⏳ PRINTED ON DEMAND — Please allow 3–4 weeks for delivery

This book is printed one copy at a time when you order it. There is no warehouse shelf of these — your copy goes on the press after you check out. Hardcover binding takes longer than paperback. Please allow 3–4 weeks from order to delivery.

About this book

In the 1880s, china painting was the rage of the Victorian parlor — and E. Campbell Hancock's 1881 The Amateur Pottery and Glass Painter was one of the books that taught the craft to thousands of enthusiastic amateurs. This is a complete course in decorating pottery and glass at home: mineral colors, grounds and borders, flower and fruit painting, raised paste, gilding on china, and the all-important firing — how the amateur's work was sent to the kiln and brought back vitrified and permanent.

The glass chapters are just as rich: painting on glass with enamel colors and stains, gilding and silvering glass, the techniques behind the decorated vases, panels, and cabinet ware of the era. Hancock writes for the true beginner, explaining materials, brushes, palettes, and mediums before any design is attempted, and the plates show the flat Victorian floral styles that defined the decorated china of the period.

Today the book is a window into a whole forgotten craft economy — the china-painting classes, the ceramic studios, the home decorators who turned blank white ware from Limoges and Belleek into one-of-a-kind pieces. For china painters, ceramic artists, glass decorators, and restorers, it preserves the actual 1881 working methods: which colors fired true, how enamel was handled, and what a well-decorated piece looked like when new.

An antique pottery painting book with real teaching value — Victorian decorative technique, fully explained. For ceramic artists, glass painters, decorators, and collectors of the Victorian applied arts.

Details: 6×9" hardcover (case laminate), black and white interior, cream paper.

⚠️ Please read before ordering — about print quality

This is a print-on-demand reprint of a scanned historical document. The pages were scanned from an original 1881 printing, and the print quality of your book reflects the condition of that original scan.

What that means in plain terms: you may see faded text, uneven inking, age spots, show-through from the back of pages, and other imperfections that were in the 1881 original or introduced by the scanning process. These are preserved as-is — they are not printing defects, and they are not something we can fix.

We are not responsible for the condition of the original source material. If you want a pristine modern typeset book, this isn't it. If you want the actual 1881 book with all its character intact, you're in the right place.

Printed on demand by IngramSpark. One copy at a time — no inventory, no waste.