24 
House' & Garden 
A MUSEUM THAT 
W E used to think of a museum as a tomb of the past. There were 
ample reasons why we held to this opinion. Museums were de¬ 
positaries of old, rare and beautiful works of art where the discerning 
or the desirous foregathered, whenever the spirit moved them, to behold 
and enthuse. That was about all. 
During the past three years this worn-out legend has been scraped 
together with kings and untaxed incomes and all the other non-essential 
and evil flotsam of a recent dark age. Museums have become the de¬ 
positaries of the future. They link up the past with the present. They 
reincarnate the beauty of a by-gone time for the guidance of present- 
day manufacturers and the delectation of people. 
This is the significant work that the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
in New York City has accomplished under the stress of war. The story 
is best told by the words of its own accounting of stewardship: “Manu¬ 
facturers and designers have found it to their advantage to use the 
museum, and this means that they have found it to their business 
advantage. No greater test of the value of art as related to progress 
could be offered. Design has been able to demonstrate its own salabil¬ 
ity, which indicates a by no means insignificant step in our valuable 
art producing trades, trades which Represent an annual expenditure of 
no less than $500,000,000 for home furnishings alone.” 
Just how do these designers and manufacturers benefit from the 
museum ? 
W HETHER the field is metal work, tiles, plaster, stained glass, or 
costume design, whether the manufacturer makes reproductions of 
colonial furniture or re-designs a silver goblet for commercial use, 
whether he works from Byzantine ivories or Flemish tapestries, in jewel¬ 
ry or architectural terracotta, 
whether he is designer or man¬ 
ufacturer, decorator or crafts¬ 
man, the resources of the mu¬ 
seum have been offered to him 
and he has studied objects of 
art from an inspirational view¬ 
point, very much as he would 
use a book for study. 
To continue the report of 
this work: “An Italian gesso- 
covered and painted picture 
frame may seem a long cry 
from the modern market, yet 
it has been studied by a New 
York manufacturer of tapes¬ 
tries. An Athenian vessel 
twenty centuries old has been 
passed by thousands of visi¬ 
tors until a designer of com¬ 
mercial containers saw in this 
as in nothing else that had 
come to her notice a possibil¬ 
ity for a modern jar to hold 
cosmetics. A millefleurs tap¬ 
estry remained the despair of 
scores of artists and designers 
until a manufacturer of rugs 
determined to take advantage 
of this design for the improve¬ 
ment of American rugs. A 
designer of dress fabrics saw 
possibilities in the armor col¬ 
lection. A china painter stud¬ 
ied Russian laces. Embroid¬ 
ered crests assisted in the de¬ 
sign of American sport skirts. 
Florentine glass bottles offered 
suggestions for printed voiles. 
Ecclesiastical vestments were 
found full of suggestion for 
wall papers. The color for 
painted chairs was found in 
Chinese pottery. A paper soap 
wrapper design saw its be¬ 
ginnings in snuff boxes. 
“These are a few of the 
actual cases of recent weeks, 
all showing that in tracing 
EARNS ITS KEEP 
fundamentals of design the manufacturer or his designer seeks his 
inspiration wherever it may be found and the differences of material, 
style, artist, period, race, or purpose are not considered barriers. Thus 
they have at their command the entire field of industrial art design 
of all ages, and their only limitation is that they shall properly express 
in terms of their own materials the design and purposes of the pieces 
which they themselves are producing.” 
T he work of the museum in facilitating the study of designers is 
manifold. One method, for example, is the sale of photographic 
reprints to students and designers. Sixty-five thousand of them are 
sold annually. 
“To meet these requirements on the part of the modem manufactur¬ 
ing and designing world, the Metropolitan Museum maintains a large 
and efficient force of assistants and an extensive system of study rooms, 
lantern slide and photograph collections, lending collections, and other 
physical means of assistance. There are a number of docents or 
museum instructors familiar with every detail of the galleries and 
their contents and there is a specially trained associate whose province 
it is to assist in bringing together the seeker and his objective, to act 
as a sort of liaison officer between the museum and the world of art in 
trade. This member of the staff is a person qualified to assist manu¬ 
facturers and designers from the standpoint of their own requirements. 
He makes it his business to visit shops and workrooms, he is familiar 
with the processes of manufacture and keeps abreast of the market, so 
that he'shall be able to visualize trade values in museum facilities and 
thus help manufacturers toward their own objectives.” 
In these endeavors lies the promise of a great result. 
B ehind all this activity, 
this reincarnation of past 
beauty is a great aspiration. 
Our manufacturers are learn¬ 
ing that their factory is not 
merely a business venture, but 
“a work bench of national 
taste.” Every chair or light¬ 
ing fixture or yard of goods 
is a factor in the great mosaic 
of national culture fostered by 
the industrial arts. 
The Metropolitan Museum, 
to have recourse once again to 
its report, “maintains that 
‘Made in America’ on an ob¬ 
ject of furniture or furnish¬ 
ings is inadequate unless it 
also connotes designed by an 
American-trained craftsman.” 
Here is an irrefutable an¬ 
swer to those who would ac¬ 
cuse the American people of 
lacking good taste. Here also 
is an answer to those who look 
upon museums as tombs. For 
a laudable standard of activ¬ 
ity is being set by this museum 
that must be copied—if they 
dare to justify their existence 
—by every other museum in 
the country. 
No longer are the people 
to be satisfied with “good 
enough” wares in their homes. 
That old fallacy of maintain¬ 
ing a low level in order to 
give the people what they want 
is beautifully exploded. Give 
them the best, and they will 
buy, for the average man’s 
tastes are very much above the 
average. Teach him to live 
surrounded by beautiful ob¬ 
jects and he enters into a new 
life. Teach him to go to his 
museums and the things that 
were dead will live. 
HEARTHSIDE 
So many things to love in that small house of ours, 
The sunlight swept across the breakfast-board, 
The brass bowls blooming with their nodding sheaves of flowers. 
The genial fireplace where stdut logs have roared; 
There is a little window looking to the East 
Where stars peeped in on us through twilight haze; 
The mottled plates we kept against the seldom feast 
Shining from their shelves in bright arrays; 
The wide, soft rug — fair-colored as some enfabled mead. 
With stiff Levantine blossoms, weaver-sown; 
The stately chairs, the pipe-stand, and rows of books to read; 
The sweater on the settle lightly thrown. 
So much I love . . . their peace, content and happiness. 
And friendliness to make each corner bloom, 
And more than all, the clock, so solemn of address. 
That murmurs to itself down the still room. 
—Archie Austin Coates. 
