COLLECTOR'S LUCK By ALICE WTLEER CARRICK H.H.AUSTIN. COLLECTOR'S LUCK A charming Sheraton secretary a delicate piece with tambour doors and beautiful marquetry filled with rare lustre pitchers. COLLECTOR'S LUCK or A Repository of Pleasant and Profit- able Discourses Descriptive of the Household Furniture and Ornaments of Olden Time What toil did honest Curio take, What strict inquiries did he make, To get one medal wanting yet, And perfect all his Roman set! 'T 'is found! and oh! his happy lot! 'Tis bought, locked up, and ne'er forgot. Prior. By ALICE VAN LEER CARRICK THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS BOSTON Copyright 1919 by THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY PRESS, INC. First Impression July 1919 Second Impression January 1920 Third Impression February 1923 Printed in the United States of America TO ORDE AND ALICIA PREFACE I WANT to write another dedication as well: to times past and gone ; to the men and women who lived then; and to these old things that are the tangible, present symbols of their faraway lives. Do you know, I often find collectors learning history from a little, personal angle that more academic scholars often- times overlook. How else could I have known with such happiness my adored Horace Walpole or gossip- ing Pepys? Margaret Winthrop and Eliza Pinckney stretch sisterly hands across the years to me, and I count among my intimates Judge Samuel Sewall and worthy Cotton Mather. For, if you collect the right way, and there is but one right way, you cannot help absorbing the politics and art and religion of your chosen pe- riod. Collecting is n't just a fad; it is n't even just a "divine madness": properly interpreted, it is a liberal education. And so to these old days and ways that have been my kindest guides, and to the readers who have walked with me awhile in this pleasant pays bleu, I rededicate "Collector's Luck." A. V. L. C. WEBSTER COTTAGE HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE April, 1919 CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE I COLLECTOR'S LUCK 1 II STENCILED FURNITURE 17 III PRESSED GLASSWARE 31 IV OLD WOVEN COVERLETS .... 46 V LUSTRE PITCHERS AND TEACUPS . . 63 VI OLD LIGHTS AND LAMPS .... 77 VII OLD VALENTINES AND SILHOUETTES . 97 VIII OLD GLASSWARE . . . . . . . 113 IX OLD WHITE COUNTERPANES . . . 136 X COLLECTOR'S LUCK IN THE CITY . . 158 XI THE FRIENDLY FIREPLACE . . . . 177 XII OLD DOLLS AND THEIR FURNITURE 194 ILLUSTRATIONS SHERATON SECRETARY Frontispiece SHERATON BUREAU 5 HEPPELWHITE CARD-TABLE; WARMING-PAN .... 6 EARLY GEORGIAN MIRROR; CHIPPENDALE CHAIR ... 9 SOFA OF CHIPPENDALE TYPE 10 EMPIRE TABLE 13 " BREAKING UP HOUSEKEEPING " 14 TEA-CADDY AND TRAY SHOWING STENCIL DESIGN . . 19 A STENCILED FRUIT-DISH 20 FOUR CHAIRS SHOWING INTERESTING STENCILS. . . 23 A GROUP OF INTERESTING STENCIL TRAYS 24 BLACK- AND-GOLD STENCIL TRAY . . . . . . . . 27 A BEAUTIFUL TRAY SHOWING UNUSUAL STENCIL ... 28 PRESSED GLASSWARE 33 HISTORIC CUP-PLATES 34 CUP-PLATES AND COMPOTE 39 LACY-PATTERNED PLATES, SUGAR-BOWL, CREAMER, AND SALT-CELLARS 40 PLATTER AND CAKE-DISH 43 GLASSWARE OF OUR GRANDMOTHER'S DAY 44 "THE SCOTCH BLANKET" 49 THE " RED, WHITE AND BLUE " COVERLET 50 DOUBLE-W T OVEN COVERLET IN ROSE AND WHITE ... 55 "LOVER'S CHAIN" AND "LOVER'S KNOT" 56 "THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE" PATTERN . . 59 "THE CROSS" AND "SINGLE CHARIOT WHEEL" DESIGNS 60 LUSTRE PITCHERS FROM L 's COLLECTION .... 67 PINK LUSTRE AND LUSTRE OF THE BRONZED TONES . . 68 Two BEAUTIFUL LUSTRE PITCHERS . 71 xiv ILLUSTRATIONS MORE LUSTRE WARE 72 CANDLESTICKS 79 MORE CANDLESTICKS; CANDLE-MOULD, WHALE-OIL LAMPS, AND " BETTY LAMPS " 80 CANDLESTICKS OF VARYING DESIGN 89 CANDLESTICKS FROM A RAG-FAIR IN PARIS; ASTRAL LAMP 90 CHARMING LAMPS OF ODD DESIGN 93 PRESSED-GLASS CANDLESTICK AND GIRANDOLES ... 94 VALENTINES THAT HANG IN THE "PRETTIEST ROOM" . 99 THE " LANGUISHING LADY " 100 " THE SOLDIER AND SAILOR " VALENTINES 103 THE "SECOND SAILOR" AND THE "PENSIVE GENTLEMAN" 104 SILHOUETTES 107 MORE SILHOUETTES 108 DIRECTOIRE GENTLEMAN AND JOHN RANDOLPH OF ROANOKE Ill THE LADY WHO ADORED " CHILDE HAROLD " . . . . 112 GLASSWARE FROM NORTHERN NEW ENGLAND; ENAMELED STIEGEL MUG 115 WATERFORD GLASS; DECANTERS 116 STIEGEL GLASS AND OTHER GLASSWARE 119 MORE STIEGEL GLASSWARE 120 FRAGILE VENETIAN GLASSES 123 OPAQUE BRISTOL PIECES; AND THE "LAFAYETTE DE- CANTERS" ....... 124 JACOBITE GLASSES 129 "FIRING-GLASSES" 130 AN INTERESTING GROUP OF ENGRAVED GLASS AND A CUT AND ENGRAVED CRUET OF UNUSUAL DESIGN . . 133 A QUAINT BOTTLE; FIVE FLIP GLASSES 134 WASHINGTON'S BEDROOM AT MT. VERNON .... 139 OLD QUILTED COUNTERPANE DESIGNED BY A HUNGARIAN EXILE 140 ILLUSTRATIONS xv QUILTED WHITE COUNTERPANE WITH PADDED DESIGN . 143 L 's CANDLE- WICKING SPREAD ^ 144 THE CANDLE- WICKING SPREAD E MADE .... 147 THE SPREAD E USED AS A MODEL 148 THE " CROSS-STITCH " CANDLE- WICKING SPREAD . . . 151 EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LINEN SPREAD EMBROIDERED IN SOFT WOOLS 152 BEAUTIFUL CANDLE-WICKING SPREAD OF DEEP AND SYM- METRICAL DESIGN 155 OLD KNITTED SPREAD OF "FAN" PATTERN .... 156 Two INTERESTING CHAIRS 161 MAPLE CHAIR, BOUGHT IN BOSTON FOR TWELVE DOLLARS 162 MAHOGANY TIP-TABLE 165 EMPIRE DINING-TABLE 166 EMPIRE WORK-TABLE AND FOOTSTOOL 167 PRESSED-GLASS CANDLESTICKS; SHEFFIELD CAKE-BASKET 168 "CoURTING-MlRROR" 171 LUSTRE PITCHERS AND MUG . . . 172 FIREPLACE FROM THE PAUL REVERE HOUSE, BOSTON . . 179 THE AUTHOR'S LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FIREPLACE 180 OLD HAND- WROUGHT IRON ANDIRONS 183 OLD FRANKLIN FIRE-FRAME 184 LATE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FIREPLACE 187 IRON AND BRASS ANDIRONS . 188 THE "AcoRN-Top" PATTERN . . . . . . . . 191 A "Two DOLLAR GAMBLE" IN ANDIRONS 192 EARLY EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY DOLL'S CHEST AND MINIA- TURE SOFA 195 A GROUP OF OLD DOLLS 196 DOLL'S FURNITURE FROM THE WITCH HOUSE, SALEM, MASSACHUSETTS 201 INTERESTING PIECES OF DOLLS' FURNITURE .... 202 A LITTLE BED AND A SLEIGH-FRONT BUREAU .... 205 THE LITTLEST DAUGHTER'S LITTLE CHAIR . 206 COLLECTOR'S LUCK COLLECTOR'S LUCK The world is so full of a number of things I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings. IF I were a physician prescribing for the ills of body and mind, I know I should have one sovereign rem- edy. Even now, as a layman, I present my panacea. If you are dull, if you are unhappy, if you are bored collect ! It gets you out of doors, it gets you out of yourself, and, best of all, if you do it intelli- gently, you cannot help knowing something more about the world's history and civilization. You are creating a background. These joys have been mine, and I speak as one having authority because, through the width of our countryside, I am now known as one of the "antique ladies." The other is L , and together, through storm and sunshine, along dusty roads and up unspeakably muddy lanes, from sunrise until there is hardly a light left twinkling in the lonely farmhouses, we have followed and found our treasures. Of course, you do not always have to go so far afield; even in our little country town there are frequently sales, removals, people willing to "part with" some heirloom. There is, for instance, 2 COLLECTOR'S LUCK one ancient house that we watch with quickened breath every time we pass by, for local legend says that in it is a walled-up closet of old blue china. Years ago the eccentric owner grew tired of it, and took this unique way of ridding her mind of its pres- ence. Now, some day, that house is going to be torn down and take its eighteenth-century pictur- esqueness out of the way of village improvement; and then - - ! Already our imaginations have purchased countless Staffordshire platters and faintly blue Nankin teacups. My little country town is also a college town, and, thirty or forty years ago, when old furniture was in complete disrepute, I have no doubt that wonder- ful "finds" might have been made here. Even now, at students' sales, apparently it is not seemly for any man to graduate with more than his degree and a few clothes, I have known two charming little tables, one an inlaid Hepplewhite, the other a rope- carved Empire, to be picked up, the first for a dollar, the second for twenty-five cents. And in earlier generations, when Thomas or Henry came to our "classic college halls," bearing with them all the family's worst furniture: highboys and lowboys, block-front chests and fiddle-back chairs, really, anything from the attic would do for a boy's room, and the Mid-Victorian plush was safe in the best parlor, what the Faculty might have found if only they had known! COLLECTOR'S LUCK 3 But to discover heirlooms and want most earnestly to get them is n't always enough, even though you have a distinct "flair" for such things. Patience also is necessary. Way back on the hills, near a blue little sheltered lake, I know where there is a house a barn, too cram-jam full of old things : pink lustre, brass, and pewter; carved chairs and a claw- foot sofa hidden from envious eyes deep down in the hay; and on the sitting-room mantelpiece a lovely "proof" Boston Common platter. Cows graze plac- idly on its blue surface, and, I regret to say, through the open-work of the china edge a white satin ribbon runs neatly and ties on one side in a preposterous rosette! It is the only fitting pendant to its city cousin, the gilded Barye lion, its tail pink-bowed, that I have ever seen. And sell these treasures? Not for anything that the owner has been offered yet; but some day his heirs will, and that is why, like Mrs. Bofkin, we "sit and watch with pious pa- tience." And there is the funniest old lady that we have met on our "antique-ing " trips. She is the pos- sessor of a maple highboy, nothing unusual, lack- ing brasses, and scrubbed by her with such relentless neatness that the surface is as white as if it had been scraped. She is unpersuadable; her price is "a hun- dred dollars, no more, no less," and when you hint at its exaggeration she just shakes her head and says, "Well, it can set a while longer. The critter don't eat nothin'!" Nobody will ever be able to buy it 4 COLLECTOR'S LUCK for any reasonable sum; but the experience is valu- able discipline to our optimism. Now, having shown you the far enchantment of our hopes, let me tell you of some of our actual "finds." Unless you have known the stimulating varieties of a rural auction, it may be hard to visualize for you the happy pleasure of it all. Our North Country is so beautiful that to drive through it is a joy all by itself: to see its rolling foothills, its blue mountain distances, the intervales and rounded knolls that look as if some giant thing, centuries ago, had folded its hands and then lain down to sleep, and the grass had grown green over its clasped fingers. The roads themselves are "dusty with fes- tival"; you follow a procession of all kinds of ve- hicles, for a country auction is a neighborhood en- tertainment; everybody goes. It was in just this sort of setting that L - bought her ten-cent table. The wood is old black cherry; the legs are straight and grooved like some of the later Chippendale chairs, and the drop-leaves, when they are raised, make a surface over three feet square. At each end of the central board is an apron carved in charming curves, and yet this valuable piece was so dingy with time and disuse it had apparently been shoved carelessly into an outhouse and left there for genera- tions that nobody wanted it, and L -'s ten- cent bid was left undisputed. It is in the process of renovation, and, alas, I cannot show it to you now, A dignified Sheraton bureau of the type just merg- ing into the Empire feeling, and showing wonderful wood-making. It cost $15. An inlaid Heppel- white card-table that cost $15. Its mahog- any and marquetry are unusually delicate. The Sheffield cake-bas- ket was bid in for $2. Collection of Mrs. Carleton. The auctioneer is a sensitive soul ; do not irritate him; because of my defer- ence, I got the warming-pan for $1.20. COLLECTOR'S LUCK 7 but it is another proof of my theory of buying by line. Here I want to present and insist upon another auction theory of mine never offend the auction- eer! He is a sensitive soul, full of the pride of his profession, and, if you irritate him, by some subtle psychological process, he will make the crowd go on bidding. I don't know quite how he does it; I am merely aware that, because of my flattering deference, an excellently engraved warming-pan was dropped for $1.20 into my waiting hands. Moreover, a friendly auctioneer will always send you advance notices of his auctions; no small assistance to the collector who depends upon scattering village sales. In just the same way it pays to be friendly to the gathering auction crowd. Not only the reward of virtue but of "Collector's Luck" will be yours. The people will tell you of bargains, they may even sell you some of their own possessions. This is how L - got one of her finest pieces, a beautifully in- laid Hepplewhite card-table, for fifteen dollars. It is mahogany and its marquetry is so delicate and di- verse that, if you saw it in a city shop instead of way back on an almost forsaken hillside, you would com- pletely distrust its genuineness. The Sheffield cake- basket standing on it is another token of our auction energy, for it is in very good condition and was bid in for only two dollars. I long for and lack time and space to describe 8 COLLECTOR'S LUCK more minutely all our captured dreams: L 's walnut early Georgian mirror, bought in a little Ver- mont village for five dollars and probably Eng- lish ; my black cherry Chippendale chair the back is especially lovely that cost me, in a little city shop, fourteen dollars; G 's dignified Sheraton bureau (on page 5) , fifteen was its price, the type just merging into the Empire feeling, and showing wonderful woodmarking; and H -'s entrancing helmet creamer well, this I'll have to stop and tell you about. We had walked, H and I, a pleasant pair of miles to the little "store" of a man who joined the trades of harness-maker and jockey and antique dealer all in one personality. Sometimes you found treasures there, and why, knowing this, I stopped at his gate to look back I have never known, except that the world was so very lovely. Nature had sat at ease in her fields that day and splashed her hillside canvasses with lavish color; and while I, luckless, gazed at the crimsons and golds, H walked in and bought the helmet creamer with its quaint blue and gilt bands for thirty-five cents. Then I said severely, quoting my Emerson, "H , 'Things are of the snake!' I shouldn't have minded twenty-five cents or fifty, but, somehow, thirty -five seems so improbable! In this game of mine hesitation means nearly always being lost, you know. Frankly, I believe in " Collector's Luck " Collection of Mrs. Carleton. The black cherry Chip- pendale chair that was bought for $14 in a little city shop. This early Georgian wal- nut mirror was bought in a little Vermont village for $5. From the author's collection. Collection of Mrs. Frost. This fine sofa, of a type usually called Chippendale, probably dates somewhere in the second half of the eighteenth century. It is over six feet long with a wide curving back and gracious arms. COLLECTOR'S LUCK 11 very strongly, but one way of my belief is that you must never neglect an opportunity, that every clue is worth following, every auction worth attending for the sake of the possible prize that may be there. A certain energy of pursuit is necessary. That accounts for one of the finest sofas I have ever seen coming back into the possession of the original own- ers. It is over seven feet long, and very wide, with high, curving back and gracious arms, of a type usually called Chippendale, the legs are straight and slightly grooved and quite unlike the later Sher- aton, and it probably dates somewhere in the sec- ond half of the eighteenth century. But for all its loveliness it fell upon evil Victorian days, and was given away to the local hospital. There it stayed, at one end of the upper corridor, covered with a con- cealing linen slip, and sat upon by countless unsus- pecting collectors, I, myself, was one of them, until it grew rickety and was thrust away out of sight in one corner of the attic. My friend, who had always longed for it and laid plans for its cap- ture, had no further need to think of herself as a potential Indian giver; she asked if she might buy back her father's gift, and the hospital authorities pre- sented her with it, freely. Now it stands before her drawing-room fire, the earnest of her constant, un- failing hope that some day it would be hers. Next comes my most amazing "luck" story, and, logically, I should save its dramatic thrill for a fitting 12 COLLECTOR'S LUCK climax, but I can't wait. It really is L 's tale, but I always have the fun of telling it because she is modest. I want you all to take Frances Morse's "Furniture of the Olden Time " - I feel as if I were a school-teacher and turn to page 243. Look at the illustration opposite carefully, for this is the table I am going to talk about, and, besides, it is the most beautiful piece of Empire furniture that I have ever seen. Neither my photograph nor that in the book does justice to the excellence of the carving. Some time ago L showed this picture to our favorite dealer, and said, "I want you to get me a table like this some day." He promised he is always oblig- ing but I don't think he thought it a probable pur- chase, for such tables are rare. Months later he telephoned that he had found one that he thought very similar in design and asked her to come down and see it; but it was not until they had examined it together and looked over the bill of sale, dated at Worcester and signed Mrs. John Smith, you will notice that Frances Morse's text describes this table as owned by John Smith, Esq., of Worcester, that they discovered it to be the identical table L had pointed out in the book. Wasn't that an ex- traordinary