These Liverpool cup-plates, by reason of their pictorial nature, have always been popular with collectors, hence the scarcity of them in antique and curio shops. Private collectors, too, seem loath to part with specimens of such printed wares. The glass cup-plates in native American manufacture are in no sense comparable esthetically with the cup-plates of porcelain and pottery of foreign fabrique. Still they are interesting historically. The majority of the glass cup-plates were crystalline glass, though some were colored—blue, green, yellow, brown, amber, rose, purple, etc. There were many glass factories in America in colonial days as well as in the nineteenth century, and American households were well supplied by them with cup-plates, although in design these were, more often than not, of comparatively little beauty.

Among the patterned cup-plate wares the collector will find, many varieties of the hundreds of varieties of the “Willow” pattern may with reasonable certainty be traced to their various potters; but this is a special study in itself, and one entailing the

surmounting of many difficulties. The amateur need not concern himself with the matter completely in order to enjoy the few examples that may chance to discover themselves to him.

The lovely dark-blue Davenport ware, with designs in the Chinese style, are worth looking for. Ware such as this is familiar to every collector and is coming to be appreciated more generally than formerly. From even a small collection of cup-plates much pleasure may be derived, and the collector need not feel that it is hopeless to start getting together examples of worth. If things are being picked up here and there on the one hand, it is true that, on the other, examples of cup-plates fully worth while are coming to the market as well as leaving it.

CHAPTER VI

CHINTZ

CHINTZ has been called the tapisserie d’Aubusson of the cottage home. Its place in the affections of the collector of antiques and curios has long been secure. For fully fifty years and more lovers of household ancientry have gathered to their appreciation bits of old printed fabrics. Originally the word “chintz” was applied to the printed cotton fabric from India, each piece being called in early days a chint, a name which was derived from the Hindu cint, Bengal cit, and Sanscrit chitra, meaning spotted or variegated. Afterward it came to be applied to the glazed printed calicoes of European and American manufacture, gaily patterned with flowers and birds and figures in diverse colors on a white ground. Its calendered dust-shedding surface made the material a great favorite with careful housewives. Cretonne, the French substitute for chintz, a heavier material, was not introduced until somewhere around the year 1860.

The old-time chintzes are not so easily picked up nowadays. However, there are still excellent chances of occasional “finds,” even in antique-combed America, where, happily, collecting has come to be one of our chief pastimes. I know one collector who has been so fortunate as to obtain many quaint specimens of old printed fabrics at small cost, from an upholsterer in his own town. From time to time chairs and sofas were brought to the upholsterer to be re-covered. Often these had several layers of material under the outer one, and below those of later days he would find, now and then, coverings of old printed cotton fabrics. Among these were a lovely spray-pattern chintz of the Queen Anne period and a hand-print of pastoral design by one R. Jones, manufacturer of Old Ford, London, who produced patterned chintzes about the year 1760. Many of the new printed cotton fabrics have borrowed their patterns from these interesting textile ancestors, though nowadays, in the case of monochrome and duochrome prints, the color effects are somewhat richer than those that obtained in the printed fabrics of the eighteenth century, with their cold chocolate browns, bottle-greens, and ox-blood reds. For the collector there will naturally be an inimitable charm about the original pieces, not to mention their historic interest, while old multicolored chintzes cannot be surpassed in loveliness.

Chintz attained a beauty and a distinction of its own when it attracted the fancy of the fashionables of the eighteenth century. To maintain its favor, it did not rest content with being imitative but developed its own resources with a consequent richness that marks its place among decorative fabrics of the early days.

A sixteenth-century Portuguese writer, by name Odoardo Barbosa, gives us an interesting early reference to printed fabrics: “Great quantities of cotton cloths, admirably painted, are held in highest estimation.” But even some two hundred years before his time the narrators of the romance of commerce were celebrating the chintzes of the Coromandel India coast. Doubtless these printed fabrics of the earlier centuries attained an intricacy and beauty that were long denied the European printed textiles which they inspired. Early examples of the latter are in no way comparable, artistically or technically, with contemporary India prints. Even to-day it would be difficult to improve esthetically on the beautiful printed stuffs that come to us from the countries of the Orient.

