64 
House & Garden 
OUR ENTIRE COLLECTION OF 
Highest Class Period Furniture and 
Furnishings, Italian Garden Marbles 
and Terra Cottas 
Goods in Process at Our Factories, and 
SEVERAL EUROPEAN COLLECTIONS 
| Which Have Been Held in Abeyance During: the War, 
and Which We Have Agreed to Accept for Sale Will 
Be Offered to the Public as They Arrive. The 
| Whole When All Goods Are In, 
AMOUNTING TO $342,628.00, TO BE 
SOLD FOR 50c ON THE DOLLAR 
. * --- * 
No one interested in Fine Furnishings should 
fail to visit our Showrooms and see this remark¬ 
able and comprehensive Collection. 
The Aimone Manufacturing Company will 
stand hack of every sale made, and purchasers 
may be so assured. 
All prior notices to the Trade are hereby 
withdrawn. An unusual opportunity is afforded 
to Dealers, Decorators and Architects. 
Goods purchased at this sale are not subject 
to return or exchange. 
No articles sent on approval. Out-of-town 
purchases carefully packed at cost. 
TERMS OF SALE NET CASH 
SALE NOW OPEN TO THE PUBLIC 
(jumoric 
157-159 E. 32nd Street 
NEW YORK CITY 
Filial Notice to the Public! 
(jtimonz S^oi^eri td 
157-159 East 32nd Street 
Between Lexington Ave. and Third Ave. $ 
NEW YORK CITY 
■ F.STABI.TSHED 1S7S 
We Vacate Our Present Premises 
On December 31st, 1919 
Kwa-Cho — The Flower and Bird 
Prints of Japan 
(Continued from page 62) 
the cherry flower, never to the plum; 
but womanly virtue and sweetness, on 
the other hand, are compared to the 
plum, never to the cherry.” The Iris 
is an emblem of Victory, the Peony of 
Regal Power, and the Wistaria of Youth. 
The Wistaria and Cuckoo symbolize 
Summer, while the Orange-blossom 
and Cuckoo symbolize the memory of 
departed things. To the Japanese, the 
Falcon is a symbol of generosity and 
nobility of disposition, the Mandarin 
Duck of conjugal felicity, the Wild 
Goose of caution, the Crane of longev¬ 
ity. There are reasons for this based in 
legend. For instance, the Crane is an 
emblem of longevity because the Jap¬ 
anese in centuries past believed this 
bird lived to an age of two thousand 
years, at which time it turned from 
white to black, while at six hundred 
years it gave up the happy indulgence 
of eating and subsisted on fluids only. 
The Japanese assign a plant or flower 
to each of the months,—January has 
the pine, February the plum, March the 
peach, April the cherry, May the wis¬ 
taria, June the iris, July the morning- 
glory, August the lotus, September the 
seven grasses, October the maple, No¬ 
vember the chrysanthemum and De¬ 
cember the camellia. Then there are 
the four flowers for the seasons—Spring 
with the daffodil, Summer the lily, 
Autumnn the lotus or the chrysanthe¬ 
mum, and Winter the crimson plum. 
Autumn also has its separate list of 
plants—lespedeza, blossom of the Su- 
suki, wild pink, yellow valerian, Chi¬ 
nese agrimony, morning-glory and 
Eulalia. 
Illustrating Hokku 
Nearly all the Kwa-Cho prints are 
allusive illustrations to well-known Jap¬ 
anese poems. The Japanese people are 
as fond of poetry as the Italians are 
of music. As the words in the Japanese 
language end in syllables, or in n, a 
variety of rhymes would be impossible, 
hence the Japanese poetry completely 
disregards rhyme. The forms of the 
poems are also confined to alternating 
lines of five and seven syllables, ending 
in the Uta or Tanka form with two 
lines of seven syllables, whether the 
poem is of the usual length of 31 sylla¬ 
bles or more. The epigrammatic Hokku 
or Haikai contains but three lines of 
seventeen syllables in all, arranged S-7-S. 
