To the making of tiles America has contributed the excellent dull glazed Grueby, the symbolic and picturesque Moravian, and the richly colored Pewabic, Rookwood and Batchelder.

Among the simpler types of hand thrown pottery are the Byrdcliff, the Marblehead, the Dedham, Newcomb and Van Brigle. The Arequipa, executed for philanthropic purposes in California, the Paul Revere of Boston, and the Sharon of New York have also many points of merit.

We are learning to appreciate the value of beautifully formed, textured and colored pottery in decoration and its use is doing away with the trivial and useless things which cluttered the homes of the last generation.

Among the rarest and most difficult types of Ceramic art, the Persian and Chinese glazes of the Durant Kilns and the high fire porcelain of Mrs. Robineau are undoubtedly the best work of its kind being done in any country.

In decorated porcelains we are working in both the under- and the overglaze. Underglaze is accomplished by painting on the pottery body before firing. Of this type the well-known Rookwood ware is an example. Overglaze is the painting upon the surface after the glazing has been applied. This type of work was formerly known as china painting; but between the superb decoration in brilliant enamels of Dorothea Warren O'Hara and the old-time painted naturalistic roses and violets there is, indeed, a world of difference.

Modern tableware decorated by individual artists has done much to revolutionize taste in that direction and is beginning to bring back to the use of china much of its old piquancy and charm.

In the working of metal, America holds its own with the older countries. "I know of two workers in forged and wrought iron," says Mr. Ralph Adams Cram, "who are blood brothers of Adam Kraft; three goldsmiths who would gladden the heart of a Cellini."

For many years American architects failed to appreciate the value of hand-wrought iron, and the efforts to preserve the art in this country were beset with great difficulties. Now, both in the interior and exterior of the house, its distinctive values are beginning to be appreciated.

In hand-wrought silver American silversmiths have nobly carried on the traditions of the Colonial craftsmen. Although we did not escape from the aberration of water coolers propelled by flying angels, cake plates supported by dragons and sea monsters, and bowls and goblets so contorted with relief and chasing that not an inch of the original surface was visible to the eye, the beauty of the simple hammered surface has been rediscovered and is nowhere handled with a greater feeling for form, texture, and modeling than by our contemporary master silversmiths.

The decorative use of silver, as well as its artistic conception, has undergone strange abuses. While the effect of a few well-chosen pieces against a dark wood background has great charm, an assemblage of commercial silver has little more decorative value than a display of household china or linens.

The gross misconception that "Mission" was characteristic American furniture is fortunately being refuted by the interesting and individual modern pieces which have recently been put on the market. Old English cottage furniture and the peasant types of many countries are the inspirations for many excellent modern creations, as well as the classic historic models.

In the larger arts of stained glass and mural painting, the foundations of a new and vital development are apparent.

The pictorial idea which has dominated the making of glass during the last hundred years is gradually giving way to a more decorative treatment. Among the younger school of stained glass artists there is a noticeable return to the simpler and stronger ideals of the earlier periods, but with a new spirit and vitality.

From both pre-Raphaelitism and exaggerated allegory, American mural painting is emancipating itself and perhaps striking out to a more genuinely decorative development than it has ever realized before. In the remarkable ceiling of tropical birds and foliage painted by Mr. Robert Chanler for the trellis room of the New York Colony Club one sees many new possibilities for an art which seemed to have reached its former high water mark in the depicting of cupids and cherubim sprinkled over an azure sky.

The ravages of materialism appear, after all, negligible when we come to view the work of some of our American enamelers. All the romance of old Florence and of the Gallic and Celtic nations seem mingled in the clear translucent depths, in the fluidity and colorful charm of the caskets and boxes and little objects of intimate use turned out by their brain and fingers.