PLATE XXXII

     In the illustration five of the four vases, four with covers and
     one without, are reproductions of old pharmacy jars, once used by
     all Italian druggists to keep their drugs in.

The really old ones with artistic worth are vanishing from the open market into knowing dealers’ or collectors’ hands, or the museums have them, but with true Latin perspicuity, when the supply ceased to meet the demand, the great modern Italian potters turned out lovely reproductions, so lovely that they bring high prices in Italy as well as abroad, and are frequently offered to collectors when in Italy as genuine antiques.

[Illustration:  Italian Reproductions in Pottery after Classic Models]

CHAPTER XL

ITALIAN POTTERY

About nine years ago, an American connoisseur, automobiling from Paris to Vienna, the route which lies through Northern Italy, quite by chance, happened to see some statuettes in the window of a hopeful, but unknown, potter’s little shop, on a wonderful, ancient, covered bridge.  You, too, may have seen that rarely beautiful bridge spanning the River Brenta, and have looked out through broad arches which occur at intervals, on views, so extraordinary that one feels they must be on a Gothic tapestry, or the journey just a dream!  One cannot forget the wild, rushing river of purplish-blues, and the pines, in deep greens, which climb up, past ruined castles, perched on jutting rocks, toward snow-capped mountain peaks.  The views were beautiful, but so were the statuettes which had caught our collector’s eye.  He bought some, made inquiries as to facilities for reproduction at these potteries, and exchanged addresses.  The result was that to-day, that humble potter directs several large factories, which are busy reviving classic designs, which may be found on sale everywhere in Italy and in many other countries as well as America.

CHAPTER XLI

VENETIAN GLASS, OLD AND MODERN

If you have been in Venice then you know the Murano Museum and its beguiling collection of Venetian glass, that old glass so vastly more beautiful in line and decoration than the modern type of, say, fifteen years ago, when colours had become bad mixtures, and decorations meaningless excrescences.

A bit of inside information given out to some one really interested, led to a revival of pure line and lovely, simple colouring, with appropriate decorations or none at all.  You may already know that romantic bit of history.  It seems that when the museum was first started, about four hundred years ago, the glass blowers agreed to donate specimens of their work, provided their descendants should be allowed access to the museum for models.  This contract made it a simple matter for a connoisseur to get reproduced exactly what was wanted, and what was not in the market.  Elegance, distinguished simplicity in shapes, done in glass of a single colour, or in one colour with a simple edge in a contrasting shade, or in one colour with a whole nosegay of colours to set it off, appearing literally as flowers or fruit to surmount the stopper of a bottle, the top of a jar, or as decorations on candlesticks.