304 



The Garden Magazine, July, 1922 



natural development. The easiest 

 design possessing character and 

 charm which a smith can make with 

 a flat iron bar on his anvil, is a scroll. 

 It is more difficult to hammer out 

 the long bars of the Spanish vertical 

 reja, though it looks simpler. 



" Most ubiquitous, possibly, of all 

 iron accessories in Spain is the win- 

 dow reja" (Byne's "Spanish Iron- 

 work"). Grilles, railings and gates 

 have the purpose of protecting some- 

 thing without preventing one from 

 looking through. Church grilles and 

 railings surrounded or shut off chap- 

 els, altars, and tombs. Hence the 

 church grille prevails north as well 

 as south. Domestic window grilles 

 are not in such demand in northern 

 Europe, where warmth in winter is a 

 prime essential, as they are in Italy 

 and Spain, where windows have to 

 be left open at night. There window 

 grilles are necessary. The finest ex- 

 amples and most varied designs seem 

 to be Spanish. 



Beautiful iron beds were made in 

 the 16th century, which might well 

 be copied now; and iron chairs also, 

 and tables. The throne presented to 

 the Emperor Rudolph by the city of 

 Augsburg in i 574 was of iron. But 

 the furniture of the hearth is a richer 

 field — andirons, the earlier work 

 plain and the later ornate — innu- 

 merable cooking utensils and de- 

 vices. Before the age of furnaces 

 and steam heat there was an age — 

 a not very long one — of stoves, and 

 before that a very long age of open 

 fire-places. One almost forgets that 

 all the cooking was done there, but 

 the old andirons remember it. All 

 the old hearth ironwork of the north 

 remembers the old times when the 

 life of the house centred at the 

 hearth, and it is mainly blacksmith 

 work. There are cast fire-irons of 

 the 15th century, but cast iron did 

 not come into general use until the 

 1 6th century. Candelabra were ec- 

 clesiastical as well as domestic. The 

 hanging candelabra in Flemish and 

 German churches were especially 

 elaborate. 



If the church was the earlier chief 

 patron of ironwork in art, and next 

 the kings and nobles, in the 1 5th and 

 1 6th centuries the burghers became 

 powerful rivals. The streets of the 

 free cities in Germany and Flanders 

 were filled with ornamental iron- 

 work, signs and sign arms, lanterns, 

 lantern holders, and weather vanes. 

 In Italian cities like Florence and 

 Siena the cressets, horse rings, and 

 banner holders are notable. But 

 ironwork was not on the whole so 



popular a craft in Italy as in Ger- 

 many, where ornamentation seems 

 to have been lavished on well covers, 

 for instance, for the mere joy of 

 decoration. 



Just as an Indian arrow-head or 

 an antique seal opens a sudden 

 vista into the past and reminds us 

 that at one time on this continent 

 every man was an archer; as an 

 engraved gem reminds us that at 

 another time, about the Mediter- 

 ranean, every man of substance wore 

 a seal ring; so does an old iron-bound 

 chest recall an age when bank vaults 

 and steel safes were not. The huge 

 complicated locks of the old chests 

 and caskets suggest that no burglar 

 could ever have thought of attempt- 

 ing to open the chest by way of the 

 lock, when it would be so much 

 easier to cut through the wood 

 or leather. Spanish workmen often 

 used stamped leather with orna- 

 mental ironwork at the corners. 



In ironwork generally in Germany 

 and Austria there was more use of 

 gilding and various colors than else- 

 where, perhaps for the same reason 

 of taste, whatever it may have 

 been, that made the house fronts 

 of old German cities so polychrome. 

 Heraldry, too, played a larger part 

 there in ironwork design; though 

 indeed nearly all ironwork for in- 

 terior decoration in the 15th and 

 1 6th centuries was painted and 

 gilded. John Evelyn, the diarist, 

 speaks of the gilded iron beds he 

 saw in Italy. 



Sixteenth century iron furniture 

 was. often damascened; the process 

 seems to have come through Spain 

 from the Moors. 



Another characteristic of German, 

 Swiss, and Scandinavian ironwork is 

 the interlaced knotted motifs — the 

 same interlaced patterns that appear 

 in illuminated manuscripts and in 

 Scandinavian and Irish woodcarv- 

 ings. 



D 



Metropolitan Museum of Art 



CHANCEL SCREEN, FIFTEENTH CENTURY, FRENCH GOTHIC DESIGN 



Garden influence is apparent in the leaves, flower and cones of this ornate and yet beau- 

 tifully restrained pattern that spirals upward into ever lighter form in true vine fashion 



URING the Renaissance and 

 through the 18th century, dec- 

 orative ironwork played an impor- 

 tant part in the gardens of both 

 northern and southern Europe, but 

 especially in Spain and Italy where 

 the climate was more suited to life 

 out of doors. The skill of designer 

 and craftsman was lavished on gates, 

 railings, window grilles, well-heads 

 and weather-vanes. Often the arms 

 of a noble house were wrought into a 

 pair of entrance gates as a central 

 motif, and remain as the only memo- 

 rial of a family which has long since 

 disappeared and been forgotten. 



