Page:Arts & Crafts Essays.djvu/300

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Of the Room and Furniture.

on which and by which each piece was designed.

Another cause prejudicial to the growth of modern furniture is the canonisation of old.

That tables and chairs should have lasted one hundred years is indeed proof that they were originally well made: that the conditions of the moment of their make were better than they are now is possible, and such aureole as is their due let us hasten to offer. But, to take advantage of their survival and to increase their number by facsimile reproduction is to paralyse all healthy growth of manufacture.

As an answer to the needs and habits of our ancestors of one hundred years ago—both in construction and design—let them serve us as models showing the attitude of mind in which we should meet the problems of our day—and so

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