coincidence? Our dealer had found it quite by chance, while hunting up a sideboard, and had bought it from the widow of its former owner. It really makes me think that, if people will just want anything in the world enough and in the right way, Collection of Mrs. Carleton. That lovely Empire table: a symbol of collector's luck raised to the nth power. The final wreck of the home that has sheltered generations must of itself he sad sad in this sym- bol of change, at least. Once again I wish my- self rich that I might buy the old place back for them, and give them all the things they have wanted and never got. COLLECTOR'S LUCK 15 they will surely get it. I am wishing all of you limitless faith! And I am wishing you, also, infinite sympathy. These joyous quests of mine are not always gayly colored, you see, for they are woven out of the fabric of life itself. An auction can be very pathetic; the breaking up, the final wrecking of the home that has sheltered generations, where little children have lived and played and laughed, must of itself be sad; sad in the symbol of change, at least. And, sometimes, the people are so very, very poor; old bent women and stooped old men ; for years they have struggled with farm-lands barren as their lives, and hoped so to keep things together! I am thinking of two such cases now. Once again I wish myself rich that I might buy the old place back for them, and give them a Ford and a Victrola and all the things they've wanted and never got. And, then, magically, the pattern of my imagination changes to a happier color, and I remember the tale of the friend of a friend, an "antique" emotionalist like myself. I hope most earnestly to meet her some day ; we would have so much in common. Now, not knowing her, I still can tell the story with admiring freedom. My friend's friend had gone to a hillside farmhouse in search of a platter famous throughout the neighbor- hood. It proved even lovelier than she had expected : its blue the deep, intense tone that old Staffordshire alone possesses. Her whole collecting heart went out 16 COLLECTOR'S LUCK to it, and her modest tentative offer soon reached im- moderation. But still the owner refused to sell it. At last, in desperation, the friend of my friend said, "Have I nothing to offer that would induce you to let me have it?" Immediately the reply came, "Yes, ma'am, that skirt you've got on now." " It 's yours," answered my friend's friend, promptly stepping out of it. And she always adds when she tells the story, "And my good-fortune stayed with me for I had on a black taffeta petticoat!" II STENCILED FURNITURE WERE you ever lucky like me, do you think? Did you ever find a set of stenciled chairs, softly brown and glowing with gold pomegranates and formalized flowers, and all six for six dollars? I did, and ever since then I have been wanting to tell you what can be done with stenciled furniture old sten- cils when you can get them, new when you can't; for very few people know at all the charm of this quaint, early-nineteenth-century type, the far-away country cousin of the wonderful, long-ago oriental lacquer. Besides, in the late eighteenth century, Angelica Kauf- mann, Pergolesi, and Cipriani, all painters of great vogue, worked for Robert and James Adam and deco- rated the furniture that these masters designed. If you have read "Quinney's," I am sure you have not forgotten the tragic affair of the satinwood commode with panels painted by the charming Angelica, and Jo's despair at its loss. In the reign of Louis XV, Martin, the famous French coach-painter, perfected his marvelous process of enamels now known as vernis-Martin, and even from mediseval days cer- tain pieces of mobiliary furniture have been adorned and embellished by the addition of vivid color like the "sapphire, pearl and rich embroidery" that Shakespeare pictures as buckling below the bending 18 COLLECTOR'S LUCK knee of fair knighthood. From these dignified dy- nasties my simple stencils can claim only distant de- scent, and yet they are so attractive, so full of vigor and stamina and with such wonderful decorative possibilities, that I am sure you will love them as I do, once you know them. I cannot think of a better way to bring tone and the quality of color into a room than by their use. I am going to begin by walking directly to my side- board, and taking down my little canister, black- surfaced, straight-lined, and not more than five inches in height, but, oh, so delightful! It has two compartments, one for green tea, one for black, and a tiny lock, for, in those thrifty days, our ancestors had to be very careful indeed of their precious Oolong and Japan. A brass lion's head forms the handle, thus marking it beyond doubt as belonging to the full Empire period; and the stencil itself makes me think of the old nursery rhyme about the nut tree "that would nothing bear but a silver apple and a golden pear" my design in silvers and golds precisely. Why, I am almost daily expecting a visit from the Queen of Spain's daughter "all on account of my little nut tree." And my tea-caddy has something more than quaint charm to recommend it; the color- scheme of golds and silvers has the merit of binding together the pewter on my sideboard and the brass on the table beyond. On my dining-table is another interesting piece, A stenciled tea-caddy owned by the author. A lion's head forms the handle. Tray with original stenciling. Collection of Mrs. Carleton. Stenciled fruit-dish in blues and roses, with gold and silver arabesques. From the collection of the author. STENCILED FURNITURE 21 this time combining more colors. The background is black, the heavy, japanned black that takes long years and rough usage to wear away; on the four curved-over edges are alternate designs of blue and rose conventionalized flowers set in a wreath pattern of gilt and silver, and the stencil on the bottom is plain gold. It is quite twelve inches wide and the photograph gives no real idea of its capacity, for it will hold nearly a dozen smallish oranges. It is in almost "proof" condition; the colors are merely dulled by time, not rubbed away, and because there are so many combinations of tone in it, it makes a most admirable fruit-dish, harmonizing with any- thing: oranges, golden-red plums, or crimson-hued peaches and apples. Many such dishes are still to be found through the countryside; sometimes the design is completely worn away, in which case a piece of this kind seems to me practically worthless, and I should not advise redecoration. At other times, the colors are warm and glowing; desirable bits to be picked up both for decoration and actual use. I wish that I could show you the stencil on the columns and cornice of my Empire clock, but it is so dim that, although the effect is yet very pleasing to the eye, any adequate reproduction is impossible. Still, bear my counsel in mind, and, if you ever find a clock with stenciled pillars and cornice, remember that it is worth buying. I have chosen four standard types of chairs to show 22 COLLECTOR'S LUCK you, all excellent of their kind. The first has a charm- ing decoration of gold, with little, nai've flecks of green and red picking out the pattern; an unusual touch conies in the turning and stenciling of the brace, and, most valuable point of all, there is a lion's head inset like a medallion in the top of the back. The seat is round, another excellence. Altogether, it is one of the most desirable stenciled chairs that I have ever seen. The design when it was found was so dulled that it had to be done over, but the repro- duction has not a flaw. The next chair is completely old you will see that the stencil is dimmer but the gold fruit and flowers on the black background are very agreeable to look at. The seat is the square rush, more common than the rounded one, but still well worth while. The third chair is the most deli- cately shaped of all; notice how charmingly turned the legs and brace are. You will see, too, that the finish is light; in this resembling the Adam style in satinwood, and the decoration, redone twenty years ago, is formed by clusters of golden grapes. The fourth chair has been restenciled recently, but in shape is the style of rocking-chair that was made be- tween 1820 and 1830, as both the form of the rockers and the inset cane-seat indicate. Cane was used for seating the later types, and, while rush is prefer- able to anything else, I have frequently found such chairs with splint bottoms. Trays you will find almost as often as chairs, and A GROUP OF INTERESTING STENCIL TRAYS STENCILED FURNITURE 25 they vary from small ones, such as are shown in the photograph grouping four together, to great salvers, very useful and very decorative. Sometimes the trays have an irregular, fluted, "pie-crust" edge like the two on either side of the large tray. The upper one is more of the usual shape, but it is re- deemed by the brilliance of its decoration, a bird of paradise nestling in unknown and luxuriant flowers. The large tray (on page 19) is a beautiful one; of most unusual design, too, with vivid flowers on gold bands that glow with a happy radiance. I wonder if you will like the one with the swans as much as I do? And G - has another just like it, only bigger. Frankly, I think it is lovely. I find myself envying the fortunate bride who went to house- keeping somewhere in the early eighteen-hundreds with these charming trays to keep her company. There must have been three of them at first, "nests" of trays they were called, and how I wish I could find that other wandering lost one! Those dear, queer, conventional swans on a blue pond in front of a little thatched cottage ! If you could look at the trays themselves, you would see that the win- dows have the tiny panes that such a cottage should have, and that immense sunflowers form a floral back- ground. "Gorgeous" is the adjective that was meant to describe the next tray. It is perfectly preserved; it might have been finished an hour ago as it stands 26 COLLECTOR'S LUCK there in its fresh black and gold livery, except that they do not make such lovely things nowadays. It be- longed to the great-grandmother of a friend of mine, and her descendant, owning it, is a happy woman. The way the stencil is applied, covering as it does nearly the whole surface, adds to its rarity. I thought it the most attractive one I had ever seen until D - and I found this lovely last one (on page 28) in a little dingy antique shop where treasures are often to be picked up. I didn't be- lieve that such things existed, and I stood hold- ing it in my hands and wondering. To begin with, it is very large, its oval shape is quite uncommon, and, best of all, it has a stenciled rim. There is not an imperfection in it, and the colors are simply exquisite, browns I never saw a brown tray before decorated in golds with little touches of crimson. It is a piece to marvel at, almost to worship. All through my descriptions I have said "sten- ciled," not "painted" furniture, and with the best of reasons back of my statement, because the early nineteenth-century pieces, these honest, sturdy chairs and trays and dishes, were decorated by the process of stenciling. I have seen just one painted tray, interesting because it interprets so primitively the story of Jacob and Rebecca, but nowhere nearly so attractive or artistically good as the ones with the formalized patterns. I do wish the modern decora- tors would return to the good old paths. Now the Black-and-gold stenciled tray. Collection of Mrs. Woods. The finest tray I have ever seen, with the rim as well as the tray surface stenciled. Collection of Mrs. Carr. STENCILED FURNITURE 29 process is free-hand, though sometimes the design is traced on oiled paper, then filled in with chalk and so transferred to a chair-back that way. Twentieth- century painted furniture is often pretty, but it rarely suggests the "feeling" of a hundred years ago. In mid-August it was my privilege to talk to a man who has spent nearly all his life and he is ninety- one years old in decorating furniture, and who probably knows more about it than any other living soul. Shall I ever forget the day of my pilgrimage? He lived miles away; the "noonday stood still for heat," and the road stretched, a dusty ribbon, ahead of me. And then at last the little welcoming white cottage, smaller than mine, and older, for it dates back to 1768. Even the green-latticed sheds built long out at the side looked as if, friendly, they had caught hold of hands with the house, and were run- ning down the little slope to meet me. It was cool, so cool, inside, so pleasant to sit there with Mr. In- galls he is the "rosy -apple" type of old man and discuss stencils while the day blazed outside. When he was a lad he had learned the trade from his father who was a coach-painter, and at that time they worked entirely with stencils; he remembered the piles that used to lie in his father's shop. Little by little they were broken and destroyed, and at last the old order changed for something different and not so intrinsically good. Nobody works with sten- cils now; the color has remained but the "feeling," 30 COLLECTOR'S LUCK the "soul," has vanished. Still, I think it is a craft that could as well be revived as the weaving of blankets and coverlets and rugs. 1 Perhaps, all this time, you are thinking, "But, nevertheless, it is just peasant furniture, the product of homely workmanship." And so it is, and it would be more wonderful, undoubtedly, to own a splendid, authentic bit of vernis-Martin, or such a red-lacquer cabinet as Anne Douglas Sedgwick describes in her delicately modulated " White Pagoda ." And yet I am thinking that so many of you must be, like me, living in "middling" houses on "middling" incomes, and wanting things pretty and real ! Fancy how charm- ing you could make a cold, north-exposed breakfast- room with the yellow glitter of brass, warm brownish walls, and gold-brown stenciled furniture weaving the colors together into a unit of comfort. Or think of the appropriate prettiness of sprigged china and pink lustre on an old tea-tray, its tones as exquisitely mel- lowed as theirs. Remember, too, that "the love of the genuine is a very healthy human instinct." I know nothing that has more of this quality than the simple, honest, unpretending stenciled furniture of the early nineteenth century. 1 Fortunately, the craft is being revived. Ill PRESSED GLASSWARE PERHAPS if I hadn't bought my "five-cent sugar- bowls" at that Vermont auction I never would have begun to collect pressed glass, and so become in- terested in one of the most genuine, attractive a little nai've, too American industries of the early nineteenth century. And then this article would never have been written, for, you see, I had n't in- tended to buy them at all. What my soul was crav- ing was a delicate Spode cup lying all unnoticed among the rubbish of an "odd lot." Apparently I was its sole discoverer; when it was put up for sale, I said "five cents," not another bid was made, and as I stopped to examine my china treasure, I found that I had been even luckier than I thought, for the two quaint sugar-bowls were oddly charming, and grew more so every time I looked at them. My white glass candlesticks (on page 33) came next in order of purchase. Discovered at a little hill- side auction in New Hampshire, I bought them for a dollar and a half. I have never seen any quite like this pair, with their clear, white curves, rounding bases, and pewter sockets to hold the candles, the last a most unusual touch. Now they stand on my Em- pire sideboard, just the right lighting arrangement, for the silverish sockets are in tone with the pewter 32 COLLECTOR'S LUCK on the wide mahogany top, and the glass matches the pressed handles of the sideboard. The dolphin candlesticks a much more recent acquisition - are an even stronger Empire note, for you must remember that the Empire period meant the revi- val of antiquity in furniture, and that the dolphin was used as a constant classic symbol in decoration. These candlesticks are not white, but as yellow as if they had been cut from a block of clear amber; and if you are gracious enough to recall the color-scheme of my dining-room, you will realize how harmonious they must be on the mantelpiece against that gray- greeny-brown background. But, even after my first candlesticks, I don't think I quite took my glass-collecting as a serious art, a quest to scour the countryside for, until in a little, old attic, hidden away in a dusty blue bowl, I found three "Benjamin Franklin" cup-plates. I knew that they were cup-plates because they were just the same shape and size as the dark-blue "Cadmus" design, which a dealer had just told me was worth twenty- five dollars. But that these odd little glass plates, which our prudent grandmothers used to set their cups in when they drank their tea from the saucers, had any particular value, I was utterly unaware. Remember, I was very young at the game, and when they were offered to me at ten cents apiece, why, I took them. No, my conscience does n't prick me a bit; I was a mere child at collecting in those days. *:;;;;; The two sugar bowls were thrown in with a five-cent teacup at an auction. Several of the other pieces show classic decoration. Rare pressed-glass candlesticks. The two outer ones are white glass with pewter sockets, the other two, in the dolphin design, are made of amber glass. Both groups from the author's collection. Stamped Eagle, Unstamped Eagle, Fort Meigs, Log Cabin. Log Cabin with Cider Barrel and Flag, Benjamin Harrison, Henry Clay. Bunker Hill with draped border, Bunker Hill (plain) with braided border, Bunker Hill with braided border. The Benjamin Franklin, Chancellor Livingston, Ship Cadmus. HISTORIC CUP-PLATES From the author's collection. PRESSED GLASSWARE 35 And then, by some chance, I ran across Edwin A. Bar- ber's book on "American Glassware," and found that my "Benjamin Franklins" were among the rarest of a lot of historical cup-plates. Let me quote this great authority