VI. Dress and the Principles of Decoration 121
XI. Decorative Work in Leather, Copper, and Other Materials 321
XII. Concluding Suggestions--Country Homes 366
All the Rough Carpentry was Assigned to the Boys of the Woodworking Sections of the Vocational School 22
The Boys of the Forging Classes of the Technical High School were not Overlooked in the Distribution of the Work on the House 24
A Table Runner of Russian Crash and Pillow Cover with Geometrical Design 96
Window Draperies with Stencilled Border 108
Crocheted Panels, a Linen Work Bag with Conventional Landscape in Darning Stitch, a Crash Table Mat Embroidered in Darning and Couching Stitch 118
An Alcove with Window Draperies, Pillow Covers, Window Seat and Moss Green Rug, All Hand Woven 262 Hand Woven Window Draperies, Couch Cover, Slumber Rug, and Pillow Covers 266
Pottery: Designed and Made by Schoolgirls 318
[Illustration: A model house: Designed by girls and built by boys]
To design, plan, and build a house is a task that rarely falls to the lot of boys and girls. In fact, it is not the common experience of men and women to build houses without the aid of architects, masons, and carpenters. Such a task, however, was recently offered to certain classes in one of the public schools of a well-known New England city. It was, indeed, a school problem, and yet there was something about it that seemed to suggest larger and more interesting things than are ordinarily dealt with in the school-room. It did not seem at all like some school work. It was more like real life; for all boys and girls must some day have homes of their own, and here was a chance to learn how the house, which is an important part of every home, is planned and built. It is hardly necessary to say that this work--or play, if you like that word better--was undertaken with genuine enthusiasm. It was a task crammed full of the pleasure of interest and of accomplishment--full of the joy of doing something worth while--from the beginning to the end.
_The House a Work of Art._--One of the first lessons learned by these young builders--perhaps the most important one of all--was that a great many things have to be thought of in planning a house, if the thing is to be well done. It is not simply a question of deciding how many rooms one will have, arranging them in some conventional order, and building the house around them with whatever external features style or fancy may dictate. Too many houses, it is true, are planned, or at least put up, in this thoughtless fashion; and whatever goes into them in decoration or furniture is generally chosen either for necessary use or for display--not with any thought of the real comfort and satisfaction that come from artistic surroundings. People who are satisfied with such dwellings seem to show less appreciation of art, the highest product of civilization, than those uncivilized tribes who decorated their caves or huts with beautiful rugs of their own weaving and who ornamented their pottery and their utensils and implements with wonderfully conceived and elaborately wrought designs. Modern cave dwellers in apartment houses with all the conveniences of their ready-made surroundings, are in danger of missing that self-expression in their home belongings that encouraged and delighted even the savage. The most extreme example of this form of degeneracy is found in the suggestion of a certain great inventor, that the age of concrete construction, now at hand, means that we are to have concrete houses poured into a standard mould, hardened in twenty-four hours, and finished for occupancy in a day or two.