THE NECESSARY POINT OF VIEW. OAK OR MAHOGANY? WALNUT AND OTHER WOODS. FURNITURE PURCHASABLE IN THE GENERAL MARKET.

I mean that side of art which is, or ought to be, done by the ordinary workman while he is about his ordinary work. This art no longer exists now, having been killed by commercialism. While it lasted, everything that was made by man was adorned by man, just as everything made by Nature is adorned by her. The craftsman, as he fashioned the thing he had under his hand, ornamented it so naturally and so entirely without conscious effort, that is is often difficult to distinguish where the mere utilitarian part of his work ended and the ornamental began.

William Morris, "Useful Work v. Useless Toil"

The Necessary Point Of View

THE need of the reader of such a book as the present is a broad view of Period decoration and furnishing - not either a vast amount of detailed information that will but bewilder him or a mere smattering of talk regarding isolated epochs. The knowledge of the general reader is mostly confined to the English styles: they are in every way admirable, but constitute only a portion of the manifestations of great decorative movements which swept over all civilised Europe. But the subject will best be opened by a semi-humorous discussion.