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In her early art training, Mrs. Nave had done some china painting, but had concentrated more on pastels and oil work. One summer as she looked for a new art interest to explore, she heard of Mrs. Luther Hodge of Bristol, Tennessee, who was teaching china painting. Mrs. Nave was soon a weekly visitor at her studio. They found that they had much in common. Mrs. Hodge was a retired art teacher from Sullins College in Bristol, Virginia.

As Mrs. Nave began to take her first pieces of china home, they were much admired by her neighbors and friends in the fine arts group of the women's club. By the time that she was ready to retire, a number of people had asked Mrs. Nave to teach them to do china painting. She wanted a kiln anyway for firing her own work. A few pupils would offer an opportunity to pay for the kiln. Soon she found that she was not retiring at all, but just shifting from the formal routine of public school teaching to instructing a small informal group in her own living room.

MUCH OF china painting instruction is identical with all art teaching. Principles of line, balance, color harmonies and proportion must be learned in order to do any type of art successfully. Many of the materials and techniques are peculiar to china painting though. The painting is done on china that has already been glazed. While wide assortments of shapes and sizes in both porcelain and pottery are available from some art supply houses, these usually have to be ordered. Most department store displays have some undecorated white pieces that are perfectly satisfactory for painting. As the painter perfects technique and gets ready to do a whole dinner service, or launch out into a specialized field, she usually has to resort to ordering from a good art supply house.

Before the china is painted it must be washed, and cleaned with alcohol to remove any trace of grease or finger prints. China paint comes in powder form and is reduced to a paste consistency by adding a few drops of mixing medium. A glass muller or palette knife and glass palette are convenient for doing this job. If the paint dries too much, Mrs. Nave does not thin it with more mixing medium, but with oil of lavender or oil of anise. The brushes that Mrs. Nave chooses for china painting are similar to but softer than the ones that she uses for oil painting. The silk pounce or puff is a specialized tool of china painting. One is prepared by covering a wad of cotton with very smooth, finely woven silk. This is used in doing large shaded areas. The paint is applied with a brush. Then the area is gone over with the puff, using an up and down patting motion. Patting lightly smooths out brush marks, but leaves deep color. A heavier patting gives lightly shaded areas. This technique is very useful in doing backgrounds where the artist wants a heavy area in the center shading out to nothing at the edges. The pencil is a special one for sketching on china. It has a rather oily texture.

SINCE SHE returned to china painting as a hobby, Mrs. Nave has confined herself to decorator pieces. A number of factors influenced this decision. One was the limited field of dinner service painting. She did want to make her hobby profitable and she felt that there would be few customers for laboriously hand done sets when there were such excellent mass produced ones on the market. A hobby should be primarily for pleasure. She says that the wide variety of design possibilities presented by occasional pieces appealed more to her than the repetition of one pattern necessary to complete a dinner service of a hundred or so pieces. In a dinner service the design should be dainty and inconspicuous in order for the food to be presented in its most appealing fashion. The big, bold designs characteristic of picture plates and plaques are easier for beginning and shaky older hands to do.

Mrs. Nave has certainly achieved her variety. The only design that she has duplicated, except on order, was the one that I asked her to do for the photographs accompanying this article. Then I wondered if she washed it off after I was gone. She did not have time to really fire it while I was there. This wide variety of design interest serves several purposes. First it satisfies Mrs. Nave's creative urge. Second it results in a varied assortment of designs that will fit into any decorating scheme, which enhances the market possibilities. Then she also has many models or patterns to help her pupils decide what they would like to do. She likes to start pupils out doing some real china painting on their very first visit. The easiest way for them to do this is to copy a ready made design. This leaves mind and hand free to concentrate on the mechanics of china painting. Then if they have not learned basic art principles in school, she can give this instruction as the pupil masters china painting technique sufficiently to do her own designs. Some pupils, of course, have sufficient art background to plan their own decorations.

The sources of design material are unlimited. Flowers come from greeting cards, seed catalogues, calendars, life, magazines, and wallpaper. Mrs. Nave says she finds greeting cards especially valuable for beginners because they can so often trace directly from them, while if the flower has to be enlarged or decreased she usually has to do most of the work. The neighborhood hardware stores are most kind to save their hunting advertisements which often feature lovely game birds. The National Wildlife Federation, Washington, D.C., puts out stamps, cards and stationery which have beautiful nature subjects. Photographs of buildings or scenes help Mrs. Nave to achieve authenticity in preparing these subjects.

