in defiance of every known law of perspective, adorned millions of
our family ever since the days of platters? Didn’t you inspect the
copper-plate on which my pattern was deeply engraved? Didn’t you
perceive an impression of it taken in cobalt colour at a
cylindrical press, upon a leaf of thin paper, streaming from a
plunge-bath of soap and water? Wasn’t the paper impression
daintily spread, by a light-fingered damsel (you KNOW you admired
her!), over the surface of the plate, and the back of the paper
rubbed prodigiously hard – with a long tight roll of flannel, tied
up like a round of hung beef – without so much as ruffling the
paper, wet as it was? Then (says the plate), was not the paper
washed away with a sponge, and didn’t there appear, set off upon
the plate, THIS identical piece of Pre-Raphaelite blue distemper
which you now behold? Not to be denied! I had seen all this – and
more. I had been shown, at Copeland’s, patterns of beautiful
design, in faultless perspective, which are causing the ugly old
willow to wither out of public favour; and which, being quite as
cheap, insinuate good wholesome natural art into the humblest
households. When Mr. and Mrs. Sprat have satisfied their material
tastes by that equal division of fat and lean which has made their
MENAGE immortal; and have, after the elegant tradition, ‘licked the
platter clean,’ they can – thanks to modern artists in clay – feast
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Dickens, Charles – Reprinted Pieces
their intellectual tastes upon excellent delineations of natural
objects.
This reflection prompts me to transfer my attention from the blue
plate to the forlorn but cheerfully painted vase on the sideboard.
And surely (says the plate) you have not forgotten how the outlines
of such groups of flowers as you see there, are printed, just as I
was printed, and are afterwards shaded and filled in with metallic
colours by women and girls? As to the aristocracy of our order,
made of the finer clay-porcelain peers and peeresses; – the slabs,
and panels, and table-tops, and tazze; the endless nobility and
gentry of dessert, breakfast, and tea services; the gemmed perfume
bottles, and scarlet and gold salvers; you saw that they were
painted by artists, with metallic colours laid on with camel-hair
pencils, and afterwards burnt in.
And talking of burning in (says the plate), didn’t you find that
every subject, from the willow pattern to the landscape after
Turner – having been framed upon clay or porcelain biscuit – has to
be glazed? Of course, you saw the glaze – composed of various
vitreous materials – laid over every article; and of course you
witnessed the close imprisonment of each piece in saggers upon the
separate system rigidly enforced by means of fine-pointed
earthenware stilts placed between the articles to prevent the
slightest communication or contact. We had in my time – and I
suppose it is the same now – fourteen hours’ firing to fix the
glaze and to make it ‘run’ all over us equally, so as to put a good
shiny and unscratchable surface upon us. Doubtless, you observed
that one sort of glaze – called printing-body – is burnt into the
better sort of ware BEFORE it is printed. Upon this you saw some
of the finest steel engravings transferred, to be fixed by an after
glazing – didn’t you? Why, of course you did!
Of course I did. I had seen and enjoyed everything that the plate
recalled to me, and had beheld with admiration how the rotatory
motion which keeps this ball of ours in its place in the great
scheme, with all its busy mites upon it, was necessary throughout
the process, and could only be dispensed with in the fire. So,
listening to the plate’s reminders, and musing upon them, I got
through the evening after all, and went to bed. I made but one
sleep of it – for which I have no doubt I am also indebted to the
plate – and left the lonely Dodo in the morning, quite at peace
with it, before the bandy-legged baby was up.
OUR HONOURABLE FRIEND
WE are delighted to find that he has got in! Our honourable friend