HOUSE AND GARDEN 
June, 
1912 
advantage over the cheap, 
ornate kind in the fact that 
it keeps its excellent ap¬ 
pearance as long as it lasts, 
while the highly varnished, 
highly ornamented objects 
soon become shabby and 
dull looking, and pull apart, 
giving an effect of dejec¬ 
tion and slovenliness that is 
depressing. 
Furniture of an inex¬ 
pensive sort was for a 
period of perhaps twenty- 
five years thrown together 
with the utmost careless- 
aiess, and without any at¬ 
tention paid to truly artis¬ 
tic lines and finish. But a 
few years ago there came 
an awakening, and people 
turned in disgust from the 
cheap and inartistic furni¬ 
ture, the result being that 
the decadent state was 
swept by a far reaching 
conversion. 
The first effect of this 
new aesthetic sense was the 
inevitable stage of self- 
conscious and affected sim¬ 
plicity verging on the mo- 
n a s t i c . The pendulum 
swung to the other extreme 
and the better work of the 
modern school of crafts¬ 
men appeared, work which 
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With the simple finish of this dining room the sturdy, unpretentious look of 
the furniture is in excellent accord 
certainly has tended to re¬ 
press any exuberance of 
imagination .and to ex¬ 
press its revolt in negation. 
Nothing actually new 
has been made in the way 
of furniture in this revived 
knowledge of the beautiful, 
but a wise eclecticism has 
been displayed in regard to 
the rich inheritance of 
styles of the past, and a 
groundwork of severity and 
simplicity having been at¬ 
tained wise study of the 
best periods of furniture, 
the Tudor, Stuart and 
Georgian especially, has re¬ 
sulted in what may be safe¬ 
ly called a modern style. 
This very simple furni¬ 
ture calls for better crafts¬ 
manship and better ma¬ 
terials, wood carefully 
cured and seasoned, which 
is of vast importance. 
Such pieces outlast a 
dozen of the sham, shoddy 
varnished horrors that our 
furniture shops have 
known in years past, and 
people of small means are 
gradually learning to see 
that this well-made, well¬ 
shaped, simple furniture 
outlasts by years the other; 
not only that but improves 
The craftsmanship is painstaking in all 
the joinery 
Natural graining is well brought out in this 
wood finish 
This very simple sideboard may be matched 
by a useful kind of plate rack 
