Home Makers' Conference. 323 



works of art felt and seen every day throughout the developing period 

 of childhood and youth, cannot but have a wonderfully tine effect on the 

 formation and development of character. Such fine reproductions of 

 these pictures can be had at such reasonable rates that there is no 

 longer any excuse for the cheap chromos or the tawdry pictures which 

 have so often defaced the walls of our homes. In art, as in everything 

 else, the best is none too good. The speaker earnestly recommended that, 

 our homes should contain reproductions of the fine things in works of 

 art, and particularly of the fine things which have been done by our 

 American artists. 



He suggested that there were various firms from which such pictures, 

 could be obtained, among which might be mentioned : The Copley Prints 

 of Boston, Massachusetts, and reproductions by famous American artists 

 from N. E. Montross, 372 Fifth avenue, New York City, or William 

 Macbeth, 450 Fifth avenue. New York City. 



PRINCIPLES OF ART APPLIED TO DRESS. 



(Miss Calibel Ingels, Department of Home Economics.) 



The same principles which make pictures, architecture and sculp- 

 ture good, also determine the pleasing quality of clothing. Artistic dress 

 means the conscious or unconscious use of the rules of balance, harmony 

 and rythm, of size, shape, line and color. 



Our ideas of the artistic in dress are much affected by the prevail- 

 ing mode. For that reason no one can say this is absolutely good and 

 will be altogether pleasing in a hundred years from now. The advocates 

 of the dress reform twenty years ago designed artistic clothing, which 

 looks odd today, though not so much so as the really stylish clothes of 

 that time. Therefore, although we cannot be independent of fashion, 

 we can choose from current styles those which are most becoming to us, 

 and modify these in order to make them even more beautiful. In modi- 

 fying styles and emphasizing the really good trend of them, we get 

 clothes which will look well longer than those which are at the height 

 of an exaggerated fashion. By this moderation we are creating a bet- 

 ter public opinion, and this may react so that designers will give us 

 their best efforts in the highest sense. The producers will not continue 

 to put forth monstrosities in the way of clothing unless the people like 

 the horrors sufficiently to purchase them. We seem to want hair rolls 

 and sanitary rats. 



