Garden Ornaments of Pottery 
greens, sell as low as six dollars, but would 
be expensive at any price. The Nanking 
porcelain garden seats, which fetch about 
sixty dollars, are much better worth the 
money. Nanking, in fact, was once a famous 
depot for this ware, and boasted a porcelain 
tower, built in the fifteenth century, that 
stood until destroyed fifty years ago. 
Modern blue and white porcelain bowls 
cost from ninety to one hundred and fifty or 
two hundred dollars, 
and, like the best Chi¬ 
nese ware, are said to 
be proof against the 
American climate. 
The specimen from the 
art rooms of Long 
Sang Ti,in New ^ ork, 
has a capital decorative 
motive, a male and a 
female dragon being 
about to devour some 
peonies,which in China 
are symbols of richness. 
The border at the top 
is a conventionalized 
version of clouds. 
Much of this ware now 
comes from Canton. 
Harking back for a 
moment to the older 
pieces, it is worth not¬ 
ing that Corean pot¬ 
tery of the seventeenth 
century, in splash 
brown glaze, is to be 
had reasonably. At 
the Fujita art rooms 
the specimen illus¬ 
trated herewith is 
quoted at sixty - five 
dollars. This is surely 
of garden stature, physically and artistically. 
Leaving the recognized varieties of Chi¬ 
nese garden pottery, the designer seeking for 
novel and effective jars and bowls of Orien¬ 
tal make will find them in the Chinese quar¬ 
ter of nearly any large American city. He 
will seek in vain for them on the front 
shelves full of ordinary cheap ornamented 
ware manufactured for a guileless and unin¬ 
formed Caucasian public. Probably the in¬ 
telligent Chinaman in charge of the shop 
will try to sell him a teacup. By close 
questioning and personal search, the buyer 
may come upon the shop’s storeroom, where, 
out of dirty surroundings, he may rescue a 
bowl of heavy pottery, used for bringing 
preserved oranges or fish or pickles to this 
country from China. Grocery and provi¬ 
sion shops offer the best chance for pieces 
large enough for garden ornaments. 
No encouragement may be expected from 
the puzzled shopmen, 
who look with mild 
pity and often scarcely 
disguised amusement 
upon the American 
buyer who wants a jar 
of jellied fruit not for 
its contents but for the 
vessel itself. And let 
not the searcher be 
dissuaded by an un¬ 
promising exterior. 
The writer spied in a 
Chinese grocery in 
Pell street,New York, 
a jar like the smaller 
of the two illustrated 
here; it was in the 
window, and was half 
full of some Oriental 
food product not in¬ 
viting to American 
eyes or nostrils. The 
jar was covered with a 
thick coat of white 
paint, and a rattan bas¬ 
ket-work holder was 
fastened around it, with 
two heavy handles. 
Persistent queries im¬ 
pelled a Chinaman to 
lead the way through 
a long passage to a stuffv back room, in 
which raw meat, boxes and barrels, dusty 
rubbish, a litter of kittens, a plentiful fam¬ 
ily of spiders and sundry vessels of large 
size were at once conspicuous. Here were 
found, among others, the two heavy jars 
shown in the illustrations. 
The smaller one, with the thick rim, was 
full of strong waters, whose odor clung to 
the hard glazed interior until after many 
subsequent washings. The original contents, 
MODERN CHINESE JARDINIERE WITH 
FIGURES IN RELIEF 
From the Tytuiale Mitchell Collection 
1 12 
