Thus we see that in composition a mild porcelain forms a middle term between stoneware on the one hand, and a severe porcelain on the other. In other words, stoneware cannot be regarded as an extreme type of a refractory porcelain. CHAPTER XXIII CONTEMPORARY EUROPEAN PORCELAIN We have seen that in England the new aims and the new schemes of decoration that have so profoundly affected most of our industrial arts have so far had little influence upon the porcelain manufactured by the large Staffordshire firms. Here and there, as by Mr. Bernard Moore of Longton, an attempt has been made to take up the problem of the _flambé_ glazes, which has so fascinated the French potters. Mr. Moore has succeeded in making some _sang de bœuf_ vases which in outline and colour closely follow the Chinese models. Otherwise the many skilful artists--more than one of them, I think, are Frenchmen--employed by our porcelain manufacturers have been content to follow in the main the old traditions, nor has any occasional attempt that has been made to imitate, not the latest but rather the work of the last generation at Sèvres, produced any very satisfactory results. It cannot be denied that both in the design and in the decoration our English porcelain has, for some time, remained outside the art movement of the day. Indeed at the present time, and for the last twenty years, whatever of interest we can find in the contemporary production of porcelain, centres in two factories--Sèvres and Copenhagen. To the latter works we must now return for a moment. The royal factory, of which we have already spoken, was closed after the disastrous war of 1864. But during the eighties a number of able men, both artists and men of science, occupied themselves with the new porcelain problems, and in 1888 a fresh company was formed, the ‘Alumina.’ These men--I will only mention Philip Schou--were much impressed by the technical and artistic merits of the porcelain lately sent from Japan, highly finished ware decorated under the glaze with great delicacy and generally in subdued colours. They were influenced above all by the work of the Japanese potter Miyagawa Kozan, called Makudzo. The Danish porcelain produced during the nineties is distinguished as a whole by its cool, subdued colours, with a prevalence of various pearly tints approaching more or less to celadon. In the carefully executed but boldly designed decoration, we see the influence both of the Japanese naturalists and of the impressionist painters of the day. The snow scenes, the rocks, the dancing waves and the sea birds have been suggested by the stormy coasts of the Baltic and the North Sea. It is from the primitive rocks of this coast that the pure felspar, which plays so large a part both in the paste and in the glaze, has been obtained. It was at Copenhagen probably that the crystalline glazes, derived from salts of bismuth, were first made--this was by Engelhart, about 1884.