We do not know with certainty the circumstances attending the introduction into Europe of the manufacture of printed fabrics. Long before English weavers had undertaken the industry, the printing of fabrics flourished on the Continent. The sixteenth century references to printed cottons in England are so few and so vague that we are virtually without knowledge of the earliest manufactories of these fabrics. We do know, however, that veritable legions of skilled craftsmen in the textile arts settled in the British Isles during the latter half of the seventeenth century. It is to them, probably, that the art owes its introduction there.

The Print Room of the British Museum exhibits a quaint old trade card—itself the impression of a wood-block such as the cloth-printers used—which bears the representation of a cotton-printer at work. In the costume of his time—the reign of James II—he stands before a long, broad Jacobean table, lengthwise of which lies a piece of cloth, one third showing the pattern which the printer has impressed on it. Behind the left end of the table is set a Jacobean stool on which rests a circular basin containing the color, which a boy is waiting to apply to the wood-block for printing. The master printer is in the act of impressing a section of the pattern on the white cloth by means of the wood-block, which he is hammering with a wooden mallet. The text (in script of the period) reads, “Jacob Stamps living at ye sighn of the Callicoes Lineings Silkes Stuffs New or Ould at Reasonable Rates.” This old mode of block-printing obtained for fully two hundred years until the inventive genius of the nineteenth century joined hands with commerce, to the craft’s almost complete discouragement. However, a revival of interest in the old arts was inspired by such enthusiasts as William Morris. The hand-printed fabrics have been restored to favor, and to-day they again play an important part in the decoration of the modern home.

Richmond, Bow, and Old Ford, London, became the earliest centers for printed chintzes in England. The few extant specimens of seventeenth-century chintz show us that the early printed cottons were crude enough. At first more than one color was not attempted. The next step appears to have been to add to the monochrome effect by applying washes of dye, either freehand or stencil application, to the outline pattern. This was done by brushing the color on as required, a process slow, laborious, and fraught with uncertainties. An examination of these early pieces, treasures though they are from an antiquarian point of view, reveals a smudgy appearance resulting from the thickness of the dye-inks with which the patterns were printed. The early materials were very coarse canvas-like cloths.

With the advent of the eighteenth century the cloth for receiving the printed patterns was much improved, and it was not long before finely woven textures supplanted the cruder ones. This greatly facilitated the development of textile color-prints, and the Queen Anne chintzes were in consequence infinitely superior to those of the Charles II, James II, or William and Mary reigns. So popular did these improved patterned fabrics become that the chintz industry not only rivaled that of the silk-weavers but for a time threatened to drive the latter out of business. Indeed, so bitter became the feeling on the subject, between the two crafts, that riots resulted and an appeal was made to Parliament, by the silk-manufacturers of Spitalfields, for protection. History records that the silk-workers were so enraged because Westminster did not immediately forbid the wearing of chintz that the delegation which had carried the petition to London, gave vent to its wrath by tearing off all chintz gowns whose wearers were encountered on the homeward journey. Finally, in 1736, Parliament passed an act prohibiting printed cottons and linens, an act which was soon repealed and followed by an increased vogue in chintz. In France as well it was at one time considered expedient to forbid the manufacture of printed textiles; the restriction extended until 1759.

Authorities seem to be agreed in considering the middle of the eighteenth century as the golden age of old-time printed chintzes. Collectors eagerly seek specimens of this period, though they are all too rare to encourage hope in this direction except for occasional finds. It was during the years around 1760 that multicolored patterns were so beautifully and satisfactorily wrought with superimposed woodblock impressions. Chippendale furniture of the time naturally led to the popularity of Chinese motifs in design, and lovely indeed these were. The intertwining flower sprays that marked the printed fabrics of Queen Anne’s day now gave way to motifs in separated positions. The famille verte, famille rose, and famille noire porcelains of China furnished many a motif for the chintz designers of the seventeenth century. In the Chippendale period buff grounds were introduced, whereas in the earlier chintzes the grounds had been white or untinted.

The third quarter of the eighteenth century witnessed an innovation in the manufacture of printed fabrics. Various mechanical devices were perfected and led to an enormous increase in chintz manufacture. Cotton-printing was taken up in the northern counties and soon the trade center shifted thence from London, its old cradle-town. Engraved copperplates and roller-printing came into use. Still, as has already been said, hand-printing was destined to survive.

