Gardner C. Teall

“ An intaglio is the product of a reverse and much more difficult process than that by which the cameo is evolved. An impression from a well-cut intaglio leaves a very fine design in relief, and it is marvelous to behold the results obtained by the infinite pains of gem-engravers. In our own day the masters of the art can be counted on the fingers of one hand, so greatly has the demand for work of the sort diminished. ”

“ To the uninitiated any coin or medal a hundred years old will seem instantly to suggest an almost prohibitive value. Nothing could be more of a mistake. As a matter of fact interesting coins and medals are within the reach of almost any one for a remarkably small outlay. Of course tremendous prices are given for tremendous rarities, but coin-and medal-collectors in America seem more interested in early coined United States cents which exhibit this slight variation or that, than in collecting for purely the beauty and the historic charm medallic art exhibits. ”

“ Well, gone is Master Horatio, gone the wits and beaux and belles of his day, but he remains in our thoughts as the Georgian master of Chelsea china pseudo-shepherds and shepherdesses, the most elegant of collectors, the most brilliant of subjects in the sovereign realm of precious bric-à-brac. We are glad that he lent his presence to our ranks.
So, you see, collecting is not merely a fad of recent generations. In that which has gone before there is ever a peculiar fascination. The field is unbounded, its possibilities limitless ”

“ Little wonder it is that the collector of the objects for art of the Japanese craftsmen finds in them an ever refreshing delight. The tsuba, or sword-guards of Japan, are famed for their workmanship, beauty of design, and historic interest, while their rarity is not such as to discourage the collector. A few years ago, indeed, these remarkable examples of the skill of the old-time Japanese metal-workers could have been picked up in the Japanese shops in America and Europe for a song. ”

“ It is hard enough to believe in genius in our own day, when miracles are no longer surprises. What, then, must have been the alienating doubts of Master Bernard’s whole family as they saw him, day after day, absorbed with his clays, his enamels, and his ovens, while they stood by, hungry and neglected! The colossal selfishness of the men who win against all odds is forgotten afterward and forgiven, and one is inclined to think Palissy’s plaint about the lack of encouragement of his friends and family more of a screen to his troubled conscience than anything else. ”

“ The arts and crafts of Persia have suffered terribly from the state of misrule. Always artistic by nature, many beautiful arts were theirs, the secret of which has been forgotten through the years of civil war and trouble. Among them the exquisite lustre-ware, charming in design and coloring, is now difficult to obtain. The enamel work for which they were once famous is a lost art; formerly tiles of this work, exquisite in color and beautiful in pattern, were freely produced, and many wonderful specimens have been saved from ancient ruins, and many are still the glory of mosques and shrines ”

“ Probably no piece of furniture holds greater interest for the specialized or even the general collector than the chair. Its ancestry is venerable, but its remote antiquity need not be dwelt upon at length here. It is true that in a magnificent Louis Quatorze drawing-room, perfectly appointed and historically correct, the introduction of a cottage chair of the Windsor type would be as displeasing an anachronism as putting a wild thrush to neighbor with all the parrots of an avairy. ”

“ But that is true, too, of collecting, which, figuratively speaking, is in itself a species of the art of angling, of dipping into the quiet pools of unfrequented places, there to angle for quaint curios and interesting mementos of bygone days, conscious that though the bait may be small, the catch may be large—besides, there is the fun of fishing! ”

“ Many collectors have become such through an increasing interest in old furniture, rare china, early silver, and other classes of antiques and curios, inspired in the beginning by the acquisition of some object of the sort, personal contact with which has served as an example of the pleasure which collecting holds in store for one. The true collector is not merely “a gatherer of things,” indifferent to the guidance of a discriminating taste. ”

“ The finest examples of the craft of the old master cabinet-makers of the seventeenth century and the eighteenth were originally produced for wealthy patrons who paid well for the master’s skill. While such pieces must naturally be beyond the reach of the collector of moderate means—except in rare instances where complete ignorance of their value is combined with a desire to part with them—they are still always interesting to note, and many of them have been reproduced with wonderful skill by some of the leading masters of the craft of furniture-making to-day. ”

