GARDEN ORNAMENTS OF POTTERY 
By SAMUEL SWIFT 
I TALY’S artistic creative force, in most of 
its manifestations long since spent, keeps 
in one of its humbler phases at least a rem¬ 
nant of its old-time power. As the source 
and inspiration of pottery used in landscape 
gardening, no other country can approach 
her; though the best days ot the craft are 
past, the Italian influence, which helped to 
determine, three centuries ago, the shapes 
and colors and surfaces of French terra cotta 
and also of English, is now at work mould¬ 
ing the plastic products of the United States. 
Clearer proof could not be asked of the in¬ 
herent reasonableness and beauty of the 
Italian oil and wine jars that for generations 
have lorded it over formal gardens. No 
style could impose itself so exclusively on 
the taste of even its own people unless it had 
some vital quality, some form or color inti¬ 
mately connected with its utilitarian function. 
To have exerted a tension powerfully felt 
across the Atlantic, in a country only begin¬ 
ning to demand artistic settings for its out¬ 
door life, is the signal 
achievement and prob¬ 
ably the last important 
conquest of I talian gar¬ 
den pottery. In a pre¬ 
vious article the de¬ 
pendence of American 
terra cotta makers 
upon the old and re¬ 
cent jars and bowls 
and vases of Italv was 
noted at some length. 
The domination of 
these styles in outdoor 
pottery is rooted in the 
fact that Italian gar¬ 
dening design was it¬ 
self the model for that 
of other nations. It is 
mere history that from 
the spread ot Rome’s 
authority northward 
and westward over 
Europe, to the day 
when Le Notre, having laid out Versailles, 
went to Italy and came back declaring he 
had learned nothing, the Latin formal gar¬ 
den has been at least a point of departure 
for other designers. 
The styles of France and of England 
ultimately differentiated themselves, but the 
basic influence remained, while here in 
America, when one speaks of a garden as 
formal, he usually means that it is Italian. 
So transalpine landscape architects naturally 
turned to Italian pottery when they arranged 
such gardens, and the two have continued in 
close partnership. Unless the recent impor¬ 
tations of Chinese garden ornaments, in 
pottery or porcelain, should incite an unex¬ 
pected demand from architects and their cli¬ 
ents, there will hardly be a serious disputant 
of the Italian ware’s primacy for some time 
to come. 
If American potters were more fully alive 
to their opportunities, fewer foreign jars 
would be needed here. The situation is 
easily made clear by 
the experience ot a 
New York landscape 
architect who within a 
year has brought in, 
tor his own use, over 
one hundred wine and 
oil jars from Italy. 
These jars are made 
by hand and they are 
cheap. In Florence 
they cost from three to 
five francs, and they 
can be landed here at 
a total cost of from 
twelve to fourteen 
dollars apiece, includ¬ 
ing allowance for 
breakage. Lor dupli¬ 
cating such jars a 
well - known pottery, 
not far from New 
York, asked not less 
than twenty dollars 
“5 
ITALIAN DECORATED OIL JAR 
From the Glaenzer Garden 
