"A modern establishment professes to occupy the premises of the ancient Casa Pirota, where we have seen fairly good reproductions of the ordinary _sopra azzuro_ plates of the old botega; but these are but weak imitations, and the glory of Faentine ceramic art must be looked for in museums." The "SGRAFFIATO" wares of Italy do not come under the head of maiolica. The term is used to designate work where the design is scratched or incised upon the clay; and in Italy, often upon a white clay laid over a darker clay, so that the design shows through the lighter "slip" or "engobe," as the covering is called. Of _Forli_, _Venice_, _Castelli_, or _Abruzzi_, and the many other manufactories of maiolica, it will be almost useless to write here. We have few, if any, examples of the work in this country; and without examples it is difficult to make the subject interesting. I have not attempted to give any "marks" of maiolica, for two reasons: one, that we have so little opportunity for purchasing that the knowledge of the marks, such as they are, would be almost wholly useless; and, second, these marks are of little use anywhere. Few of the painters were in the habit of marking their work; and, when they did, their marks seem to have had no uniformity, and were varied in many whimsical ways. Those who wish to buy pieces of maiolica, unless they have made the matter a study, will hardly do it without consulting a person of experience; and a person of experience will not be guided solely by the marks. It can do no harm to say that admirable counterfeits are now made, both in Italy and in France (probably also in Germany), of the finest of the old maiolicas, design, color, and all complete. Even judicious chippings of edges and mild cracks are added to please the exacting connoisseurs. Any person, therefore, who is looking for the best specimens of "genuine old" maiolicas, at the _smallest prices_, will be fairly and fully met in the shops of the Continent. [Illustration: FIG. 71.--_From the Kensington Collection._] With regard to some of the most celebrated maiolica, I have quoted the judgments of two most competent writers as to the beauties of two of the most famous artists. It is far from being high praise. I venture to say, in addition, that much, very much, of what I have had the opportunity to see, strikes me forcibly as being crude and poor in color, bad in drawing, uninteresting in design, and wretched in clay and in glaze. Not that there are not good and beautiful works among the maiolicas; but it seems to me they are few. Besides this, I believe the great maiolica-painters, such as Xanto and Giorgio, were wholly wrong in attempting to transfer to pottery the pictures of Raffaelle and Giulio Romano; at least, they can be but very poor representations of the pictures themselves, and therefore unjust to their models, and useless to us as examples of high art.