116 
House & Garden 
Just as rain^ 
freshens the foliage of 
Nature^s children in 
field and forest, so a 
shower refreshes you* 
TN NATURE’S way of washing, 
-L the water is used once. It passes 
on, carrying away everything of 
which it has cleansed the pores of 
flower and plant. 
And so it is with your shower. The 
clear, sparkling sprays strike your 
back, chest, arms—your entire body. 
Each flushed-out pore again breathes 
naturally as the water runs off. You 
are stimulated and refreshed. 
H-9521/2 Mixometer 
Shower. For use in stall 
or over built-in tub. A 
turn of the Mixometer 
handle controls the 
shower’s temperature. 
By the Anyforce Head* 
you control the shower’s 
force. This head is 
placed at an angle; not 
necessary towetthehair. 
Not only have those scin¬ 
tillating sprays cleansed, but 
they have massaged as well. 
In all the better class homes being 
built today, showers are part of the 
regular bathroom equipment. And 
where alterations to bathrooms are 
being made or considered, showers 
are always included. 
There are many types of showers. 
To aid you in selecting the right type 
for your home, we have a booklet 
entitled “Once-Used Water.” If 
you are really interested, we’ll be 
glad to send you a copy. In writing 
for “Once-Used Water,” if you have 
a regular plumber, will you please 
mention his name? 
SPEARMAN COMPANY, WILMINGTON, DELAWARE 
ON HOUSE & GARDEN’S BOOKSHELF 
(Continued from page 114) 
poles apart, but they are none the less 
of one and the same family. Between 
them is a wide range of porcelains of 
varying quality which fill the gap and 
lead us gradually from one extreme to 
the other.” 
In disentangling the threads of the 
story of Ming wares Mr. Hobson ex¬ 
hibits a positive genius. He describes 
the growth of the Ming technique and 
its essential features in detail, and in 
a manner that will enable the reader, 
aided by the fine and well-chosen illus¬ 
trations which accompany the text 
(and which do illustrate it!) to dis¬ 
tinguish for himself and to appreciate 
the points of Ming porcelain. Special 
attention has been given by Mr. 
Hobson to surface decoration, as the 
most prominent feature of Ming por¬ 
celain is the use of the pictorial and 
polychrome designs as opposed to the 
monochrome glazes of the earlier, 
Sung (960-1279 A. D.), period. Ming 
is not, says Mr. Hobson a home for 
stray pots, in which every mongrel 
piece, which has no fixed attribution, 
can find a refuge, nor is it a locus 
penetentiae into which anything wrong¬ 
fully posing as Sung or Yuan (1280- 
1637 A. D.) should be degraded when 
found out. 
That Mr. Hobson’s monograph 
authoritatively answers the question 
“What is Ming?” may not please 
everyone for the reason that it is not 
agreeable to some to welcome an at¬ 
tempt to eradicate errors which have 
so many vested interests tangling its 
roots. Mr. Hobson does not hesitate 
to express himself on this as follows: 
“Specimens of this ware (K’ang Hsi 
1662-1722 A. D.) have been bought 
and sold and collected as Ming; and 
auctioneers in selling them to-day are 
chary of giving them another name, 
lest some ojd-fashioned owner should 
charge them with ‘carelessness’. Worse 
still, they have been published as Ming 
in large and expensive books. This is 
particularly true of those fine porce¬ 
lains which have grounds of the 
precious green-black, green or yellow 
enamels; and one has seen these con¬ 
fidently described as Ming even when 
touches of rose-pink and the opaque 
blue of the famille rose appeared 
among their enamels. It has taken 
years of wearisome repetition to 
smother, though not yet finally to 
annihilate the ‘Lowest oft’ myth; and 
it is safe to say that a generation of 
enlightenment will be needed to get rid 
of this particular Ming fallacy.” 