The collector of these various printed cottons will find the historical group especially interesting. Take for instance, the “Apotheosis of Washington” or the “Allegory of Washington and Franklin” subjects. In both, the figures of Washington were taken from the famous Trumbull portrait. In the “Apotheosis” chintz the medallions containing portraits of thirteen famous personages of early American history are after engravings by Du Simitière. “William Penn’s Treaty with the Indians” forms the subject of another patterned chintz of especial interest to American collectors. Then there are the later political subjects which the nineteenth century’s early history inspired. The printed kerchiefs also came within the province of the collector of printed cottons. Many of these kerchiefs are especially well adapted for framing. Such as the “Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor” kerchief and the one bearing the title of “The Token or Sailor’s Pledge of Love.” Some of these old kerchiefs and also many examples of printed chintzes of historic interest have found their way into American public collections.

CHAPTER VII

PEWTER

Relics of any age that are so damaged as no longer to command respectful attention have no real excuse for perpetuation unless some highly important historic association attaches to them, for surely mere age or antiquity is not a raison d’être with the sensible. Pewter in a state of dilapidation is no exception to the rule governing the forming of any collection of quality, and no matter what its antecedents, it should present good form to be worthy a place in the worth-while collection, if it is to be regarded with other than the sentiment bestowed upon a chipping from the Great Pyramid or a bottle of dust from Pompeii.

But truly fine pewter has attributes to justify its collecting. In the first place, its decorative quality commends it to notice. Here, however, one must remember that an esthetic taste will recognize this, where one to which the artistic does not appeal will overlook it. Secondly, the story of old pewter, as recorded by Welch Massé and other authorities on the subject, authorities to whom the collector-student is bound to be indebted for much information, is one that lends entertainment to the pursuit of the hobby.

A few years ago a rage for old pewter swept over England and America, following a notable exhibition—the first of its sort—held at Clifford’s Inn, London. This was in 1904. To be truthful one must record the “slump” that followed a few years later. But the true collector who had taken up with pewter remained loyal and enthusiastic, and with the appearance of a number of exhaustive and authoritative works on the history of pewter in America and in Great Britain, there has been a revival of interest in the subject which is bound to be permanent.

English pewter was much simpler than the pewter made in other parts of Europe. This latter often attained to an ornateness from which, fortunately, the pewter of England of the best period is free. The manufacture of pewter in England was governed by the strict rules of the Pewterers’ Company, which, as early as 1503, made it compulsory for the pewterers of England to mark their wares, just as the French pewterers of Limoges had been compelled to do a century earlier. Some of the early English pewter was marked with the heraldic Tudor rose with crown above, although the rose-and-crown is to be found on Scottish and on some Flemish pieces also.

As for the individual marks of the pewterers, these marks were called touches. Each pewterer was compelled to have his separate touch, which was recorded at the Pewterers’ Company halls by impressions struck on sheets of lead. Nearly all the plates of touches in London so formed prior to 1666 were destroyed in the Great Fire, which also consumed nearly all the records, although some of the audit books of the company, dating from 1415, were saved. However, on the lead plates that have survived we find some eleven hundred pewterers’ touches impressed. The earlier touches were somewhat smaller than those of later date; some of them, in fact were tiny. The mark X on old English pewter was permitted on metal of extra quality, as one may learn from one of the company’s rules of 1697, which gives notice that “none may strike the letter X except upon extraordinary ware, commonly called hard metal ware.” The various instances of misdeeds on the part of pewterers who tried to evade the regulations kept the company busy for several centuries. The very last regulation of the Pewterers’ Company concerning touches directs that “all wares capable of a large touch shall be touched with a large touch with the Christian name and surname either of the maker or of the vendor, at full length in plain Roman letters; and the wares shall be touched with the small touch.” A penalty of one penny per pound was exacted from those pewterers who neglected to observe this rule.

While all the facts concerning the marking of old pewter should be diligently studied by the collector, as he gathers them from this source and from that, and will prove of great help, be of interest, and lend zest to collecting, one must not forget that much imitation old pewter has been fabricated with intent to defraud. However, such “fakes” (many of them are very attractive!) usually unblushingly bear upon them the ear-marks of their spurious nature, and the collector soon comes to have command of the knowledge necessary to detect such reproductions.

