August, I912 
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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
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Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
One of the exhibits in the industrial arts section of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, is an entire room from a seventeenth century 
house in the village of Flims, Switzerland, containing a fine example of a porcelain stove 
Museums and Decorative Art 
By Henry Hollis 
q|E are all children, inasmuch as we like to 
“see pictures,’ which, owing to the relation 
that this form of art bears to literature, 
mythology and allegory, has resulted in the 
story-telling or pictorial form of artistic ex- 
pression being the best known and the most 
appreciated. In the past the art museums have fostered 
this idea and most of them have had their beginning in a 
collection of pictures, so that when an art museum is men- 
tioned, the lay mind instinctively conjures up a vision of row 
after row of pictures, plaster copies of antique sculpture, 
Oriental porcelain and pottery, perhaps, and nothing more. 
The great interest taken in all forms of art in America 
during the last decade, the educational influence of foreign 
travel, of the great private collections which have been 
assembled with care and discrimination, of the local collec- 
tions of historical and antiquarian societies, and a realiza- 
tion that all art does not begin and end in paint and canvas, 
have combined to broaden the scope of the various museums 
of art throughout the country, until now nearly all of them 
give room to industrial arts. 
No longer can the modern museum be regarded as a 
storehouse of inert matter. It 1s, instead a working museum, 
that is to say, a vital force in the community, having its 
collections arranged in a manner readily accessible to archi- 
tect, decorator, craftsman and student of industrial art, 
who seeks to become inspired by the best traditions of the 
work executed by the artists and craftsmen of all countries 
and all ages, working in metal, clay, wood and stone. Here 
one can see how the most ordinary things with which we are 
daily and hourly surrounded, have been touched by the hand 
of the artist and made beautiful; a key-plate, the hinge of a 
door, a chair, a piece of molding, have been raised above 
the sphere of the commonplace by an artistic genius. 
The historical and antiquarian societies throughout the 
country have done much to improve the general taste by 
assembling collections of old Colonial furniture, silver, 
pewter, and china, and have accomplished noble results in 
restoring to their original beauty and preserving for pos- 
terity, old houses which would otherwise have been de- 
stroyed by the ruthless march of modern improvements. 
Our Colonial architecture and furniture is the nearest we 
have approached to evolving a national style, and we must 
(Continued on page 29#) 
