Stories of Invention, Told by Inventors and their Friends Part 6

Enamel is nothing more than a kind of glaze colored with metallic acids, and rendered opaque by the mixture of a certain quant.i.ty of tin. It is usually spread upon metal, when only it is properly called enamel; but this glaze can also be put upon earthenware. It makes vessels water-tight, and gives them brilliancy of surface. To find out how to do this was to make a revolution in the keramic art.

In France, in the sixteenth century, the only vessels, such as jugs or vases, were made either of metal, wood, or coa.r.s.e porous pottery, through which water could penetrate; like the goulehs of the Arabs, or the cantaras of the Moors, which are still used for fresh water to advantage, since the evaporation of the drops keeps the water cold.

Many attempts had been made to imitate the beautiful and costly vases of China; but no one succeeded until the potters of Italy found out how to make faience. The discovery was hailed as a most valuable one. The princes who owned the works guarded their secret with jealous care,--to betray it would have been punished by death; so that Bernard Palissy had no hope of being taught how it was done, even if he should go to the places in Italy where the work was carried on.

"But," he says, "what others had found out, I might also discover; and if I could once make myself master of the art of glazing, I felt sure I could elevate pottery to a degree of perfection as yet unknown. What a glory for my name, what a benefit to France, if I could establish this industry here in my own land!"

He turned and turned the cup in his fingers, admiring the brilliant surface. "Yes," he said at last; "it shall be so, for I choose! I have already studied the subject. I will work still harder, and reach my aim at last."

Exceptional determination of character was needed for such an object.

Palissy knew nothing about the component parts of enamels; he had never even seen the process of baking clay, and he had to begin with the very simplest investigations. To study the different kinds of earth and clay, to acquire the arts of moulding and turning, and to gain some knowledge of chemistry, all these were necessary. But he did not flinch, and pursued his idea with indomitable perseverance.

"Moving only by chance," he says, "like a man groping in the dark, I made a collection of all the different substances which seemed at all likely to make enamel, and I pounded them up fine; then I bought earthen pots, broke them into small bits, numbered these pieces, and spread over each of them a different combination of materials. Now I had to have a furnace in which to bake my experiments. I had no idea how furnaces were usually made; so I invented one of my own, and set it up. But I had no idea how much heat was required to melt enamels,--perhaps I heated my furnace too much, perhaps not enough; sometimes my ingredients were all burned up, sometimes they melted not at all; or else some were turned to coal, while others remained undisturbed by the action of the fire."

Meanwhile the resources of the unlucky workman were fast diminis.h.i.+ng; for he had abandoned his usual work, by which he earned his living, and kept making new furnaces, "with great expense and trouble, and a great consumption of time and firewood."

This state of affairs much displeased his wife, who complained bitterly, and tried to divert her husband from an occupation which earned for him nothing but disappointment. The cheerful little household changed its aspect; the children were no longer well-dressed, and the shabby furniture and empty cupboards betrayed the decay which was falling upon the family. The father saw with profound grief the wants of his household; but success seemed ever so near to him, that he could not bear to give it up. His hope at that time was but a mirage; and for long afterwards, in this struggle between intelligence and the antagonism of material things, ill fortune kept the upper hand.

One day, tired out by his failures, it occurred to him that a man brought up to baking pottery would know how to bake his specimens better than he could.

"I covered three or four hundred bits of broken vase with different compounds, and sent them to a _fabrique_ about a mile and a half from my house. The potters consented to put my patterns with their batch for the oven. Full of impatience, I awaited the result of this experiment. I was on hand when my specimens came out. I looked them anxiously all over; not one was successful!

"The heat had not been strong enough, but I did not know this; I saw only one more useless expense of money. One of the workmen came to me and said, 'You will never make anything out of this; you had better go back to your own business.'"

Palissy shook his head; he had still in his possession some few valuable articles, souvenirs of happier days, which he could sell to renew his experiments. In spite of the reproaches of his wife, he bought more ingredients and more earthenware, and made new combinations.

