The Toledo chronicle. [volume] (Toledo, Tama County, Iowa) 1873-1924, 1877-06-28
The Furniture-Craze

Is IL not almost Time 10 reDel against the
professors of household art? They are so
numerous, persistent and dogmatic that
they make life a burden. No man or
woman dares any longer to Uncomfortable
iii his or her own house. We must be
| possible. According tu this brood of
writers and lecturers, who infest every
branch of literature, the end and aim Of
existence is to be artistic. People are not
permitted to pursue the even tenor of their
| joying the things which they chiefly like.
Ii man accepts (as he must, Cr be
deemed vulgar) the cant of the household
artists, he must fill his house with an odd
tumble of the furniture OF the ages, eat
from high.art plates set on spider-legged
table, hang his hat on a Queen Anne hook,
put his cane in medieval rack, poke his
fire with an Egyptian obelisk, lie on
Louis XIV. bedstead, and when he is car
ried to his long home in a modern
casket," glad to escape the esthetic
trials of this mortal life, he is pelted into
his grave with artistic floral designs by the
cart load. 1850; ags e
Nearly every newspaper, book and
magazine in the land is laden with lectures
OH the art of household decoration. Even
the hapless children are not spared. One
juvenile periodical has had essays on this
well worn subject, and little girls are
ruthlessly torn from their rag-babes and
taught to make denominations with red
flannel, -four barrels and gum -shellac. A
religious newspaper, giving way to an un-
holy impulse, forsakes the Shorter Cote
c1ssm of the fathers, and shows its readers
a back aching bookcase, bay window
filed with gimcracks, and design for a
fireplace which is calculated to make
angels weep. Young housekeepers go
mad over the vain attempt to be ecOnomi-
cal and esthetic; and sensible old people
are made wrerched by the discovery that
their lives have been misshapen and
dwarfed by being spent in habitations un-
illumined by household taste. The shop
keepers gabble learnedly of Eastlake, the
Renaissance and Queen Anne, and even
the table, girls sigh for angel spoons, and
the scullion breaks common French china
with superb disdain. t. ASA.
The curious and worrying feature Of this
popular craze is that it has set us back
several centuries. Notwithstanding all
that has been said about the worlds
Udhrs 5gsfsssndtafkefs,S It abpdafa. ufe
Raphaels and Titians of cabinet-making,
the real old masters of the furniture-s shop.
A sideboard with sixteen thin legs, for
years used as hen coop or meal chest, is
dragged forth and extolled as treasure.
A chest of drawers, which weighs ton,
and must be hoisted in by hole in the
wall, Is rapturously depicted in the maya
zines as marvel of art. To be thorough
ly artistic we must discard carpets, tear
out the gas-pipes and water works, and .
cit MI
Candles which drip, waxed floors which
make one shiver and which trip up the
unwary, and open fireplaces which cheer :
and do not warm, must take the place of 3
modern but inartistic comforts No more
water-pipes in the house for the disciple
OF high art in household decoration. The
lcleanly bathing tub must be banished, and
the crockery bowl, the terror of awkward
children and servants, must take its place.
Then, when the devotee of art in the
household has stripped his house ofAau /.
the conveniences which he weakly
deemed were the products of high civili-a.
zation, he may sit down among the dis 4
comforts of his dead -and. gone ancestors
and fancy that he is enjoying himself:
Taken in moderate doses, esthetics in
the household may be harmless. But
what, with the cant of the professors and
the rapacity OF the dealers, the whole :.
business of household art has become AN :.
unmitigated nuisance. Painters sxand
sculptors are coolly asked to decorate side
boards and fre-screens, and every popin-.
jay who has smattering of art infictshis
crudities upon long suffering public. It
is not too much to say that some of the
/" designs and suggestions which have
been held forth as models for imitation are
preposterous beyond the power of ridicule-
The tendency of the whole business is to
make house. furnishings the end and aim
of life, to make ones surroundings the
principal figure instead of his accessories.
IN p. Times. as s;ss.s.is as5syes b A.