The ornamental department of the Manufacture of Porcelain has at all times, more or less, been involved in a degree of mystery, which has not characterised the other arts.

Many an amateur has abandoned his first attempts at initiation, from the want of lucid and simple practical information, on the subject. Nevertheless various excellent treatises have been written, from time to time on the subject, and, although some of them are obnoxious to the general charge, those by the later authors, from whom we shall draw our materials, are, when divested of certain technicalities, perfectly intelligible to the commonest capacity. The amateur, however, requires something more succinct than is to be found in the pages of such authorities, and with the view of supplying this desideratum, the following unpretending directions have been compiled.

None but metallic oxides are used in colouring porcelain or glass—colours of a vegetable or other origin, would not resist the action of heat in the process of fixing them.