HOUSE AND GARDEN 
December, 1910 
Framing and a special wooden shelf molding 
have greatly improved the decorative quality 
of this bas-relief 
The illustration 
at the head of 
this article gives 
a suggestion as 
to the appear¬ 
ance a repro¬ 
duction of a por¬ 
tion of the 
Parthenon frieze 
would have if it 
were incorpor¬ 
ated completely 
in the design for 
the chimney - 
breast. In the 
room illustrated 
the frieze is 
merely hung on 
the wall over 
the high mantel. 
It would have 
been possible, 
no doubt, to se¬ 
lect a stock size 
of this same 
frieze, measur¬ 
ing approximately the length needed for the chimney projection, 
and then to have designed the mantel shelf for a proper height 
to include the cast exactly between shelf and ceiling beams. A 
strip of the dark stained woodwork finishing each end would 
have completed an effective 
arrangement. Even with 
the size frieze that has been 
employed, it would be an 
easy matter to run two cas¬ 
ing strips up along the ver¬ 
tical edges, with two other 
strips at the corners, leaving 
two plaster panels flanking 
the reproduction of this 
classic bit of sculpture. 
In the same way there is 
often an opportunity of this 
sort offered by which a plas¬ 
ter cast panel may be set in 
a frame over the head of a 
doorway. 
Casts of fairly large size, 
particularly when tinted in 
the well known ivory finish, 
seem to appear at their best 
against a brick background. 
One of the most effective 
bits of this decoration I have 
ever seen was a full-size re¬ 
production of a della Robbia 
bambino, tinted in its orig¬ 
inal colors and set in a shal¬ 
low panel of brickwork at 
the end of a paved terrace. 
A hood made of the dark 
creosoted cypress, with 
which the exterior of the 
building was trimmed, shel¬ 
tered the cast from the 
weather. 
These bambini, by the way, 
The central mantel-shelf feature is the Portrait 
of a Neapolitan Princess, replicas in dark 
stained wood costing $100 in Italy 
A panel in very low relief representing a hawking party in the time of 
Robin Hood, proceding to the tournament 
Two ways of using the Winged Victory. The use of plaster casts on 
stands and tables usually detracts from the livableness of a room 
have a peculiar 
interest to those 
who love the 
bas-relief. Made 
of terra cotta by 
one of the great¬ 
est sculptors of 
the fifteenth cen¬ 
tury, they were 
covered with an 
opaque stanni¬ 
ferous glaze in 
which the colors 
were mixed as 
in enamel. The 
figured reliefs 
are usually 
white against a 
b bu e back¬ 
ground, but of¬ 
ten show a va¬ 
riety of colors. 
Impatient of the 
slow processes 
of sculpture in 
marble, and per¬ 
haps weary of the monotony of its whiteness, Lucca della Robbia 
re-discovered and taught to his family an art which for two cen¬ 
turies was to be monopolized by those who bore his name. A 
reproduction, in the white, of one of the bambini, in its full-size 
oval, four feet high, may 
be bought for about $8 ; there 
is a smaller size at $i. 
Another plaster cast in 
favor with those who know 
their Italy is the Portrait of 
a Neopolitan Princess, from 
the original marble by Fran¬ 
cisco di Laurana, now in the 
Royal Museum, Berlin. In 
Italy one finds copies of the 
beautiful head carved skill¬ 
fully from wood, finished 
very dark, with perhaps a 
bit of gilding. For a really 
good replica in wood one 
pays as much as a hundred 
dollars. The cleverness with 
which the plaster modelers 
reproduce these wooden ex¬ 
amples in plaster is astonish¬ 
ing. They show every detail 
of grain and even the natural 
checks of the old block, and 
may be had at $15. In the 
white the plaster reproduc¬ 
tions are obtainable at $5. 
The cost of all these 
plaster casts is low when one 
considers their value in dec¬ 
oration as compared with 
good pictures. The Winged 
Victory, for instance, costs 
but $10 in the three-feet 
height, and $5 for a smaller 
size. For sections of the 
Parthenon frieze two feet 