The material of old pewter is variously compounded. Old fine pewter consisted of 112 pounds of tin to 26 pounds of copper, or—in place of the cooper—of brass. Again, a fine, hard resonant metal was made of 100 parts of tin to 17 of antimony. Distinguished from the fine pewter was common pewter—or “trifle” pewter, as it was called. This was made of 83 parts of tin to 17 parts of antimony, or, with slight variations, of 82 parts of tin to 18 parts of antimony. These various alloys are susceptible of a high polish and of retaining it well in ordinary circumstances some time. This pewter, too, has a good measure of hardness and possesses durability.

Britannia metal must not be confused, as often it is, with the real pewter. It was a late eighteenth-century invention of tin, antimony, copper, and zinc, which lent itself to fashioning on the lathe (a process called “spinning”), having in this respect a decided advantage over the less easily worked pewter. Naturally it did not take long for the new Britannia metal to supersede pewter when it was discovered that Britannia metal could be electroplated.

However, the general use to which pottery and porcelain, tinware and enamel attained had come to have much, too, to do with banishing pewter from general use, though it remained longer in favor in Scotland than in England. “A whole garnish of peutre,” such as a lady of 1487 bequeathed to one of her heirs, no longer came to be deemed fashionable. The master pewterers suffered and, as time went on, found themselves forced out of their trade.

With the waning of the popularity of pewter, vast quantities of it were melted up for solder and for other purposes, which accounts for the scarcity of really fine old pieces. Indeed, such articles as pewter spoons are exceptionally rare; not, as some suppose, because they were so small, but because they were especially serviceable to the traveling tinkers, who could convert them into solder. The English pewter spoon was seldom a small affair, if it ever descended in scale to the size of a dessert spoon. In passing it is well to call the collector’s attention to the fact that pewter spoons are imitated and often placed before buyers as antiques. One needs especially to familiarize himself with the shapes of the bowls and of the handles of the English ones, and with other minutiæ, in order to determine intelligently the authenticity of a piece of pewter of this sort. Other objects are much more common, and ten genuine English pewter spoons would form a goodly collection, considering their exceptional rarity.

The London pewterers guarded their trade secrets jealously. They permitted no outsiders to loiter and watch them at work. As the various molds for pewter objects were made at great expense, it was the custom for the guilds of the Pewterers’ Company to own these and to let them out. This accounts for the various standard shapes of articles, made by quite different pewterers. Lists of such molds, dating as far back as 1425, have survived the vicissitudes of time and throw much interesting light on the subject. Let the pewter-collector remember that pewter objects appear to have come into vogue as a substitute for silver, and that pieces of old pewter usually follow in form the shapes of the contemporary silver objects of like use. Indeed, a study of old English silver will prove of great help to the pewter-collector in solving problems of chronology. One may not attempt to collect a whole garnish of pewter of a single period—a complete garnish consisting of twelve platters, twelve dishes, and twelve saucers—but it is quite possible, without an appalling outlay. On the other hand, unless it is a “find,” one may have to pay forty or fifty dollars for a fine and authentic early English pewter spoon.

Whatever one collects in the way of old pewter of any period and of any country, it should be displayed by itself and not mixed with silver, glass, and other objects. As to what dealers sometimes call “silver pewter,” let not the unwary collector suppose that it is more than pewter of a fine quality (if the object proves to be that!). Silver cannot enter into the composition of true pewter, as it takes 950° C. to melt it, while the tin, melting at 230° C., would volatilize too greatly to combine with the precious metal before the silver even reached the melting-point. Perhaps because the finest pewter takes a silver-like polish it was originally called “silver pewter,” without intent to mislead.

Another point worth remembering is that, although all sorts of objects have been fashioned of pewter—even a copy of the Portland Vase has been fashioned in this metal—the collector will find very few old English pewter tea-pots. Fully eighty-five per cent. of the tea-pots passing as pewter are, I should say, either Britannia or Ashberry metal. Very early ecclesiastical pieces of English make are rare, too. The Council of Westminster forbade the fashioning of church vessels of pewter, as it was thought not sufficiently precious to be dedicated to such use. But in poorer communities exceptions must have been made, as we know of its use in churches in 1194. The Council of Nîmes (1252) and the Council of Albi (1254) in France had later to take up a like matter, then permitting pewter in the manufacture of objects for church use under certain restrictions.

