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the new york magazine program HOME IN MODERN DRESS In Which We Touch Glasses By ELISE JERARD CONSIDER, ladies and gentlemen, this business of Looking Backward. A prophylactic pastime, in many respects, but not to the neglect of looking around. Which brings us to today's text, the grandeurs of modern glass and a few shining examples. Not even the most melancholy critic of contemporary arts can deny that in the field of glass making and cutting we have made appreciable progress since the days when the Phoenicians turned the first tumbler and ever since those sacred times when our lusty forefathers in the land of the wet and the free quaffed from glasses quaint, glamorous with antiquity, but often chunkily clumsy. Right here and now we call your attention to such a dazzling display of strictly modern glass as should send aesthetic shivers down your covetous spine. There are the specimens of superlative skill that come out of the Orrefors works, Sweden. These craftsmen have developed distinctive new techniques that render their products at once pellucid, lovely toned, and tough as it is sparkling. One of the striking and strengthening devices is to make glass double, a delicate sandwich with a vacuum filling on the thermos principle. Rare reds, as brilliant as the Bohemians ever secured and more subtle, are achieved by the infusion of gold. Graceful forms in elusive hues- water greens, violet blues, dusky clarets with dainty designs, all of which must be seen, to coin a phrase, to be appreciated. The great individual giant in the modern glass realm is a German, one Richard Sussmuth. He does virtually everything conceivable in this craft. He uses glass as a medium for sculpture; he makes stained glass, panels and windows with a modern feeling- great things he creates, like punch bowls cunningly cut and costly; and small things eminently purchasable. For example, you may have one of his glass trays with a feathery engraving for a mere seven dollars; tumblers of pure crystal with Diana and stag a la mode for two fifty per. Or a variety of enchanting grace notes in glass- and engraved mustard pot, art in miniature- olive, almond or whatnot dishes, with the mark of a master. In similar style there are small Bavarian bowls, clear glass, edged with blue and Pierrotically dotted with tiny gold stars. Bits of bright beauty for whimsical fingertips. Of course, modern Venice sustains her shining tradition. Among much that is gaudy are simple masterpieces. Faultless is the collection a certain selective shop that boasts the rare reds and poignant blues and greens in bubble jars, bowls and glasses with frilled bases, deeper hued, as harmonious in color as in bell-like ring. The ring, of course, is the ear test. Lead glass rings richer-- Venetian being the exception, a rare lime glass. The touch test refers to the weight and keen-edged feel. Lead glass has more heaviness and sharpness of the edges. By the eye you judge the clarity, the sparkle, shade and life and rim protection. These are the A B C's for the glass fancier. [20] mansfield theatre LETTERS Salute from Java Sirs: Every now and then I find in your publication where your attention-calling readers have checked up on some erroneous statements previously appeared, and your deep contrition therefor. The marvel of it is not that you are wrong, but that you are wrong so seldom. With the entire world to call upon each week for information, it seems remarkable that you are able to give such meaty and concise reports. Many times we on the ground, in such places as China, have not the first hand news you give to your readers. Whoever your correspondents are, I salute them as a body... W. J. Garrity Soerabaia Thanks from India Sirs: I am an Indian sojourner in the Western Hemisphere.... After reading your article on our leader (Mahatma Gandhi) and his present activities in India (TIME, March 31, et. seq.), I have to congratulate you most heartily on the thorough grasp and clear understanding you manifest of the true spirit, morals and significance of our movement, as also on the coining, as only an American can, of the very happy and expressive term "Recpolism"* to convey in a word to your readers a comprehensive idea of the movement. As an Indian I beg to express my gratitude to you, sir, for this enlightening article which is so different to the unconscious or deliberate misrepresentation of facts or the stupid jibes or fun poking that I have seen in some English journals on the subject. I believe freedom... will be accelerated and the sufferings... mitigated, if we can rally to our side the moral support of the world and especially of nations like your own with a traditional love of liberty. As you rightly assert, the further development of the present struggle will see the tightening up of the British censorship on all true news, and then the outside world will be fed on only such distorted and whitewashed versions of Indian happenings and affairs as will best suit the powers that be... T. P. Däver San Francisco, Calif. * To denote a religious-economic-political movement. Taste Test Sirs: Your "taste test" suggested by the Subscriber Lyman Richards of Boston reminds me of a sworn-to-be-true story heard recently at dinner. It does not concern Fiddler Kreisler, nor a Blind sign and cup hung on any famed musician. But it is a thrust, I think, against Mr. Richards' complaint of a widespread musical hypocrisy and his statement that people "impressed by the eminence of artists claim to appreciate what they neither enjoy nor understand." The story was told me by a friend of Jascha Heifetz. Not long ago it seems Heifetz was dining in a little restaurant near Paris in which there played a small, very ordinary orchestra. Halfway through the evening Heifetz got up and offered to take the violinist's place. So enthusiastically was he, an unknown, received that the manager immediately offered him a job at something like $2 an evening. What says Subscriber Richards to this? But perhaps the 'musical hypocrisy' he means is limited to Boston. Herbert M. Franklin New York City Sirs: ...I am forwarding under separate cover a sales booklet which came into my hands recently. I cannot vouch that this test actually took place, but should it only be an impressive piece of high pressure sales talk, I believe it smacks of the truth so far as it concerns monetary returns. BUT, should Artist Kreisler stand on the corner of 42nd Street and Broadway in the guise of a beggar and play the "Caprice Viennois" I predict that he would assemble one of the biggest listening audiences every to crowd this corner, until he was chased by Whalencops. E.S. Candidus Brooklyn, N.Y. The booklet (an advertisement of Winchester Repeating Arms Co.) told of a "noted opera singer" who wagered he could earn $10 per hour by street singing. Disguised as a humble Italian, he began in the courtyard of a luxurious Manhattan apartment house. In one half-hour he got 27c.—Ed. TIME The Weekly Newsmagazine 15c — At All Newsstands — 15c [21]
