The House in Good Taste

I wish people generally would study the oak and walnut furniture of old England, and use more reproductions of these honest, solid pieces of furniture in their houses. Its beauty is that it is "at home" in simple American houses, and yet by virtue of its very usefulness and sturdiness it is not out of place in a room where beautiful objects of other periods are used. The long oak table that is so comfortably ample for books and magazines and flowers in your living-room may be copied from an old refectory table--but what of it? It fulfils its new mission just as frankly as the original table served the monks who used it. The soft brown of oak is a pleasure after the over-polished mahogany of a thousand rooms. I do not wish to condemn Colonial mahogany furniture, you understand. I simply wish to remind you that there are other woods and models available. French furniture of the best type represents the supreme art of the cabinet-maker, and is incomparable for formal rooms, but I am afraid the time will never come when French furniture will be interchangeable with the oak and mahogany of England and America. In short, the whole thing should be a matter of taste and suitability. If you have a few fine old things that have come to you from your ancestors--a grandfather's clock, an old portrait or two--you are quite justified in bringing good reproductions of similar things into your home. The effect is the thing you are after, isn't it? Then, too, you will escape the awful fever that makes any antique seem desirable, and in buying reproductions you can select really comfortable furniture. You will be independent of the dreadful vases and candelabra and steel engravings "of the period," and will feel free to use modern prints and Chinese porcelains and willow chairs and anything that fits into your home. I can think of no slavery more deadly to one's sense of humor than collecting antiques indiscriminately!