directly: "These interesting little objects were pressed in metal moulds by means of a plunger. It is believed that they were made in England since we have no knowledge that pressed-glass designs of this character were produced so early in this country." Then followed a long list, and my fired ambition made me unable to rest until I, too, owned all these cup- plates. Sit down beside me on the sofa, won't you, and let me tell you about them in their order; for "these in- teresting little objects," as Professor Barber calls them, collected here and there through Vermont and New Hampshire and Massachusetts, and costing, perhaps, ten or twelve dollars, are worth to-day fifty by a dealer's estimate. I am beginning with the "Stamped Eagle," be- cause it is the oldest cup-plate of all, dated you can see the figures faintly 1831. A shield is em- bossed on the eagle's breast, and overhead is a circle of stars, the border being a conventional leaf and fleur-de-lis design. The "Unstamped Eagle" comes next, set in a scroll border, and clasping defiant ar- rows; you almost expect to find the militant "E Plu- ribus Unum" stamped underneath as you frequently see it in the bureau brasses. I am particularly proud 36 COLLECTOR'S LUCK of this cup-plate because I have never seen it in any collection but my own, and I think it is undoubt- edly rare. My third trophy, acorn-bordered, bears as central design a solidly square log-cabin, with the words "Tippecanoe" and "Fort Meigs" printed above it. The next cup-plate usually described by dealers and catalogues as "The Log Cabin with the Flag and Cider Barrell" -is my most cherished little dish, probably because it was so hard to get and eluded me so long. I had pursued its veriest shadow, and, for an eternity, the most tangible evidence that I could find that it existed for me was one with a nibble as large as the Hatter made in his teacup, bitten out at the edge. And then I saw it advertised in Lib- bie's auction-list, and I shaped my life accordingly. It was the last day of the sale, and I hurried through a luncheon-party, I gave up the gilded chance of hearing Yvette Guilbert sing her "Noels," and I sat and sat in that crowded auction-room until my blessed cup-plate was announced. For me the mean- time is a blank; Syntax plates and Bennington dogs, even Sunderland lustre creamers, passed unnoticed. If any of you ever saw that engaging French farce done over into a musical comedy and called "The Pink Lady," - saw and recall the part where M. Don- diddier, the antique dealer, is told that the twentieth snuff-box has been found, you will understand my emotions. They were as his when the missing PRESSED GLASSWARE 37 cup-plate was put into my trembling hands. And I have a curious theory about this piece. I think that it may have been "made in America," for a rubbing from a medal on the fly-leaf of an old school-book shows precisely the same design, and the inscription above reads "Free Soil School," below "The Hero of Tippecanoe." I think, too, that it must have been a characteristic American illustration of the time. A logical fifth is the "Hero" himself, a profile portrait of Harrison, with the date of his birth, 1773, and the date of his presidency, 1841. Henry Clay is on the sixth cup-plate; a small head with a much more elaborated border than most of these patterns show, and, as it has been said, the head might be almost anybody, Julius Csesar, for instance, it is so con- ventionally classical. The row below shows at the right the three Bunker Hill plates; all more or less alike to the layman, all blessedly different to the collector, and one of them, the third, remarkably hard to get. The first three are my cherished ships; two those early "Walk-in- the- Water" boats, the Benjamin Franklin and the Chancellor Livingston. They were among the first Hudson River steamers; do you suppose it was that same Franklin that was "snagged at St. Gene- vieve in 1822"? The Chancellor Livingston, named for one of the drafters of the Constitution, a thor- ough-going friend and patron of Fulton in his navi- gation projects, is shown, also, by Enoch Wood on 38 COLLECTOR'S LUCK one of his blue platters, but I like mine better. As it sails to its horizon of stars and hearts it is the statelier ship. The last of these cup-plates is called the "Cadmus"; why, I do not know.* Like Henry Clay, it might be anything. The other four are not in any sense historical, but I am showing them to you because they are such standard patterns; the Valentine and the Butterfly being particularly well known. Of the leaf -border design I have six, and let me give you a hint if you, too, have half a dozen. They make the most at- tractive individual almond dishes in the world. And mine are all in the white glass, a fairly wise limiting, you see, for these cup-plates are also made in deep sapphire blues, emerald greens, topaz yellows, and, to continue this jeweled comparison, opal-hued effects. But while such variety is excellent as show- ing range, and most desirable in a museum, I really think the white more charming for intimate and pri- vate use. Yet, as I write with such composure, I am envying, and I can't help it, a friend who, going out to buy a bureau, not only captured it, but se- cured besides a lovely and lambent blue Chancellor Livingston for twenty -five cents. Long before I had collected all these cup-plates I had decided that modern cut-glass was showy and rather vulgar, quite out of place in my demure little eighteenth-century cottage. I may have been helped to this conclusion by many maids, optimistic washers NOTE. Now I do know. The Cadmus cup-plate is probably commemorative of Lafay- ette's second visit to America in 1824-1825. On one of the earliest salt-cellars made at Sandwich in 1825 the ship design alternating with an eagle is used, and this is a definite Lafayette piece. A group of cup-plates with a compote in centre. The compote is from Mrs. Dickerman's collection; the cup-plates from the author's. :* Collection of Mrs. Dickerman. Two lacy-patterned plates and a sugar-bowl, creamer, and covered salt. From the author's collection. A group of salt-cellars. The upper two are decorated almost in the feel- ing of the Sheffield grape design. Some of the designs are like magnified snow-flakes. ZH* PRESSED GLASSWARE 41 of dishes, who broke nearly all my wedding presents. When I surveyed the ruins, I made up my mind that I would never buy any more, but collect instead this early pressed glass, and, as our professorial purse grew more ample, add Stiegel and etched glass and that rare old Waterford to this foundation. You can see that I have been blessed; my friends give pressed glass to me; people bring it to sell to me, and now I have over fifty pieces, and more to come; a lovely set way out in the country just waiting for me to go for it; and I am pursuing a Washington plate and a cake-basket. My salt-cellars are charming, don't you think? The upper pair are decorated almost in the feeling of the Sheffield grape-design, and the lower outer pair somewhat resemble a Louis Seize set in silver that my sister found at the rag-fair in Paris. Some of the designs are fine enough to be almost like magnified snow-flakes: the little individual salt-cellar and tiny plate at the left in the large group are like that. My cake-dish is somewhat coarser in texture, but it still suggests, in its strawberry-and-thistle design, the names invariably given to this glassware: "lace," which explains itself, and "snake" from the stippled effect resembling a snake's skin. Perhaps the two rarest pieces are the oval dish with handles, and the jar with the delicate tracery of landscape medallions and a diamonded base that makes you think of that Stiegel-looking glass made in 42 COLLECTOR'S LUCK Southern New Hampshire. The platter it is about ten inches long belongs to the full "Tippecanoe" period, and, in my experience, is almost unique. The handles are of ground glass and represent sleep- ing deer ; and, if you look closely at the centre, ground- glass, too, you will see that the Wild West, as America then understood it, is there depicted: mountains in the distance, a log-cabin, fleeing deer and buffalo. The jar, perhaps, has more artistic charm, but the platter out-values it in nai've unusualness. I cannot go into the definite details of each treasure, but I do hope that you can trace on the larger pieces the really classic designs, set in medallions almost Adam in effect: a blowsy Venus leading a chubby Cupid, -- that 's on the wide-mouthed vase, and on the jam-jar (on page 33) such a stern Minerva! They, too, carry on the feeling of antiquity as ex- pressed in the Empire period. The full-blown Goddess of Love also reminds me of one of my smaller collecting tragedies, too tiny, per- haps, to be called anything but a grief, but still real. Only in one little hillside town have I found this par- ticular pattern, and I think it must have existed once early in the nineteenth century as a complete set. Three pieces were already mine, and the fourth, a large cake-plate, had been promised me if the owner ever broke up housekeeping and went away. And then, by night, stealthily she fled, taking with her my cher- ished dish, and my Collector's Paradise was tern- Collection of Mrs. Whitney. From the author's collection. PLATTER AND CAKE-DISH . PRESSED GLASSWARE 45 porarily topsy-turvy. You know how you can want things! I am not a bit ashamed to tell you that it took all my Christian fortitude not to hope it would get broken. Will you like my glass as well as you did my sten- cils, I wonder? After all, it has much the same feel- ing that "folk feeling" of the early nineteenth cen- tury, full of vigor and stamina. It may not merit the term "beautiful," but surely it is quaintly pretty and engaging. Besides, as yet it has not been imi- tated, and it is still fairly easy to acquire two dis- tinct blessings. And more than all this, these pieces of pressed glass are the fragile symbols of our stirring thirties and forties, and, as such, worthy a place in any collection of Americana. NOTE. Since writing this article, I have found twelve other historical glass cup-plates : two variants of the Henry Clay pat- tern; two other Hudson River boats, the "Frigate Constitu- tion" and the "Fulton Steamboat," both with octagonal edges; two more Log Cabins, General Ringold of Palo Alto fame; and five more eagles. And my " made in America" theory has been thoroughly proved; for further investigation shows these his- torical glass cup-plates to have been pressed at Sandwich, Mass- achusetts, early in the nineteenth century. IV OLD WOVEN COVERLETS TO-DAY I have been very happy, and what do you think I have been doing? Mending an old coverlet; a coverlet woven, it is said, before this country of ours was a nation, and bearing out tradition by its linen warp overshot with blue and red wools blended to- gether in an intricate tracery of design. Darning, always a pleasantly monotonous domestic task, be- comes apotheosized, glorified, when the fabric you are working on is in itself beautiful. That was part of my joy. The rest was the way the years rolled back, and placed me in such close kinship with the long-ago ancestress by marriage who wove this wonderful web in the eighteenth-century Lowlands. For the coverlet is Scotch; brought to America in the wed- ding-chest of a bride who married into a Dutch fam- ily "up state" in New York, when its name was changed to "spree," and it became part of the every - dayness of existence like the more ordinary blue and white coverlets woven here. What happy chance preserved it to me? I do not know. Certainly it was used, not locked away in a chest as so many cov- erlets we find to-day have been. And of course I know the reason that it is directly mine, for, years ago, when he was a little lad, O decided that the OLD WOVEN COVERLETS 47 engaging reds and blues would look well on his nursery bed, and claimed for his own the "Scotch blanket," now returned to its rightful name. Can a man be said to have a dowry? Well, I know that among many other excellent things I married the stencil clock, the graceful Empire table in my dining- room, and this quaint, desirable old coverlet. You see how very strong, how well-woven, it must have been, to defy time and moths and a small boy's wear and tear. And at first I only half appreciated it; I knew it was a woven coverlet; I knew it was old; I referred to it casually as "the brick pattern" because a dealer had once so described it. Dealers have so many fallacies Martha Washington tables, and so on. I used it as a couch-cover; I hung it up for a portiere, never once valuing the jeweled beauty that makes it as lovely as a glowing Bokhara rug. And then Eliza Calvert Hall's "Book of Hand- Woven Coverlets" swam into my ken, and my eyes no longer were holden. I sat, exultant, upon a peak in Darien. I am not at all ashamed of my ignorance, it is so rapidly changing into intelligent information ; and, besides, nobody can properly understand or really "see" coverlets until they have read this book, this wonderful, radiant, marching book. Why, you 'd know that the woman who wrote it believed in other women, rejoiced in the earnest beauty of their work, even if you had never read "Aunt Jane of Kentucky." 48 COLLECTOR'S LUCK It is almost as if she had woven a lyric out of these mountain-women's lives. Well, the first thing that I did after I had looked at the illustrations, and dipped here and there into its pages of enchantment, was to run upstairs for my coverlet, then in the temporary seclusion of moth- balls. I brought it down and draped it across my Empire sofa, and it lighted up the room ! Had I been blind? Here was a wonderful, gorgeous fabric, a design that lingered between "King's Flower" and "Governor's Garden," and yet was more subtle, more intricate than either. Patterns shaped themselves before my eyes: chariot-wheels, squares, octagons, oblongs, and quaint heraldic devices that looked like halberds, blended and wove themselves into each other. I can't give you any better comparison than this: it is the way you look at the night-sky before you know the constellations. At first it 's just a tangle of stars; and then, when you learn them, all heaven itself falls into patterns. You must forgive my rhapsodies; it is the oldest coverlet that I have ever seen, and one of the loveliest. It has been joy to work on it; restor- ing the time-marred places by the skill of weaving my needle in and out. And, while I darned, the song from "Paracelsus" hummed itself through my mind : - From closet long to quiet vowed With mothed and dropping arras hung, Mouldering her lute and books among As when a queen, long dead, was young. Owned by the author The oldest coverlet of all. An earlier variety of " Governor's Garden." Linen warp overshot with blue and red wool. Dates from the eighteenth century. From the author's collection. The " red, white, and blue " coverlet, woven in the early nineteenth century, and a variant of the "Snowball " design. OLD WOVEN COVERLETS 51 Though, thank goodness, it is n't quite so fragile as that ; I mean it gives you in some way the same magic distance of time. And other people feel it, too, I think. When the coverlets were at the studio posing for their pictures I heard the photographers saying, - my "Tennessee Trouble" coverlet was then on the screen, "Look pleasant, please," and, "After all, the expression is everything," and I believed that my coverlet's loveliness was wasted on these friv- olous men. Then the "Scotch blanket" was hung up to have its likeness taken, and one of them said, quite without suggestion, "That's an effective pat- tern." I stopped long enough to play my favorite game. "What design do you first see, the one you are conscious of when you look at it?" I asked. "It's like a checker-board," he answered, laughing a little; and then, growing suddenly serious, "No, it really makes me think of some of those old Egyptian tapestries." My faith was vindicated for, you see, the verse from "Paracelsus" begins And strew faint sweetness from some old Egyptian's fine, worm-eaten shroud. Never again shall the "Scotch blanket" serve as portiere or couch-cover, but, because I hate unused things, things locked away in chests, I will hang it, a glowing, happy banner on our study walls. Perhaps I ought to be even more ashamed about not recognizing my "Tennessee Trouble," for that 52 COLLECTOR'S LUCK came, you know, from my own family. I knew it was an old woven coverlet, and that it must be rare because it was white, coverlets in this respect being something like blackbirds; but not until I studied Mrs. Hall's book, and watched the patterns reveal themselves, did I realize that this century-old cover- let, woven in East Tennessee by my great-grand- mother's slaves, was a variant of the design known as "Tennessee Trouble." I am sorry that I cannot show it to you, white fringe and all, but the pattern, charming as it is, is too flat to photograph well in the one color. It is in perfect preservation, and an- other excellence is its warmth; woven in the South, it shuts out the chill of a New England winter as I have never known any quilt or comforter to do. I am, also, the happy owner of a third coverlet, soft and warm and woven in three colors, an unusual and very charming effect. This has no family asso- ciations; I bought it last fall way up in Vermont, at a little white farmhouse on the top of the world. Below were mists, and the hillsides flamed with maples. I had just found a little stenciled footstool for fifty cents, rare! why, I never even heard of one before, and then the nice old farmer brought out this lovely thing, this coverlet as full of color as the autumn outside, and said, "Anybody give me three dollars for this spread?" I answered, "I will," so quick that I don't know how I did it; and, as he passed it over to me he said, "A lady was by here OLD WOVEN COVERLETS 53 last week, and she offered me two dollars for it, but I sort of thought I ought to get three." A dollar apiece, you see, for each color, for the red and white and blue that go to make up my coverlet. Don't be too sorry for the farmer; don't fancy the old homestead mortgaged and me an avaricious collector. He really had more money than I ; it was merely that we expressed our expenditures differently. The design I cannot quite identify, though it seems to me similar to the various "snowball" pat- terns. Except for two or three tiny time-worn places it is in excellent condition; and the colors, how shall I make you see them? White, a creamy tone, the blue dark, and the red not red at all but a coral pink, the color that Mrs. Hall describes as "just hesitating between scarlet and rose." That 's my despair in writing this: I can show you designs; I cannot reveal the colors to you, these marvelous home-made dyes that have lasted and will last as long as a shred of the fabric does. That is why I urge you to save every scrap of each coverlet you find, for in no other way can you get such perfect results in mending as by using the old threads. I like to think that this coverlet of mine was woven when our country was still young enough to care very greatly for the symbolism of these three blended colors, and that it was kept gently so that it might in time come to me to be a couch-cover by day; at night to tuck snugly round the Littlest Daughter. 