HOUSE AND GARDEN 
August, ign 
115 
Of course the flower holders will not re¬ 
quire to be washed as frequently as cups 
and saucers, for instance, or the enamel 
might be covered with a coat of clear var¬ 
nish. The brushes chosen should be good 
ones and well pointed. The enamel must 
not be used too thickly and should be very 
evenly mixed. A medium brush will be 
the most useful for general work, as it is 
not probable that the patterns will be of any 
great size. A small brush or two may 
be kept at hand for the finer details. Each 
stroke of the pattern must of course be 
done in one piece without lifting the brush. 
Some skill and a great amount of care 
will be required to successfully place the 
sections on the rounded and perhaps pol¬ 
ished surface of the jar. The strokes need 
to be very cleanly made with a steady hand. 
In order to make quite certain of the twists 
and curves that will best show the outline 
of the pattern, it may first be tried over on 
a sheet of paper. If preferred, the princi¬ 
ple points can be touched in with a pencil, 
though as a rule the work is done directly 
by eye with the brush only. Of course it 
it necessary before carrying out the pat¬ 
tern to ascertain exactly its best position 
on the jar, so that it may show to a good 
advantage. Some designs look well ar¬ 
ranged round the base of the jar, thus 
leaving the remaining surface plain. 
Others may be effectively placed just be¬ 
low the curve of the neck. Sometimes a 
small all-over floral pattern will seem the 
most suitable, but much will depend on the 
shape of the jar. Possibly it may be 
thought worth while to paint the glazed 
background of the pot entirely in one 
shade. Then when the coat is dry, the pat¬ 
tern can be worked out in another or a 
lighter color. As a rule, however, the 
original cream or white looks very well as 
it is, especially if the color used for dec¬ 
oration is a soft china blue. On a rough, 
unpolished earthenware, blue gray or buff 
gives a nice contrast. 
Small pots may be decorated for bed¬ 
room pin-holders, or made into dainty lit¬ 
tle corner vases for the table-centre. Any 
odd china lids may also be painted with a 
very dainty effect in shades of blue. The 
idea of these mav be taken from old Dutch 
tiles. Ginger or honey jars make pretty 
preserve pots for the breakfast table, and 
they may be painted in colors which har¬ 
monize with the flower vases or with the 
coffee service. 
Glass bottles and jam pots may some¬ 
times be varied in shape by the following 
method of treatment. For the purpose 
will be required some olive oil—the com¬ 
monest kind will answer very well—and 
a slender iron bar which will yet be sub¬ 
stantial enough to bear heating to a great 
degree. The bottles selected should be of 
thinnish glass, those with sloping shoul¬ 
ders being the easiest for manipulation. 
The one under consideration should be 
placed on a perfectly level surface, and 
filled to a height which must be judged by 
individual discretion. The iron bar should 
be placed in a hot fire. The result of the 
experiment will be that the glass will 
break away at exactly the highest point 
A bottle vase made by filling a bottle with 
oil and thrusting a hot iron into it 
Delftware or Dutch tile patterns are attractive when painted on small earthenware pots 
A jam jar simply decorated with a conven¬ 
tionalized design that is suggestive of its 
contents 
that is touched by the oil. Thus the fin¬ 
ished shape of the vase will depend en¬ 
tirely on the filling. As soon as the iron 
has been brought to a red heat, it should be 
removed from the fire and at once gently 
lowered into the oil until the bottle cracks 
in the required place. If the rod is rather 
a short one it is a good plan to grasp it 
securely with a pair of pincers to avoid 
any possibility of burnt fingers. The rea¬ 
son for the breaking of the glass is that the 
heat brings the oil on the surface very quiet¬ 
ly to the boil and the bottle, being unable 
to expand quickly enough, breaks all round 
at the point where the pressure is greatest. 
The edges will probably be rather sharp. 
To remedy this, stretch a piece of glass 
paper firmly over a block of wood, of a 
size that can be easily held in the hand, 
and rub the border of the glass till it is 
smooth and regular. If desired, the vase 
may be decorated with metallic sealing- 
wax, either gold, bronze or silver, care¬ 
fully banded round the top. This in it¬ 
self would of course dispense with the 
roughness of the edge, and it would give 
the vase an effective finish. 
It may be mentioned that the hot oil 
makes a very unpleasant smell, and it is 
better to carry on the operation out-of- 
doors or in a room which can be shut off 
from the remainder of the house. In every 
other respect the process is an extremely 
simple one and can be easily carried out 
by anybody. The oil does not act very well 
after it has become all heated by several 
times of using, but it can soon be cooled 
down again by placing it, in the flask, in a 
pail of ice-water. If there are a number 
of bottles which it is required to shape, it 
is a good plan to use two flasks. 
Useful picnic tumblers can be made 
from ordinary glass jam pots, only ov 
course it is necessary to get the edges very 
smooth and rounded so that they may not 
be unpleasant to the lips. Certainly the 
glasses are inexpensive and breaking will 
not matter, which is always an advantage 
for the rough and tumble meals, when one 
is out camping. 
