One must have preserved many naïve illusions if one may believe in all
the "antiques" that are offered in the marketplaces of the world to-day.
Even the greatest connoisseurs are caught napping sometimes, as in the
case of the famous crown supposedly dating to the Fifth Century, B.C.,
which was for a brief period one of the treasures of the Louvre. Its
origin was finally discovered, and great was the outcry! It had been
traced to a Viennese artisan, a worker in the arts and crafts.
[Illustration: MRS. C.W. HARKNESS'S CABINET FOR _OBJETS D'ART_]
Surely, if the great men of the Louvre could be so deceived it is
obvious that the amateur collector has little chance at the hands of the
dealers in old furniture and other objects of art. Fortunately, the
greatest dealers are quite honest. They tell you frankly if the old
chair you covet is really old, if it has been partially restored, or if
it is a copy, and they charge you accordingly. At these dealers a small
table of the Louis XVI period, or a single chair covered in the original
tapestry, may cost as much as a man in modest circumstances would spend
on his whole house. Almost everything outside these princely shops
(salons is a better word) is false, or atrociously restored. Please
remember I am not referring to reputable dealers, but to the smaller
fry, whose name is legion, in whose shops the unwary seeker after
bargains is sure to be taken in.
Italy is, I think, the greatest workshop of fraudulent reproductions. It
has an output that all Europe and America can never exhaust. Little
children on the streets of Naples still find simpletons of ardent faith
who will buy scraps of old plaster and bits of paving stones that are
alleged to have been excavated in Pompeii.
In writing about antiques it is not easy to be consistent, and any
general conclusion is impossible. Certain reproductions are
objectionable, and yet they are certainly better than poor originals,
after all. The simplest advice is the best and easiest to follow: The
less a copy suggests an attempt at "artistic reproduction," the more
literal and mechanical it is in its copy of the original, the better it
is. A good photograph of a fine old painting is superior to the average
copy in oils or watercolors. A chair honestly copied from a worm eaten
original is better for domestic purpose than the original. The original,
the moment its usefulness is past, belongs in a museum. A plaster cast
of a great bust is better than the same object copied in marble or
bronze by an average sculptor. And so it goes. Think it out for
yourself.
It may be argued that the budding collector is as happy with a false
object and a fake bauble as if he possessed the real thing, and
therefore it were better to leave him to his illusions; that it is his
own fault; that it is so much the worse for him if he is deceived.
But--you can't leave the innocent lamb to the slaughter, if you can give
him a helping hand. If he must be a collector, let him be first a
collector of the many excellent books now published on old furniture,
china, rugs, pewter, silver, prints, the things that will come his way.
You can't begin collecting one thing without developing an enthusiasm
for the contemporary things. Let him study the museum collections, visit
the private collections, consult recognized experts. If he is serious,
he will gradually acquire the intuition of knowing the genuine from the
false, the worth-while from the worthless, and once he has that
knowledge, instinct, call it what you will, he can never be satisfied
with imitations.
The collection and association of antiques and reproductions should be
determined by the collector's sense of fitness, it seems to me. Every
man should depend on whatever instinct for rightness, for suitability,
he may possess. If he finds that he dare not risk his individual
opinion, then let him be content with the things he _knows_ to be both
beautiful and useful, and leave the subtler decisions for someone else.
For instance, there are certain objects that are obviously the better
for age, the objects that are softened and refined by a bloom that comes
from usage.
An old rug has a softness that a new one cannot imitate. An old copper
kettle has an uneven quality that has come from years of use. A new
kettle may be quite as useful, but age has given the old one a certain
quality that hanging and pounding cannot reproduce. A pewter platter
that has been used for generations is dulled and softened to a glow that
a new platter cannot rival.
What charm is to a woman, the vague thing called quality is to an object
of art. We feel it, though we may not be able to explain it. An old
Etruscan jar may be reproduced in form, but it would be silly to attempt
the reproduction of the crudenesses that gave the old jar its real
beauty. In short, objects that depend on form and fine workmanship for
their beauty may be successfully reproduced, but objects that depend on
imperfections of workmanship, on the crudeness of primitive fabrics, on
the fading of vegetable dyes, on the bloom that age alone can give,
should not be imitated. We may introduce a reproduction of a fine bust
into our rooms, but an imitation of a Persian tile or a Venetian vase is
absurd on the face of it.
The antiques the average American householder is interested in are the
old mahogany, oak and walnut things that stand for the oldest period of
our own particular history. It is only the wealthy collector who goes
abroad and buys masses of old European furniture, real or sham, who is
concerned with the merits and demerits of French and Italian furniture.
The native problem is the so-called Colonial mahogany that is always
alleged to be Chippendale or Heppelwhite, or Sheraton, regardless! There
must be thousands of these alleged antiques in New York shops alone!