54 COLLECTOR'S LUCK If I could show you color; if I could turn my pen for the moment into a paint-brush, I could let you see what I reckon the most beautiful of all the cover- lets I have ever beheld. It, too, is coral pink, that wonderful, lighting rose that I have just tried to de- scribe to you. It is double-woven, a beautiful piece of workmanship, dated 1836, and signed with the name H. N. Green, three points that contribute to its rarity. The signature might mean either the name of the person for whom it was woven or the name of the weaver himself, the latter more likely, for this double-weaving was usually done by professionals, men who traveled the countryside, and brought with them when they came new patterns and tales of the world without. In just the same way the majestic lions in the corners and the American eagles and stars may indicate that the work was done by an English- man who took this way of binding his old and new homes together. Notice the formalized border. Did you ever see anything more delightful than those con- ventional trees with the little posing monkeys under- neath? Such weaving is masterwork; and here it is interesting to quote what Alice Morse Earle has to say about coverlets like this, "The 'setting-up' of such a design is entirely beyond my skill as a weaver to ex- plain or even comprehend. But it is evident that the border must have been woven by taking up a single warp-thread at a time, with a wire needle, not by passing a shuttle, as it is far too complicated and Double-woven coverlet in rose and white; dated and very rare. This is the most beautiful old coverlet that I have ever seen. .A*j>u?;!roxfi>; Owned by Mrs. Wetts. Double- woven coverlet in dark blue and white, done in the early nine- teenth century by Lucy Bingham. The design is the "Lover's Chain." Cushion made from an old woven coverlet bought in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Design, "Lover's Knot"; colors, dark blue, pinkish ecru, and orange. OLD WOVEN COVERLETS 57 varied for any treadle-harness to be able to make a shed for a shuttle." I think that the coverlet de- sign is older in feeling than the actual date; it is really full of the Empire feeling. That 's why it is going to look so lovely on an old acanthus carved four-poster that came from a James River plantation. The "Lover's Chain" -a variant of "Lover's Knot" -is double- woven, too, and as attractive in its fresh blue and white finery as on the day when it was first made. As the old people hereabouts say, "there 's not a brack in it." Aside from the beauty of its design, the charm of its quaint, formalized tree- border, it is very wonderful to me because it was done by a woman, and this double-weaving was usually a man's task, considered too hard and intricate for the weaker sex to accomplish. But this woman could and did, this little valiant-souled, indomitable Lucy Bingham, who lived a century ago somewhere in upper New York State. , It is related of her that once, when washing storm-windows, she slipped and broke a rib, and, after the doctor had bound up her injuries, she insisted on beginning the washing all over again be- cause she was n't quite certain just where she left off. Do you wonder that such a fiery spirit could do dou- ble-weaving as easily and well as a man? My third and last woven coverlet (on page 59) is the most interesting historically of the three: it was made in America in those vibrant, jingoistic forties, when our country was burning to express herself. 58 COLLECTOR'S LUCK The weaving is a marvel; the color that beautiful, subtle blue which has the depths of the ocean in it. The central design is like English tapestry, while the border resembles the coverlet known as "The Dec- laration of Independence." There is more printing than one usually sees on such pieces: Washington in each corner with the patriotic motto, and the re- peated, invincible slogan, "Under this we prosper." Then, too, the signature, "J. Cunningham, Weaver, N. Hartford, Oneida County, N. York," is one that I have never before seen recorded. Altogether it is a most unusual and valuable piece. Blues and whites are the commoner color expres- sion in these coverlets, but there is such variety of tones and designs in them that you may have many such, and never once repeat your pattern or shade. For instance (on page 60), the "Single Chariot Wheel " design, the variant of a most primitive motif, is a soft old blue, a watchet blue, the color of the eyes of Elia's Alice, and, lovelier, to my way of think- ing, than the deeper hues. And yet there is such stamina, such vigor in the indigo and white "Cross" coverlet, that it, too, seems wholly desirable. Don't you like the pattern of my cushion-cover? (Shown on page 56.) That's the real "Lover's Knot," woven long ago in the Blue Ridge country. Of all designs the "Lover's Knot" seems to me best and loveliest: clear-cut, decided, beautiful. Part of the pattern, time has worn away, but the colors are still Double-woven coverlet in blue and white; dated and signed, and an unique piece. "The Declaration of Independence" pattern. Owned by Mrs. Janis. The design of this dark blue and white coverlet is called ' ' The Cross." There is much variety of tones and designs in these coverlets. Collection of Mrs. Carlelon. "Single Chariot Wheel" design in old blue and white. This design is a variant of a most primitive motif, and the blue is a soft old blue. OLD WOVEN COVERLETS 61 fresh and unfaded: the background a deep, dark blue, the motifs a pinkish ecru and a queer, tawny orange. These are all the designs that I have to show you, but, of course, I could go on unendingly. So many of these coverlets have been woven by simple, lov- ing, long-ago hands! Do you realize that Mrs. Hall records the names of nearly three hundred and fifty different designs? That alone shows how the coun- try-women of America tried to express beauty tried and succeeded, and left these woven patterns of their lives for us to wonder at. From New Eng- land they came and New York, from the South and the early Middle West, these coverlets that meant a year of a woman's life from first flax-sowing to final weaving; these marvelous blues, these magic roses, these gentle browns and greens. And you find them everywhere, in the most astonishing places, if only you will take the trouble to look. One, for example, a rare piece of double-weaving of the Greek vase de- sign, has just moved away from our town into Ver- mont. I never knew it was there until it had gone; and it had taken prizes and prizes at county fairs, I am told ! Do you know, I never before realized that the proud owners put them on exhibition; but of course they must have, just as they do patchwork quilts to-day. And there is another coverlet carefully locked away in the local bank, but that I shall in- vestigate before it escapes me. I have seen them used as careless covers on swinging hammocks, on 62 COLLECTOR'S LUCK ironing-boards, for chair-seats, even as the patching for an old carpet. See how many of them you can rescue; you could n't find a worthier work. I have yet to discover the woman to whom these old woven bits of beauty do not appeal. "When Adam delved and Eve span," you know. Well, apparently all of Eve's daughters have inherited their mother's tastes. LUSTRE PITCHERS AND TEACUPS ARE N'T they dear? Don't you love them? I do, and yet none of them are mine; they are all L 's, and I admire them almost enough to break the tenth commandment, but not quite, for envy scourges the soul, and if you cannot collect without it, then you will do very well to leave collecting alone. Now I might make this little article a didactic treatise on lustre wares; inform you that they were made by the early Persians; that wonderful lustrous pottery was known to Spain in the Middle Ages ; that John Hancock, a Staffordshire potter, rediscovered the lost process in 1769 while working for Josiah Spode ; and that the more famous Josiah Wedgwood himself experimented with it later in the eighteenth century. All this I might discuss in detail, but, you see, I want to tell you about these especial pieces, and mingle fact with description as I go along, just stopping to name over the list of lustres for you : ruby, gold, copper, bronzed purple, lilac, pink, steel, silver, stenciling, and resist lustre. The lovely silver resist pitcher first in the group on page 67 is one of L -'s heirlooms, having be- longed to her great-great-grandmother. Sentimen- tal considerations apart, it is very desirable, being quite five and a half inches tall, of quart capacity, in 64 COLLECTOR'S LUCK "proof" condition, and excellently decorated. Here I am breaking my promise and being pedagogical, quoting a definition of "resist" and "stenciled" lustre because I find that so few people know them apart. "The term ' resist ' is derived from the method adopted in order to secure a white pattern or one of another color, such as blue, canary, etc., on a silver or copper lustrous ground. A white surface or one of the other shades (there are specimens with more than one ground shade) is first laid on the clay body, the outline is painted or stenciled on with a substance such as glycerine, or some other prepara- tion which would quickly become detached in water. The whole pattern is lustred over with the metallic solution, and allowed partly to dry. The ware is next washed in water, whereupon the glycerine prep- aration covering the outline or pattern washes off, but the metallic solution is not affected by the bath, or, in other words, it 'resists' the water." The ware is next fired, to complete the process. This method uses much more of the lustre, and would doubtless occupy more time to accomplish than the process of stenciling, and it explains in a measure why fine re- sist examples are expensive to procure. On the other hand, it must not be overlooked that certain varieties of lustre treated with fine stenciled designs are also difficult to purchase. It will be noticed that the stencil leaves a lustre pattern on the prepared ground, while the resist process leaves a white or LUSTRE PITCHERS AND TEACUPS 65 blue pattern on a gold or silver self -ground, according to the kind of metallic glaze employed. Can you see how charming the next pitcher is? This type is called Leeds Lustre, if you ever go to the Antiquarian Rooms at Concord, Massachusetts, you will find a piece almost absolutely its mate, and the body is cream and of that ridged ware so connected with the English city that gives it its name. There are three "house" designs set in medallions, and observe, please, how very like the shape of the one shown is to the old Fairbanks House at Dedham. Stripes of lustre divide the medallion designs, and a beaded line separates the rose pattern at the top from the lower part. These roses are slightly in relief, and the tone is a deep bronzed purple. More than a hundred years ago it came from Scotland overseas to Canada, where it was bought by a collecting cousin of L 's. It is nearly as tall as the first pitcher, but its capacity is not so great. The third pitcher is perhaps L 's finest piece: quite six inches in height, of a clear copper, with the raised figures so much in the classic spirit that you feel as if it must at least have been made under the influence of Wedgwood, if it did not come directly from his potteries. The background is a soft blue, the color I like to think of as watchet blue, and there are five figures (six if you count the basket) : a child kneeling with flowers ; a woman standing with basket 66 COLLECTOR'S LUCK on head; Cupid blowing a trumpet and riding on a queer ecru-pink bull spotted with black; a kneeling woman; a girl holding a votive offering of garlands; and a large flower-basket. A range of six colors is em- ployed in these figures : green, yellow, red, pink, dark blue, and black, and the whole feeling is full of charm. It came from Maine, from the little old house of a little old lady who lives on a point of land that juts down into one of the branches of the Kennebec River. I think that it must be a very alluring spot in more ways than one, for L says that there were, besides, old drawn-in rugs and black and gold mirrors and a most attractive Stiegel toddy-glass that belonged to the little old lady's great-great-grandfather. Another pitcher with the same foundation color as this is the first one in the group that stands like "the great, big bear, and the middle-sized bear, and the little, wee bear." The blue, however, is a trifle duller and the texture of the paste somewhat less fine; but it is, nevertheless, filled with the same classic spirit, the band at the top being very like the grape-vine design on a Wedgwood sugar-bowl and creamer in my own collection. This suggestion is further accented by the use of the formalized sprays and acanthus leaves in copper lustre. The two smaller pitchers in this group are much less remark- able the first, copper lustre with a green leaf and pink flower-pattern ever so slightly raised; the sec- LUSTRE PITCHERS FROM L S COLLECTION From Mrs. Carleton'a collection. Naive bucolics in pink lustre. From Mrs. Carleton's collection. Very vigorous, yet very different types of the bronzed tones. LUSTRE PITCHERS AND TEACUPS 69 ond, a tiny thing with just a broad band of plain green. The raised figures on the next two pitchers have a very different effect, for, if the two others are clas- sic odes of pottery, these are naive bucolics in pink lustre, quaint hunting-scenes with a very rural air. The ground is a creamish-white that time has mel- lowed and yellowed a little. On the left-hand pitcher the slender tree-trunks of pink lustre support a heavy verdure; and pink lustre, too, are the droll mother-animal we don't know quite what she is, but she looks like a llama and her trotting baby. On the other side is a dotted pink lustre male with branching antlers, undoubtedly of the same species. The decoration below the lustre band at the top is quite different from any other that I have ever seen, a queer scroll design with green spot centres. This pitcher always makes me sad when I look at it, be- cause it represents an auction that I did n't go to, an auction where there were mirrors and andirons and pewter; even a grandfather's clock that H found lying out in the grass, and that was sold for five dol- lars. The second pitcher shows huntsmen brave in pink lustre coats and gaiters, with polka-dot dogs in attendance ; on the other side, more dogs and a kneel- ing hunter displaying a trophy of the chase and this we think a rabbit, though its design is pink polka- dots like the dogs to an old man with a gun, who resembles the local squire. A pink lustre hound's 70 COLLECTOR'S LUCK head forms the end of the handle, and the border is the fairly conventional grape and leaf design. The heights of these pitchers are seven and six inches respectively. I wish I could show more distinctly the colorings in the group of copper lustre pitchers below these on page 68. The first, eight inches in height, is seven-sided, the lustre unusually clear and intense, and the decorations pink and purple clusters of grapes and vivid green leaves. The second is a trifle darker and less lambent, with a two-and-a-half- inch green band stenciled with a copper design a really uncommon effect. The third, seven inches tall, has a narrow upper band and a broad lower band of apricot yellow with a design stenciled in copper, too, and all three are very vigorous, yet very different types of the bronzed tones. L -'s gold-lustre pitcher is a very fine specimen, fully six inches high, and of rather more than one quart capacity. The wide lower band of pink-purple lustre shows the familiar "house" design, and the inside rim also has a broad pinky stripe. This is another trophy from Maine, but since it was bought directly from a dealer, its history is all unknown to me. And now I am proudly displaying the loveliest pitcher L - has, the loveliest lustre piece, too, I think I have ever seen, barring that Swansea mug that even now I behold in my dreams: a rose lustre that had somehow caught the soft glory of a sunset Of gold lustre, fully six inches high, of rather more than one quart capacity. The loveliest pitcher has. From, Mrs. Carleton's collection. From Mrs. Carleton's collection. From Mrs. Carleton's collection. MORE LUSTRE WARE LUSTRE PITCHERS AND TEACUPS 73 and forever imprisoned it in china. It is small, a fraction between three and a half and four inches, with a purple "house" design, the best interpreta- tion of this well-known theme that I have ever found, for the trees are real trees, and you can look into distances. It is the sort of pitcher to enchant a child; it depicts a