Frenzied Furniture

 from "Old Collection"

from my Interior Design days...

In 1905, Good Housekeeping, published a poem, "Frenzied Furniture" which seems to illustrate the state of furniture design at the time:

When Gladys went crazy on Simple Designs

She said: "Do away with indefinite lines;

All foolish upholstered devices must go--

Plain, square, Mission furniture--massive, you know."

I meekly, agreeably answered, "That's so!"

Then trouble began when a lumbering van

Brought furniture built on a mountainous plan,

Brought chairs elephantine with ponderous legs,

Brought tables like platforms with cross-beams and pegs,

Brought bungling brown sideboards and copper-hooped kegs.

A smoke-covered burlap was hung on the walls;

Great benches like battleships stood in the halls;

Plain, heavy plank bookcases, desks with sharp edges,

And sickly green "art-ware" in deep window ledges.

Simplicity frowned in aesthetical gloom

From every hallway, from every room;

We sat down to tables our knees didn't fit in,

On chairs too confoundedly simple to sit in.

Like giants about us the mighty Things sat

And bullied and browbeat our poor little flat,

Till pygmied and lost in this wondrous creation

We frequently raised the faint interrogation:

"Can this be Our Home or some new Railway Station?"

Then Gladys awoke to her error, and so

She turned to the style which they call "Art Noovo."

"For Nature," she said, "loves lithe, languorous curves

And tenuous tendrils and swivels and swerves."

I answered, "She does," though it got on my nerves.

So, our brown Mission furniture hustled away.

An "Art Noovo" outfit came to us next day:

A wallpaper figured with lilies and loops,

And cupboards like highly adorned chicken coops.

And armchairs suggesting suggesting cadaverous goops.

On "art bronze" tobacco trays lay my cigars;

Lank, taffy-shaped females on platters and jars,

Long, swan-maiden table lamps, stringly and swirly,

Gave all decorations a flavor quite girly.

One night as we lay in our serpentine bed

With querlicue carvings at footpiece and head,

We dreamed that the bureaus, increased by a million,

Were dancing an "Art Noovo" demon's cotillion

With armies of furniture quaintly reptilian.

A spider-like chiffonier first pirouetted

And near a fantastic art-curtain coquetted;

A crab-legged table, beginning to caper,

Traced out the designs on the snaky wallpaper--

A bookcase marked time with its tentacles taper,

A horrible chair, in the midst of the play,

Threw up its lithe arms and came hissing our way--

"O murder!" I cried in a cold perspiration

"O mercy!" screamed Gladys, with wild intonation

And fell on her pillow in nervous prostration.

Then unto the telephone quickly I ran

And called Dr. Bottle, a sensible man,

Who giving poor Gladys a quick diagnosis,

Said: "Here is no use for my medical doses-

The patient's distemper is called "Art Noovosis."

"Remove from your house these delirious curves,

This eel-winding furniture, hard on the nerves,

Some old-fashioned couches and cushions are best,

Some soft, easy chairs where the muscles can rest--

For chairs, after all, are intended for rest."

And so, from that moment an era began

Of suiting, our home to a rational plan.

"For really," said Gladys, "in parlor and den

One likes to feel human, at least, now and then."

I feelingly, earnestly answered: Amen!"