Failure again! However, he would not be beaten. Some friends lent him a little money; he sat up at night to make new mixtures of different substances, all prepared with such care that he felt sure some of them must be good. Then he carried them again to the potters, whom he urged to the greatest care. They only shrugged their shoulders, and called him "crack brain;" and when the batch was done, they brought the results to Palissy with jeers. Some of the pieces were dirty white; others green, red, or smoked by the fire; but all alike in being dull and worthless.

It was over. Discouragement took possession of Palissy. "I returned home," he says, "full of confusion and sadness. Others might seek the secret of enamels. I must set to work and earn money to pay my debts and get bread for the family."

Most luckily for him at this time, a task was given him by government, for which he was well suited, and which brought him good pay. The king, Francis I., having had, like many another sovereign, some difficulty with his faithful subjects in the matter of imposts, now found it necessary to make a new regulation of taxes; and for this, among other things, an inspection of the salt marshes on the coasts of France was needed, in order to name the right sums for taxation, and a knowledge of arithmetic was required as well. Palissy was appointed; and to the great delight of his family, who thought that his mind would now be forever diverted from the search for enamel, he set forth to explore the islands and the sh.o.r.es of France. He drew admirable outlines of the forms of the salt marshes, and wrote with eloquence upon the sublimity of the sea.

Ease and comfort came back. His task was ended; but debts were paid, and plenty of money remained.

The first thing he saw on returning home, alas! was the cup,--his joy and despair. "How beautiful it is! how brilliant!" he exclaimed; and once more he threw himself into the pursuit of the elusive enamel.

It was easy to see that the so much admired faience of Italy was simply common baked clay, covered with some substance glazed by heat, but so composed as to adhere to the surface after it had cooled. But what substance? He had tried all sorts of materials; why had none of them melted? Palissy at length decided that the fault had been in using the common potter's furnace. Since the materials were to be vitrified by the process, they should be baked like gla.s.s. He broke up three dozen pots, pounded up a great quant.i.ty of different ingredients, and spread them with a brush on the fragments; then he carried them to the nearest gla.s.s-works. He was allowed to superintend the baking himself; he put the specimens in the oven, and pa.s.sed the night attending the fire. In the morning he took them out. "Oh, joy! Some of the compounds had begun to melt; there was no perfect glaze, only a sign that I was on the right road."

It was, however, still a long and weary one. After two more years, Palissy was still far from the discovery of enamelling, but during this time he was acquiring much knowledge. From a simple workman he had become a learned chemist. He says himself, "The mistakes I made in combining my enamels taught me more than the things which came right of themselves."

There came a time, which he had once more resolved should be the last, when he repaired to the gla.s.s-works, accompanied by a man loaded with more than three hundred different patterns on bits of pottery. For four hours Bernard gloomily watched the progress of baking. Suddenly he started in surprise. Did his eyes deceive him? No! it was no illusion.

One of the pieces in the furnace was covered with a brilliant glazing, white, polished, excellent. Palissy's joy was immense. "I thought I had become a new creature," he says. "The enamel was found; France enriched by a new discovery."

Palissy now hastened to undertake a whole vase. For many and large pieces there was not room enough at his disposition in the ovens of the gla.s.s-works. He did not worry about that, for he was quite sure he could construct one of his own. He decided, too, at once to model and fas.h.i.+on his own vases; for those which he bought of the potters, made of coa.r.s.e and heavy forms, no longer suited his ambition. He now designed forms, turned and modelled them himself. Thus pa.s.sed seven or eight months. At last his vases were done, and he admired with pride the pure forms given to the clay by his hands. But his money was giving out again, and his furnace was not yet built. As he had nothing to pay for the work, he did all the work himself,--went after bricks and brought them himself on his back, and then built and plastered with his own hands. The neighbors looked on in pity and ridicule. "Look," they said, "at Master Bernard!

He might live at his ease, and yet he makes a beast of burden of himself!"

Palissy minded their sarcasms not at all. His furnace was finished in good time, and the first baking of the clay succeeded perfectly. Now the pottery was to be covered with his new enamel. Time pressed, for in a few days there would be no more bread in the house for his children. For a long time he had been living on credit, but now the butcher and baker refused to furnish anything more. All about him he saw only unfriendly faces; every one treated him as a fool. "Let him die of hunger," they said, "since he will not listen to reason."