Not only in early times (by the year 1290 Edward I had accumulated three hundred pieces of pewter of fine quality) but as late at 1820, when George IV had pewter placed upon the table at the coronation feast, pewter has enjoyed the protection of royalty, which fact adds not a little to its historic interest. But let the collector beware of certain pewter plates with arms, portraits, etc., stamped in high relief, which are now and then to be met with, marked with a crowned rose and N. D. in the upper part of the crown, as well as a pellet in the center of each petal (except in the center of the upper one, where there is a six-pointed mullet). And let him beware of the marked pieces distinguished by a St. George or by a St. Michael and a dragon in a beaded circle and the letters A. I. C., as these are not old pieces but appear to have been fabricated as “ornamental” antiques.

Of course there are many other tricks resorted to by the unscrupulous, but the real collector, generally speaking, happily possesses that instinct which enables him to learn his lessons quickly and inexpensively; and there are plenty of reputable antique shops wherein genuine things are to be found. As a matter of fact, the writer has found that even where certain dealers have offered spurious objects as genuine, they have done so through ignorance rather than through cupidity. A dealer will usually be only too glad to have a collector who knows point to him mistakes in attribution. Most of the small shops are run by men who have little time for study, and who are far more likely to be imposed upon themselves than to attempt to impose upon their customers. After all, the dealer could not live without customers, and the only safe way to hold any customer is to treat him honestly.

Early in the eighteenth century the lathe began to be developed, so any specimens of pewter disclosing lathe marks would suggest a date subsequent to that period. The pewter formed by the “spinning” process is the most modern of all. The pewter collector should be careful how he polishes his pewter, as this ware should never be subjected to rubbing with brick-dust and like vigorous usage.

CHAPTER VIII

SAMPLERS

Samplers are among the most intimate of collectable old things.

How patiently the little fingers toiled over these records of their wonderful (even if enforced) application! Truly, samplers are the needle-craft primers of yesterday. We have only to recall an old English play, “Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” probably the very first of the earlier English folk comedies, to understand the great importance attached to the needle. This play, written about 1560 (and attributed to John Still, Bishop of Wells, and formerly Master of St. John’s College, Cambridge, where it was first produced) shows how, during the period of its conception, a steel needle was treasured as few family treasures of to-day, and so when Gammer Gurton lost hers—the only one she possessed—the misfortune took on the importance of genuine calamity. As collectors of samplers and writers on the subject of samplers have been baffled in trying to discover why no samplers dated or positively known to have been worked before the middle of the eighteenth century are extant, this clue to the probable reason which we find in “Gammer Gurton’s Needle” is of interest; the fact is that as needles were so uncommon and such treasured possessions they were not to be entrusted to tiny fingers. Later, when invention turned its attention to needle-making, needles became common enough. I imagine many a little girl of the eighteenth century wished that needles had never been “born”!

Very fine samplers containing both names and dates prior to 1800 are not to be found at every turn. Notwithstanding this, the sampler-collector need anticipate no discouraging difficulty in getting together examples for a fairly representative collection. It is only in comparatively recent years that we have discovered the value of old samplers as excellent decorative accessories on the walls of a room in which old pieces of furniture are placed. Samplers may be mounted and framed for hanging on a wall as a picture might be, and I know of few objects in the line of antiques that seem so appropriate for use in this manner for adorning the walls of a bedchamber.

While it is not always an easy matter to assign undated samplers to their exact periods, approximate dates may without great trouble be determined. Naturally, the earliest examples were more utilitarian than ornamental in conception, more like a mere example of stitchery of various sorts—a leaf from the scrap-book of needlework, as it were. Later, pattern and design and pictorial composition were evolved. Likewise, the earlier samplers seem to have been longer and narrower in proportion than later ones. Threads of gold and silver are to be found in needle-work of the Elizabethan and the Jacobean period, where we should not look for them in the Georgian. Again, there are characteristics of pattern that clearly denote the embroiderer’s time. The design of the letters of the alphabet embroidered on a sampler also forms a clue, inasmuch as it shares in common with contemporary dated, printed, and engraved lettering the more distinctive period characteristics of the latter. The earliest date of an alphabet sampler is, I believe, 1643; of a sampler with a motto, 1651; of a sampler having a border, 1726; of a representation of a house, 1763; of numerals, 1655; of a verse, 1696; 1728 has been suggested as the approximate date of the introduction of mustard-colored canvases on which the samplers were worked.

