ONCE upon a time an old gentleman moved into the house across the street. Whence he came no one knew, no one ever came to know. His name was Kyttyle—Major Kyttyle. As midsummer marked his advent, he probably felt properly attired when he appeared on the lawn that first day, to survey his new domain, in a basket-shaped hat of straw and a suit of East-India-looking stuff. Major Kyttyle’s face was seamed and bronzed. I imagine his hair would have been as white as the snows of Dhawalaghiri had it not been as extinct as the HippuritidÆ, revealing a shining pink dome as reflecting as the pool of Anuradhapura at sunset, visible as now and then he would lift his hat to mop his brow.

Major Kyttyle’s installation was followed by the arrival of countless foreign-looking trunks and boxes and the neighborhood naturally wondered what on earth the major had in them. Mrs. Minch was of the opinion that a lone man could have no use for such a lot of truck. Mrs. Bittles ventured the opinion that Major Kyttyle might not be so “lone” after all; he might have a family and it might arrive later. “Families” usually did. Mrs. Minch only sniffed. “I can tell a bachelor anywhere,” she declared with conviction. And she could.

However, although no family came upon the scene, a whole menagerie arrived one by one, from distant parts, to keep the major company and to scandalize the town. There was a pet monkey, a poll parrot, a Persian cat, and a globe of diaphanous-tailed goldfish the like of which had never been dreamed of thereabouts and which quite put to rout the two gilded minnows owned by the Pickhams, which till then had been the only exotics in the district and had lent a certain distinction to the Pickhams to which, socially, their breeding did not entitle them.

As time went on Major Kyttyle brought to him a few congenial spirits and yet the little group really found out nothing about the major’s past beyond the fact that he had lived in the Far East for years. Why he had come to America no one knew. Why he had settled in our uneventful valley no one could guess. In fact, deliberately to choose the spot was thought to be an indication of mental weakness. But if there is anything that the major was not, that thing is mentally weak. No one else could have had the will power and ingenuity to evade as successfully as did this gentleman of mystery, the life-history disclosures sought by the Minches and others who came to “know” the major.

Notwithstanding Mrs. Minch’s earlier disapproval of the number of trunks and boxes which the “lone man” appeared to have accumulated, she came in time to revise her opinion when it was discovered that, though decent, the major’s wardrobe had not comprised his luggage, whereas wonderful objects of Oriental art at once made it clear that the trunks and boxes had been put to a very excellent and approved good use when their unpacking found the major’s house adorned with treasures in the way of pottery, brasses, rugs, damascened arms, Persian miniatures, Indian enamels, gem-encrusted jades, and what not.

Frankly, Major Kyttyle might have been as miserable with his treasures as was Midas with his enchantment had it not been that some of his neighbors were persons of culture and themselves not only appreciative of art but versed in some of its branches. Otherwise the major would have had to depend on whist, which, by the way, he played poorly and to which he was devoted.

As for the menagerie, it served to bring out the fact that the major adored children. His yard was always full of them after school let out. At first those fond mothers who could not be persuaded that the major’s several East-Indian servants were not one and the same with the tribe of the son of Hagar, were much distressed, but when these did not steal forth like pied pipers, they concluded that perhaps they weren’t gypsies after all.

Good old Major Kyttyle, how grateful I am that, mysterious though you were, you permitted me to browse for hours among the curious and beautiful things of the Orient that appealed to my child-fancy! And the marvelous tales you would tell us of their history! How patient you were with our eager queries! You should have been attached to some great museum, to interpret its hoardings to the soul of the people.

It was in your house, in the house of the stranger who had come among us, that I formed some knowledge of the arts of India and of Persia, a knowledge that made some of the beautiful things which had found their way from the Far East into my own home greater joys to behold than ever before.

I suppose I might have taken down one of the heavy volumes of that vast encyclopedia which so formidably thwarted youth’s enterprise though advertised to foster it, and have read therein much of what was told me in less pedantic and less academic style by the major.

If I have seemed to linger beyond the limits of a preface it is not that I started out to write a eulogy of Major Kyttyle, but rather that in what I am saying I hope there can be found some hint of the truest sort of collecting, the noblest sort of a collector—one who uses his collection as a preacher uses his text, happily discoursing to attentive ears and not shutting himself up with his treasures, like a medieval monk of old with book in cell.

The good major went to his rest long since. We had supposed him out of the land of India, not only because we gleaned from his stories that he had spent long years in service there, but also because of his attachment for the arts of India, which he seemed to hold above those of Persia. But when his grave was marked, the granite shaft provided in his will as a last luxury bore simply this legend, “Kyttyle of Khorassan.” Mrs. Minch was jubilant. “What did I tell you? A Persian! One never knows what with these mysterious people.”

