"
Mr. Croyden was as good as his word.
Theo had just finished his share of the big trout when into his room
came the china merchant.
"Your father and Manuel are busy icing some fish to ship home, so here
I am," he affirmed.
After dragging a steamer chair up to Theo's bedside and stretching
himself comfortably in it the elder man began:
"Most of the pottery of the seventeenth century was an outgrowth of
the Italian Renaissance when all the arts such as painting,
wood-carving, sculpture, literature, glass and pottery-making were
revived. In France the attempt to imitate Italian Faenza ware gave
rise to the word _faience_, a term applied to French porcelains made
both from hard and soft paste. French potters at Nevers, spurred on by
Dutch and Chinese products, began to turn out a type of pottery not
unlike Delft, except that the method of coloring it was reversed, and
instead of having blue figures on a white ground it had white figures
on a background of blue. This innovation, however, was not an entirely
new variety of pottery. It still remained for France to invent its own
peculiar kind of ware, and this it soon did. Nevertheless you must not
make the mistake of thinking that these first attempts were very far
reaching, for on the contrary they were very limited.
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