workmanship. These are qualities that are to be sought for the cottage
as well as for the mansion; and while they may add to the purchase cost
of the separate articles, it is possible to secure them at no great
increase for the whole over the cheaper goods, provided we guard
against the common error in housefurnishing--overpurchasing.

[Illustration: Good examples of Chippendale and old walnut.]



THE ARTS AND CRAFTS

What is known in America as the arts and crafts movement has, in its
sincere developments, sought to adapt the better qualities of the old
designs of furniture to the demands of modern conditions, artistic and
practical. Not always, however, has it been possible to distinguish
between the honest effort to enforce a better standard and the various
forms of charlatanry under which clumsy and unsightly creations have
been and are being worked off upon an ingenuous public at prices
proportioned to their degrees of ugliness. In colonial times many an
humble carpenter vainly scratched his noggin as he puzzled over the
hopeless problem of duplicating with rude tools and scant skill the
handiwork that graced the lordly mansions of merrie England; to-day
some wight who can scarcely distinguish a jackplane from a saw-buck
essays to "express himself" (at our expense) in furniture, repeating
all the gaucheries that the colonial carpenter could not avoid making.



MISSION FURNITURE