“ Your true collector may often maintain reticence in order that he may enjoy a normal place in the community, undisturbed by the merely idle curious, the undeft rummaging of the clumsy, the curt depreciation of the supercilious, the gushing of the undiscriminating susceptible, or the skepticism of those who measure the sanity of their fellows by the canons of their own irrevocable and undeviating limitations, those to whom no music but the echoes of caverns can appeal. ”

“ Fatal improvements have often marked the progress of the arts. It was so with that of the Royal Porcelain of Sèvres. The early pieces were of soft paste, but in 1804 the director, Monsieur Brogniart, was so pleased with the introduction of the hard paste instead that he utterly banished the soft paste, going so far as to destroy the secret formula for its making, and burying alive, as one might say, all the soft-paste material then on hand in the Parc de Versailles! Poor, deluded mortal! Probably he died unaware of having murdered the Sèvres porcelain of the finest type! ”

“ My own flair for collecting has often fed my pride, but it is tempered with a happy contentment from an interest in the things I cannot have, may never hope to have! I cannot, perhaps, describe to you the delight I experienced in coming upon that saucière at Cleon’s or the joy I felt in being permitted to take my time in gloating over it unhurried by a museum curator, whose official anxiety must of necessity ever play false to his kindly attempt to conceal it. ”

“ The collector of old Chelsea will find it rare indeed. But as with so many things worth while, an occasional find will cause thrills of a quality scarcely to be compared with the ordinary excitement of coming upon a bit of commoner ware. As the Chelsea porcelain was of very soft paste, the pieces do not withstand refiring, in consequence of which it is not redecorated or patched up as often is the case with many wares. ”

“ As the clay base of old Dutch delft was so soft and friable, the surface of a piece was entirely coated with the tin-enamel. While it was not metallic in the sense of having a metallic lustre like the maiolica of Deruta or of Gubbio, light glinted across the surface of a piece of old delft reveals a tinny sheen. The surface will prove smooth to the touch, but it will not feel glassy as does that of a glazed ware. ”

“ The one great distinction of Mughal from Hindu art is not so much racial as social; the former is an art of courts and connoisseurs, owing much to individual patronage; the latter belongs as much to the folk as to the kings.
The alluring arts of the East are well worth one’s study, well deserving of one’s enthusiasm. Perhaps the illustrations of some of the antiques of Persia and of India here reproduced from photographs of some of the fine examples to be found will awaken an interest in the subject in some who chance upon them. ”

“ Some one has estimated that every collection which does not go into a museum changes hands every twenty years on an average. It is a fact that collecting in America to-day is infinitely more easy of accomplishment than it was a century ago. In New York, for instance, the auction sales of a single recent season presented to the collector more opportunities than could have come his way in six seasons years ago. ”

“ With the advent of railroads and the decline of coaching such glasses were retired from service. Many of these old-time coaching-glasses were engraved and inscribed, but few of them have survived and a specimen would, indeed, be a pièce de résistance in any collection of glass.
We see from these notes that there is less guesswork connected with the study and collecting of old glass than one uninitiated in the rudiments of its lore might suppose. Nothing is without a reason; the thing is to find the raison d’être—that is a true collector’s pleasure. ”

“ This, too, is true of the designs that are to be found on the decorated pieces of Chinese porcelain. The casual observer will pick up a piece and admire or dismiss it on the judgment of the general impression it makes upon his artistic sensibilities. Not so with the connoisseur, who takes into consideration color, texture, glaze, and, quite as much as these (so far as intellectual interest is concerned) , the story the design tells.
The porcelains of China, like the sword-guards of Japan, offer the native artists a vast wealth of mythological and folklore subjects. ”

“ As Pliny says, it is no easy matter to give novelty to old subjects, authority to new, to impart lustre to rusty things, light to the obscure and mysterious. Yet he who writes of antiques and curios may find the subject of old glass so wide a field in which to browse that its restraints seem few indeed and its interest of broad appeal.{219}
The millefiori glass of yesterday and to-day offers to the collector a fascinating study. It is the “Glass of a Thousand Flowers,” a pretty name the Italians gave it centuries ago—mille, a thousand, and fiori, flowers. ”