It is only within the last half-dozen years that the arts of India and of Persia have attracted much attention with Americans in general. Happily, we are out of that stage where everything Asiatic is classed as either “Turkish” or “Chinese.” The field here for collection is a broad one and naturally embraces a myriad of objects. Private collections and public collections of the arts of Persia and of India, including those of Ceylon, are growing apace. Good things and fine things are appearing in public sales and are still to be picked up in antique-shops by the discriminating one who has taken the trouble to study the subject. Fortunately, the collector now has at hand such excellent books for reference as the various works by Ananda Coomaraswamy, Vincent Smith, Martin, Birdwood, Havell, Hendley, and others.

Of Persian objets d’art an anoymous writer in the article on Persia in “The Everyman EncyclopÆdia” has said:

Persia has ever been famed for its textiles—not only embroideries and printed cottons but marvelous rugs which stand supreme in beauty. The old rugs of Persia were ancestors of the carpet of other lands. In this connection it is worth noting that the Persians never made themselves ridiculous by the application of inappropriate design. You will not find an old Persian rug patterned with formal bouquets tied with blue ribbons, suggesting a gift being trodden underfoot. A Persian floral patterned carpet will suggest flowers and verdue in their wild state as the stroller might chance to find them.

Although the impress of the art of the Chinese ceramicist and of the shawl-weavers of Cashmere exerted some influence upon the Persians, still the art of Persia from earliest times has retained a national distinction. Nearly all are objects from the earlier periods now to be met with date from the reign of the shah Abbas the Great (1586-1628) when the native art manufacturers reached their greatest degree of excellence. Thence onward came the decline.

We have only to consider the fact that artistic ornamentation was applied to innumerable objects in daily service to realize how widely diffused was the taste for art among the Persians. They have truly been always an art-loving people. Some one has aptly remarked that every home in India is a nursery of art, and I think this must once have been true of the home in Persia. Apropos of Persian ornament it may be remarked that the native artists have always delighted in varied and symmetrical patterns of great intricacy. External beauty, too, seems to have been sought, rather than intrinsic thorough excellence of fabrique, excepting, of course, the products of the Persian looms and the works of the masters in metal.

As to Persian pottery, it has always been more or less of a puzzle to antiquarians. The ancient pieces in a perfect state of preservation are exceedingly few and rare, and all have been recovered from ruined areas.

There yet remain vast areas to be excavated by enterprising antiquarian expeditions and later efforts are sure to be productive.

The ancient lustre faience dates back many centuries. Its genre was carried down as late as 1586. The finest Persian ware resembles Chinese porcelain somewhat, having a white ground with azure-blue decoration in bold, free designs. The paste is hard and the color is not blended with the glaze. Later specimens of this genre have less good design, blending color, and a glaze showing greater vitrification.

A second sort of Persian faience is thicker, shows a departure from Chinese influence somewhat, has a softer and more porous paste, is brighter in the blue, has a less even glaze, and a less well-drawn design. Red enters, as also relief and gaufrures.

A third sort of ware is denser and harder, of blackish color on a white ground, with thick glaze, and some pieces have been varnished with single color. Such pieces in this genre as exhibit figures in the decoration show these without faces, which would suggest that this class of pottery was the product of Persian potters of the Mussulman Sunnis sect, a sect more rigidly opposed to presenting the human face in art than that of the Shiahs.

A fourth sort of ware is white and translucent, of still harder paste, and bearing no marks or makers. I have seen this ware only in small pieces. It is rare and is usually styled porcelaine blanche de Perse.

A fifth sort of faience is also translucid, very thin, and ornamented with lacy designs.

The ruins of Rhages have yielded examples of the sixth sort of faience, a common pottery of reddish clay varnished with single color, and all somewhat in imitation of the celadon porcelain of China. The green and bronze varnish is often very beautiful. Some of these pieces have designs in relief and gaufrure.

The faience tiles of Persia are among its most interesting and beautiful ceramic remains. Most of these tiles date from such Seljuk or Mogul rulers as Malik-Shah (1072), Hulagu Khan (1256), and Ghazan Khan (1295).

India has never produced anything like a porcelain. Even pottery of the glazed sort rarely appeared previous to the Mussulman tile products, which tile products were the forerunners of the modern glazed wares fabricated in Multan, Jeypore, and Bombay. However, unglazed pottery has been common throughout India for countless centuries.

In speaking of Hindu and Buddhist art Ananda Comaraswamy writes (“The Arts and Crafts of India and Ceylon”):

The alluring arts of the East are well worth one’s study, well deserving of one’s enthusiasm. Perhaps the illustrations of some of the antiques of Persia and of India here reproduced from photographs of some of the fine examples to be found will awaken an interest in the subject in some who chance upon them. I only hope the world holds more Major Kyttyles of revered memory, and that you, too, may have the good fortune to be brought into communion with such treasures as made the major’s home vie with our conceptions of the palace of Aladdin, treasures which in time brought even the Pickhams to forgive the major his diaphanous-tailed goldfish, to feel no longer the sting of the insignificance of their poor little gilded minnows.