It goes without saying that only a very small part of it can be really
old. As for it having been made by the men whose names it bears, that is
something no reputable dealer would affirm. The Chippendales, father,
son and grandson, published books of designs which were used by all the
furniture-makers of their day.
No one can swear to a piece of furniture having been made in the
workshops of the Chippendales. Even the pieces in the Metropolitan
Museum are marked "Chippendale Style" or "In the Sheraton manner," or
some such way. If the furniture is in the style of these makers, and if
it is really old, you will pay a small fortune for it. But even then you
cannot hope to get more than you pay for, and you would be very silly to
pay for a name! After all, Chippendale is a sort of god among amateur
collectors of American furniture, but among more seasoned collectors he
is not by any means placed first. He adapted and borrowed and produced
some wonderful things, but he also produced some monstrosities, as you
will see if you visit the English museums.
Why then lend yourself to possible deception? Why pay for names when
museums are unable to buy them? If your object is to furnish your 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 so much now. The process of lacquering is as tedious
to-day as it ever was, and the reproductions sell for goodly sums. A
tall secretary of black and gold lacquer may cost six hundred dollars.
You can imagine what an Eighteenth Century piece would cost!
The person who said that a taste for old furniture and bibelots was
"worse than a passion, it was a vice," was certainly near the truth! It
is an absorbing pursuit, an obsession, and it grows with what it feeds
on. As in objects of art, so in old furniture, the supply will always
equal the demand of the unwary. The serious amateur will fight shy of
all miracles and content himself with excellent reproductions. Nothing
later than the furniture of the Eighteenth Century is included in the
term, "old furniture." There are many fine cabinet makers in the early
Nineteenth Century, but from them until the last decade the horrors that
were perpetrated have never been equaled in the history of household
decorations.
I fancy the furniture of the mid-Victorian era will never be coveted by
collectors, unless someone should build a museum for the freakish
objects of house furnishing. America could contribute much to such a
collection, for surely the black walnut era of the Nineteenth Century
will never be surpassed in ugliness and bad taste, unless--rare
fortune--there should be a sudden epidemic of appreciation among
cabinet-makers, which would result in their taking the beautiful wood in
the black walnut beds and wardrobes and such and make it over into
worth-while things. It would be a fine thing to release the mistreated,
velvety wood from its grotesqueries, and give it a renaissance in
graceful cabinets, small tables, footstools, and the many small things
that could be so easily made from huge unwieldy wardrobes and beds and
bureaux.
The workmen of to-day have their eyes opened. They have no excuse for
producing unworthy things, when the greatest private collections are
loaned or given outright to the museums. The new wing of the
Metropolitan Museum in New York houses several fine old collections of
furniture, the Hoentschel collection, for which the wing was really
planned, having been given to the people of New York by Mr. Pierpont
Morgan. This collection is an education in the French decorative arts.
Then, too, there is the Bolles collection of American furniture
presented to the museum by Mrs. Russell Sage.
I have no quarrel with the honest dealers who are making fine and
sincere copies of such furniture, and selling them as copies. There is
no deception here, we must respect these men as we respect the workers
of the Eighteenth Century: we give them respect for their masterly
workmanship, their appreciation of the best things, and their fidelity
to the masterpieces they reproduce.
Not so long ago the New York papers published the experience of a
gentleman who bought a very beautiful divan in a European furniture
shop. He paid for it--you may be sure of that!--and he could hardly wait
for its arrival to show it to his less fortunate neighbors. Within a few
months something happened to the lining of the divan, and he discovered
on the inside of the frame the maker's name and address. Imagine his
chagrin when he found that the divan had been made at a furniture
factory in his own country. You can't be sorry for him, you feel that it
served him right.
[Illustration: A BANQUETTE OF THE LOUIS XV. PERIOD COVERED WITH
NEEDLEWORK]
[Illustration: A CHINESE CHIPPENDALE SOFA COVERED WITH CHINTZ]
This is an excellent example of the vain collector who cannot judge
for himself, but will not admit it. He has not developed his sense of
beauty, his instinct for excellence of workmanship. He thinks that
because he has the money to pay for the treasure, the treasure must be
genuine--hasn't _he_ chosen it?
I can quite understand the pleasure that goes with furnishing a really
old house with objects of the period in which the house was built. A New
England farmhouse, for instance, may be an inspiration to the owner, and
you can understand her quest of old fashioned rush bottomed chairs and
painted settles and quaint mirrors and blue homespun coverlets. You can
understand the man who falls heir to a good, square old Colonial house
who wishes to keep his furnishings true to the period, but you cannot
understand the crying need for Eighteenth Century furniture in a modern
shingle house, or the desire for old spinning wheels and battered
kitchen utensils in a Spanish stucco house, or Chippendale furniture in
a forest bungalow.
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!
[Illustration: THE TRELLIS ROOM IN THE COLONY CLUB]