Baird to the fixtures of the National Museum, where drawers and cases are all made on a fixed proportionate scale so that any drawers will fit in any case. In this, however, it is clear the Japanese anticipated us with their mats all of regular fixed size, so that the size and proportions of rooms, and houses, are expressed by the number of mats requisite to cover the floors.

The universal use of machinery in nearly all manufactures necessarily precluded the existence of any true art; for it will be remembered in our definition of art, that it is the personal quality given by the individual artist which distinguishes a work of art from every other product of man's labor; so that, when the manufacturers sought only to combine the maximum of production with the minimum of cost, it was impossible that the product could be, in any respect, a work of art. The baneful action of this wholesale manufacture in preventing any art development of the industries was everywhere apparent in the surroundings of domestic life, in the furnishings and appointments of the homes of the people, in which, for the most part, a depressing sameness of dreary ugliness prevailed; for the general adoption of machine-made furniture, the monotonous product of the large factories which supplied retail dealers all over the country, effectually superseded local cabinet makers; who, possibly, might else occasionally have developed the possession of some individual instinct for art. The lathe and glue pot sufficed to create all the ornament of the factory-made furniture requisite to meet the demands of a popular taste which had no opportunity of seeing better work.

It resulted that for the twenty or thirty years immediately preceding the Centennial there was little if any artistic furniture made in the United States outside of a few very expensive shops, in two or three of the large cities, in which foreign designers and cabinet makers were employed. One or two of these establishments made some showing of their costly work. An inlaid cabinet shown by Marcotte et Cie., of New York, was greatly admired for the beauty of its design and the perfection of its execution. In all respects it merited the appellation of a work of art and, placed as it was in close proximity to some of the most pretentious of the machine-made furniture, it revealed by contrast, their artistic failings. There was also a little showing of so called "Eastlake" furniture, hand-made and excellent in its honest construction but with a prevailing air of ugliness and discomfort. In the Cincinnati exhibit in the Woman's Pavilion, there was an ambitious

showing of wood carving, of varied excellence, applied to furniture; mostly the work of ladies, pupils of Mr. Fry or Mr. Pittman, a few admirable specimens of masters' work accompanied them, the whole was suggestive of what a wealth of domestic art ornament and of interior decoration is made possible by a revival of this charming art. This unique exhibit is referred to in Part II. Spite of these scattered exceptions, encouraging as indications of improvement and of the possibility of artistic furniture, but lost sight of among the multitudinous inartistic articles shown by the wholesale factories, there was, on the whole, little of the attractiveness of art in the showing of American furniture at the Centennial.

Indeed, owing largely to the causes recited above, in nothing was the absence of any true ideas of art more evident, than in these immense and obtrusive exhibitions of costly American furniture, when contrasted with those shown by any of the Europeans, especially by the English.

The lesson was speedily learned and American manufacturers soon set to work with more or less success to imitate art furniture. There has been a grateful change even in the machine-made furniture which never can be very artistic; many of the most obtrusive abominations as seen at the Centennial are now obsolete, and there has been a great deal of exquisite artistic furniture made in the United States, as well as imported during the past nine years.

While at one time, the broad cloths manufactured in the village of Leeds, in Northampton, Massachusetts, were considered the finest made, superior to the best English cloths, this industry had been destroyed by the changes in the tariff, made subsequently to the election of Polk and Dallas, by reason of which the woollen manufactures of the countryas well as the iron industries—were practically obliterated for years. Owing to this, the Americans were left far behind by European nations in the display of textiles at the Centennial,-the iron interest had the sooner recovered by reason of the demand for rails in the sudden development of railroad building all over the country. Carpets were largely and successfully made, by means of the famous inventions of the Bigelow power looms, etc., so far as the mechanical weaving was concerned, but the art qualities were conspicuous by their absence; so that in design, and in dyes, much was wanting.

The rapid development and extent of popular taste under the guidance of fashion can only be realized by occasional reference to dates.

In view of the present large importations of Oriental rugs and carpets, as well as of the American manufacture of "Smyrna" rugs, it seems difficult to believe that Oriental carpets and hangings and any general taste for Oriental colors, were almost unknown in this country before, and indeed for some time subsequent to, the Centennial. The preva lence of artistic paper-hangings, both imported and of native manufacture is due to a fashion as recent as that which impels to the general adoption of the carpets and tapestries of the Orient.

It was in November, 1870, a year that saw many notable art beginnings in America, that the first importation into Boston of Oriental rugs, and of the artistic wall-papers designed and manufactured by the poet William Morris in England, was made by Mr. N. Willis Bumstead who, returning from a visit to England, sought to introduce the new English ideas in regard to the decoration of interiors. To effect this he fitted up some rooms in the English style and opened them for inspection in April 1871. These rooms so different from the ordinary, attracted much attention but the time was not then ripe for so radical a revolution. Occasionally an artist, who had not forgotten his early days in European studios, selected a pretty rug with which to light up his own studio, but there was no general adoption of the novelties and it was a number of years before the new departure met with favor. One would like to know how those rooms would compare with the customary furnishings of to-day! Judging from the first essays in color the Brooklyn Academy interior by Eidlitz for instance, they may have been almost sombre by contrast.

