and Laboratory Methods. 



255< 



adopted with most chaste effect in the Metropolitan Art Museum in New York. 

 Certainly the halls where the Cypriote statuary is installed, in these dull sur- 

 faced and well designed cases, present most pleasing museum pictures. Figure 

 70 shows a hall in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, where the wood 

 work is of ebonized wood, and where the armor and implements are artistically 

 assembled. Kbonized wood has been used in the gem room of the New York 

 Museum, and the nature of an octagon case and its surrounding wall cases, in 

 this instance, will be shown in the chapter on Accessories. 



Dr. A. B. Meyer of the Museum in Dresden has pressed the claims of iron 

 in the construction of the furniture of a museum on the grounds, primarily, of its 

 safety, and not less indeed on account of its superior beauty. In positions 

 exposed to dangers from fire, for the preservation of books, records, archives, 



Fig. 71. — Iron furniture, Art Metal Construction Company, Jamestown, N. Y. 



etc., ironwork possesses unquestionable advantages; but the writer — though 

 such an objection may be attributed to idiosyncracy — cannot concede that iron 

 cases are attractive. They seem distinctly repugnant to the senses of sight and 

 feeling, and the most artful concealment of their metallic nature does not com- 

 pensate for the warm tones, the more agreeable surface and the softer outlines 

 of wood construction. 



The iron case, however, must be reckoned with, and its use, especially in crit- 

 ical positions, will indubitably gain acceptance. The Art Metal Construction 

 Company of Jamestown, N. Y., has perhaps done most to give iron a pleasing 

 exterior, and their " Seven Points of Merit" are in many situations incontestible. 

 They claim it is sanitary, durable, convetiient, agreeable, attractive, eeononiieal, 

 incombustible. 



