As long as a family thought itself comfortably furnished with a
chest or two, a wardrobe, a box-bedstead, a dozen earthenware
pots of different sizes, and three or four vessels of pewter
or copper, each one of these objects of utility might become a
vehicle for a good deal of artistic thought. The piece would
be handed down from mother to daughter, from father to son. At
all events, it would be made with that possibility in mind.
It was made to last, and in an artistic community it would be
the object of a good deal of careful consideration as to its
form and as to the little adornments that might be added to
it. Now, however, when the poorest family requires two hundred
utensils of one and another kind, and finds, moreover, that
these utensils are furnished at an incredibly low price by great
companies which make them by the thousand and force them upon
the customer with favorable opportunities for immediate delivery
and gradual payment, the possibility of having the common
objects of life beautiful has gone.--RUSSELL STURGIS,
“Lubke’s History of Art.”
(135)