landscape Where if I were not so small I might live for good and all. The four creamers grouped together are all small ones, none more than four and a half inches high. It is unfortunate that this photograph reveals so little of the charm of their color and design, and par- ticularly unlucky that the prettiest one of all the second on the right-hand side shows hardly at all. Until I met the little purple treasure, I thought it the most attractive of all my acquaintance. The nar- row band is pink with a deeper-toned lustre sprigging; the broad band white, the creamy-white that you see in Queensware, with a scroll-and-flower pattern in pink lustre and yellows and bright green. First in the group is the "Spotted Sunderland" lustre pitcher, pink with a purplish cast; the other two are variants of the "house" design, yet quite differ- ent, for the enclosing medallions are round on the taller piece, oval on the shorter, and the separating motifs are quite unlike. In both, the tones of pink are very fresh and clear. As for the little mugs, I 74 find them charming in their quaint colors: copper bands and handles, pink lustre in curves, and touches of green and a tawny orange-red that really combine wonderfully. The Odd Fellows pitcher is more interesting than beautiful; although the pink spotted lustre deco- ration is good in tone. The design is one of the transfer processes, like the Liverpool ware. On one side is a symbolic group, the pattern a little blurred, as if the paper had been crumpled. Below you read, "Manchester Unity Independent Order of Odd Fel- lows." The other side depicts a river busy with commerce and a bridge spanning it, and the in- scription is as follows: "A West View of the Cast Iron Bridge Over the River Wear, Built by L. Bur- don, Esquire. Span 238 feet, Height 100 Feet, Be- gun 24, September 1793, Open'd 9, Aug. 1796." In the front is a five-pointed star in black outline, with the initial "G" in the centre. The middle piece, a Spotted Sunderland lustre cup-plate, is de- lightful, the tone deepening almost to a purple and lovely in its shading, while the centre is blue Stafford- shire. But the cup and saucer, like the pitcher, has interest for its chief charm. It must be early nine- teenth century, for the costumes shown are Empire, and it is full of that larmoyant feeling that people had who were very happy only when they were very miserable. A band of lilac lustre encircles both cup and saucer; on one side oh, I wish you could really LUSTRE PITCHERS AND TEACUPS 75 see it clearly ! are three children touchingly clus- tered in a "cemetery " weeping before their " Mother's Grave," and on the other side, still in deep purples, are three disproportionate-sized "Orphans." To enliven the situation the "Mother's Grave" is repeated in larger, less compact grief, on the saucer. Can you imagine a more fitting receptacle for "the cup that cheers and not inebriates"? Well, L keeps it on a shelf in her cabinet! The real teacups you see grouped just below these last. Of course, there are more, but these are the prettiest, and I am allowed, sometimes, for a great treat, to have that dearest one of all, the one in front with the maple-leaf and the clusters of berries. The color that you cannot see is a happy pink with a little lustre vine, green leaves, and bright blue berries. Almost its rival in beauty is the one beside it, crude blue and reddish flowers spaced between lustre and green leaves. Truly they are all lovely, and hunting for lustre cups for your tea-tray is quite as fasci- nating a pastime as discovering historical glass cup- plates; not easy to find, but rewarding at last the real devotee of their worth. I wish that you could have seen me as I carried, oh, so carefully, these precious pitchers out to be photographed in the full light of the piazza. No acolyte at any altar ever walked more reverently than I did. On the whole, it was a wonderful ex- perience; but I feel that it has aged me, and if any 76 COLLECTOR'S LUCK one of you wants to court nervous prostration, allow me to recommend your handling another collector's lustre treasures. But I wish, too, that you might have sat beside me yesterday at L 's Sheraton table as I studied with loving attention their every charm. By some happy chance the flowers in the centre were pink and purple asters, delicate shades that echoed the tones of the pieces before me. I know now that of "everything that pretty bin" pink lustre is the apotheosis of all prettiness. VI OLD LIGHTS AND LAMPS Then I rose, lighted a Candle at Father's fire, that had been raked up from Saturday night, kindled a Fire in the chamber. The Diary of Samuel Sewatt. I KNOW a lucky lady who has twenty-seven pairs of old candlesticks, to say nothing of the odd ones she possesses. Of course it is L ; I sometimes think that she has just to wish for a thing hard to have it fall into her waiting hands, though, of course, I do know that patient, intelligent persistence has a deal to do with it, too. And she deserves the candle- sticks, for, every night of her little girlhood in Ver- mont, she went to bed by the light of a tallow dip. But before I, like a fortunate showman, display her treasures, let me tell you something about the old lights and lamps that our forefathers worked and courted and studied by. I quoted that simple, revealing sentence from Judge Sewall's diary be- cause, in the twentieth century, when the ease of electricity makes even striking a match a wearisome process, it is so hard for us to visualize, to imagine in the least degree what the seventeenth century was enduring in real efforts and privation. Picture to yourself the first pioneer light, a pine torch, "candle wood" it was called, flaring and dancing and answering the flames on the hearth, for 78 COLLECTOR'S LUCK in the earliest days of the Colonies there were no lamps or candles. Tallow was lacking; cattle and sheep grazing on the commons belong to a somewhat later time, and in the earliest letters and inventories of Governor Winthrop, about 1632, we find constant mention of "ordinary suet and tallow" and "tal- low and wick" as being among the necessities to be imported. When the candles themselves were sent over, they cost f ourpence apiece : no small item of ex- pense in a Colonial menage., nor would it be to-day, for this same fourpence must be multiplied by three to give its real purchasing power now, and a candle for a quarter would be a decided luxury. Even as late as 1730 they were used sparingly. In his quaint, gossiping diary Samuel Sewall, telling of his unsuc- cessful wooing of Madame Winthrop, writes, and, by the way, if you want an illuminating, fluent com- mentary on the life of the times you should surely read him, - "Madame Winthrop not being at Lec- ture, I went thither first; found her very serene with her dater Noyes, Mrs. Dering and the widow Shipreev sitting at a little Table, she in her armed Chair. She drank to me and I to Mrs. Noyes. After awhile I pray'd the favor to speak to her. She took one of the Candles, and went into the best Room, clos'd the shutters, sat down upon the Couch." Now, since both were well along in years, her one candle must be attributed to frugality, not coyness. These smaller pairs of candlesticks are just as characteristic and different as their taller brothers. From Mrs. Carleton's collection. At first glance these six pairs of candlesticks seem very much alike, but examine them through a reading-glass and you will see the decided differ- ence, for no two pairs are exactly alike. I iJirumimiommmiiinmiiimtiiaiiiiiimiittimiimiiiinii! Candlesticks found in New England villages. A pair of traveling candlesticks with saucer bases and sockets that unscrew. Candle-mould, three whale-oil lamps, and two "Betty Lamps." The latter could be suspended where they would give the reader his best light. OLD LIGHTS AND LAMPS 81 Where did all the candlesticks come from, I won- der? There are so many now. In 1636 they were important enough to be mentioned in several wills, often just a single candlestick being noted. Sixty years later, part of a legacy is recorded as being paid in 40 "brass candlestiks of a middle cize." In 1719 they were still being ordered from London; Judith Sewall's wedding outfit included "Two pair of large Brass sliding Candlesticks, about four shill- ings a pair, two pair of large Brass Candlesticks, not sliding, of the newest fashion, about five or six shillings a pair and four Brass Snuffers with Stands." So much for candlesticks. A method of lighting almost equally used, following the pine torch, was the "Betty Lamp," shaped rather like the old Roman lamps, made of brass or iron, hanging from a chain ending in a large ring so that it might be suspended where it would give the reader his best light, some- times on the round in the back of a chair, sometimes from a hook on the mantel-shelf. The body was filled with tallow or oil and a little rag or wick in- serted at the lip. I have burned a Betty Lamp! I did not see what could possibly be the use of one in the house if you did n't know how it worked. So I took the larger one, the brass one there in the pic- ture, filled it a third full of tallow and inserted a rudely twisted wick. It burned for an hour with a flame steadier and larger than a candle flame, and by a simple process of arithmetic I arrived at the con- 82 COLLECTOR'S LUCK elusion that the lamp, filled, would burn nearly three hours. This one came from Massachusetts, the smaller iron one from Virginia, and both are furnished with the little metal pin for picking out the tallow or oil when it became clogged. The light the Betty Lamp gave was quite sufficient to read by; it was only when it went out that I regretted my experi- ment, for it left a confused, muttony sort of smell. I immediately understood why the colonists, when they found the abundant bayberry bushes growing along the seacoast, hastened to make their wax into candles, for, "if accident puts a candle out, it yields a pleasant fragrancy to all that are in the room; insomuch that nice people often put them out on pur- pose to have the incense of the expiring snuff." Some day I shall make many of these spicy things, and burn them in your honor when you come to see me. For I have moulded and dipped candles my- self! My spirit of research would not let me rest until I had tried, and I had always wanted to use these old candle-moulds discovered in a village attic. My market-man, who is of an obligingness, often he looks up antiques for me when he goes hunting or fishing in the backwoods, for such is the neigh- borliness of a little country town, got me all the tallow I wanted, and I embarked on what I am sure was one of the most endless of Colonial tasks. Mould- ing is not so difficult; perhaps that is why experts insist that a "dipped" candle is a much superior OLD LIGHTS AND LAMPS 83 product. The difficulty of moulding is merely a question of getting the wicks properly "threaded" through. I used a large darning-needle, and as I worked, I couldn't help hoping that the ancestress whose spirit was urging me on had something better to work with than the poor, sleazy stuff that is sold for wicking nowadays. I read once that Colonial children used to gather milkweed silk and spin it into wicking. That seems like capturing a dream, does n't it? Well, my candle-wicking was quite as fragile; it acted as if possessed: gossamer, cobweb, moon- shine ! It broke if you looked at it ! If I had lived in those days, I know I should have been haled before the Spiritual Court; Cotton Mather would have admon- ished me, and that pungently, for my expressed state of mind! After the wick has been run through the mould and secured at the top by being twisted around a nail to hold it in place, it is a comparatively simple matter to pour in the melted tallow, let it harden, and later remove it by much the same process you would use in taking ice-cream out of a mould. I must confess to a certain feeling of primitive pride when my first candle slipped out: I lighted it, and it burned! Dipping is infinitely more tedious. You must have a kettle full of bubbling, boiling water, on top of which the melted tallow lies in a thick, yellowish sheet. The wicking must be looped over the candle-rods, and twisted into a stout wick. I tallowed mine to make them completely straight. 84 COLLECTOR'S LUCK Next, if you are a wise woman, you will spread papers all over your kitchen floor; for you must dip and dip and dip the wicks endlessly into this melted fat cooled a little, of course in between letting them dry hard and firm, for a candle dipped too quickly will melt and run. They say, you know, that a good worker could dip her two hundred candles a day. At my rate of accomplishment I know I would not have been considered worth my board and keep in Puritan times. I have a vague memory of O coming in and asking, "Are you going to fight it out along those lines if it takes all summer?" Anyhow, no longer do I feel helpless; electricity may go, the exigencies of war take our kerosene, but my candles, like the knitting-needles in " Vassalissa the Fair," will gleam and "give me light enough." The whale-oil lamps (on page 80) represent a lit- tle later stage of lighting than the Betty Lamps, just why, it is hard to say, for fish-oil was available in the Colonies before tallow. However, lamps such as these became common in the eighteenth century, and were usually made of pewter, although I have seen one pair made of copper and heard of another made of brass. The two larger ones have double wicks, the middle just a single one, and all three represent a type of whale-oil lamp much in use in New England in Colonial times, and still to be picked up cheaply. The little one, for instance, I bid in at an auction for five cents, and the others were a dollar OLD LIGHTS AND LAMPS 85 and a dollar and a half apiece. Mine are the plainer type, but whale-oil lamps can be very lovely. L and I found just such a treasure when we were out on quite another antique errand, the quest of a carved bed, to be exact. It was one of those beautiful days of early autumn, with a blue, hot sky, and clouds of yellow butterflies dancing round our wagon-wheels as we drove along an enchanting wood-read winding up and up, with a little brown brook to keep us company. We found the bed, and then we found this lamp: a fine, lustrous pewter, more beautiful in its lights and shades than silver, and as graceful and dignified and simple in shape as one some Pom- peian girl might have used. And money couldn't buy it! They had "had it a long time in the fam- ily." Oh, well, it is good for your soul to have some- thing to want ! Do you know I am wondering what Judge Sewall meant by those candlesticks "not sliding, of the newest fashion," because that smaller pair of French candlesticks (on page 90) are not sliding and are very old: this, the round circle of brass, to catch the wax-drip, shows. They were picked up at the Paris rag-fair, among the wreckage of some artist's studio, for a franc each. That, too, was the price of the central candlestick, bought at the same time a very fair example of Empire, though not so good as the larger pair, for the chasing on these is beautiful. Somehow they had drifted to New Haven, and L knew that she had got a bargain 86 COLLECTOR'S LUCK when she bought them at a little second-hand shop for six dollars. I am wondering, too, how many of you have ever seen a pair of little traveling candlesticks like those on page 80? Practically, they are just a pair of sock- ets set in deep brass saucers, and they are very rare, this particular pair being the only ones we have ever found for sale in our North Country range. The sockets unscrew and fit inside the saucers, which, in their turn, screw together into one compact whole. It is said that they were first made in Salem, for the captains and supercargoes who, if they were very pros- perous, had them fashioned of silver. I like these candlesticks; they are very quaint, and they are a tribute to the wisdom of general con- versation. In this case it was not only the travel- ing candlesticks, but another pair and a mirror and a stunning astral lamp-globe that we found in the little farmhouse. The other candlesticks have a less stirring history, but, since they came from our favor- ite dealer, who picks up his treasures around the countryside much as we do, their hidden stories must, I am sure, be interesting. At the first glance these six pairs of candlesticks (on page 79) seem to be very much alike. I wish you would take a reading-glass and examine them care- fully. If you do you will see the decided difference; for no two pairs are just the same. The very front ones are epoch-making; they were the "opening OLD LIGHTS AND LAMPS 87 wedge," and L - really dates her collecting from the day that she bought them. Another pair rep- resents our "swapping" system; the real New Eng- land dealer still loves to "trade" and dicker, and the price of these was a mahogany mirror-frame. But the large ones at the back are the most interesting of all very massive, yet with a steady excellence of line. Although we bought them in an outlying coun- try district, they originally stood on the parlor man- telpiece of an old hotel in a neighboring town, and another pair, their exact mates, still exist somewhere hereabouts, and, one fine day, we are going to find them. And please examine with your careful read- ing-glass the other smaller half-dozen pairs, for they are just as characteristic, just as unique, just as differ- ent as their taller brothers, and quite as much they represent our collecting range in New Hampshire and Vermont. Old candlesticks like these polish into a beautiful lustrous pallor, and L -'s almost wink at you, they shine so. The saucer candlesticks (on page 89) came from an "old woman who lives under a hill," a beauti- ful hill, and that I mean literally, for, as we drove out of her dooryard, the pointed horizon-line, shoul- dering its way into the sky, faced us with loveliness. The by-products of "antique-ing" are