No matter how one
tries, it will not fit. One has to leave out so much of importance, so
much of historic and artistic interest, so much of the life of the
people that helps to make the subject vivid, and has to take so much for
granted, that the task seems almost impossible. In spite of this I shall
try to give in the following pages a general but necessarily short
review of the field, hoping that it may help those wishing to furnish
their homes in some special period style. The average person cannot
study all the subject thoroughly, but it certainly adds interest to the
problems of one's own home to know something of how the great periods of
decoration grew one from another, how the influence of art in one
country made itself felt in the next, molding and changing taste and
educating the people to a higher sense of beauty.
It is the lack of general knowledge which makes it possible for
furniture built on amazingly bad lines to be sold masquerading under the
name of some great period. The customer soon becomes bewildered, and,
unless he has a decided taste of his own, is apt to get something which
will prove a white elephant on his hands. One must have some standard
of comparison, and the best and simplest way is to study the great work
of the past. To study its rise and climax rather than the decline; to
know the laws of its perfection so that one can recognize the
exaggeration which leads to degeneracy. This ebb and flow is most
interesting: the feeling the way at the beginning, ever growing surer
and surer until the high level of perfection is reached; and then the
desire to "gild the lily" leading to over-ornamentation, and so to
decline.
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