The art Primers of the Pennsylvania Museum and School of Industrial Art are designed to furnish, in a compact form, for the use of collectors, students and artisans, the most reliable information, based on the latest discoveries, relating to the various industrial arts. Each monograph, complete in itself, contains a historical sketch, a review of processes, descriptions of characteristic examples of the best productions, and all available data that will serve to facilitate the identification of specimens. In other words, these booklets are intended to serve as authoritative and permanent reference works on the various subjects treated. The illustrations employed, unless otherwise stated, are reproductions of examples in the Pennsylvania Museum collections. In these reviews of the several branches of ceramics the geographical arrangement used by other writers has given place to the natural or technical classification to permit the grouping of similar wares of all countries and times, whereby pottery, or opaque ware, is classified according to glaze, its most distinctive feature, while, on the other hand, porcelain, or translucent ware, is grouped according to body, or paste.
