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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



February, 1908 



An Experiment in Arts and Crafts 



By Mary H. Northend 



(HEN, less than a dozen years ago, a group 

 of summer visitors to quaint old Deerfield, 

 Mass., conceived the idea of reviving some 

 of the old-time arts, especially the em- 

 broidery still produced by some of the 

 descendants of the early settlers, they 

 probably had no idea of starting an in- 

 dustry that would spread in different directions until there 

 would be, as there is to-day, what are called arts and crafts 

 shops in twenty-five different States, not only giving employ- 

 ment to many who need it, but adding numerous household 

 articles, both useful and beautiful for all time to come. For 

 just here let it be said that these reproductions of old time 

 articles are honestly made and made to last, not yielding up 

 their usefulness by contact with the world as do so many of 

 the machine-made products of the modern factory. 



This revival of the old arts and crafts is a sort of New 

 England renaissance, the products sometimes changed to 

 adapt them more closely to modern needs and sometimes 

 exact copies of things that were made centuries ago before 

 the Mayflower crossed the ocean. Often designs of lace, 

 embroidery, quilt or rug have come down from mother to 

 daughter in a sort of artistic succession, as generally one 

 member of the family inherited the taste and the skill that 

 make her handiwork as acceptable to-day as was that of her 

 forebear a hundred years ago. Sometimes the art would 

 seem to have vanished, for nobody had skill enough to exe- 

 cute it, and then it would be revived as some girl would 



"hark back" to the ancestor who had had the nimble fingers 

 and the artistic sense, and then she, too, would be able to re- 

 produce the forgotten stitches or the forms of some cherished 

 bit of needle work or lace, yellow with age and almost ready 

 to crumble beneath her touch. 



Perhaps it was when the discovery was made that these 

 articles, reproduced to-day exactly like those of the olden 

 time, found ready sale and good prices, that the necessary 

 impetus was given to what has now become a recognized 

 industry, employing men, women, boys and girls at profitable 

 wages. 



The work differs in different localities. It remained for 

 a Marblehead physician to find in the industry, not only a 

 source of benefit to the world at large, but a means of treat- 

 ing his patients suffering from nervous diseases in various 

 stages. 



He has built, on a rocky point that runs out into the sea 

 on the rough coast of Marblehead, a sanitarium and handi- 

 craft shop combined. It is almost surrounded by the blue 

 waters of the sea, bluer nowhere than at Marblehead, in con- 

 trast with the white foam of the waves breaking on the 

 craggy shore; and the air is so full of health that the environ- 

 ment must hold a balm for even the sickest nerves. But the 

 wise physician who evolved this method of healing, holds 

 the idea that mind and body must be occupied a part of each 

 day if the strained and worn nerves would get back to normal 

 condition. So his patients take up weaving with the hand- 

 looms made in ancient Colonial days. Perhaps they will 



Rug-making as a Cure for Nervousness 



