Contemporary Home Interior Designs

contemporary home interior designspage 79 of 107


are places for everything. They were made for the orderly packing and
keeping of valuable things, in closetless rooms, and they were made
without projecting corners and cornices, because life was lived in
smaller spaces than at present. They were the best product of a
thoughtful time--where if manufacture lacked some of the machinery and
appliances of to-day, it was at least not rushed by breathless
competition, but could progress slowly in careful leisure. Of course we
cannot all have colonial furniture, and indeed it would not be according
to the spirit of our time, for the arts of our own day are to be
encouraged and fostered--but we can buy the best of the things which
are made in our time, the best in style, in intention, in fittingness,
and above all in carefulness and honesty of construction.

For some reason the quality of durability seems to be wanting in modern
furniture. Our things are fashioned of the same woods, but something in
the curing or preparation of them has weakened the fibre and made it
brittle. Probably the gradual evaporation of the tree-juices which
old-time cabinet-makers were willing to wait for, left the shrunken
sinews of the wood in better condition than is possible with our hurried
and violent kiln-dried methods. What is gained in time in the one place
is lost in another. Nature refuses to enter into our race for speedy
completion, and if we hurry her natural processes we shorten our lease
of ownership.

As a very apt illustration of this fact, I remember coming into
possession some twenty years ago of an oak chair which had stood,
perhaps, for more than two hundred years in a Long Island farm-house.
When I found it, it had been long relegated to kitchen use and was
covered with a crust of variously coloured paints which had accumulated

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