HOUSES AND GARDENS 



in the joining of its woodwork. The simplest is that now used in making 

 packing-cases, the wood being joined by means of nails. The more complicated 

 is that in which the wood is joined by letting one piece into another by the use 

 of what are called mortices and tenons. 



It is a foregone conclusion nowadays that the simplest way of doing a 

 thing is necessarily the worst way, and the nail in modern woodwork has been 

 considered a thing to be hidden. While in all other details of construction a 

 virtue has been made of frankness, and while the pegs of the tenon are dis- 

 played to view, the nail is sedulously concealed by all kinds of artifices. In 

 the making of the simple kinds of furniture in which the wood is joined by 

 nails of the kind known as clout-headed, made by a blacksmith, these might 

 be shown without shame, and form a feature in the design, and nothing could 

 be reasonably urged against this simple and direct " packing-case " construction 

 for a chest or cabinet. 



As to how far it is justifiable to attempt to reproduce ancient styles of 

 furnishing in modern rooms will depend on many circumstances. It must 

 necessarily always be absurd to aim at reproducing the styles of the Gothic 

 period, or those which were in the Renaissance time coloured by its influence. 

 The modern Jacobean room, if it include all the carving and ornaments of the 

 period, must necessarily be a failure, simply because Jacobean art was a 

 workman's art to a great extent, and we have no workman now who would be 

 able to re-create the spirit of the Jacobean age. It would be as reasonable to 

 ask of the modern workman to write you a Shakespearean sonnet as to carve 

 you a Jacobean panel. A judicious selection of those features and principles 

 which are suitable for reproduction under modern conditions would lead to a 

 room which in its traditionalism would bear the stamp of reasonableness. 

 And this thoughtful modified version of old work must not be confounded 

 with the Wardour Street tradition of artificiality, worm-eaten carving, and 

 other deceptions. 



The later and more histrionic styles of furnishing in which ethical 

 standards are given up for superficial refinements, and which were the setting 

 for a life divorced from realities, and which seem a kind of elaborate play- 

 acting, are more easily reproduced under modern conditions. Your modern 

 workman may copy a Louis XV. chair, though he cannot a Jacobean one. In 

 the modern school of furniture that is generally the most satisfactory which is 

 based on the principles of old work. In its aim to achieve a rational quality 

 of simplicity it sometimes tends to become somewhat unsympathetic and 

 severe, and the recognition of the materials is not so much considered as 

 qualities of lines and surfaces. A straining after effect and over-accentuated 

 ornament is often found, which destroys all sense of repose. The true course 

 seems here a middle one, between the extreme of archaic revivals on the one 

 hand, and aggressive originality on the other, and in reaching forward to the 

 unborn beauty of the future still to hold fast that which is good in the work 

 of the past. 



The enthusiasm with which the designer of the revival period set himself 

 to copy exactly mediaeval work may have been ill-judged ; but it seems no less 

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