As the preface to Mr. Hobson’s book 
states, “the text is based primarily on 
information obtained from Chinese 
sources and the occasional notes made 
by Europeans who visited China in the 
Ming period. To this must be added 
the deductions which can be made 
from the study of well-authenticated 
specimens, and, of course, the valuable 
work enshrined in the books which are 
mentioned in the bibliography. The 
first twelve chapters are occupied al¬ 
most exclusively by the porcelain of 
Ching-te Chen; the next four by the 
porcelain and pottery made at other 
centres. For the convenience of 
printing, all the Chinese characters 
have been collected together in the 
final chapter, to which reference is 
made in each case. . . .The bulk of the 
illustrations are drawn from private 
collections, but reference is made 
throughout to important examples 
which can be seen in public museums 
... .In the colour-plates an attempt 
is made to illustrate the chief Ming 
colours.” It would be difficult to 
overpraise Mr. Hobson’s book. 
Gardner Teael 
T he Parish-Watson Coleection ; 
OF Mohammedan Potteries. By I 
R. Meyer Riefstahe, Ph. D. Published I 
by E. Weyhe. 1 
There has long been need of a con- \ 
venient reference work on the early j 
Mohammedan potteries of Persia in the : 
10th and in the 11th Century, of Meso- 1 
potamia in the 12th, of the Classic peiri- ! 
od in Persia from the second half of ] 
the 12th Century into the 13th, and of ; 
the Sultanabad potteries dating from i 
the end of the Classic period, a work 
at once scholarly, well-illustrated, em- ; 
bodying the results of 20th Century 
research and a work which would prove ! 
as interesting to the layman as to the i 
connoisseur and collector. Dr. R. : 
Meyer Riefstahl has given us just such ■ 
a work in “The Parish-Watson Col- i 
lection of Mohammedan Potteries”, ' 
one of the most beautifully printed and 
finely illustrated art volumes that have 
appeared in many years. 
European pottery is almost entirely 
derived from the ceramic art of the I 
Near East—the salt-glazed stonewares i 
of Flanders and the lower Rhine are an 
e.xception. Dr. Riefstahl traces the de- i 
velopment of Mohammedan wares in i 
a clearly written and thoroughly in- i 
teresting manner. “The wonderful i 
evolution of pottery in Italy from the ; 
thirteenth to the sixteenth century”, j 
writes he, “is based on Mohammedan I 
inspiration. The polychrome faience i 
and maiolica potteries produced every¬ 
where in Europe during the seven¬ 
teenth century are derived from pot¬ 
teries that traced their descent back to 
the Near East. In the seventeenth 
century the blue-and-white Chinese 
pottery and, on a smaller scale, the 
Ming five-color ware, were copied by 
the Dutch in the diverse Mohammedan 
techniques. Later, these wares were 
made in all European countries. Chi¬ 
nese inspiration did not supersede the 
Mohammedan until the invention of 
porcelain in Meissen in the early 
eighteenth century. Our modern move¬ 
ments in art, with its desire for beau¬ 
tiful color and expressive simplicity, 
reacts again towards the Mohammedan. 
The work of mediaeval Near Eastern 
potters has an especial appeal for us.” 
Not only is this appeal an aesthetic 
one, but the potteries of the Near 
East convey and confirm many im¬ 
portant facts of the history of their 
period. Fortunately American Muse¬ 
ums and private collections are rich in 
examples of Early Mohammedan pot¬ 
teries. Many of these pieces are re¬ 
produced in the superb illustrations in 
Dr. Riefstahl’s volume, whose color 
plates are truly unsurpassed. 
In the earlier pages Dr. Riefstahl 
sketches the general historic back¬ 
ground, skillfully showing the connec¬ 
tion of Mohammedan pottery with its 
Assyrian, Archaemenid, Roman and 
Sassanian predecessors, as well as its 
influence on European art, to which 
reference has already been made. One 
finds in this book vivid pictures of 
Persian civilization in the 12th and in 
the 13th Century, a civilization which 
the decorations on Persian pottery of 
the period depicts or suggests. Not the 
least valuable portion of the book is 
Dr. Riefstahl’s explanation of the tech¬ 
nique and processes employed by these 
early potters. 
“Mohammedan potteries are entirely 
different from both the Greek and the 
Chinese,” writes Dr. Riefstahl. “They 
seldom surprise by beauty of line or 
perfection of material; their sandy 
pastes and glazed earthenwares are very 
brittle, poor and fragile.” 
(Continued on page 118) 
