THK CASE FOR MODERN 1-TRNHTRE 



5 ) 



producing good furniture and selling it at a profit. Work 

 made under these conditions has more chance of enduring 

 than the isolated attempts of the dilettante working under 

 artificial conditions. 



The semi-circular oak \vashstand (Eig. 94) is a useful 

 little piece, attain designed by Mi . Heal, the absence of 

 angles making it very suitable lor a small room. It is 

 not Jacobean or Georgian, Elizabethan or Adam. The 

 designer thought that a semi-circular front might make 

 it useful, and planned it so. Washstands are like men 

 they want legs to stand on ; so this one was given four 

 at the pniper place tT take the weight put on them. 

 It was felt that, as one sometimes blows like a grampus 

 when washing the hue, a hanging that would save the 

 wall-paper and be removable lor washing was a good 

 HUM, and this embroidered one is verv 



en; 



if tin 

 is of 



stvlc, 



)2. I&amp;gt;KSK;NHI&amp;gt; 



and 



M u t 



\\ashstand 

 no dated 



it has the 

 merits ,&amp;gt;t those 

 me n t ioned. It 

 h a s b e e n de 

 signed to suit its 

 purpose. 



That modern 

 I u r n i t lire has 

 not held its 

 own is clearly 

 proved by the 

 way in which 



antique chairs, tables and all the furnishing.-* ot the 

 home have been collected. Begun in the first plan- 

 by connoisseurs, it has become a habit reaching into 

 Suburbia, and so one finds that there is an apparently 

 unending supply of &quot;genuine antiques&quot; to suit all 

 purses. 



The writer has a very real love for old furniture, 

 and is among the first to acclaim its beauty : 

 but the time seems ripe to urge that we should 

 no longer continue to fill our homes with a medley 

 of indifferent antiques, or machine-made reproductions 

 of the same-. The reader may protest that he or 

 she has little alternative. On the one hand is the 

 furniture of commerce, honest only in that it looks 

 commercial, on the other remain the wild imaginings 

 of I tirt noiirciiit. So the purchaser buys simple 

 stuff, or reproductions of it. If this procedure 



old 



not retrograde, 



If 



it is just as certainly not pro- 

 must at once admit that invention 



no new types or forms 



93. BOOKCASE IN BLACK BEAN. 



is 



gressive, so that we 

 lias reached its limit, and 



are possible : or, putting this aside as sluggish, must 

 push our way on, helped forward by what has been 

 done. It is, perhaps, the youthful way not to 

 esteem too highly what has been done, buoyed up 

 by the hope that one may do better ; and it would 

 needs be a very youthful, and perhaps impertinent, cabinet 

 maker who to-day said that he intended to do better than 

 Chippendale. The impertinence could be put up with, if 

 it was coupled with a little of the magnificent assurance 

 the great cabinet-maker possessed. His book does not 



