THE FLOWER GARDEN IN THE HOUSE. 225 



in vases with hard colours and designs, is impossible to the artistic 

 mind. 



And when we have seen the ugliness of much of this work, what 



is to be done in the way of remedy, as the shops are so much against 



us ? The first need is a great variety of pots, 



Flower vases basins, and jars or vases ; so that no flower that 



simple in form, garden, wood, or hedgerow can give us, need be 



without a fitting vessel the moment it is brought 



into the house. What are known as the Munstead glasses are a great 



help, because their shapes are carefully made to suit various flowers, 



and they are very useful and good in form made, too, of plain glass ; 



but, however good this series is, it is well to use a variety of other 



things in any simple ware that comes in our way, very often things 



on the way to the rubbish heap, such as Devonshire cream jars in 



brown ware. Nassau seltzer bottles, in the brown ware too, may 



well take a single flower or branch, while old ginger pots, quite simple 



shallow basins in yellow ware, and other articles made for use in 



trade, come in very well. 



There is no need to exclude finer or more costly things than these 

 if good in shape and not outrageous in colour, but various reasons 

 lead us to prefer the simpler wares, in which the flowers look often 

 quite as well as in any others. A mass of Edith Giffbrd Rose looks 

 very well in a good old silver bowl, and good china, silver, or bronze 

 vases or basins may be used for choice positions or occasions, though it 

 will generally be best not to submit fine or fragile vessels of this kind to 

 the' risks of constant use. Among the finest things ever made in the 

 shape of vases for cut flowers is the old Japanese work, which is often 

 .as lovely in form and as beautiful with true ornaments as anything 

 made by the old Greeks ; but the Japanese, like others, have taken 

 to " potboiling " in bronze, and many of the things now seen at 

 sales in London are coarse in workmanship. It might be worth 

 while to have good and avowed reproductions of some of the 

 more useful old forms the slender, uprising ones are so good for 

 many tall flowers ; Italian bronze bowls are often useful too ; 

 and the darkness within the bronze vessels tends to keep the 

 flowers longer than when they are in glass vessels exposed to the 

 light. 



Japanese ways of arranging flowers are extremely interesting, 

 and may sometimes be practised with advantage ; but, with a great 

 variety and good shape of vessels, the Japanese way is not so 

 necessary as a system, for the reason that, given a variety of good 

 shapes and different materials, we can place any single flower, branch, 

 or bunch in a way that it will look well with very slight effort and 

 dn very little time. Any way involving much labour over the 



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