There had been some making of useful crockery early in the history of the country, and in Trenton, New Jersey, long before the Centennial, there had developed a large and important industry, as also more recently at East Liverpool and elsewhere in Ohio. In the common class of ware,— plain white table crockery, the Americans showed goods equal, and often superior, to similar goods shown by the English, Germans and French; but the American attempts at artistic decoration were such as to make the judicious grieve. There was absolutely no room for rivalry. The Americans had nothing to approach even the lower grades of European ware, English, French and Germans excelled them hopelessly, not to mention the wonderful porcelains shown by China and Japan. However, the excellence of the undecorated ware for common household use, and the exhibition of crude clays, and kaolin, demonstrated that nothing

but the application of art was needed to enable the Americans to compete with the world in ceramics.

In Chapter XVII of Mr. Elliott's work on Pottery and Porcelain, referred to later, an interesting historical summary of the origin and progress of the art in America is given. It appears that as early as 1769 porcelain was made in Southwark, now a district of Philadelphia. An account of the discovery of china clays in Virginia, and their exportation to England and use by the potters there as early as 1745, as well as the fear of the English potters lest the colonists should themselves make use of these clays, occurs in a previous chapter.

Mr. Elliott finds nothing to admire in the American ware, shown by some twenty or more firms at the Centennial, which he admits to be useful, strong, clumsy, cheap, and "detestable;" he praises, however, some figures of base-ball players, modelled by Broome, and shown by Ott & Brewer, of Trenton. He closes the chapter treating of American pottery, having recited facts showing the abundance of the raw material suitable for the production of pottery and porcelain, with the following question: "With cheap clays, cheap fuel, cheap foods, may we not begin to supply ourselves, if not some of the rest of the world, with the finest productions of the potter's wheel?”

Manufactures of glass had been long established in America and some very creditable displays were made; it was however in the artistic forms and in the applications of color, that the Americans were deficient. The improvement of art qualities in glass manufactures since the Centennial, is most striking, and may be fairly credited among the results of that exhibition.

Some sixty or more years ago a young silversmith in Baltimore began the making of repoussé silver plate. He had the good taste, or the happy fortune, to select and adhere to as models for the forms of his urns, pitchers and bowls, the exquisite shapes of the classic vases of Etruria and Greece. His experience furnishes a striking instance of the successful development in the United States of a purely artistic local industry which, by the beauty and excellence of its products, achieved a great success. There are lessons in this history worth considering; for the appreciation bestowed upon their antique forms prove that novelty of design is not essential in art work, while it is certain that no new combinations can hope to outrival the peerless forms, achieved by the antique artists,-immortal in their beauty.

Here is one instance of the creation and development of artistic production, due to a single American silversmith, long anterior to any European or American modern renaissance of Art.

In New York, the house of Tiffany & Co., in the same business under various firm names for half a century at least, had been long engaged in the manufacture of silverware, the setting of jewelry, etc. At the Centennial this house displayed, in addition to a very beautiful showing of their various goods, precious stones, etc., some striking examples of art work in silver, admirable alike in design and execution, especially in the excellence of the repoussé work. Among these, two works were conspicuous. These were the Bryant vase, (now in the possession of the Metropolitan Museum), with its harmony of line and ornament, exquisitely adapted to its purpose, it being a work in which a sister art was called on to express the love and reverence felt by his countrymen for the grand old poet; and the candelabra ordered by Mr. James Gordon Bennett in commemoration of the victory of his yacht Dauntless over the Mohawk. The name of the vanquished yacht evidently suggested his theme to the artist and the bold and original treatment in the use made of scenes of Indian life, executed in silver with admirable precision of detail, gave proof that the art of working in silver, which centuries ago gave fame to the goldsmiths of Florence, was not wholly without witness in our western world. The name of Mr. J. L. Whitehouse the artist creator of these works should be as familiar to art lovers, as is that of the fortunate firm which can command the skill of such an artist. Many of the smaller articles shown were exquisite in design and novel in material showing Japanese motives and being wrought of vari-colored metals, and in relief. In artistic manipulation of the precious metals, the art of the gold and silversmiths, and of the workers in bronze, this American display was excelled by no European exhibits. In addition there were shown very remarkable specimens of what was to the people of the West, practically a new art, the inlaying of metals, rather,—if I may coin a new word to describe the new object,-the inwelding of metals, incorporated into the body of the material and showing beautiful contrasts or blendings of color, similar to and even more beautiful than the particolored metal work formerly done by the Japanese. When this work was shown in Europe at succeeding World's Fairs, it attracted and received the admiration of the world; and brought high honors to the American workers in the precious metals. Adjoining the exhibition by Tiffany, was that of another firm of New York jewellers-Starr &