Through the years of teaching and doing all the hobby arts that she has enjoyed, Mrs. Nave has accumulated a file of art patterns and inspirations. For her own work, she works largely free hand, but in teaching, she encourages the beginner especially to trace ready-made patterns. Her library of art source materials includes many copies of famous works, as well as of lesser known contemporary artists.

Mrs. Nave's classes are quite jolly and informal. At times they look more like a luncheon or club meeting. It is not at all unusual for a morning group to announce that they decided to bring some sandwiches and a cake and just work on through lunch. Mrs. Nave will brew a pot of tea and toss up a salad and it all goes off like a party. While she says that she charges $1 per lesson for instruction, she hasn't a very strict sense of time. Her hours usually have more than sixty minutes. The pupil furnishes all of her own equipment and materials. Since Elizabethton is a small town, these usually have to be bought from Mrs. Nave. She charges the same for firing pieces whether they are done in her class or brought in for custom firing. This is a steady source of income which has more than paid for her kiln already. She charges twenty cents each for small pieces and up to seventy-five cents for bulky pieces that take up quite a bit of kiln space.

LET'S FOLLOW Mrs. Nave through the various steps in preparing a simple plaque just as she might have a new pupil do on her first lesson. The pupil has admired a finished six-inch tile in the display. The teacher's typical answer would be, "Why you can do one like it today. While I get out some materials, you trace the outline of the lily from that plaque on this tracing paper." By the time that the student has done that, Mrs. Nave has paints assembled. "While I am preparing these powdered paints with mixing medium," she says, "you can be cleaning your blank tile with alcohol. Then you can transfer your tracing to the tile with this carbon paper."

The student is soon finished with transferring the design to the tile, but disappointed. "The lines are very faint, shall I try to do them over?" she is likely to ask.

"No," Mrs. Nave replies. "You rarely get a distinct enough line from carbon for your final design. That is what this pencil is for. You may go over the weak places in the design with the pencil. The pencil lines are soft and oily so that they will all burn out in the firing. When you want a black line in your completed piece, you will have to go over the pencil lines with black paint."

The penciling only takes a little while, then the tile is ready for the paint. Mrs. Nave helps her pupil choose a thin brush for the leaves. As the new artist begins to work, the teacher adds helpful suggestions: "Beginning with the simplest part of the design will give you a little practice before you get to the flower. In simple designs you can usually put on all of the paint with one firing. In more elaborate ones it may take two or even more firings to get all of the picture completed. Especially if you have a large background area such as the church in a sunset. You do the sunset first with the trees and building detail outlined in black paint—fire that, then add color and detail to the foreground material for the second firing."

The student holds up the tile with the first leaves painted. "What do they need?"

Mrs. Nave points to a plant in the window. "Look at the leaves on that plant. The leaves are green, but several shades of green in different places. The gloss on the top of the leaf makes it appear quite a different shade from the dull back. The leaves that catch the light are lighter than the shadowed ones. As you work, begin to shade your leaves in a similar manner by brightening up your green with yellow and deepening the shadows with brown. The paint must be put on with few strokes and very lightly or it will blister in firing."

THE WORK progresses smoothly for a time. At a typical session, Mrs. Nave will not only be helping this new pupil but several others in various stages of proficiency. One of the more advanced pupils is making a tea set and is ready for advice on applying blue luster to the tea pot. Mrs. Nave begins, "Luster is like applying another glaze to the piece. You won't have to mix it as you do paint. With your brush apply it over all of the pot just as it comes from the jar. Brush it on very fast, as evenly as you can. Then go over it carefully with a silk pounce blending in all your brush strokes."

The student asks, "Do I let it dry before I begin to buff it?"

"Oh no! Try to do it in less than fifteen minutes after you get the luster on. Begin at the point where you started with the luster just as soon as you have the whole pot covered. It will look dull and very unlustrous. The firing develops that lovely, pearly, finish. If you want some design on the piece, you do that after the luster has been fired."

A cry of distress takes Mrs. Nave back to her new pupil. "Oh, I have made a blotch! I got way over the line on this petal."