“Sad sewers made bad samplers,” said Lord de Tabley in “The Soldier of Fortune,” but the wonder is that the little fingers of yesterday should have acquired skill not only in one sort of embroidery but in the varied stitches often seen in a single sampler remarkable for its perfect and exquisite handiwork. One is almost aghast, for instance, at the task suggested by John Taylor’s “The Needles Excellency,” where one reads:

With the infinitude of stitches it is not necessary here to be concerned, although the enthusiast in sampler-collecting will find the study of stitches helpful just as the expert will find it highly necessary. As there is much confusion in the nomenclature, there will be many stumbling-blocks, but the pursuit will be worth while. The earliest seventeenth-century samplers of lace-like appearance were worked in cut-and-drawn embroidery, with various additional lace stitches. Then there was the eyelet-stitch, damask-stitch, the backstitch (these three were used for alphabets), darning-stitches, tent-stitches, and tapestry-stitch (unusual) and so on.

The foundation of early samplers was the hand-woven linen, either unbleached or bleached. Sometimes this was almost as coarse as canvas and again of closely woven texture. Linen thread or silk (somewhat loosely twisted) was employed for the stitchery. The harsh yellow linen of early eighteenth-century samplers came into vogue toward the end of the first quarter of the century, but was soon discarded. Unfortunately, tannery cloth was much in vogue at the end of the eighteenth century. This unattractive material seemed especially devised to satiate the appetites of moths! Most of the tannery-cloth samplers are worked in silk. The muslin-like tiffany cloth was occasionally used before 1800 for small and fine samplers. Later the coarse linens came into fashion. The crudely dyed threads marked the decline of the sampler from about 1800. Then cotton canvas and Berlin wool completed the fall of this one of the gentlest arts.

The early American samplers had, of course, their ancestry and inspiration in English samplers, with which I think they vie in interest and attractiveness. Surely there could be no more delightful wall decoration for a colonial house than one of the early American samplers! These are less commonly found than English samplers and American collectors naturally give them preference.

That the little misses of olden times managed at so tender an age to produce such handiwork seems almost amazing. Little girls of five and six years achieved marvels in sampler stitchery as extant examples abundantly proves.

Poetry and samplers seem to have been good friends. In the second scene of the third act of “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and in the fourth scene of the second act of “Titus Andronicus,” Shakspere alludes to samplers. So does Milton in “Comus,” and Sir Philip Sidney in “Arcadia.” If those blest bards could but scan the verse of some of the sampler-makers! Here is one which, in its way, is a gem typical of task and talent:

There is rhyming for you! And may we not imagine that beneath those sentiments lurked a fine humor?

CHAPTER IX

WAX PORTRAITS

Wax portraiture is one of the arts of the past so little known to many collectors that examples of it are not often met with in American collections. Ancient writers have given us a hint of the antiquity of wax portraiture, not only in round sculpture, but in relief. Moreover, we know that the Greek artists in Egypt were adepts in painting portraits by means of powdered colors applied with rush brushes to slabs of cedar-wood covered with wax, into which coating the color could easily be worked when the sun’s rays were permitted to soften the wax. Many of these ancient wax panels are extant, and they appear very much like paintings in oil colors upon wood.

We know that Lysistratus, who lived in the time of Alexander the Great, executed small busts in colored wax, and this is the earliest use of the medium in color mentioned by history. Works of this sort were forerunners of the later colored wax portraits of the seventeenth and of the eighteenth century, with the old custom, which Pliny mentions, of having ancestral portraits in the households of the Romans as connecting links in the progress of the art. Moreover, the Romans were wont to carry in funeral procession waxen portraits of the departed, as a curious custom clinging to civilization as late as the seventh century in England. Indeed, a visitor to Westminster Abbey may see the old wax form of Queen Elizabeth gorgeously attired, which was carried in the cortège at her burial!

More cheerful, on the other hand, are the remarkable wax portraits in relief—some white or monochrome and others colored—which were modeled (“painted” would perhaps be a better word) by the early artists of the cinquecento—Leone Leoni, Antonio Abondio in Italy, later by Guillaume Dupré and Antoine Benoit in France, and then by Isaac Gosset, Eley, George Mountstephen, Joachim Smith, S. Percy, and Peter Ruow and others in England.

