The Beauty of Machine-made Things 
construct ornament, not ornament construc¬ 
tion.” The design, or rather the lack of in¬ 
telligent design, is the chief source of the 
widespread ugliness in furniture as in nearly 
all other objects of modern make. As no 
kind of training can make a genius out of an 
idiot, neither can any kind of labor carry out 
a vulgar and idiotic design so as to make a 
refined and beautiful object. The finished 
object is the fruit of the design, and it will 
be figs or thistles according to the nature of 
the plant, in spite of the skill or incompe¬ 
tency of the husbandman. 1 
Some manufacturers employ artists to de¬ 
sign furniture, but the results are seldom 
beautiful. These skilful designers learn 
their art in schools which look upon machin¬ 
ery with disgust. All of their teaching is 
how to make beautiful designs after the man¬ 
ner of former times. I do not, of course, 
mean exact copying, though much of that is 
done, but their source of inspiration is hand¬ 
made things whose forms completely domi¬ 
nate schools of design. Instead of designing 
specially for machine manufacture, designs 
are made as though to be carried out by 
hand work and then a machine is invented 
to imitate as nearly as may be the work of 
hand tools. While designs for hand-made 
furniture have dictated the styles of machine 
manufacture, nevertheless these classic designs 
have been modified, elaborated, exaggerated 
and mixed together in every conceivable ar¬ 
rangement which vulgar wealth could wish 
or ignorant poverty imagine in order to load 
them with what Prof. Veblen has so aptly 
called “conspicuous waste.” But trying to 
1 In the designing room of one of the largest and best carpet factories 
of Great Britain I saw about seventy-five people making rug and carpet 
patterns as follows : Old patterns were cut into four equal squares. 
These pieces were mixed together in a large basket. From'this hetero¬ 
geneous pile the designers selected four squares, placed them together, 
now this way, now that, like a Chinese puzzle, to form a new pattern. 
If they seemed impossible, a square was discarded and another taken. 
This process was kept up until a new and striking design was hit upon. 
This was then drawn on a large paper in colors and submitted to the 
head designer. If it met his approval it was sent to the weaving card 
cutters and in due time hundreds of yards of carpet of this pattern 
were woven. Before leaving the factory I visited the sample room. 
After we had looked at scores of samples the manager asked : “ Well, 
what do you think of them ? ” 1 said : “ To be frank with you, I 
think them hideously ugly. If instead of using hundreds of shades of 
yarn to weave these complicated and grotesque patterns, you had used 
only three or four shades to carry out a large and simple design you 
could have made beautiful carpet.” “ Now,” he said, “ I am going 
to make a confession. In weaving the carpets for my own house, 
only three shades of yarn were used to carry out a very simple pattern. 
But we can’t sell such carpet. We have to make them like these 
samples in order to sell them.” 
COMF 1 , ICATED AND SIMPLE PATTERNS 
IN CARPETS 
make these traditional forms, either in their 
original or exaggerated shapes, has com¬ 
pletely changed their character: they are 
dead and stiff like artificial flowers. Not 
only this, the whole process of cramping 
down machinery to imitate hand tools, has 
kept us from seeing the true significance and 
greatness ot the machine and its power to 
produce splendid and beautiful forms. 
A BEDROOM SET COVERED WITH “WORK.” 
