The interior of a great factory where art is in the making has many exciting moments. The cruel fire is no respecter of persons. After the various steps have been taken, the grinding, the mixing, the moulding into form, the firing in biscuit, the painting, and the subsequent glazing, the creation comes out of the oven as a finished work of art. At any one of these stages a slip may mean disaster. Each successive process gains in difficulty. It is a tragic instant when the last hour is reached. After the oven has cooled the news goes round that a firing is being taken from the kiln. A knot of artists gathers round as each piece comes out. Some call for admiration; there is a hush of joyful surprise when a completed masterpiece comes forth perfect. Alas! too often some delightful dream with its tender colours has twisted out of shape in the intense heat. A graceful form has coalesced with a neighbouring vase. They stand as failures, and the workman with swift, relentless hand gives them a tap with a hammer, and they become shards. The poet-painter's dream has ended in nothingness. =New Impulses.=--In regard to the future there are golden hopes and happy anticipations. The past has been glorious, the present is triumphant. A true and living school of design amid sound artistic environment has its band of artist-potters, trained under happy auspices, whose aims are set steadfastly on art that is nothing unless it be national--these are the children of to-morrow. New generations will come and go, and new art impulses will beat, as the waves breaking from the Baltic, on the little pottery set on a rock and proud in its great achievements. The future, like the vessel in the furnace, is in the hands of Fate. Taking courage in both hands, the potter-sons of Denmark will in those yet unborn days carry on the great traditions. There is a great heritage for the sons of the days to come, and looking backward, they will place the laurel wreath on the brow of the masters who, in the old days and at the present era, have fought the good fight and won the guerdon of praise from potters in far-off lands who have paid homage to the art of the Three Blue Lines. [Illustration] FINIS INDEX INDEX A as a mark, Copenhagen faience, 330 Abildgaard, 107 A.H. as a mark, 102 Aluminia Company buys factory (in 1883), 205 Aluminia mark on Art faience, 330 Andersen, Hans, _Princess and Swineherd_, _Tinder Box_, figures illustrating, 269, 284 Animal life, study of, at Copenhagen, 270, 339 Antonibon, Pasqual, potter at Venice, 24 Arentz, Johan, 109 Arnoux, Report on Pottery at Paris Exhibition (1867), 24 Art Faience, Copenhagen, 307-330 B and G (as a mark), 283 Bargains in porcelain, a regiment of dragoons exchanged for collection of porcelain, 32 Battle of Copenhagen, 179 Bowl commemorating, 184 Bau, N., 109 Baÿer, J. C., the painter of the _Flora Danica_ service, 105 Signature of, 103