esthetically
unpleasing possession, with which nearly every house twenty-five years ago
was filled, but those whose pocket-book and sentiment will permit, would
add greatly to the beauty of their houses by sweeping the bad into the ash
can! Far better have stone-ware plates that are good in design than
expensive porcelain that is horrible in decoration.

The only way to determine what is good and what is horrible is to study
what is good in books, in museums, or in art classes in the universities,
or even by studying the magazines devoted to decorative art.

Be very careful though. Do not mistake modern eccentricities for "art."
There are frightful things in vogue to-day--flamboyant colors, grotesque,
triangular and oblique designs that can not possibly be other than bad,
because aside from striking novelty, there is nothing good about them. By
no standard can a room be in good taste that looks like a perfume
manufacturer's phantasy or a design reflected in one of the distorting
mirrors that are mirth-provokers at county fairs.

=TO DETERMINE AN OBJECT'S WORTH=

In buying an article for a house one might formulate for oneself a few
test questions:

First, is it useful? Anything that is really useful has a reason for
existence.

Second, has it _really_ beauty of form and line and color?

(Texture is not so important.) Or is it merely striking, or amusing?

Third, is it entirely suitable for the position it occupies?

Fourth, if it were eliminated would it be missed? Would something else
look as well or better, in its place? Or would its place look as well
empty? A truthful answer to these questions would at least help in
determining its value, since an article that failed in any of them could
not be "perfect."

Fashion affects taste--it is bound to. We abominate Louis the Fourteenth
and Empire styles at the moment, because curves and super-ornamentation
are out of fashion; whether they are really bad or not, time alone can
tell. At present we are admiring plain silver and are perhaps exacting
that it be too plain? The only safe measure of what is good, is to choose
that which has best endured. The "King" and the "Fiddle" pattern for flat
silver, have both been in use in houses of highest fashion ever since they
were designed, so that they, among others, must have merit to have so long
endured.

In the same way examples of old potteries and china and glass, at present
being reproduced, are very likely good