Porcelain of an excellent quality was made at Nantgario about 1813, and at Swansea 1814-17, the decorations in enamel colours consisting of a natural rendering of flowers, birds, butterflies, and shells. Porcelain was also made about 1800 at the Herculaneum potteries at Liverpool. Rockingham, in Yorkshire, produced during the years 1759-88 a brown china, which, however, was but a fine earthenware, of a hard and compact body, covered with a rich brown or chocolate glaze. In 1820, porcelain was made at Rockingham, comprising dinner and dessert services, richly enamelled and gilt, together with vases, flower baskets, and busts in white biscuit ware. In 1832, a dessert service of 200 pieces was made for William IV. at a cost of £5,000, the decorations consisting of natural fruit and flowers, with landscapes and the royal arms in enamel colours. In some of the earlier Rockingham ware the outlines of the flowers and butterflies were in transfer printing, and the colouring was added by hand. The illustrations given on plates 21, 27, 28 and 29, show the universality of the potter’s art, which may be traced through many beautiful examples differentiated by racial customs and material. The beauty of form in the Greek vase (plate 27) was but the natural outcome of a fine earthenware in the hands of an artistic people, with traditions and architecture of the highest order. In Persian pottery, form is subservient to colour, blue, turquoise and white being used in charming combination, together with a frank yet decorative treatment of natural forms. [Illustration] The Hispano-Moresque and Italian Maiolica (plate 29) are remarkable for the technical excellence of their white enamel, rich blue, yellow and orange, the iridescence of their gold and ruby lustre, and their high technical skill in painting. English earthenware of the 17th and 18th centuries, though traditional, showed a remarkable diversity in treatment and conception. The picturesque platter of the Toft school, with its quaint enrichment of trailing lines and heraldic forms in coloured slip, the fine red stoneware of Elers, with its graceful enrichments in delicate relief, and the varied and beautiful jasper ware of Wedgwood mark a distinct phase of the potter’s art, and bear a tribute to the vitality and personality of the founders of the “_Potteries_.” [Illustration: MAIOLICA. Plate 29. ] MAIOLICA. Maiolica or Italian faience is an earthenware, coated with a stanniferous or tin glaze, termed enamel. This is formed by the addition of oxide of tin to a silicious glaze or slip, thus rendering it white and opaque, hence its name, enamel.