wonderful, too, you know. These candlesticks are very good of their kind, with their small curved rings and little "palmettes," but are not to be compared for value 88 COLLECTOR'S LUCK with the three tall ones grouped in front of them. These are most unusual and very old, with the slide at the side, not at the bottom, as so many of the later types have ; and three of a kind of candlesticks in the game of "Collector's Luck" is very good fortune indeed. And their worth is enhanced by the fact that the snuffers and tray complete the set. The Sheffield candlesticks, ten inches tall and of the shell-and-scroll pattern, are in really splendid condition, with not a shading of the copper showing through: an unusual thing for Sheffield, but then, they are cherished heirlooms, and, just think, on the other side of the family is a second set of a different pattern and quite as perfect, which L - is waiting to have swept to her on her lucky tide of chance. Those massive candlesticks all grouped together are American only in the sense that their emigrant owners brought them on their pilgrimage to this land of gold where, that they might stay, alas, they had to sell their brass and copper. The florid ones at the back are Polish; the rest, for the most part, came from a little shop in the North End of Boston kept by a Russian Jew, not long since a "greener" himself. It is just such collecting adventures that make you know how real a book like "David Levinsky" is. I think this earnest little Yiddish man always hoped to convert me; certainly his hospitality was as boundless as his Talmud lore, and he lavished both upon me. Friendliness lies anywhere you choose Two saucer candlesticks and three un- usual and very old sticks with the slide at the side, not at the bottom. Snuffer tray in front. Sheffield stick, one of a pair, ten inches tall, of the shell- and-scroll pattern, without a trace of copper showing. The heavy candlesticks at the back of the photograph at the left are Polish; the rest came from a little shop in the North End of Boston kept by a Russian Jew. An Empire candle- stick picked up at a Paris rag-fair, as was the smaller stick, one of a pair, very old, with brass disk to catch the Owned by the author. From Mrs. Carleton's collection. Astral lamp with fluted bronze standard, fitted for electricity. One of a pair of French Empire can- dlesticks bought in New Haven; very beautiful and stately. OLD LIGHTS AND LAMPS 91 to look for it, you see. Soon he invited me to "Pass- over" supper at his house; next, to his pretty niece Rosie's most orthodox wedding, the great occasion of his life. Maybe that is why I have such faith in the genuineness of his wares; but another and perhaps better reason is because candlesticks are used in such quantities as a necessary part of Jewish religious ritual, that there is more chance of finding really old ones than if they were merely means of lighting. Do you suppose the reason L - has so many lovely lamps is because, just as with the candles, she lived by their yellow glow in her girlhood? These astral lamps were very grand in their day of the early nineteenth century. Don't you remember Whit- tier's lines when Maud Muller was thinking "it might have been" ? The weary wheel to a spinet turned, The tallow candle an astral burned. Meant to indicate great splendor, you see. This one is beautiful and dignified, with its fluted bronze standard, at the base set into curled-over acanthus leaves, at the top ending in fleurs-de-lis. The globe is unusually fine, ground glass spaced with transparent stripes, and the upper edge is cut in a clear diamond shape. It is quite thirty-one inches tall, and instead of burning oil has been fitted for electricity and stands on L 's carved Empire table, a usable thing of beauty and a practical joy forever. 92 COLLECTOR'S LUCK The next lamp, ten inches shorter, is lovely, too, its base being marble and gilt with a fluted support, the same motif being carried up under the pendants, which are beautifully cut. You will see quite a good deal of their delicate design if you look through my recommended reading-glass; and you can under- stand why small villages have a fascination for us when I tell you that this one came from a tiny place about ten miles north of us. But I think I prefer the third lamp, even if the lustres are plain. The globe is so beautifully cut, the grooved standard almost classic in its simplicity, and the oil-well is glass, not metal. L - found it in the little village just across the river, the one thing in a whole house that it wouldn't have been "a re- mission of sins" merely to have owned. Little glass lamps are delightful for bedrooms, and these three are particularly pretty. The pair are all glass, the bases being pressed, and --let me tell you this for your comforting the shades of these two are new. Ordinarily, most reproductions do not get the grace and "feeling" of these early-nineteenth- century globes, but the right type may be found by careful search and comparison. The body of the centre lamp is as beautifully cut as the shade, and so delicate that pendants would be superfluous. Not that I don't like lustres: I think they are charming. I do not know when I have seen anything prettier than those fringing the little bobeches of the Astral lamp with base of marble and gilt with pendants beautifully carved. The grooved standard of this astral lamp is almost classic in its simplicity. Little glass lamps are delightful for bedrooms, and these three are particularly pretty. The pair are all glass, the bases being pressed. Two pairs of pressed-glass candlesticks, one with charming lustres. Girandoles with an Indian chief as the bearer of the light. Both groups owned by Mrs. Carleton. '""""i OLD LIGHTS AND LAMPS 95 glass candlesticks. If I were speaking in French I would call them mignonnes. From tiny glass beads, cut something the way an amber necklace is, hang long, straight icicles, and these end in cunning bells, with small glass tongues twinkling and tinkling in- side, in shape a little as if a snowdrop had suddenly been crystallized. The candlesticks themselves are good examples of pressed glass, as are the other pair, too, the bases of the first being hexagonal, those of the second, round. The girandoles, heirlooms also, are the end-pieces of a set, the centrepiece having gone to some other member of the family, and, of course, the completed trio would be more valuable. But I am showing you these because they in themselves are so good a design. I like the straight, perpendicular effect of the Indian figure, do you suppose it is Tecum- seh?--for most girandoles are too ornate and over-foliaged. The Indian chief is a fitting bearer of light. As I have written all this I have felt very much a laudator temporis acti, an honest praiser of old days. I know I am fortunate to have electricity in my eighteenth-century cottage; but will any other light ever be as lovely as candlelight with its translucent glow beneath the flame? Will anything else ever seem as welcoming as lamplight? This winter, as I have driven through the countryside at dusk, and watched the little farmhouses, their small-paned 96 COLLECTOR'S LUCK windows warm with a mellow glow, the "yellow day," as Balzac calls it, I have realized that in catching step with civilization we have left something of beauty on the road behind us. VII OLD VALENTINES AND SILHOUETTES LIKE Pendennis, I have fallen in love. Not with the Venus of Milo, as he did, but with a gracious French lady, dressed in soft blues and pearly whites, and with the nicest smiling-serious face in the world. I want her more than I do anything else, I think, unless it is to have had Goya paint my portrait, and so have been made forever interesting, or to own Jane Austen's desk which, though I have never seen it, must be good because it was built at a time when furniture just could n't be bad. I want her to hang against the grays of my parlor-walls and adorn them with her beauty. She would look as lovely there as in some old Perigord chateau, such is the universality of her charm. I shan't have her, though, for David's study of my incomparable Madame de Seriziat lives in a sumptuous Fifth Avenue gallery, and all I can do is to go occasionally to look and long. Oh, well, all of us should have these spiritual Carcassones. They are good for our souls. But to have known her is a liberal education. "Universality of her charm" -I like that phrase even if I did write it, because it shows that I am developing a picture sense, and the feeling for walls and what should be on them is, almost invariably, the wisdom that lingers. What I mean I Ve gained 98 COLLECTOR'S LUCK is that instinct which preserves you from putting the oversentimen tally sweet Psyche at Nature's Mirror against a dark paneled oak background, or hang- ing The Study in Anatomy in a boudoir. Which bit of philosophizing brings me to these old valen- tines and silhouettes. Three distinct values they have: they are very well suited to a "middling house," -and most of us have "middling houses," I fancy, --they are redolent of time's enchantment, and they do not throw out of key a room where you are trying for an old-fashioned effect, an ensemble of quaint, rested-looking furniture, as even a very good photograph of a very great masterpiece oftentimes will do. They have a fourth dimension of merit, too: they are very inexpensive. Not that they did not lead me into ways of extravagance, because, after I had discovered them in a delightful shop, I found such an engaging engraving of the Duchess of Marlborough that I simply had to have it. It is from an early por- trait, one of the few interesting pieces of work done by "that stupid, vaporing Kneller," and below, in faded brown ink, are the words, " 13 July 1710, Paid in full, S. Marlborough." Sarah before she had cut off her curls in a tantrum and flung them at the Great Duke; Sarah while she was still dominating Anne and gov- erning England. This is n't valentines, but I had to tell you about it. As for valentines, perhaps they have been sent ever "The pair of which this is one they hang in the 'Prettiest Room' are the oldest: the dress, the despair, the attitude of that melancholy gentleman, all are Byronic. The mate to this valentine will be found on the following page. t "As for the languishing lady, if you look close, I am sure you can see the towers of Udolpho in the distance. They are charmingly col- ored in pinks and blues, and the first border, just inside the heavier embossed edge, is delicately tinted in the same shades." OLD VALENTINES AND SILHOUETTES 101 since the early Church Fathers turned the Luper- calia into a Christian festival : but the earliest record I have been able to find is when Pepys, writing on the fourteenth of February, 1667, says, "This morning came up to my wife's bedside, I being up dressing myself, little Will Mercer to be her Valentine; and brought her name writ upon blue paper in gold let- ters, done by himself, very pretty ; and we were both well pleased with it. But I am also this year my wife's Valentine, and it will cost me five pounds; but that I must have laid out had we not been Valen- tines." Nowadays there aren't any of these seventeenth- century paper posies left except in the lovely verse of those days: Waller's and Donne's and Drayton's; and even eighteenth-century ones are very rare. As for mine, they are all frankly nineteenth-century, London-made : one pair dating back almost to Water- loo; the others, for the most part, early Victorian. The first pair they hang in the "Prettiest Room" are the oldest; the dress, the despair, the attitude of that melancholy gentleman, all are Byronic; and, as for the languishing lady, if you look close I am sure you can see the towers of Udolpho in the distance. They are charmingly colored in pinks and blues, and the first border, just inside the heavier embossed edge, is delicately tinted in the same shades. The damsel sitting in a bower of roses (on page 112), with the ten- der missive pressed to her heart, and a symbolic bird- 102 COLLECTOR'S LUCK cage hanging on the trellis, is a little later. I have seen similar costumes dated 1831. She, too, wears rose-pink, and I cannot imagine a happier note of color for the walls of a simple bedroom. The feel- ing of this valentine is so gratifyingly of the times, also, that I am convinced that the lady adored "Childe Harold" and wept over "Lalla Rookh." The Soldier and Sailor pair are more vivid in color; they have more stamina; in their rather crude reds and blues and yellows and greens they need the sup- porting strength of a black frame, just as the others are more suitably done in gilt. They are quite as nai've, however, and the one bit of mental superiority is the verse. I am quoting the sailor stanzas be- cause, while they are very characteristic of this sen- timental epoch, earmarked by sensibility, they are, nevertheless, unusually good for a valentine. Tom Moore might have written them on an off day. My fond one, my true one ere yet from the shore The sails shall be filled and the tars ply the oar, Ere the sails of your vessel be spread to the wind, Bethink thee the true heart thou leavest behind. I will pray for thy welfare by day and by night In the darkness of storm and the perils of fight. And all I would ask in my fondness for thee, Is that sometimes thy thoughts may be wandering on me. Farewell! gallant Sailor! dear Child of the wave, In the storm none more active in the battle more brave. My spirit goes with thee all faithful and true, Adoring and loving my gallant True Blue! * OLD VALENTINES AND SILHOUETTES 105 The other pair, the second sailor and the pensive gentleman, both tone on the brown shades, and suit admirably their plain mahogany frames. Indeed, with a little care in the selection of these valentines, they can be adapted to almost any simple room I do not pretend that they have any of the qualifica- tions of grandeur I have found them even in a "languid violet," a delightful color for experiment. Did you ever know that silhouettes were sent as valentines? I did not until I saw the one in the old gilt frame (on page 107), a most personal tribute of affection, don't you think? It would appeal to me far more than the prettiest valentine to be bought; for, to quote Mrs. Ethel Stanwood Bolton's opinion, which is precisely my own, "a silhouette at its best is a thing of real beauty and cleverness; at its worst it is a quaint handicraft, which at least shows the dress and the manners of the day." I know a collector, an amateur of really lovely things, whose judgments are valuable, and her theory is that, unless silhouettes have some real reason for being, intimate family pictures, for instance, or because they were the work of one of the mastercraftsmen of this art, they had better not be used. She dislikes "rooms full of black profiles, all welcomed because old." Now, to me, partly she is right and partly she is wrong. Silhouettes should be hung most sparingly a very few, even in a large room; and, of course, every one of us would like to have authentic copies of the best 106 COLLECTOR'S LUCK work done in the late eighteenth and early nine- teenth centuries. But, as far as I am concerned, a silhouette, whether cut by Mrs. Pyburg in William and Mary's reign; done by Miers and Field of Lon- don; a creation of either of those talented youths, Master Hubard or Master Hanks; achieved by that / delightful emigre Monsieur Edouart; or by our own American genius, William Henry Brown; or, on the other hand, just the humble production of some forgotten artist traveling through the countryside; a silhouette, I maintain, will to me always have the unique charm of distant days. I love those digni- fied gentlemen with their austerely aquilined pro- files; those little ladies and their tip-tilted, flower- petal noses. Just such a one I saw recently in a Maine antique shop, and although she was hanging between a very good Constitution mirror and a hooded highboy, most excellent company, I feel that I ought to send for her and give her a more domestic milieu. Of course, you can't adopt every one that attracts you, though two orphans did ap- peal to me so much the other day that only an empty pocketbook stood between me and my maternal in- stincts. Both wore long pantalettes; one little black figure carried a whip, the other a reticule, and the dress of this last little girl was not black at all, but an inserted strip of quaint purple silk. A fairly un- usual type this is, but then, one of the beginning mis- takes of a collector is to imagine that a silhouette is Valentine silhouette. Unknown man (1830). Millie Blake (painted glass and gilt frame). Silhouette in blue and black. All four from Dr. Coburn's collection. An old Connecticut ship-captain. Governor Corner. "Lucy" (pewter frame, very rare type). Lucetta Williams (framed in ebony and gold) . An old New Hamp- shire school-master. OLD VALENTINES AND SILHOUETTES 109 only a profile cut out of black paper and pasted on a white background, or just the reverse. On the con- trary, there were many kinds: done with brush and India ink on ivory, plaster, or card the little Di- rectoire silhouette with its rippled profile is an in- stance of this style; painted on glass, sometimes with a mixture of pine-soot and beer to give an in- tenser blackness, and touched delicately with gilt; the charming color silhouettes; and the rarest and loveliest type of all according to connoisseurs thus described by Mrs. Bolton: "The likeness painted on convex glass in such a way that one did not look di- rectly at the painted face to see the silhouette, but upon a white card behind upon which the shadow was cast." Both Edouart and Brown became so popular that they had made a set of lithographed backgrounds for what might be called their "Great Men Series." John Randolph of Roanoke is shown standing against a characteristic background, one which he might well have chosen himself. To me this is one of the most revealing, actual silhouettes I know. Look at it, and see if