His wife was the worst of all. She failed to see any heroism in the obstinacy or perseverance of her husband,--no wonder, perhaps, with the sight of her suffering children before her eyes. She went about reciting her misfortunes to all the neighborhood, very unwisely, as she thus ruined the credit of her husband, his last and only resource.

Palissy was already worn out by so much manual labor, to which he was little accustomed; nevertheless, he worked by night, and all night long, to pound up and prepare the materials for his white enamel, and to spread it upon his vases. A report went abroad, caused by the sight of his lamp constantly burning, that he was trying to coin counterfeit money. He was suspected, despised, and avoided, and went about the streets hanging his head because he had no answer to make to his accusers.

The moment which was to decide his life arrived. The vases were placed in the furnace, and for six continuous days and nights he plied the glowing fire with fuel. The heat was intolerable; but the enamel resisted, nothing would melt, and he was forced to recognize that there was too little of the glazing substance in the combination to vitrify the others. He set to work to mix another compound, but his vases were spoiled; he borrowed a few common ones from the pottery. During all this delay he did not dare to let the fire go out, it would take so much wood to start it again. Once more the newly covered pots were placed in the intense furnace; in three or four hours the test would be completed.

Palissy perceived with terror that his fuel was giving out. He ran to his garden, tore up fences, and cut down trees which he had planted himself, and threw all these into the two yawning mouths of the furnace.

Not enough! He went into the house, and seized tables, chairs, and bureaus; but the house was but poorly furnished, and contained but little to feed the flames. Palissy returned. The rooms were empty, there was absolutely nothing more to take; then he fell to pulling up the planks of the floor. His wife, frightened to death, stood still and let him go on. The neighbors ran in, at the sound of the axe, and said, "He must be a fool!"

But soon pity changed to admiration. When Palissy took the vases from the furnace, the common pots which all had seen before dull and coa.r.s.e, were of a clear pearly white, covered with brilliant polish.

So much emotion and fatigue had told upon the robust const.i.tution of Palissy. "I was," he says, "all used up and dried up on account of such toil, and the heat of the furnace. It was more than a month since I had had a dry s.h.i.+rt on my body, and I felt as if I had reached the door of the sepulchre."

In spite of the success which he had now attained, our potter had by no means reached the end of his misfortunes. He sold his vases, but could not get much for them, as there were but a few, of poor shapes; for those which he had modelled himself had all failed to take the enamel, and the successful ones were only common things, bought on credit. The small sum which he got by selling them was not enough by any means to cover his expenses, pay his debts, and restore order to the house from which pretty much everything was burned up for firewood in his furnace.

However, he was supported and happy in the thought of his success. He said to himself: "Why be sad, when you have found what you were seeking for? Go on working, and you will put your enemies to shame."

Once more he succeeded in borrowing a little money. He hired a man to help him; and for want of funds, he paid this man by giving him all his own good clothes, while he went himself in rags. The furnace he had made was coming to pieces on account of the intense heat he had maintained in it for six days and nights during his last experiment. He pulled it to pieces with his own hands, working with fingers bleeding and bound up in bandages. Then he fetched water, sand, lime, and stone, and built by himself a new furnace, "without any help or any repose. A feverish resolution doubled my strength, and made me capable of doing things which I should have imagined impossible."

This time the oven heats admirably, the enamels appear to be melting.

Palissy goes to rest, and dreams of his new vases, which must bring enough to pay all his debts; his impatient creditors come in the morning to see the things taken from the furnace. Palissy receives them joyfully; he would like to invite the whole town.

When the pieces came out of the oven, they were s.h.i.+ning and beautiful; but--always but!--an accident had deprived them of all value. Little stones, which formed a part of the mortar with which the furnace was built, had burst with the heat, and spattered the enamel all over with sharp fragments cutting like a razor, entirely spoiling it of course.

Still, the vases were so lovely in form, and the glaze was so beautiful, that several people offered to buy them if they could have them cheap.

