International studio (51.1913/1914)

William M. Robertson, Master Potter

change and adventure. So the son sought the
free and open life of the West.
The father still plodded at the factory—-always
with the vision of the one clear spot of dragon’s
blood, and the certainty that one day he would
reproduce the lost art of the Ming pottery of
ancient China. Jugs and pots he made only to
furnish the necessaries of life. The time and
thought and heart of the potter were devoted to
study and continuous experiment. The history of
Palissy, or the romance of “The Middleman” tell
no stronger tale of privation and self-sacrifice.
The lad, now grown to manhood on the wide
plains of freedom in the West—-what of him?
How did the call come to him to return to the
drudgery of the factory? As he lay upon his back
at the end of a long day in the saddle, he rested

Two perfect vases, however, are on exhibition at
the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
The making of cracqule ware had also been an
ambition scarcely less burning than the re-creation
of dragon’s blood. So they worked and struggled
until one day an explosion shook the pottery at
Dedham from basement to roof. Between the
door of the small experiment kiln and the tank of
explosives had stood William, the man who had
returned to give his life for his art. When rescued
both hands and arms were terribly burned. As
yet, surgeons have done little for him; working
almost continually, they have restored to power
but one tendon, one muscle, occasionally one
finger, at a time, but so far have not given him
the power to shape the simplest form upon his
wheel. But still the Robertsons worked, un-

Courtesy of A. C. Saunders, Photographer, Wakefield, Massachusetts
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE CRACKLE AND DRAGON’S BLOOD


his eyes upon the sunset, and thought of his self-
forgetful father. The glory of the setting sun,
with its red of the dragon’s blood, so soon to fade
into the gray night, called to his beauty-loving
soul for the immortality of the potter’s vase.
Back into the struggle, willingly, came this
William—a man—-to serve his part in perfecting
the art of the Robertsons.
The dragon’s blood developed slowly. More
and more often would a vase come from the kiln
a perfect piece. At last the secret was theirs.
In four years they gave to the world, in all,
three hundred pieces of exquisite dragon’s blood
pottery. The color is deep and pure and liquid,
beyond the finest pieces of the old Ming product.
Time will give them the only thing they now lack
■—age. The majority of these pieces are still in
the possession of Mr. Robertson, because they
seem to him too much a part of himself to be sold.

daunted, in the shadow of the blackened rafters—
and America has not only dragon’s blood, but true
cracqule ware, known as Dedham. This ware,
again, has never been equaled, except in a few
ancient Korean vases. The American cracqule is
in no way an imitation nor a reproduction. The
cracqule of the Orient was never used for table
ware, always for decorative upstanding vases, and
was only a crazed enamel upon a soft body.
The output of the pottery is small. The orders
exceed the supply. Hugh has been dead four
years. Alone, William Robertson works and plans,
and the secrets of all these processes are his alone.
This man who, like his father, cares little for money,
not at all for fame, gives himself and his time to
his art—an art which has bridged half a millennium
of years, and gives to America a distinctive pot-
tery excelling the product of the Orient’s golden
age of keramics.

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