Mrs. Nave reassures her that she is not the first one to meet with such luck. "It is easy enough to fix. Just dampen the corner of this little sponge with alcohol. It will be easy to wipe off the excess paint. You will find a little sponge handy for lots of tricks in china painting. A bit of cotton on a tooth pick would have done as well to clean up the excess paint. You are doing very well on your flowers. Remember that the color should be deeper toward the center of the flowers, and on the under petals."

Another of the more advanced students asks for help in applying gold border to a plate that she had painted during the previous session. Mrs. Nave brings over a bottle of brownish looking liquid. "I am going to let you use liquid gold. You will find it somewhat easier to work with than burnished gold. If you have a good thumb nail, the easiest way to apply a gold rim is with it. Dip your thumb tip in the bottle of paint, then run the thumb nail around the plate with plate edge resting on flesh and nail extending above. You can clean your thumb just as you do your brushes with alcohol or varsol."

BY NOW the new student is putting the finishing touches on her plaque and asks, "How long will it take to fire it? I can hardly wait to get it home and show it off to the family."

Mrs. Nave explains that there are almost enough things being finished up at this session to fill the kiln. She will add a few pieces of her own. Before the things that are being done today can be fired, the paint will have to be thoroughly dry. Since it is a warm, dry day, she says that they might be put in safely after a few hours drying. If it were cool and damp it would take longer. The kiln must be loaded carefully so that no pieces touch. Unglazed ceramic racks, stilts and pieces of asbestos are used to keep the china apart. After the kiln is filled, the lid is partially closed and the temperature brought up to about 1,500 degrees F. This takes about one hour. Then the kiln is closed tightly and the temperature held at 1,500 degrees or more depending upon the type of china, paint, etc. being used. Some materials are fired as high as 2,600 degrees F. The heat fuses the paint with the glaze that is already on the china. The china must be allowed to cool in the unopened kiln for about ten to fifteen hours. If a draft or cool air hits the softened glaze it causes a crazing. After all this explanation, Mrs. Nave is able to tell the new student that she can pick up her plaque tomorrow night.

SO FAR Mrs. Nave has had all of the students and customers that she is interested in as a dividend from her own generosity. She has given numerous demonstrations before women's clubs in her own and adjoining counties. In her school teaching she found that people learn best by doing. So at these demonstrations, she takes along a number of small plates or tiles and invites the women to work with her as she shows them the art of china painting. The club pays for the materials. Many of the women will be so pleased or amazed when they can paint a piece on the very first try, that they of course want theirs fired. A few from almost every group want to come to her for more instruction. Others will want to buy pieces of her finished work that she has taken along to illustrate her lecture.

Most of her selling so far has been in just such a direct fashion as at her own lectures. She did a plate picture of a church where her niece was married and gave it to the niece for an anniversary gift. Shortly afterward the niece was entertaining the women of the church. They admired the plate. Ten of that group asked to have copies made. A number of orders have come in from other church members who have seen those ten plates. Other people ask that she do their churches or homes. On the back of these plates she puts a brief history of the church. This is done in china paint and fired on as the picture is fired. She has also done plates for new babies giving name, date of birth, weight, etc. On the back of these plates, she has put the child's family tree.

The prices that Mrs. Nave charges for these pieces are influenced mightily by the type of china that they are painted on as well as the amount and difficulty of the work in the design. The decorative plates on inexpensive pottery bring about $2.50 to $3.50. When she has included quite a bit of delicate manuscript writing such as in a wedding invitation reproduced on a plate, she charges $5 or more. The large eighteen-inch platter with gold rim, such as one with the two mallard ducks in flight sells for $6. Cup and saucer prices start at $2. Place settings on pottery are $4.50 and up. Prices for the four-inch plaques range upward from $1, the six-inch ones from $1.50,

A LOCAL gift shop has asked for some of Mrs. Nave's pieces to sell on consignment but as yet, Mrs. Nave hasn't been able to get enough ahead to supply the orders that come to her own door. Her most popular items have been the plates as wall hangings, platters or plates on stands for table or mantel piece decoration. Teapots with matching cream and sugar on a platter or tray are in demand too. Plaques or tiles for use as trivets under hot dishes are good gift items. Also popular are large plates with metal handles for sandwich trays and cookie or candy jars. She and one of her advanced students are now beginning some work on buttons and jewelry. Some other project possibilities would be tiles to install as kitchen or bathroom trim or around a fireplace. Tile tops for wrought iron tables are very practical. Three or four mounted together in frames make an attractive cheese tray.