We next come to the consideration of reproductions. Now there is no fundamentally valid objection to reproductions merely on the ground that they are reproductions. The cause for objection, and very serious objection, too, appears when they are specious imitations, made on purpose to deceive, and not honest and straightforward reproductions; when their makers pretend they are not reproductions but are truly antiques or else when they are poor and inaccurate and are unfaithful and libellous to the patterns from which they are professedly copied.

It is manifestly impossible for everyone with a taste for and a desire to possess good furniture in the period styles to acquire genuine antiques. The number of them is not sufficient for the demand, not even though they were as plentiful as the seemingly inexhaustible supply popularly supposed to have been brought over in the good ship "Mayflower"; and if, by some chance, they were, the price would doubtless be prohibitive. But there is no limit to the potential supply of worthy replicas and anyone may acquire good and accurate copies of old work and justly take a pride therein. So then, since there is plainly not enough old furniture to go around among all its admirers, we may as well frankly recognise both the necessity and propriety of reproductions. Indeed, as we shall see a little further on, the decorative bent of our day actually demands good reproductions.

Considered from the buyer's point of view, a sharp distinction must be carefully drawn between honest reproductions and dishonest, meretricious imitations. Skilful and conscientious cabinet-makers can satisfactorily reproduce old pieces, and this duplication of good models is a commendable practice. On the other hand, nothing deserves more unqualified censure than the practice of manufacturing spurious antiques. To be sure, if anyone is silly and gullible enough to enjoy being duped into buying freshly made antiques, full of worm holes made with bird-shot or battered to order with hammers and chisels, no very great harm is done except to the purchaser. But the mischief comes in when these wretched deceptions have neither the lines nor the proportions of the originals under whose names and presumptive forms they masquerade. Apart from the detestable sham and dishonesty of the whole thing, they do an incalculable amount of harm in perverting the notions and warping the taste of persons whose knowledge of antiques is not sufficient to enable them to discriminate between good and bad, true and false.

We just now said that the decorative bent of our day demands good reproductions. This is true because there are no worthy new styles that can at all fill their place. History shows that few or no furniture styles, really worth while, have ever been deliberately and intentionally invented. They have been either the result of accident or - and this much more generally - the product of gradual development and modification according to new needs. Changes have come by process of evolution, crystallising into the several forms distinctive of the several periods, and there has ever been an ancestral background.

Even the Empire style, which may reasonably be regarded as a style made to order - and a bad enough botch it was - had classic prototypes whose details, though accurately copied, were clumsily combined and not conformed to the spirit of the originals. Some depressing new styles have, indeed, been concocted from time to time, as the result of conscious effort, but they are stilted and affected and are evidently the product of a tenuous invention painfully striving for something it could not attain. There was, for instance, the East-lake mode of Victorian days; there were the various manifestations of the "art nouveau," with its grotesque and tortured forms; nearer our own day there is the Mission style, and several others might be added - all of them so awkward, self-conscious and so evidently betokening origin from a diseased and woefully jejune imagination that we naturally feel disposed to mistrust the latest phase of style creation evidenced in the tendencies of the Vienna school.

The element of utility always rises in the background of the artistically good, and furniture development, where most successful, has followed an eclectic process that reflects, more or less faithfully, the growth of new needs according to the prevalence of new social manners and customs. It is a natural process to which we may not do violence with impunity. It is obviously best, therefore, to hold fast to the accepted period styles, which have both grace and vigour, until something preferable is devised to take their place, a thing which, judging from present indications, seems extremely unlikely to occur in the near future.

The necessity, then, for reproductions being plainly seen, the question arises: "How, or on what basis and principles, are we to choose reproductions that shall fill all requirements in point of accuracy and general acceptability!" To begin with, one must insist on absolute accuracy and truthfulness to originals and shun all presumptuous changes and "improvements," made by the modern artisan, who is too often prone to take unwarrantable liberties with the model from which he is working. This all important quality of accuracy may be said to consist in a most punctilious regard for correct proportion and an equally punctilious regard for correct detail.

The knowledge of and ability to judge accuracy of reproductions will come by persistently watching minute details of moulding, carving and the like and comparing them with other similar details on other pieces, being always on the watch, the while, to detect some difference. As stated before, with reference to antiques, constant examination and comparison are the bases of critical and authoritative knowledge. Train your eye - you can, by practice - to carry subtle proportions, the sweep of curves and every little particular of form and contour. The keenness of discrimination resulting from a conscientious study of details will at once detect and avoid anachronisms, such as William and Mary handles on a Chippendale chest of drawers - the writers saw such a thing recently - or a draw table as wide as a modern dining table, with stretchers of a much later date than the pattern of the legs would admit. The responsibility involved, indeed, and the accurate knowledge of detail and proportion needed in buying reproductions is even greater than in buying originals and often a keener eye and a sharper sense of proportion are required to detect inaccuracies which, though they may be individually almost imperceptible, at least to some eyes, nevertheless make a great difference in the sum total of appearance.

One of the aims throughout every chapter in the book has been to cultivate habits of close observation and discrimination, and if the reader once becomes proficient in these particulars it will be an easy matter to choose wisely and well, no matter what may be presented for critical examination.

As the old furniture we now so greatly prize was the work of the cabinet-maker with but a few highly trained men working under the individual eye of the master, he himself often doubtless doing some of the more critical pieces of carving with his own hand, it is the cabinet-maker who perhaps gives us the best reproductions to-day. He is usually also a dealer in antiques, familiar with and appreciative of every excellence of the old work: his reproductions are mostly those of the best antique specimens which come under his hand and not the stock pieces found in almost every shop. He does not adapt but reproduces, and his furniture is mostly hand-work.

In this latter fact lies a great advantage. It gives the indefinable mark of the individual and not of the machine: the carving of the best cabinet-makers will be incisive and vigorous; the flat spaces about it will be smooth but it will be the smoothness of hand-cut work, showing the slight irregularity or waviness of surface left by the tool and not the dead flatness of machine work. The curve of a cabriole leg will have life, and if there is a ball-and-claw foot the claw will grasp the ball, it will have tenseness and sharpness of knuckle. And the finish - it will be soft and waxlike, not glassy and hard. In short, such furniture will have the characteristics of the old work, it will look the part, and the price will usually be rather less than that asked in the shops for the best grade of factory work. But - and there is always a but - be sure you find your man: there are but few of him, even in the large cities: of the rank and file it is well to beware.

In the factory work there are likewise many grades. The best of those makers whose names are familiar through advertisements in high-class magazines, and whose work is handled by equally high-class stores, do thoroughly reputable work, the lumber is well seasoned, their furniture is put together to stay, and their workmen are expert. Some of those establishments make faithful reproductions, others whose mechanical work is as excellent show a constant tendency to adapt - a tendency unnecessary and foolish both because the man who can improve upon the best styles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has yet to be born, and because those styles were of eminent practicality they are perfectly susceptible of reproduction. Furthermore it is a tendency which, with the growing knowledge of the real on the part of the buyers, can only result, and more is the pity, in injury to the makers' own business and to their discredit.