Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II OLD CHAIRS IN MODERN HOUSES THERE is a certain class of collectors of old furniture and other antiques who seem to take a special delight in acquiring and displaying the hideous and useless monstrosities of an unenlightened age. They will give the place of honor to some battered and dilapidated old relic and call it "quaint." Fortunately for most of us, however, not all antiques fall into that class, and there are plenty of fine old things whose intrinsic beauty and sincerity of workmanship raise them to the high level of wbrks of art. Like the Iliad or the Taj Mahal, they will abide when this generation's fads have vanished. Fortunately, too, there are plenty of antiques that are as useful to-day as they ever were?and the best of them were originally made for use?and that possess features that make them better furnishings forour modern homes than the newer, and perhaps less artistic, creations, provided the architecture of the house and the other home surroundings are not too violently out of keeping. Can you imagine a more beautiful receptacle for a bouquet of roses than a Wedgwood vase, and does the subtle charm depart from an old chair when it is fit to be sat upon? Take the single subject of old chairs, for example. For delicacy of design, fineness of carving, generosity of curve, and perfection of proportion, the best examples of Chippendale's mid-period work have never been surpassed anywhere, and as to the materials, the solid, fine-grained, rich-toned mahogany that he used is simply unobtainable to-day. The wise collector will think of these things. He will not buy an antique merely because it is old and rare. He will think of it, unless he is stocking a museum, as a possible addition to the furnishings of his home, and will apply to it all the r...