The new wing of the
Metropolitan Museum in New York houses several fine old collections of
furniture, the Hoentschel collection, for which the wing was really
planned, having been given to the people of New York by Mr. Pierpont
Morgan. This collection is an education in the French decorative arts.
Then, too, there is the Bolles collection of American furniture
presented to the museum by Mrs. Russell Sage.
I have no quarrel with the honest dealers who are making fine and
sincere copies of such furniture, and selling them as copies. There is
no deception here, we must respect these men as we respect the workers
of the Eighteenth Century: we give them respect for their masterly
workmanship, their appreciation of the best things, and their fidelity
to the masterpieces they reproduce.
Not so long ago the New York papers published the experience of a
gentleman who bought a very beautiful divan in a European furniture
shop. He paid for it--you may be sure of that!--and he could hardly wait
for its arrival to show it to his less fortunate neighbors. Within a few
months something happened to the lining of the divan, and he discovered
on the inside of the frame the maker's name and address. Imagine his
chagrin when he found that the divan had been made at a furniture
factory in his own country.
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