Build Your Own Furniture

There is probably no home in which the comfort,designers set the standard for the world for all times.
convenience or artistic appearance could not beSuch furniture is worth while, and is an everlasting
improved by the addition or replacing of some piecesinspiration to the home-maker and worker.
of furniture. The reason is simple. They are furnishedOne style, variously known as "Arts and Crafts,"
with store furniture, and store furniture is made to"Mission" "Craftsman," etc., is especially adapted to
sell; the designs limited by the capabilities of thehand work, and while differing from the rich old oak
machines which make it; made of the cheapestand mahogany of our fathers' in form and finish, is
materials; put together in the quickest, rather thanlike them in all the qualities of beauty and durability
the best way, and then finished up with the crudestand is far more comfortable. A home furnished in this
varnish and stain to make a fine appearance. It is astyle not only expresses the artistic taste of its
depressing sight to see this furniture on moving dayinmates but also exerts an influence of sturdy
piled on the sidewalk, scratched, broken, dingy, all itshonesty of purpose, simplicity and absence of all
fine pretense of beauty gone forever.gaudy pretense, which both its frank, straight lines
On the other hand, the chairs, tables, sideboards andand freedom from anything to hide or mar the
other pieces that have come down to us throughnatural beauty of the wood so forcibly express. It is
generations are all made by hand, put together bya style of which we can never tire and of which no
hand and finished by hand in the days when thereother can take the place. It will last for generations,
was no machinery and the workman was an artist.for every part is as strong as the wood of which it
The result is that instead of finding its way to theis made. You can make it and make it better than
scrap heap this old furniture is as good today asyou can buy in any store, for it is made in the most
ever, after two or three hundred years of wear andnatural way, after the most natural design, of the
tear and removal from place to place half round themost natural material.
world. Hampered by no limitations of machinery these