The Garden Magazine, July, 1923 
321 
THE WALL-FOUNTAIN FURNISHES A FOCUS 
The elaborate geometric pattern and all the beds and borders of this garden seem inevitably to swing toward the 
fountain, carrying the feet and the eye of the visitor with them. At the home of Mr. Lammot du Pont, Saint Amour, 
Wilmington, Del.; designed by Miss Marian C. Coffin and shown at this season’s Architectural League Exhibition 
red clay tinged with iron, gave wonderful color, and this primi¬ 
tive pottery has been made in domestic forms without break to 
the present day. Many of the shapes, intended to be plainly 
practical, have now a real decorative value, and can be adapted 
to hold plants or flowers in loggias and gardens. These primi¬ 
tive American potteries are more notable for simple color and 
shape, than for any patterns on them. In New England and in 
parts of North Carolina there is clay of a blue-gray color which 
is sometimes covered with a brown glaze (as seen in our old bean 
pots) and sometimes fired in its natural color. 
In the part of Europe where labor has always been cheap, and 
where the hot sun prevents much growth of flowering plants 
directly in the soil of gardens, there is a liberal use of potted 
plants renewed from time to time. They have extraordinary 
values in “patio” decoration, at the sides of steps on the tops 
of walls, or variously grouped. The pots may be of two types, 
those with flat patterns of brilliant color underneath the glaze 
and those with only the color of the terra-cotta, which depend 
for beauty on their general shape and pattern in relief. 
C USTOM changes slowly in the Old World. The same use 
of tiles and flower-pots and decorative sculptural pottery 
prevails to-day about the Mediterranean, as several hundred 
years ago. As we are borrowing ideas from their ancient arch¬ 
itecture so are we borrowing from their forms of out-of-door 
pottery. Much of it, too, is imported from Spain and Italy 
where it is produced traditionally by the descendants of the old 
potters. The same forms, colors, patterns, bearing the name of 
the particular towns or districts where they were first made, are 
still produced in the same places and bear the same signatures. 
The best of the colored patterns are still decorated by hand, 
before the final glaze and firing. In such places, where the tra¬ 
dition is strong and the manual skill passed on from one genera¬ 
tion to another, there may be very little originality in the pot¬ 
ters who, from their results seem so gifted. 
But in our country, where there is little tradition, new condi¬ 
tions offer opportunities for originality, with all the stimulus 
and all the perils that go with it. A new group of artist potters 
is springing up, and at their hands there are coming into being 
new forms of garden sculpture and pottery, touched by old 
tradition, but not trammeled by it, and adapted to our uses. 
Among these potters may be mentioned Mr. Volkmar and the 
late Mrs. Rice of the Durant Kilns, whose joint work took much 
of its inspiration from Italy, but has developed a great simplicity 
of form and brilliant combinations of colored glazes very effective 
in fountain basins, vases, flower-pots and so on. Another of 
these artist potters is Mr. Carl Walters who is getting beautiful 
effects in Persian blue pottery, with interesting original patterns 
in black. The Poillon pottery is extremely varied and interest¬ 
ing and is especially adapted for garden use. There are many 
other potters using various glazes and forms for the smaller 
types of pottery. It is quite possible that we are watching the 
beginnings of a notable era of American potter’s work, as well 
as of American garden decoration and open-air architecture 
in which the names of potters shall be as well known as those of 
architects and landscape gardeners. 
RATIONAL GARDEN WEEt{ FOR IQ24., *April 20— 26 th 
