HOUSES AND GARDENS 



purchases afterwards repented of. It must be remembered that what happens 

 to take the fancy in the showroom is not necessarily the thing which will 

 maintain its charm in daily life, and the very insistence of its appeal gives a 

 fair indication of its transient nature. The beauty ot furniture is to a great 

 extent a relative matter, and its fitness for a special place in a room will often 

 be a more important point than its intrinsic merits, which may be quite at 

 variance with its surroundings. And so it will be most desirable to have 

 furniture specially made to suit particular rooms, and so to form the finishing 

 touches of the scheme which begins with the structure of the house. There 

 should be no hiatus between house and furniture. Wherever the conditions 

 make it reasonable, the furniture should in the form of fitments constitute a 

 part of the building, and the movable furniture should seem a part of the 

 house, and not an alien importation. 



Furniture, like everything else in the house, should be the best of its kind, 

 and it is better to have a first-class article of an inferior kind than a second- 

 class one of what claims to be a higher order, just as in building it is better 

 to have the best possible kind of cottage instead of the worst kind of 

 mansion. 



The furniture of the shops often fails, because while it poses as artistic and 

 pretends to features and qualities which can only be obtained by the single 

 desire of the designer and workmen to achieve beauty, it is really at heart 

 entirely commercial, and produced under factory conditions which make the 

 Art of the workman impossible. 



But there is a kind of furniture to be had which, frankly factory made, is 

 excellent of its kind. The kind of chair used for churches is an 

 example of this. There is no pretence here of " Art " finish. It bears 

 evidence that it is put together quickly and simply, and turned out in the 

 least possible time. 



To French polish it, to put a little bit of carving or inlay on the back, to 

 add what is popularly supposed to be Art to it, would be to hopelessly 

 vulgarise it. It would become good enough for the suburban drawing-room 

 perhaps, but would be no longer good enough for the church. There are 

 several types of chair of this kind which are all excellent in their way. They 

 are made chiefly of ash, but often a piece of beech or some other wood is used, 

 and this casual combination of material is quite in character with its simple and 

 direct appeal of the whole. If furniture is to be turned out in factories, this 

 is how it should be made, with no affectation of arts and crafts. 



In making special furniture for a house it must be recognised that it is 

 necessarily more expensive than furniture made by the dozen -and in furnishing 

 under economic restrictions it is desirable to include as much as possible the 

 cottage antique, and the factory furniture described above. But if furnishing 

 is undertaken on the principle of omitting everything that is not actually 

 required, it will be possible to have a few things specially made, instead of a 

 multitude of articles not really required, and which cannot be said to be cheap 

 at any price. 



In the making of furniture there are two principal methods of construction 



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