January, 1906 
Table Carved by Karl von Rydingsvard and Presented to Dr. Felix Adler. 
Wooden Pegs. 
AMERICAN HOMES 
AND GARDENS 39 
¥ 
} 
SS 
ow 
iI 
i 
The Table is Hand-Hewn and Fastened together entirely by 
The Decoration Represents Scenes from Scandinavian Mythology 
The Revival of Wood Carving 
By Charles de Kay 
three-quarters of a century ago, Edgar Allan 
Poe remarks that nothing more directly of- 
fensive to the eye of an artist could exist than 
the interior of a well furnished apartment in 
the United States. “Its most usual defect is a 
want of keeping. We speak of the keeping of a room as we 
would of the keeping of a picture, for both the picture and 
the room are amenable to those undeviating principles which 
regulate all varieties of art; and very nearly the same laws 
The Interior 
by which we divide on the higher merits of a painting suffice 
for decision on the adjustment of a chamber.”’ 
We have improved somewhat on the conditions that 
obtained in Poe’s time, but are far from having reached ideal 
conditions. Here and there, however, we find devoted bands 
of artists laboring to convince the well-to-do that hand-made 
work affords a satisfaction which machine-made things never 
give, just as pictures, into which the individuality and the 
mood of the painter enter, outlivethe brilliant copy of another 
man’s work. Cheapness is the sheet-anchor of trade, and the 
of the School 
