44 
House & Garden 
OIL JARS AS GARDEN ORNAMENTS 
Their Romantic Origin and Ancient Garden Use Make Them Adaptable 
to the Modern Landscape Picture 
E. ARMITAGE McCANN 
Copied from an ancient 
Egyptian alabaster jar 
is this reproduction. 
Courtesy of Galloway 
Terra jpotta Company 
Oil jars, empty or with 
flo.wers, are most effec¬ 
tive when placed as ac¬ 
cents on terrace walks 
or to mark garden stet>s 
Among the garden stat¬ 
uary that Paul Mans hip 
designed for Charles 
Schwab’s■ garden at Lo- 
retto, Pa., is an oil jar 
executed in a' pewter¬ 
like material 
T HE most famous oil 
jars are perhaps those 
of the Arabian Nights 
entertainment, in which the 
forty thieves were hidden 
and duly killed with boil¬ 
ing oil by Morgani; or the 
widow’s cruse, which Elija 
caused to fail not, in the 
time of drought and famine. 
But when one thinks of 
oil jars, the vision of an old 
formal Roman 'garden first 
comes to one’s mind—angu¬ 
larly divided by low, square 
hedges with the loggia or 
summerhouse, a fountain 
for coolness, and a tree or 
two for shade. The oil jar, 
point in the ground, con¬ 
tains a choice plant, or is 
raised to show the beauty 
of its line. It is natural 
that one should find many 
of them in Italy, as, until 
recently, they were in 
daily use for the storage of oils and wines. 
Pottery is, of course, one of the prehistoric 
arts, most likely the first, but as far as we 
know the Egyptians were the earliest people 
to use glaze and so make vessels suitable for 
containing oil or other liquids. They made 
them both plain and decorated with brilliant 
glazes glowing with iridescent color. 
Oil jars were much used by the Greeks, and 
some of the best and earliest examples we 
have were found in Crete, which 
In the garden of G. 
S. Van Gilder at 
Knoxville, T enn., a 
tall pottery jar stands 
at each end of the lily 
pool 
productive olive oil country 7 . 
The Roman jars, though 
best known, because they 
are more numerous, were 
much inferior to the Greek 
and were largely imitations 
of metal work. They were 
called Doliums and were 
made on a wheel, or built 
on a frame, if very large. 
The art of making them 
beautifully was lost from 
the fall of the Roman Em¬ 
pire until the 12th Century. 
It is the Persian crafts¬ 
men of the 10th and 11th 
Centuries who have given 
us our finest examples; as 
in the other arts, they were 
preeminent. They were 
masters of decorative design 
and color and possessed a 
sense of the forms proper 
to clay, so that they made 
true clay shapes and not 
imitations of metal work. 
Nowadays when beauty of form and line 
is being increasingly recognised and appreci¬ 
ated, we are using original designed jars or 
reproductions of older ones from our museums, 
for decorating our gardens and houses. They 
are placed in positions where their flowing 
lines will serve to relieve a monotony of plane 
surfaces and angles, where their cool colors, 
standing out against a dark background of 
verdure or glowing or soft color, will give 
(Continued on page 66) 
The curves of these 
jars afford a pleasant 
relief to the straight 
lines of the pool’s rim 
and the precision of 
the lattice 
: ' • ' ,o«LA- 
Hewitf 