“ Courageous, unflinching Master Bernard; brave, suffering madame!
When one remembers all these things every bit of Palissy ware becomes endowed with a double interest. It is distinguished in the earlier examples by its close adherence to natural forms, not, perhaps,{207} to be considered exactly beautiful according to the canons of art in our day, nevertheless admirable in many of its qualities; and its fidelity to nature is so remarkable often that one forgives it its lack of esthetic attributes. One of the extant examples is a large plate executed in enamel faience. ”

“ The sea carries off the heaps of sand, and auctioneers disperse the collections; and yet there are no better pleasures than the building of heaps of sand at ten years old, of collections at sixty. Nothing of all we erect will remain, in the end; and a love for collecting is no more vain and useless than other passions are. ”

“ Generally, the collector of old furniture starts in with the chance possession of two or three antique bits which, by inspiring interest and appreciation, lead him to wish to bring the other house furnishings into harmony with the loveliness of the old pieces. Few collectors of antique furniture, of course, are without homes of their own, or the modern substitute—the long-lease apartment. ”

“ WAX PORTRAITS STRANGE it seems that so many fragile objects have come down to us from antiquity while cities of stone, statues of marble, and monuments of bronze too often have appeared lost forever. On beholding a perfect glass vase whose history dates back to Phœnician times, but which has survived centuries of vicissitudes, one cannot but reflect upon the extraordinary fortune of things apparently so perishable. ”

“ Surely no legend better illustrates the Chinese point of view, that a painting is the home of the painter’s soul.
That is the story which was told to me one day when, happening into a Chinese shop where some antiques and curios were offered for sale, I chanced to pick up a tiny bottle. It was not over two and a half inches high. Its weight proclaimed it crystal. A miniature scene and inscription were skilfully and beautifully painted inside.
“This,” said the intelligent Chinese attendant, in answer to my question, “is little bit painting. Story one man artist man very much great. ”

“ Photography has stretched forward a helping hand and by means of enlarged photographic prints of a subject in dispute, the minute comparisons between authenticated and merely attributed works of a period may be studied. It was Juvenal who coined the name “rara avis”; and the impatient collector who would acquire a “rare bird” of art as it flies toward him from the horizon of opportunity must be sure he knows something of its “ornithology” before he rushes recklessly forth, perchance to put the salt of good money on some worthless tail. ”

“ From the plain crystalline glass bottles decorated with landscape or figure subjects (by deftly painting the interior walls of the bottle so that the scene shows through) to the much-bejeweled bottles, all these gems of Chinese fabrication are triumphs of the art, patience, and ingenuity of the Oriental hand and mind.{259}
It is interesting to note that the Chinese have never made claim to the discovery of glass. The historical work, “Wei Luo,” based on third-century records, chronicles that ten colors of opaque glass were imported by the Chinese from Rome between the years 221 and 264. ”

“ In cloisonné enamel-work a metal base—of gold, silver, copper, or some other metal—has its design traced upon it by means of thin metal wires or strips soldered to the base and forming a number of divisions. These, when filled with the colored silicate (subjected to amalgamation by heat, and afterward polished) produce a beautiful patterned surface, the design of which appears traced in metal filaments. The Byzantine and the Greek enamelers executed their cloisonné enamels in gold, as likewise did the Anglo-Saxons, the Russians, the Chinese, and the Japanese in their finest work. ”

“ They have truly been always an art-loving people. Some one has aptly remarked that every home in India is a nursery of art, and I think this must once have been true of the home in Persia. Apropos of Persian ornament it may be remarked that the native artists have always delighted in varied and symmetrical patterns of great intricacy. External beauty, too, seems to have been sought, rather than intrinsic thorough excellence of fabrique, excepting, of course, the products of the Persian looms and the works of the masters in metal. ”