ingness
which allows Miladi to build her own art atmosphere untainted by gifts
of well-intentioned but tasteless friends.

THE GROWTH OF GOOD TASTE

The germs of the capacity for good taste are born in most of us, but
must be sedulously cultivated before they can rightly be called taste,
and bric-a-brac presents the best of possibilities for their
development. Begin by buying one piece which you know to be
beautiful--simple and refined in outline, choice in design, modest in
coloring, and fit for the use to which it is to be put--live with it,
study it, master it. It will take on many unexpected charms as you
grow to know it, and when you are ready to select the next piece you
will find that the germ of your talent for discrimination has quietly
become other ten talents and grown into a reliable ability to separate
the chaff from the wheat. Each acquisition will have its own peculiar
individuality which, once conquered, means a liberal education.

USEFULNESS WITH BEAUTY

While all bric-a-brac should be beautiful, some certain kinds, such as
lamps, clocks, and jardinieres, are also essentially useful, and these
have undergone a wonderful transformation during recent years as a
result of the movement toward simplicity, honesty of purpose, and
fitness. It would be hard to imagine anything more incongruous than
the porcelain lamp decorated with flowers of heroic endurance which
blossomed unwiltingly on, regardless of the heat; or the frivolously
decorated clock when the passing of time is so serious a matter; or the
gaudy jardiniere, whose coloring killed the green of the plant it held.
But we have grown past this. Now our light at eventide is shed through
a simple, plain-colored shade of porcelain or of Japan paper and bamboo
(if one cannot afford the plain or mosaic shades of opalescent glass),
from an oil tank fitted into a bowl of hand-hammered brass or copper,
or of pottery, of which there are so many beautiful pieces of American
manufacture in dull greens, blues, browns, grays, and reds. These
lamps are not expensive--no more so than their onyx and brass
forbears--and are quiet, restful, beneficent in their influence.
Jardinieres we find in the same wares and colorings, which not only
throw the plant into relief but tone in with the other decorations of a
room in which nothing stands out distinct from its fellows, but all
things work together for harmony. Clocks no longer stare us out of
countenanc