How the ancients prepared their materials for working in wax is not recorded, but probably they anticipated all of the processes employed by the medieval artist in such portraiture, powdering the color, mixing in oil, and adding it to pure wax in the state of fusion. To Pastorino of Siena has been accredited the honor of having invented the particular wax paste used by himself and his successors in representing the hair and the skin.

In the sixteenth century the art of wax portraiture was practised in Nuremberg and reached a high state of development under Casper Hardy, prebendary of the Cologne cathedral.

Among the most interesting wax portraits by French artists are those from the hand of François Clouet, in the sixteenth century, which are among the treasures of the Cluny Museum, Paris. Under Louis XIV wax portraiture attained so important a place in France that we find Antoine Benoit given the royal appointment of “Unique sculpteur en cire colorée.”

No material is more responsive to the artist’s touch than wax, immortalizing as it does his individual handling in a manner peculiarly its own. Perhaps no English portraitist has given evidence of greater ability than did S. Percy, whose wax portraits, as well as those by Peter Ruow, are prized by collectors. Artists in wax portraiture were not unknown in America during colonial times. Among the names of early wax-portrait artists in America that of Patience Wright stands forth prominently. She was born in 1725, the daughter of Mr. Lowell, a Quaker of Bordentown, New Jersey. When twenty-three years of age she married Joseph Wright, and some years later was left a widow with three children. In 1772 she went to England. Already she had become noted for her excellent work in portraiture. A bust of Thomas Penn was one of her earliest works of the London period and the wax-portrait of Washington from her hand, modeled after an original from life by her son, Joseph Wright, is now in the possession of Dr. Richard H. Harte of Philadelphia. This is the work which she mentions in a letter to Washington preserved in the Library of Congress:

To this Washington replied:

Wax portraiture almost died out in the nineteenth century, but it is of interest to note its recent revival by Ethel Frances Mundy and other skilful artists.

Good old Giorgio Vasari, the gossipy chronicler of the Old Masters to whom we owe nearly all of our knowledge of the lives of the early Italian painters, wrote an interesting treatise on the technique of art from which the following is quoted, as being of further interest to the collector of wax portraits:

This was the wax probably used for the backgrounds. Vasari continues:

CHAPTER X

HAND-WOVEN COVERLETS

From colonial times the art of weaving coverlet by hand was practised wherever wool and industry suggested. The overseas traditions were faithfully carried out by the housewives of New England, and then southward. There came to be modifications in the old weaving patterns as the ingenuity of those skilled in this handicraft developed. Indeed, an enormous variety of patterns was evolved. Proportionately few of the very old hand-woven coverlets have survived—precious they are to the collector of household antiques!—but even these show remarkable pattern variations. Of course, the time came when machine-weaving supplanted hand-work, and before long coverlets hand-woven were of the discarded arts, so far as the New England states were concerned. A few years ago, however, the industry of making hand-woven coverlets was revived, for the art had in a measure, fortunately, continued in the Southern mountains of the country. Many of the old-time coverlets were carefully copied and hundreds of new patterns also were devised. These later hand-woven coverlets are, many of them, of great beauty and intrinsically worth having, even when one can also acquire the earlier specimens, for the modern hand-woven coverlet is more often than not indicative of the same artistic spirit with which the colonial housewife endowed her work.

Blue-and-white is the usual combination in the old coverlets, though many of them introduced other colors, brown being the most commonly used after blue. This blue was home-dyed—with indigo—and time has lent to many of the old coverlets a coloring comparable to that of the blues of Chinese porcelains.

With the aptitude for determining the details of the fabrics, of which every woman seems intuitively to be possessed, the woman collector will in all probability be able to distinguish a truly old coverlet from one of modern fabrication. In a few instances some unscrupulous antique-dealer may claim antiqueness for an obviously modern coverlet, but the discriminating collector will be comparatively safe.

The collector will find old coverlets interesting as hangings, lounge-covers, and portières, as well as when put to their original uses. Fortunate indeed is one who chances to acquire a signed and dated example. Such a discovery leads the happy collector to haunt genealogical libraries until he has unearthed the mystery of its owner’s place in history; for in the good old days the weaver was probably the owner as well.