94 
House & Garden 
PICTURES in IRON 
{Continued from page 92) 
It happened 
I 
He is telephoning for help— 
His beautiful closed car is on fire 
and two members of his family 
are severely burned. 
The disaster could have been 
averted. 
Pyrene, used when an automo¬ 
bile fire starts, is sure protection 
to life and property. 
Can you afford to risk your own 
life and your automobile, when, 
at a small price, you can equip 
your car with Pyrene and know 
that you are fully protected from 
fire dangers? 
Sold by garages, hardware 
and electrical supply dealers 
ancient canons of art. They are strong 
with rhythmic vitality. Though crude 
and heavy, they have an unusual 
strength. The rugged line of the distant 
mountains blends with the foliage of his 
trees that have their base in some mar¬ 
gin of a lake or stream. He has elimin¬ 
ated to the last line possible every non- 
essential to his design. His subjects re¬ 
main close to nature and to life. His 
people go about the humbler avoca¬ 
tions of the Chinese; their toil bent 
figures are vital in their simplicity. His 
worshipper bends reverent in the shrine. 
The work of Tang Tien-chih was con¬ 
tinued by his sons and contemporaries 
who elaborated his simple landscapes, 
refining the lines of iron. A set of these 
pictures, eight in number, I found last 
year in the old city of Changsha. They 
are landscapes executed by an unknown 
artist for the house of Li who held 
them for two hundred years. They are 
in excellent preservation. Each picture 
is made up of several units, usually 
four, so spaced as to give a satisfying 
perspective. 
Here are men in tea houses built 
over the water, there a woman in her 
window waits the home coming of her 
spouse. An old man toils up the hill¬ 
side, men meet on the bridge to pass 
the time of day, and fishermen, who 
would have delighted the soul of Isaac 
Walton, sit dreaming over their sus¬ 
pended lines. 
The houses vary in type. The home 
of the villager nestles behind a clump of 
trees. A thatched cottage is outlined 
with geometric precision. Hills take on 
the fantastic shapes that the traveler in 
remote sections has seen. Reeds and 
moss-grown rocks clearly indicate the 
banks of water ways. The boat on the 
rippling water carries the narrow necked 
basket of the fisherman. The waves are 
portrayed in ideal simplicity by a mere 
bended wire beneath the boat. The 
flag flying from the yamen pole is still 
swaying with the breezes of centuries 
ago. The spread of sails on the distant 
junks could have been attained only by 
the use of pliant bamboo stays. 
The trees which the artist shaped in 
this enduring medium are of the classic 
type known to all students of Chinese 
art. The pine, the wutung, the bam- 
boto, the willow, and the ginkgo tree 
are unmistakable. They stand in relief 
now in the foreground of the sketch. 
now partly hidden by some home or 
hillside. The care used in drawing 
identical branching in each tree of a 
group is typically Chinese. 
The moonrise of this artist is per¬ 
haps his greatest touch. Four parallel 
lines of ferrous mist, a circle of iron, 
and the heart is satisfied! With the un¬ 
yielding material to which the artist 
gave his thought, he has brought to us 
that rare experience to the occidental 
soul, an oriental moonrise. 
The quartet of the “four seasons” is 
still a Chinese delight. They comprise 
the orchid for spring, the bamboo for 
summer, the chrysanthemum for 
autumn, and the mei-hwa (yellow pru- 
nus) for winter. 
Iron lends itself to color effects. Time 
has added a touch of color to the iron 
with which the artist worked. Rust 
along the branches and in the rocky 
masses gives a depth and warmth of 
shade that is pleasing to the eye. 
The pictures of Tang Tien-chih, whose 
signature in iron is shown with his 
gracefully wrought orchid, and those of 
his successors,have adorned the homes 
of many of the well to do families of 
central China. They have been car¬ 
ried, I am told, as far as Chengtu, in 
the far western province that borders 
on the Himalayas. Some of them 
have been used to adorn lanterns. 
The effectiveness of the picture in a 
Chinese setting is unusually good. The 
room of the Chinese opens by a door 
and a half partition, covered with glass 
or paper, onto the court yard. Iron 
pictures are used to decorate two of the 
remaining walls, being placed on oppo¬ 
site sides of the room in pairs or fours in 
e.xact line. The pictures are framed in 
teak wood, severely plain, and backed 
with lin-dz (silk over paper), of cream 
or white. They are set off by the strict¬ 
ly conventional character of walls and 
furniture. 
It is to be regretted that the true art 
of producing iron pictures is lost to the 
world. Few men can combine the skill 
of the forger in iron with the soul of an 
artist. Only a rare artist could com¬ 
mand that spontaneity of composition 
which Tang Tien-chih and his con¬ 
temporaries employed when, with the 
iron white hot in the forge, they drew 
out in imperishable metal the lacy 
branches, the rugged mountains and the 
weary burdenbearer of their time. 
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{Continued jrom page 71) 
without air so that canning which of anything it is better to see the can 
must cut the air supply makes the flat or pushed in at the ends than bulg- 
spore birthrate about nil. ing out. (In fact don’t buy a can that 
Vegetables take longer to can than bulges out, for you may be pretty cer- 
the acid fruits and vegetables, such as tain that there is a merry time to be 
tomatoes, as the spores do not hanker had by all the spores within and they 
after acids as a rule. Of course the less are but too glad to pass on the merry 
heating and cooking the better for the time to you.) 
naturalness of the canned materials. In order to make safety safer it has 
So the thing we want to do is render been found wiser to “process” after you 
our fruits and vegetables as sterile as have packed the containers. Add most 
possible with as little fuss as possible, of the heat after the container has been 
and to prevent spores from forming, filled and safe from contamination. 
Thus canning is simply the process of 
spore and bacteria birth-control in the testing 
storage of fruits and vegetables for fu¬ 
ture use. Stop, smell and look! This is the 
There must be some degree of vac- precaution that anyone should take 
uum airlessness within the jar or can. with canned goods. It is marvelous 
In other words there must be more how few bought canned goods are un¬ 
pressure from without the receptacle safe. And it is simply because the mak- 
than within, making it difficult to take ers have taken the right precautions, 
off the lid on account of the suction or 1. Be as particular in the home as 
lack of air and the air pressure outside the canner is in the factory, 
the can. Therefore when you buy a can {Continued on page 96) 
