August, 



*9 l 3 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



289 



O very few collectors seem to have realized 

 or appreciated the beauty and quaintness of 

 old cages that the one comprehensive collec- 

 tion which has been formed possesses an in- 

 terest which is particularly and rightly its own. 

 "Without a doubt there is not a nation 

 upon the earth which does not include a love for birds 

 among its characteristics. It is by no means the result of 

 civilization, for among savages it has always existed, as 

 their folk lore will attest. In the folk lore of many prim- 

 tive races, birds are endowed with a certain mysterious 

 attribute which places them midway between the gods and 

 the denizens of the earth. Their soaring into the empy- 

 rean realms of the heavens, has led to their being considered 

 as especially favored by the gods or regarded as their 

 messengers and in some countries even the feathers of 

 birds are cherished as sacred, and those gathered from birds' 

 nests are wafted aloft and ascend as prayers to the deities. 



In civilized countries the 

 little feathered songsters 

 who are members of the 

 family circle occupy a posi- 

 tion of high regard in the 

 home and from the ice-bound 

 lands of the frozen north to 

 the olive and ilex groves of 

 the fragrant and languorous 

 south, infinite care and pa- 

 tience has been employed in 

 fashioning their little homes. 

 The making of cages for 

 birds has been, of course, a 

 form of home handicraft — 

 a kind of "fireside industry," 

 and for this reason it has a 

 special value to collectors 

 and to others who trace in 

 the making of such objects 

 the expression of artistic in- 

 stinct toward the attainment 

 of a national idea. It is 

 natural, perhaps, that the 

 cages for such household 

 favorites as birds should re- 

 flect the architecture of the 



An early Dutch chip-carved bird cage, 1714. Drake collection 



people by whom the cages have been made. After all a bird 

 cage is the home of the birds who live within it, and is 

 therefore a house in miniature, and to be planned and built 

 much as a home in ordinary. Russian cages, therefore, are 

 models of Russian architecture, and often possess bulbous 

 spires and the other earmarks of Russian architecture 

 familiar to travelers in that land of the semi-barbaric and 

 the picturesque; Dutch bird cages likewise reflect the pleas- 

 ing quaintness of homes in the little country of canals and 

 windmills, and cages from China and Japan are often tiny 

 temples. 



The materials of which bird cages are made are many 

 and varied. As might be supposed, wood in some form is 

 often employed, for wood is indigenous everywhere, and as 

 bamboo or reed is easily woven and twisted into divers shapes 

 and forms. Wood is also easily carved, and carving is a 

 form of universal handicraft. Metal is used largely by cage- 

 makers everywhere, and metals such as brass or copper 



which may be hammered or 

 beaten appear about as often 

 in the form of repousse as 

 in the form of wire bars with 

 which they are associated in 

 our minds with the bird 

 cages which are made in fac- 

 tories to-day. 



The Dutch and the Jap- 

 anese, who are wonderfully 

 dexterous in the handling of 

 many forms of ceramic art, 

 have utilized their skill in 

 such work, to some extent, in 

 the fashioning of cages. 

 The use of the Delft ware 

 made in Holland has pro- 

 duced results which are espe- 

 cially pleasing, for with the 

 structural portions made of 

 white and blue or polv- 

 chrome Delft, the use of 

 brass or copper wire is very 

 successful. 



The one collection of 

 cages which is sufficiently 

 complete to present a really 



