
This right instinct in connection with tangible and
physical things is, of course, even more valuable
when it comes to intangible ones.
Beginning with this early practice in the Limoges
method of underglaze painting Mr. Volkmar
worked assiduously in one of the smaller potteries.
In 1879 he returned to this country and set up his
hrst kiln at Greenpoint, L. I. This was soon suc-

ceeded by one at Tremont, where he produced both
tiles and pottery of an artistic quality, the "Volk-
mar faience" being much of the same character as
the Haviland slip decorated ware, that is to say, in
which the design is carried out not only in coior but
also sometimes with a slight relief line which gives
something of the effect of when using
colored glazes. The medium and the method in
slip painting produce a slight impasto. The slip,
as he uses it, is a clay which has been previously
burned and ground and which serves as a white
with which to mix his colors, as in gouache paint-
ing; the hux is either red lead or borax; the former
serves to deepen the tint, the latter to lighten it. If
not of the proper consistency it is apt to "run"
when in the kiln, and the most carefully executed
painting may emerge a ruin. In fact, difhculties
and dangers lurk on every hand; the amount of
white that can be used varies with every color, the
gradations that can be obtained by it cease arbi-
trarily at certain points. Moreover, the colors used
present themselves only as dull whites and grays,
to be distinguished only by their labels; the most
glowing vases, the most varied landscape paintings,
that issue from the kiln went into it only as pale
monochromes. The obstacles to be overcome are
greater even than in painting on glass, where the
artist, with the exception of certain species of
glazes, can form a very fair idea of the effect of his
work before it is fired.
A cardinal point in Mr. Volkmar's doctrine is
that the body of the piece and the decoration shall
not dry and be fired together, but that the latter
shall be executed on the surface of the former onlv
when it is thoroughly dry and all shrinkage has
ceased. By this means he secures not only that
leisure in which to work which commends itself to
all, but also a greater brilliancy of color. The great
chapter on ceramic glazes, as is well known, is one
of the oldest in the history of human art, one of the
most perplexing, obscure and self-contradictory.
No amount of experience, knowledge, genius, or
good fortune can ensure constant success; the sub-
chapter of accidents is made tolerable only by the
fact that all accidents are not catastrophies and
that unknown causes sometimes produce astonish-
ing successes. But, generally, it is a devil who
enters the kiln to interfere with the ordinary and
regular progress of events and pushes over the one
piece in which the mysteries of the glaze have pro-
duced the most superb color, so that it emerges
with a flaw. Mr. Volkmar, like all other potters,
can show these
The palette of color is a restricted one. Red is

LXXVI