"All gold looks like that," he said, "before it is fired and burnished. In fact, all the mineral colors used to decorate glass, pottery, and porcelain look very different when they are put on from what they do after they have been subjected to the heat. That is the wonderful part of working in oxides and metallic colors. The beautiful hues we see on china or glass are the result of years of experiment. Never forget that. All china decorators have constantly to bear in mind the effect of a high temperature upon their colors. What would be attractive on the unfired clay might emerge from the kiln a very ugly product indeed. We must reckon on this fact." Theo nodded. "It must make the decoration of china a great problem," he said. "It does. However, decorators have now learned pretty well what to expect. A certain carmine, for example, fires out violet. Many other shades fire lighter or darker than when applied, and allowance must be made for them. The girls who paint china become very skilful in estimating the changes in colors. These who are working beside us are doing the finest sort of porcelain decoration--faces, figures, and flowers. Those across the aisle are doing a vastly different type of work. They are putting coarse, sketchy flowers on the cheaper ware. Some of them, you will observe, are filling in designs that have either first been printed, or transferred by the decalcomania process, and must afterward be finished by hand. The girls supply the dabs of color that are needed to complete the pattern." "It looks easy." "It is not highly skilled work," answered Mr. Marwood. "Some of our methods, however, are far less skilled than this one. What would you say, for instance, to decorating china with a sponge?" "A sponge? Painting with a sponge?" "Not exactly painting," protested Mr. Marwood. "It is not quite that. We do, nevertheless, for our cheapest ware use a fine-grained sponge cut in the shape of the desired design. This we dip in color and with it impress a pattern on the clay as we would with a rubber stamp." "I should think you would use a rubber stamp and be done with it," replied Theo. "It would not hold the color satisfactorily," explained Mr. Marwood. "But we do use the stamping method for inexpensive gold ware. We also imprint the firm name or trade-mark on the bottom of our porcelain that way before it is glazed; so we do some stamping, you see. Of course stamping is only for the cheap wares. The finest porcelain is hand-decorated--or at least the major part of it is." Theo was silent; then he said: "Suppose after all the work of preparing the clay, and shaping and decorating it, the piece is broken when the final glaze is put on?"