ur home
suitably, what need have you of antiques?

The serious amateur will fight shy of miracles. If he admires the beauty
of line of a fine old Heppelwhite bed or Sheraton sideboard, he will
have reproductions made by an expert cabinet-maker. The new piece will
not have the soft darkness of the old, but the owner will be planning
that soft darkness for his grandchildren, and in the meantime he will
have a beautiful thing to live with. The age of a piece of furniture is
of great value to a museum, but for domestic purposes, use and beauty
will do. How fine your home will be if all the things within it have
those qualities!

Look through the photographs shown on these pages: there are many old
chairs and tables, but there are more new ones. I am not one of these
decorators who insist on originals. I believe good reproductions are
more valuable than feeble originals, unless you are buying your
furniture as a speculation. You can buy a reproduction of a Chippendale
ladder back chair for about twenty-five dollars, but an original chair
would cost at least a hundred and fifty, and then it would be "in the
style and period of Chippendale." It might amuse you to ask the curator
of one of the British museums the price of one of the Chippendales _by_
Chippendale. It would buy you a tidy little acreage. Stuart and
Cromwellian chairs are being more and more reproduced. These chairs are
made of oak, the Stuart ones with seats and backs of cane, the
Cromwellian ones with seats and backs of tapestry, needlework, corded
velvet, or some such handsome fabric. These reproductions may be had at
from twenty-five to seventy-five dollars each. Of course, the cost of
the Cromwellian chairs might be greatly increased by expensive
coverings.

There is a graceful Louis XV sofa in the Petit Trianon that I have
copied many times. The copy is as beautiful as the original, because
this sort of furniture depends upon exquisite design and perfect
workmanship for its beauty. It is possible that a modern craftsman might
not have achieved so graceful a design, but the perfection of his
workmanship cannot be gainsaid. The frame of the sofa must be carved and
then painted and guilded many times before it is ready for the brocade
covering, and the cost of three hundred dollars for the finished sofa is
not too much. The original could not be purchased at any price.

Then there is the Chinese lacquer furniture of the Chippendale period
that we are using