it is not like what one of his personal observers I will not say admirers wrote of this whimsical, bad-tempered, witty old aristocrat. " His long, thin legs, about as thick as a stout walking cane, and of much such a shape, were encased in a pair of tight small-clothes, so tight that they seemed part and par- cel of the limbs of the wearer." Standing severely 110 COLLECTOR'S LUCK there, you can almost hear him rebuking his opponent, the watch-maker Congressman. "Sir, you can mend my watch, but not my motions. You understand tictics, sir, but not tactics." Perhaps I am like Monsieur Poirier: it may be that I like my pictures at least to suggest a story. That is why I am so fond of silhouettes; each one has its little legend, whether you have heard it or not. Certainly all that I am showing you have, but there is room for only one more, the tender tale of Millie Blake. When the nineteenth century was very young indeed her sea-captain husband sailed away on a long, long voy- age, a voyage from which he never came back. Be- fore he left she promised that every night a candle should burn at the window to welcome him home; and, every night, that candle burned, not only dur- ing Millie's life, but for generations, until the family died out, and the old house was sold to strangers. And so my advice is to have your profiled forebears if you can; and, if you cannot, be very happy to hang some other body's ancestors, snipped by nimble, long-ago scissors, against your walls, to give them charm and character. iiiumaiiummiiniumimiiaim "The feeling of this valentine is so gratifyingly of the times that I am convinced that the lady adored 'Childe Harold' and wept over ' Lalla Rookh. ' " VIII OLD GLASSWARE IF, Gentle Readers, you should learn later that I am languishing in a county jail, you must under- stand that it is all your fault. You see, I was am- bitious; I wanted to know everything that could be known about the charming old glassware that you pick up now and again_at sales and shops and auctions and little out-of-the-way places. And such informa- tion is expensive; a body can have but an academic knowledge of what she has never bought. I need n't, I am sure, go on with my sad story. As yet I have n't expended any vast sums, but my feet are firmly planted on the downward path, for old glass has al- ways had what I am tempted to call a holy fascina- tion for me. I do not know anything more engaging than these delicate things that have lived so long so fragile, yet so resisting time; nor yet anything so eloquent of hospitality; and, if I am being ruined, it is in a high cause. The illustrations and my words, I hope, may con- vert you, also, to this divine madness, but better still and more certain would be examining the old pieces themselves, handling them, if you may, for if you can get the "feel" of the texture, you are on the way to becoming a discriminating collector. Indeed, one connoisseur I know tells me that there 114 COLLECTOR'S LUCK is no more final way of testing old glass and china than by touching it to the tongue somewhat after the fashion of the old-time laundress who "tasted" her irons to see if they were the right temperature. I have tried this honestly and with my eyes shut, but I cannot yet tell the tongue-difference between a Lowestoft cup and a modern piece of similar size and texture. I merely give it to you for what it is worth. There is n't much use in my trying to write the history of glassware in one short chapter, is there? If you don't agree with me, a casual stroll through the glass-rooms of the Metropolitan Museum will con- vince you, I am sure. You all know that the art is as old as time itself, that it came down from the early Egyptian days, and that the Phoenician legend may be even a truth. In the Museum there are several pieces of Sidonian glass, and one cup, a dull amber-green, bears an inscription which, translated, runs, "Let the buyer remember." . Ah, far-away, dead-and-gone buyer in that distant time and town ! Truly, "the bust outlasts the throne, the coin Tiberius." And the Romans used glass, so we are told by one authority, much more commonly than we do now, read Machen's "Hill of Dreams," and see how beautifully he paints its color and love- liness, and, where they colonized, there their glass was also made. Even in Great Britain there are traces of Roman glass-making, and the fires of the Collection of Mrs. Carleton. Early nineteenth-century glass picked up in northern New England. The cruet and decanter are especially interesting. Enameled Stiegel mug, flower and pheas- ant design an unusually fine specimen in "proof" condition. ::::::;;* Collection of Shreve, Crump and Low Company. Waterford glass, late eighteenth century unusually fine and stately pieces, beautifully cut. Collection of Dr. Coburn. Five decanters, each one of a pair, two cut, one Bohemian, one pressed, one blown. Notice the difference in the decoration and in the varied stopper shapes. OLD GLASSWARE 117 craft died down and burned up through the centu- ries, until they reached a steady flame of excellence in the late sixteen-hundreds. You have heard of the glory that was Venice and the grandeur that was Bohemia; but, as I am quite sure that none of us are going to discover Portland vases or authentic Verzellini wine-glasses, I am just telling you the short and simple annals of the various pieces I chose to point my moral and adorn my collecting-tale. For many of these quaint and charming pieces were picked up here and there through the New England countryside, and the first group, as you might guess, is L -'s. It is a pity that you cannot see more clearly the attractive etched festoons that adorn the decanter, the wine-glasses, and the little cruet. The tumbler L has a pair of them flares slightly at the top, and is decorated only with a ring of ridges, and probably all five pieces are early nineteenth cen- tury. L - owns also the beautiful Stiegel mug. The enameled decorations, pheasant and flower, nai've in their coloring, sturdy tones of green, blue, yellow, and red, are perfectly preserved, and as clear as they were the day they came from the glass- works of "Baron" Stiegel. What an interesting human being he was; what an individual personality he has written into the pages of America's manufacturing history! Some day you must read Mr. Hunter's delightful study of this man and all his works, for I can give you just 118 COLLECTOR'S LUCK the barest details. Heinrich Wilhelm Stiegel was born near Cologne on May 13, 1729, and, after his father's death, came to America with his mother and younger brother. His early struggles, his connec- tion with the iron business, even then flourishing in Pennsylvania, his marriage to his master's daugh- ter, his increasing prosperity, his magnificent style of living, and his real merit, have been admirably and accurately related by Mr. Hunter. So much legend surrounds the man! And perhaps he was not all that grandiloquent tradition testifies; but I am so glad that "The Feast of Roses" has been reestab- lished at Mannheim, where he erected his first glass- house, and created an artistic craft, in itself a feather in America's commercial cap. You see, once he cast his bread upon the waters by canceling the debt of the Lutheran church there, "one red rose annually in the month of June forever" to be the only payment, and now, on the second Sunday in June, roses are piled within the chancel-rails of the Zion Lutheran church at Mannheim, and a red rose is sent in fee to one of Baron Stiegel's descendants. He brought the tradition of his craft from Germany where glass-making had been an art for centuries. I realized this when I saw at the Metropolitan Mu- seum a little green glass pitcher with the applied thread design, found at Cologne and dating from the third century, for it has much the same feeling, color v Engraved and initialed white flint Stiegel tum- bler, with a short baluster stem. The .engraving is unusually good. - Both of these tumblers are from the Hunter collection in the Metropolitan Museum. Collection of Dr. Coburn. The first and third are Stiegel pieces, the other two the later type. iiimiifijnmmiiittjmiiminKiiwimiiiurJ* A Stiegel bottle from the Metropolitan Mu- seum, known to have been done by Sebastian Wilmer, one of Baron Stiegel's imported work- White flint toddy-glass from the Hunter collection, in the Metropolitan Mu- seum. These glasses with tops are very rare. Collection of Mrs. Carleton. So-called Stiegel glass, but in reality made in the early nineteenth century. From the inscriptions on the mugs they may have been intended for children. OLD GLASSWARE 121 and "air" as some of Stiegel's own work made hundreds of years later. He even imported workmen, the lovely flowered bottle is the achievement of one of them, Sebastian Witmer, but he was a most loyal American, and it is said that Elizabeth Furnace one of his foundries and named for his first wife was once the only place where Washington's army could get cannon- balls. He protested vigorously against the importa- tion of foreign goods, and it was a keen chagrin to him to feel that, to sell his wares in Boston and New York, the dealers had to assure their customers that they came from across the water. Baron Stiegel's rise was rapid; his fall even swifter; his success, while it lasted, phenomenal; and the tragedy of it is that this American craftsman-genius should have died in utter poverty, and been buried in an unknown grave. Stiegel died in 1785, but the feeling of this enam- eled glass that he introduced lasted on until the nine- teenth century, and now and again you will find pieces of this type sold as Stiegel. But while they are thoroughly charming with their gay little colors, and certainly related, though distantly, they are not his work at all. The group of two tumblers flanked by the two taller mugs will show you pre- cisely what I mean. Of course, glass-making had been attempted early in the history of our colonization, the year 1607, in Jamestown, marking the first venture. It is said that 122 COLLECTOR'S LUCK Italian workmen were brought over to assist in the enterprise. But no definitely good, artistic work was accomplished until the days of Wistar and Stiegel in the middle eighteenth century. Glass was imported from England and the continent as soon as the settlers had adjusted themselves to fairly secure and comfortable lives, and continued to be imported, as I said before, even when America had created a craft of her own. The magnificent group of cut-glass epergne, compotes, and sweetmeat dishes (on page 116) is old Waterford, and though they have just come over, they are precisely what our beauty-loving ancestors bought when they could af- ford them. For Waterford in Ireland was one of the glass-making centres: beautiful cutting, rather shallower than we moderns interpret cut-glass, was done there until the excise duties in 1825 killed the industry. And "Venice glasses," such as you see in the long rows, were constantly imported during those early days. I am wondering just which of these patterns is like the ones Samuel Sewall describes in his Diary. "July 18th, 1687, Mr. Mather had two Venice glasses broken at our Meeting." Now, as not one of this godly company could be described as a "lewd, roistering fellow," I am attributing the destruction to the sweeping results of religious fervor. Bristol was an important glass-centre, too, and the late-eighteenth-century decanters (on page 116) almost the finest I have ever seen and this From the Metropolitan Museum. Fragile Venetian glasses, delicately shaped and charming through their bubble-like transparency. Notice the elaborate stems. ::* Collection of Dr. Coburn. Three opaque Bristol pieces quaintly decorated. From the author's collection. The "Lafayette decanters." Late eighteenth-century cut-glass pieces from Bristol, England, the pattern delightful and individual. t^ OLD GLASSWARE 125 group of three milky, opaque glasses probably came straight from that city. There were three other decanters, and we call them the "Lafayette decan- ters" because, in 1824, when he was being feted all over America, the set was sent down by my ancestors to be used at the big civic banquet given in Nashville, Tennessee, in his honor. These three descended to my side of the family; quite perfect they were, too, except for one tiny nick on the further one, and that happened when my grandmother kept open house during the Polk-Clay campaign. My mother just remembers it; she was a tiny thing then, dancing about the big old hospitable Southern yard, and the gay-colored lanterns, each representing a state, a yellow one for "little Rhody," hanging there in the dusk made an immense impression on her childish mind. As did, also, a big coon, for some reason a Clay mascot, running up and down and rat- tling his chain in the tall walnut tree. All this for the "Clay Guards," for my family were Old Line Whigs ; and the next night everything was darkened as if for some tragedy when the "Polk Fusileers" paraded past the house. They still tell a story of their captain stopping at the gate to ask an old negro standing beside it why there were no lights, and what his master's politics were, whereupon the darkey an- swered, "I disremember, Sah, but I knows he is what you isn't!" Somehow, these decanters seem to me to hold memories as glowing as the wine that 126 COLLECTOR'S LUCK has filled them. Do you wonder that, in their later years, they are treated with the greatest care and consideration? And at Bristol they still make the opaque glass; I saw a piece the other day, more sophisticated, but I do not think possessing any more charm than these quaint scenes that resemble the mediaeval, red-roofed Troy Town that Swin- burne and Rossetti describe. Bristol, too, stands sponsor for some of the charm- ing eighteenth-century wine-glasses, of all things my desire, and what I am going to collect as soon as ever my ship comes a-sailing in. England, you know, had for some time been making glass successfully. A Venetian, one Jacob Verzellini, worked in Crutched Friars, under a patent that dated from 1575 and was to last for a quarter of a century. There are three of his glasses still to be seen : one at Windsor Castle, the other two in the British Museum, carefully preserved as very precious evidences of that early glass-making time. Later, the Duke of Bucking- ham, always interested in his country's manufactures, established a glass-furnace at Greenwich, and in 1673 Evelyn records in his Diary, "Thence to the Italian house at Greenwich, where glass was blown of a finer metal than that of Murano, at Venice"; and, twelve years later, he notes, "his Majesty's health being drunk in a flint-glass of a yard long." And then from 1690 to 1810 the dates are ap- proximate only these delightful wine-glasses were OLD GLASSWARE 127 made: baluster-stem, plain-stem, air-twist, white- twist and cut. There they are, rather roughly clas- sified, and the bowls are even more numerous: the Drawn, Bell, Waisted Bell, Straight-Sided, Rect- angular, Ovoid, Ogee, Lipped Ogee, Double Ogee, and Waisted. When you have mastered these details, you may feel, as I did, very much as the White Queen must have felt when she had "believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast." I have given you such a list of names that I almost hesitate to describe the types of feet; but I will risk it, for there are only four principal ones: Plain, Folded, Domed, and Domed Folded. The fold was to give additional strength, the dome to make the glass sit evenly on the table and keep the roughness of the "pontil- mark" from scratching the wood. And, by the way, always remember this, that a glass with a pedigree has a "high instep," and if you find one very flat- footed, or, except on the cut-stems, with the "pon til- mark" ground away, the chances are that the glass is spurious. For fakers are beginning to copy these old wine-glasses very skilfully indeed, because the price that the genuine glass brings is temptingly high so very high, really, that nation-wide prohibition assumes the aspect of a twofold blessing. But this for our comforting: even the cleverest copier in the world cannot reproduce the effect of that silvery air-twist, the twist that grew, perhaps by accident, out of the adorning "tear" in the stem, for the process 128 COLLECTOR'S LUCK has been lost, and we are safe in purchasing that type if we have the money ! I have a theory which I hope you share. All of us, at least all of us with romantic tendencies, no matter what our political principles, are Jacobites at heart, are n't we? I know that you would have rejoiced with me in a very fine collection of Jacobite glasses that I have just seen: glasses that Harry Esmond, before he broke his sword and renounced his alle- giance, might have drunk from as he toasted "The King over the water"; glasses engraved with the oak tree, thistle, and the Stuart rose with its two buds, emblematic of James the Second and the Old and Young Pretender; even with the portrait of "Bonnie Prince Charlie" himself. Others were inscribed with "Fiat" (the Cycle Club's motto), "Redeat" and "Audentior Ibo," each earnest of the hope that breathes in the old Scotch song "Better lo'ed ye canna be; will ye no come back again?" And would n't you like to own some of those dram- glasses (on page 130), fashioned of lead-glass, thick and heavy at the bottom? " Firing- glasses " they were called, because of the noise they made when the roisterers thump-thumped them on the table in applause. Would n't they make you see the long, smoke-filled room, the hospitable board, and, through the haze, Tom Jones and Humphrey Clinker and the beloved Uncle Toby sitting there? Of course, all inscribed glasses are not Jacobite; I *:;; OLD GLASSWARE 131 am thinking of one such a slender glass in this same collection, engraved "Herte be true." The gift of some lover to his lass, maybe; but, just to show you that all sentiment was not confined to the mother-country, let me tell you of a pair of engraved flip-glasses, large