3 8o 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



December, 1906 



Old Time Arts 



And Crqf typ 



)HE revival of the old-time handiwork is no 

 mere fad. It seeks to reproduce by modern 

 fingers the articles that our great grands 

 mothers wrought with greatest care and 

 completed after days and weeks of labor. 

 The twentieth century looks back on the 

 past and what it did with admiring and approving eyes, for 

 true art is found in much that was then accomplished. Often 

 the productions were of the simplest designs, and this very 

 simplicity appeals to those who have the artistic sense not 

 yet confused by the conglomeration of articles turned out by 

 machines in such quantities that there can be no personality 

 and no chance for individuality in any of them. 



Some moderns, while able to prate of art, having a com- 

 mand of language yet a scarcity of ideas, are disdainful, 

 for instance, of the blue and white bedspread, that made a 

 part of every girl's wedding outfit a hundred years ago and 

 now acts as couch cover or portiere in some home of her 

 descendants. They will say, 

 perhaps, that the pattern is 

 "so common," the colors 

 merely blue and white, and 

 will prefer the mixture of 

 hues in the fabric the machine 

 has turned out by the gross 

 for the admiration of the 

 multitude. 



Such do not know that the 

 blue is unfading, for the old- 

 fashioned dye, made at home 

 after the formula so ancient 

 that its originator is un- 

 known, will last as long as 

 the fabric to which it gives 

 the hue. A hundred years 

 for one of these bedspreads 

 is but a day compared with 

 modern articles of the kind. 

 One such, in the possession of 

 the writer, was made over a 

 hundred years ago. The 

 wool was grown on the home 

 farm; it was spun by the 

 whirring wheel turned by a 

 woman and was dyed and 

 woven by the women of the 

 household all unaided. It 



served them in their day and was handed down to one of 

 their descendants until now it is an ornament for the home 

 of the great-great-grandchild. Not a thread is worn, not a 

 stitch is broken, the colors are unchanged and no doubt, un- 

 less the careless housewife allows the moth to fret its folds, 

 it will last for three generations more and be a joy forever. 

 Its very simplicity is its strongest appeal for admiration. 



The modern critic, accustomed to what he considers more 

 artistic designs, forgets that these early workers copied what 

 they saw about them. The oak leaf, the log cabin, the her- 

 ring bone, the star, the hexagon and other simple geometri- 

 cal figures, the rising sun, the goose track — these were com- 

 mon enough and reproduced on various articles became "con- 

 ventionalized" by people who knew not the word in the way 

 it is used to-day, and are still beautiful. Nobody can im- 

 prove on the old "blue and white" spread, though when 

 sleeping under its weight "such dreams would come," no 

 modern mortal would wish to repeat the experiment. 



A Finished Quilt 



