Croyden?"
The manufacturer laughed.
"I declare if you are not beginning this morning just where you left
off last night!" he exclaimed. "What kind of porcelain do you mean,
hard or soft paste?"
"Oh, any kind."
"You have not forgotten the vast difference between the hard and
soft ware, have you? I should be discouraged if you had."
Theo shook his head.
"I don't believe you would let me forget even if I wanted to," he
replied with an impish chuckle.
"I certainly shouldn't," smiled Mr. Croyden. Then he added more
seriously: "Soft paste china, or pate tendre, as it is called, was
made at St. Cloud as early as 1695, and some of it was very
beautiful. Such ware looks more creamy and is not so cold and harsh to
the touch. It is, however, much more fragile and for that reason,
although a great deal of it was manufactured, the industry never
became a wide-spread success. Later soft paste was also made at
Chantilly, Vincennes, Limoges, Paris, and a number of French
cities. Even the celebrated Sevres ware, the finest thing in
china-making that France ever produced, was at first made from soft
paste. This is easily understood when you recall that at the beginning
the only clays the French knew anything about were pate tendre
clays.
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