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