ones, that live in one of Mr. Francis Bigelow's loveliest cabinets. The first is marked "John," the second "Mary." Now, who was it that defined domestic happiness as "two pairs of feet on the fender?" I constantly think of this happy Co- lonial couple, sitting together before a blazing hearth, with these glasses full of steaming flip, rocking and sipping in harmony. Collecting old glass is such a joy ! Once, in a little, shabby suburban shop, I found a charming decanter; early nineteenth century, cut a little, engraved a great deal and I gave it away to one of the most at- tractive women I know, a friend who loves old glass quite as much as I do. And parting with it was n't a pang, really, because my collecting creed tells me that you must never keep what you could not give away, nor give away anything that you would not willingly keep. Another "find" is the cut and en- graved cruet (on page 133), which might be either Spanish or Dutch, for both countries so reacted on each other. It is one of the finest pieces of glass I ever saw, and D - and I bought it for a song an expensive song! You could buy several Caruso records for what we paid in a little, dark downstairs 132 COLLECTOR'S LUCK shop on an ancient side-street that used to be one of the "green lanes of North Boston." And those big, browny-olive bottles with their rough pontil-mark at the bottom can so often be picked up at country auctions. One such time is as indelibly engraved on my memory as the designs on those old glasses I have been showing you. My first auction it was, too, and I think I have never seen so many desirable things all together at once at any other country sale: a Hepplewhite secretary, slat-back chairs, copper-lustre pitchers, a Nanking coffee-pot, -- I got that! a little, squat, jolly brown "Toby," -the only piece of Bennington I ever wanted, and this lovable, old, fat, green bottle. We were terribly excited, R - being especially agi- tated. He had motored miles to get that Benning- ton "Toby," and he meant to have it. The desire of his whole collector's soul shone eloquently in his eyes. The bottle was put up for sale first, and he bought that. Then, clasping it in his arms, he sat awaiting the Bennington treasure and near a Franklin stove! Here is the crux of the tragedy; here, perhaps, you discern the beginning of the end. Up and up went the bidding, and, finally, as R stretched out trembling, triumphant hands to seize his trophy, he knocked the bottle against the edge of the stove, and crash, smash, like the "Luck of Edenhall," went all that old greeny glass in fragments at his feet! So, you see, you must remember when Collection of Francis Bigelow. An interesting group, two flip glasses and a celery holder, all beautifully engraved. Collection of Mrs. Carr. Cut and engraved Spanish or Dutch cruet. A very fine and dignified piece standing twelve inches high. The sides are slightly flattened and beautifully decorated. :;:* Courtesy of Metropolitan Museum. These quaint old browny green bottles have charming decorative qualities. Collection of Dr. Coburn. Five flip glasses, each also one of a pair. The second with its toddy stick is very interesting. Kimiiimmtiiitimmiit: ' 'mi OLD GLASSWARE 135 you buy one of these ancient bottles to be very care- ful. Remember, too, that they are delightful recep- tacles for certain flowers, the hardy, homely sort: roses are too delicate, but pink phlox, pink snap- dragon, and, above all, pink peonies, become their nai've, simple quality admirably. When I was a small, wondering girl I used to stop, caught by the rainbow beauty of the iridescent Cy- press glass in the Museum, and dream over this love- liness that had outlasted the ages. Now I know that my youthful enthusiasm meant that I should live one of the most ardent protestants to be of all charm- ing antique glassware. IX OLD WHITE COUNTERPANES AGAIN I have been darning a coverlet, this time a fine linen, creamed with age. It was made for my great-grandmother, woven under her careful direc- tion in East Tennessee when the nineteenth century was in its first quarter. I know even about the nim- ble black fingers that embroidered the design, for they belonged to "Mammy Fanny," who, later, came to Nashville with the "young Mistress," my grandmother, and was my own mother's special nurse. A very close bond existed there, I think, for all my life I remember hearing stories about this tall, dignified negress who was really a personality, and who wore her bandanna handkerchief bound around her head with almost Oriental pride. And so kind to the children she was, so devoted to them, that, when offered her freedom and a chance to go to Liberia, she absolutely refused to leave the little things she had loved and "raised." I know that, if I had been a Northerner at that time, I should, also, have been a mad, impassioned abolitionist, otherwise my present liberalism means nothing; but I cannot help knowing, too, that the South held much happiness and frank affection and old memories that are very sacred. That is one reason why I love my counter- pane; the other is because it is beautiful, well, per- OLD WHITE COUNTERPANES 137 haps rather engagingly pretty, with its somewhat sketchy embroidery, a little after the manner of an ancient "lazy daisy" stitch, -- the whole effect being that of a wandering vine-pattern and a central basket of flowers that is very much like the designs Stiegel etched on his toddy-mugs and flip-glasses. Un- fortunately photography will reproduce only pat- terns standing in bolder relief, so you must take its prettiness on trust until you see it upon my carved Empire bed. In the meantime I shall be bleaching it: when the dog-days are done and all danger of mildew is past, I shall put it out on the grass and let the bright suns of early autumn and the racing winds whiten it magically for me. First you wet the web 5 of course, and then, when it is dry, you wet it again; and wise ladies tell me that this old-world way is infinitely superior to any amount of soap, or even what we call hereabouts "elbow-juice." It is better really than the freezing-bleaching process, for that is apt to weaken the strands of the fabric. My cover- let and my Empire bed are about the same age, and they will go " companionably " together. I 've worked so hard to dress that bed properly! You see, so many quite charming old beds suddenly lose this charm of theirs because the right things are not put on them; sometimes a counterpane that makes the bed look as if an old lady were masquerading in her granddaughter's clothes. Maybe that comparison is n't worth much nowadays in our present terms of 138 COLLECTOR'S LUCK fashion, but you understand, don't you? And then, when the coverlet is all right, the pillow-shams are all wrong. That mine are right comes by the luck of discovery, for I found the pattern in a little old house way up in the Vermont hills; and because so many people have asked me just how they were made, and I think you might like to know, too, I am passing the directions on to you. I made mine from very fine longcloth, though I think linen would be better, and fine-meshed dimity a pretty alterna- tive. The length is thirty-five inches, the width twenty and a quarter, of course, these measure- ments are not rigid, they can be adapted to any size pillow you wish, and the adornment is little, frilly ruffles, ruffles gathered in the centre and spaced three inches apart. The gathering of the first frill comes at the edge of the sham which makes it a little less bulky in effect; and when they are freshly ironed they are the prettiest, quaintest things you can im- agine. But they are hard to do up; sometimes I think I'll get myself a "goffering-iron." Like "dear Mrs. Tiggy winkle's," you know. Don't you remember, in that charming tale, how she took little Lucie's pinny, "and ironed it and goffered it and shook out the frills"? As I have a house that much re- sembles Mrs. Tiggy winkle's, I think it would be most appropriate. There is infinite variety in these old white coun- terpanes. L - has three delightful old-fashioned C-* Collection of Mrs. Carleton. Old quilted counterpane done in the middle of the nineteenth century. The design was drawn by a Hungarian exile, a follower of Kossuth. The work is very fine and beautiful. OLD WHITE COUNTERPANES 141 beds, and an entirely different type of spread rests on each one. The first again I rail at the inad- equacies of photography, for half of its fine loveli- ness does not show is one of the most charming, intricate pieces of needle-craft that I have ever seen, worthy even of L -'s Hepplewhite room, and that is high praise. To-day, as I looked at it, the dear lady who had quilted it said, "I wish I had a penny for every stitch I took in it"; and I felt that if she had, she would be rich beyond the dreams of avarice. Those tiny, tiny stitches! Do you suppose we shall ever again rise to such apotheoses of sewing? And the design has an interesting story. It was drawn a num- ber of years before it was quilted, by an Hungarian exile, a follower of Kossuth, who had drifted to this country, and who turned his native talent of music into a profession, and gave lessons to support himself. He drew a number of these patterns for his pupils, and this one embodies both America and Hungary. In the centre is the eagle of his adopted country, with the thirteen stars above and "E Pluribus Unum" below, and in the corners is an Hungarian motif. Above and below the eagle are graceful cornucopias, but whether they were symbolic of the plenty that he found in his adopted country or of what he hoped for his native land, tradition has never told me. The second is a quilted counterpane, too, and this adorns such a slender, fluted mahogany "four- poster" with a field canopy. The work is less fine, 142 COLLECTOR'S LUCK but it is very nearly as handsome ; if I liked to apply so very modern a word as "stunning" to an old counterpane, I think I might call it that. It is, also, a very unusual type, and very attractive in the man- ner in which the padded pattern stands out against the quilted surface. It began life way, way up in these Northern hills, and its owner, before L - bought it, was, in spite of the possession of this lovely bit of age, most mid- Victorian in her tastes. Her house was adorned with the many, many things she had made and painted and decorated; but they were her idea of beauty and she was very happy in them, and, since innocent human happiness is one of the ends of life, I, for one, shan't grudge them to her. You know, often in the countryside you will still find such odd embellishments: roses made out of leather, and so on, which are, I suppose, the rural equivalent of the gilded plaster lion; once, even, I saw one of the framed coffin-plates that everybody insists are found only in stories. I almost wept with joy when I beheld this vindication of literature; I did n't want to own it, of course, but I felt so grateful once to have wit- nessed this concrete symbol of Victorian gloom. As for L -'s third coverlet, I am not sure that it is not my greatest favorite of all, the design is so grace- ful, so symmetrical. It is what is known as a candle- wicking spread, in other words, a counterpane made usually of a homespun linen (or cotton sometimes), with the tufted design worked in candle-wicking or Collection of Mrs. Carleton. Quilted white counterpane with the padded design standing in very bold relief. An especially handsome and effective piece. Collection of Mrs. Carleton. -'s candle-wicking spread. Less intricate than some of the others in design, it is, nevertheless, very graceful and symmetrical. OLD WHITE COUNTERPANES 145 a full cotton yarn. Now I dislike more than any- thing else to be academic; I dipped candles that I might tell you about them, and I am "dra wing-in" a rug after an old pattern so that I may be really intelligent about it and practical in my advice. But I simply cannot stop, my dear Friends in Collecting, to make a candle-wicking spread so that I shall be qualified to tell you exactly how it is done. How- ever, I have been talking to past mistresses of this art and taking experimental stitches, just enough to keep my counsel from being pure theory. I think that the task must have been easier in bygone times, for then candle-wicking was more durable and firmer; the stuff they sell nowadays being quite "no account." And it will have to be vigorously bleached, for it is rather a dark ecru; at least all that I have been able to get is very far from white. Then you will need your counterpane carefully marked with a chosen design, this, I am told, is the most difficult part, an embroidery or darning-needle with an eye large enough to take in a thread of candle-wick- ing which must be used doubled, and endless pa- tience! If the cloth, whether linen or cotton, is un- bleached, the work will be easier, for then the threads will not have to be tied before shearing. The proc- ess really is not unlike "drawing-in" a rug, if you have ever done that; the weight of the wicking holds it in place, you see. I meant to gather mre informa- tion for you : to walk across our blue watered ribbon 146 COLLECTOR'S LUCK of a river into our next-door state I always feel a queer little thrill of surprise at being able to be in two states almost simultaneously ! and talk to an old lady there who has made a number of these counterpanes. I have never seen them, but I know that they must be attractive, for she herself is so very pleasant, and so full of the joy of life that, over seventy, she seems about fifty-five. But, instead, I went to an old-furniture sale, and I know you will forgive me when I tell you that I bought three lovely pieces of old glass for fifteen cents, and a prettily turned light-stand for seventy-five, and two silver- plated cups of chaste design and beautiful engraving for so little that I am ashamed to tell you just how little it was, although the prices were already set and I had nothing whatever to do with them. My one comfort was that the uninteresting modern pieces were selling for such magnificent sums; it made me feel less guilty. And, as I brought my treasures home, another happiness was mine, for I was lighted by a round, pale moon just climbing over the hori- zon. Personally I like a great bubble-moon walking through the high heavens with dignity ; I had not the faintest desire for Merlin's power to hurry her, scud- ding, through the clouds. Rather I delighted in her calm, and at home, when I had polished my cups, I took them out of doors to see how much more silver the silver moonlight made them. Moonlight, broad stretch of meadows and such peace! Collection of Mrs. Patten. The candle-wicking spread E made. Notice the resemblance to the one that follows. Collection of Mrs. Patten. The old candle-wicking spread that E used as her model. An unus- ually large and handsome one. OLD WHITE COUNTERPANES 149 And I loved my little house, the little house full of my dear things, with its background of black velvet shadows, its vine-trimmed porch, its banded phlox. That 's what I mean by the joy of collecting: it weaves such a pleasant pattern of life for you. But why do I speak of these coverlets as all in the past? E - made one only a year or so ago, and here it is, an infinitely laborious counterpane, copied, or perhaps I should say modeled, on the old one that follows. It took her six months to do it; of course, I suppose, she did n't work night and day on it, but I fancy it was pretty steady "pick-up" work. She tufted the centre design first, and then worked the connecting lines, corners and festoons. The fringe, she confessed, she found the hardest part of all, for she took one whole summer doing it, finally getting a stick and knotting the wicking over and over, rather after the fashion of a fisherman making nets. We marveled at her when it was done, but so far as I know she has never had the flattery of imitation. Most of us think it looks like a life-work. But then E - is a specialist in coverlets; she has so many charming ones: three candle-wicking and three others. Of course, I am always hoping that some day I shall have one of these tufted candle-wicking spreads of my own, but I have not yet found one with the necessary three dimensions, by which I mean a spread that measures itself at once to my bed, my 150 COLLECTOR'S LUCK fancy, and my pocketbook. At times, you know, you can get such bargains; I have seen good ones sold for ten, and sometimes even five dollars. Once I bought one for a small bed for a dollar and a quarter. The pattern was not done in the thickest tufting, but really quite an engaging eagle set in circles was out- lined in the centre. And when you think how much you have to pay for just a plain seersucker spread, you may agree with me that I got a bargain. And I also desire one like this counterpane of E -'s done in flat, unsheared candle-wicking, so that the effect is almost that of cross-stitch. It is really very charming, with the beauty of a well-done sampler, and a little irregularity that guarantees the genuineness of its handiwork. Moreover, it is one of the oldest that I have known to be found here- abouts. Down in one corner, if you look very closely, you can see the initials of its worker, L. D. D., and the date, 1822. I have seen one dated 1815, but nothing earlier, and, as it is the older ones that are usually dated, I have formed a theory that the candle-wicking spread was a fashion of the very early nineteenth century. At least, I have never found any evidence to convince me that they were made in the eighteenth. But the embroidered counterpane was undoubtedly made then, for it is full of the feeling of the delicate, charming " chinoiserie " that so much dominated domestic art in those days. Deepened by time, it Collection of Mrs. Patten. The "cross-stitch" candle-wicking spread. Notice the quaint formality of its pattern, and the initial and date in the corner. Vfc ^E 'JL c.t^K I *4* l? : #> A c i % c> w .9 I A 000 678 786 5 ;j otov&Ud ''$ hooka craft shop