you may see the most exquisite Chinese, Japanese, Greek, Italian, Dutch, French, English, German and American art wares. For hundreds of years many peoples have been making pottery and porcelain too beautiful and costly for anything except to look at, as we look at paintings and statues. The clays were mixed, shaped, fired, painted, enamelled, polished, glazed and fired again by great artists. The finest examples are marked with the makers’ names burned in. And oh, what hero stories there are of famous potters, who worked years, and failed and suffered and at last succeeded in this lovely art.
Pottery making is one of the few things very little children can do, and do well. In its simplest forms it needs as cheap materials, and as few tools as basket making. Modeling clay comes among school supplies ready for use, too. In many places are kilns where schools can have pottery fired. And there are models of very old, simply shaped pieces to copy, and old patterns of ornament that grew out of the lives of ancient peoples. So as you shape and paint and dry the jar or bowl or vase, you live again the history of the earliest workers in clay, and learn principles of form and ornament that are used in many arts.
That kind of playing mud pies is useful and beautiful. Anyone can wash a dish after it is made, but just ask mama to read this story and then say if she thinks she could make a dish. (See Pottery, Palissy, Wedgwood.)