To know something of the poems that 
accompany the Flower-and-Bird prints 
is one of the delights in collecting them, 
and one curiously neglected by collec¬ 
tors who scratch only the surface of 
the pleasure to be had in knowing all 
about the things they possess. 
On a Kwa-Cho of a cherry branch and 
woodpecker one may chance to find this 
poem by Joso (1663-1704): 
Kitsutzuki no sagasu ya 
Kare-ki wo sagasu 
Hana no naka, 
which one may translate: “Amid the 
blossoms of the cherry forlornly the 
woodpecker seeks a withered branch.” 
On a Kwa-Cho of a flower above which 
is a soaring skylark may appear Sampu’s. 
poem, 
Ko ya matan 
Amari hibari no 
Taka agari, 
"Too high soars the nightingale whose 
little ones left in the nest alone long: 
for her return.” I have a Kwa-Cho in 
which a wagtail is the bird depicted. 
Above appears this poem by the famous 
Boncho, master of the haikai form, 
Vo no naka wa 
Seki-rei no o no 
Him a Mo nashi, 
which may be rendered, “Fleet as the 
day is life. The Wagtail flicks its tail 
and lo, life vanishes!” As an example 
of the Tanka form we find on a Kwa- 
Cho of a cherry branch and bird with 
a great moon in the background, this 
ode of the poet Saigyo (1115-1188): 
Nageke tote 
Tsuki ya wa mono wo 
Omowasuru 
Kakochi-gao naru 
Waga namida kana — 
“Overcome with pity for the world,, 
tears flood my eyes, Ah, can it be the 
moon whose melancholy light has sad¬ 
dened me to-night!” This recalls to 
mind the story of how Saigyo on be¬ 
ing requested to scare a bird from the 
branch of a blossoming cherry, whose 
beauty of color was being interfered 
with by the presence of its jarring 
color note according to the ideas of 
the extravagantly aesthetic master of 
the garden, so vigorously whacked his 
fan against the branch that it killed 
the bird as well as scattered the cherry 
blossoms, much to the master’s displeas¬ 
ure. When Saigyo returned home he 
was met by his wife, who related to 
him a dream she had the night before, 
wherein she dreamed that Saigyo had 
struck her with his fan. So overcome 
was he with remorse at having killed 
the bird, which incident he connected 
with the dream, that he withdrew in 
sadness from the world. 
Perhaps you, too, will come to find 
an interest in the Kwa-Cho prints, and 
although one might write volumes upon 
this single subject, I shall be content if 
I have here hinted at their allurements 
in a manner that will suggest independ¬ 
ent research. 
The Sofa as a Decorative Feature 
(Continued from page 34) 
The French artists may at times have 
developed a little more florid designs 
than did their English competitors, but 
there is grace and delicacy in their types 
of furniture that are lacking in any 
other masters’ work. They are also 
noted for their nicety of proportions, 
thus assuring to them a place in the 
decorative field for all time. 
The taste for luxurious furnishing that 
was brought about during the Restora¬ 
tion, is responsible, in a great measure, 
for many of the upholstered pieces of 
that day. They were featured in the 
homes of the wealthy, more especially 
during the reign of Charles the Second, 
who used for the covering of his house¬ 
hold belongings, fabrics made on French 
or Flemish looms. His training led him 
to demand vivid coloring in furnishings, 
which soon came into vogue. 
For some time the public have been 
demanding better and more appropriate 
furniture for their houses, and much 
of the present-day upholstery has been 
copied from museum pieces or adapted 
from them to conform to the period 
Exploited. It is also an acknowledged 
fact that the type created a century or 
two ago, is absolutely perfect in design 
and execution. 
There is an absence of distinction in 
many of the other American types, 
owing to lack of time spent in their 
designing. 
Let us take as an instance the Classic 
era, where the dignity and simplicity of 
(Continued on page 66) 
