Pottery Quotes

“Figures that almost move and speak.”

“I am content to be a bric-a-bracker and a Ceramiker.”

“pottery”

“Wikipedia: Pottery”

“All this of Pot and Potter—Tell me then,
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot?”

“For a male person bric-a-brac hunting is about as robust a business as making doll-clothes.”

“The potter, digging the hoe in the ground, for days on end extracting the clay with his hands.”

“The very "marks" on the bottom of a piece of rare crockery are able to throw me into a gibbering ecstasy.”

“Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?”

“What land is this? Yon pretty town
Is Delft, with all its wares displayed:
The pride, the market-place, the crown
And centre of the Potter's trade.”

“Said one among them: "Surely not in vain
My substance of the common Earth was ta'en
And to this Figure moulded, to be broke,
Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again."”

“Turn, turn, my wheel! Turn round and round
Without a pause, without a sound:
So spins the flying world away!
This clay, well mixed with marl and sand,
Follows the motion of my hand;
For some must follow, and some command,
Though all are made of clay!”

“Thou spring'st a leak already in thy crown,
A flaw is in thy ill-bak'd vessel found;
'Tis hollow, and returns a jarring sound,
Yet thy moist clay is pliant to command,
Unwrought, and easy to the potter's hand:
Now take the mould; now bend thy mind to feel
The first sharp motions of the forming wheel.”

“And yonder by Nankin, behold!
The Tower of Porcelain, strange and old,
Uplifting to the astonished skies
Its ninefold painted balconies,
With balustrades of twining leaves,
And roofs of tile, beneath whose eaves
Hang porcelain bells that all the time
Ring with a soft, melodious chime;
While the whole fabric is ablaze
With varied tints, all fused in one
Great mass of color, like a maze
Of flowers illumined by the sun.”

“There's a joy without canker or cark,
There's a pleasure eternally new,
'Tis to gloat on the glaze and the mark
Of china that's ancient and blue;
Unchipp'd, all the centuries through
It has pass'd, since the chime of it rang,
And they fashion'd it, figures and hue,
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.
Here's a pot with a cot in a park,
In a park where the peach-blossoms blew,
Where the lovers eloped in the dark,
Lived, died, and were changed into two
Bright birds that eternally flew
Through the boughs of the May, as they sang;
'Tis a tale was undoubtedly true
In the reign of the Emperor Hwang.”