This the proud potter would not bear. Seizing the vases, he dashed them to the ground; then utterly worn out, he went into the house and threw himself on the bed. His wife followed him, and covered him with reproaches for thus wasting the chance of making a few francs for the family. Soon he recovered his elasticity, reflecting "that a man who has tumbled into a ditch has but one duty, and that is to try to get out of it."

He now set to work at his old business of painting upon gla.s.s, and after several months had earned enough to start another batch of vases. Of these, two or three were successful and sold to advantage; the rest were spoiled by ashes which fell upon the enamel in the furnace while it was soft. He therefore invented what he called a "lantern" of baked clay, to put over the vases to protect them in baking. This expedient proved so good that it is still used.

The enamel once discovered, it would be supposed that all trouble was over; but it is not enough to invent a process,--to carry it out, all sorts of little things have to be considered, the least of which, if not attended to, may spoil all the rest. These multiplied accidents, with all the privations and sufferings he had undergone, were attacking the health of Palissy. He says in his simple style,--

"I was so used up in my person, that there was no shape or appearance of curve on my arms or legs; my so-called legs, indeed, were but a straight line, so that when I had gartered my stockings, as soon as I began to walk, they were down on my heels."

His enamelled pottery now began to make a living for its inventor, but so poor a living that many things were wanting,--for instance, a suitable workshop. For five or six years he carried on the work in the open air; either heat, rain, or cold spoiled many of his vases, while he himself, exposed to the weather, "pa.s.sed whole nights at the mercy of rain and cold, without any aid, comfort, or companions.h.i.+p except that of owls screeching on one side and dogs howling on the other.

Sometimes," he continues, "winds and tempests blew with such violence inside and outside of my ovens, that I was obliged to leave, with a total loss of all they contained. Several times when I had thus left everything, without a dry rag upon me, on account of the rain, I came in at midnight or daybreak without any light, staggering like a drunken man, all broken down at the thought of my wasted toil; and then, all wet and dirty as I was, I found in my bedroom the worst affliction of all, which makes me wonder now why I was not consumed by grief." He means the scolding and reproaches of his wife.

But the time came when his perseverance was rewarded, and his pottery brought him the fame and money he deserved. He was able to make new experiments, and add to the value of his discovery. Having obtained the white enamel, he had the idea of tinting it with all sorts of colors, which he did successfully. He then began to decorate his faience with objects modelled from nature, such as animals, sh.e.l.ls, leaves, and branches. Lizards of a bright emerald color, with pointed heads and slender tails, and snakes gliding between stones or curled upon a bank of moss, crabs, frogs, and spiders, all of their natural colors, and disposed in the midst of plants equally well imitated, are the characteristic details of the work of Palissy.

These perfect imitations of Nature were taken actually from Nature herself. Palissy prepared a group of real leaves and stones, putting the little insects or animals he wished to represent in natural att.i.tudes amongst them. He fastened these reptiles, fishes, or insects in their places by fine threads, and then made a mould of the whole in plaster of Paris. When it was done, he removed the little animals from the mould so carefully that he could use them over and over again.

Thus, after sixteen years pa.s.sed in untiring energy, sixteen years of anxiety and privation, the artist triumphed over all the obstacles opposed to his genius. The humble potter, despised of all, became the most important man in his town. His productions were sought for eagerly, and his reputation established forever.

His life henceforth was not free from events, but these were not connected with his invention. His fame came to the knowledge of the queen mother Catherine de Medicis; for Francis I. was no longer living, and Charles IX. had succeeded Francis II. upon the throne. He was summoned to Court, and employed to build grottos, decorated with his designs, by personages of distinction,--one especially for the queen herself, which he describes in his Discourse of the "Jardin Delectable."

He was in Paris at the time of the terrible ma.s.sacre of St. Bartholomew, where, as he was a Huguenot, he would doubtless have perished but for the protection of the queen, who helped him to escape with his family.

Later, however, in the midst of the troubles and terrors of the time, he was thrown into the Bastille; and there he died, an old man of eighty years.

VI.