forms to the slab.  The under-cutting may be carried to such a pitch as to make the design look weak, and as though it would fall to pieces with a puff of wind.  When this is the case, I reckon the finishing has been carried too far.  Clay should always look strong enough to hold together, and I may say I never thought much of that fancy china one sees which is covered with flowers and foliage modelled as delicately as though wrought in some precious metal.  Sooner or later the edges get chipped off, and the charm of such work is immediately gone.  Of course we know that an accident may destroy work that is not wrought in this delicate manner, but modelled clay should be delicate without being weak—­it should at least look as though it could hold its own with fair usage.

Get as much of the work done as possible while the clay is plastic, and with a little practice a modelled design can be finished entirely while the clay is damp.  In fact, the work is better when wrought from the plastic clay than when finished up with steel tools after the clay is dry.  There is a certain crispness about the modelling when wrought from plastic clay, which is often wanting in work tooled up when the clay is hard.  To my thinking, the best work is always that which looks as though it had been thrown off in a happy moment, and which has a certain number of the tool marks showing, as though the worker were not ashamed to let his craftsmanship be seen.  Work which has been touch and retouched, and rubbed down and smoothed until all life, vigour, and crispness have departed from it, looks what it is, amateurish (in the worse sense) and weak.

I have had many opportunities of seeing amateurs work during the years I have been teaching, and I have noticed that they have a mistaken notion of what finish really is.  It certainly does not consist in smoothing the work until it has the texture of a wax doll, and I have often noticed that work is often wholly spoilt in the so-called finishing.

In the subject I am dealing with—­modelling in clay—­this is particularly the case, and, reader, I pray you avoid it.  I would sooner you leave the work rough, with all the marks of the tools showing, so that you get vigour and crispness in your work, than that you should in your endeavour to efface the marks of the tools make your work tame and effeminate.

[Illustration:  Fig. 2.—­A plaque.]

In working up the leaves, don’t attempt to put many veins in them.  Hardly do more than indicate the centre vein.  Nothing looks worse than to see the various forms covered with a network of minute markings.  You will find, if you try and put in the veins in your modelled tile, your leaves will not look as though they were veined, but as though some stiff-legged insect had crawled over the damp clay, and had left its trail behind it.  In putting in the stamens in flowers, you will have to have recourse to an expedient, for it is evident that you cannot copy every individual stamen in clay any more than you can make your clay petals as thin and delicate as nature.  You must translate the effect of nature into clay, and in the case of the stamens you will find it a good plan to build up the centre of the flower, and then press into it a pointed stick, repeating the operation until the whole of the centre is perforated, as it were, like a grater.