Home Problems from a New Standpoint

by Caroline Louisa Hunt

WE all seek beauty. We want the beauty of form and of color which appeals to the eye, but we want also the greater beauties which, because they belong, not to material, but to immaterial things, make their appeal to the conscience and to the intellect, rather than to the senses. We want the beauties of lives in harmony with their physical and their social environment.

Esthetics is the philosophy of beauty. A narrow conception of its province makes it concern itself exclusively with the beauties of material things. A broader and better conception brings into its province all beauties, including those of life and of character and of harmonious human relations.

Home Economics, like Esthetics, finds a large part of its interest in material things. The objects of its concern, the common articles of every-day use, such as chairs, tables, beds, and bureaus, present the beauty problem in many, if not all, of its phases. Being material, they are capable of beauty of outline and color. Being tools for the expression of the tastes of their owner or user, and for the satisfaction of his desires, they are capable of giving to his life the beauty of harmony with its material surroundings. Being made and sold and oftentimes cared for by others than the user, they are capable of giving beauty by bringing his life into accord and into sympathetic relations with other lives. There are, then, places where Home Economics and Esthetics overlap.

As there is a narrow and also a wide view of Esthetics, so there is a narrow and also a wide view of Home Economics. The former makes it deal exclusively with the details of household management; the latter makes its chief concern the problem of the adjustment, through home life, of the individual to society.

Where Home Economics and Esthetics, considered in their restricted senses, meet, we have a field of inquiry legitimate in itself, but fearfully liable to suffer by losing connection with life and with vital interests. This common ground we call the art of House Decoration. It concerns itself with the form, color, and ornamentation of articles of house furnishing and with the problem of so arranging them as to please the eye.

But House Decoration is not the only common ground between Home Economics and Esthetics. Considered broadly, the two subjects present an overlapping territory coextensive almost with life itself. On this field, which no one has ever named, there present themselves for investigation not only the finer articles of household utility—the furniture, the curtains, and the draperies—but also the meaner and commoner articles—the pots, even, and the pans. Each one of these demands to be studied, not only with reference to its power to give esthetic satisfaction through the sight, but also with reference to its fitness to serve the purpose for which it was created, with reference to its usefulness in the particular life with which it is associated, and with reference to the possibility of there being anything in the circumstances of its manufacture or sale or in the conditions of its care—anything of injustice or oppression—which has the power to destroy the beauty of the life of the user by throwing it out of harmony with that of the maker, or of the seller, or of the caretaker.

The desire to make home beautiful we have always with us. At times it gets planted where it can draw nourishment only from that part of the field of Household Decoration which is not only narrow, but, because it is cut off from connection with life, is shallow also. Planted there where there is no deepness of earth it sprouts with fearful rapidity. Many housekeepers seem to have planted it in such spots about the middle of the last century. The result was a prodigious growth—three sets of curtains in every window, sofa pillows upon which no one was ever allowed, and no one ever wished to lay his head, grill work for archways, plaques, and sometimes even embroidered banners and painted tambourines to hang upon the wall. At intervals, fortunately, new fashions arose and turned their blazing rays full on these marvelous growths, and because they were not rooted in utility they withered away and were sent to the junk shop or were given to the poor. The soil was then ready for another crop.

But better times came. Great thinkers and teachers and artists, including the founders of the Arts and Crafts movement, began to concern themselves with the beauty of the common things of life—with the lesser arts. They taught people to consider in the selection of house furnishings, not only color and form and design, but also the welfare of the maker and the possibilities of his development through his work. They suggested that even the seller, the cleaner, and the caretaker should be considered. Those who listened to their teachings and followed their example learned to plant deep the desire for beauty in material surroundings; and because they knew that they had much to learn and many lives to consider, they adopted a form of house furnishing whose chief characteristic was simplicity. It was a tiny growth which was put forth by those who had caught the spirit of the Arts and Crafts movement, but it was sturdy, and in time it grew large enough to attract the attention even of the thoughtless. They, being ever ready for something new, looked upon the material output of the Arts and Crafts Societies, and, failing entirely to appreciate the spirit lying back of the work, seized upon simplicity as an end in itself.

The result was another prodigious growth of house furnishings, this time very simple ones. Thus simplicity, which in the mind of William Morris stood for sincerity and for beauty of life, became a mockery, being manifested only in the outward form and finish of articles that had been made under conditions that had crushed out life and hope and had damaged character. There probably never was a greater travesty on a righteous movement than much of the stuff now sold as “Arts and Crafts” furniture.

And so simplification has become the motto of the unthinking as well as of the thinking, and is at present the butt of the ridicule of the funny man, and threatens to become as much of a stumbling-block to the mind, if not to the feet, as the passion for decoration was a few years ago. For this reason it seems fitting, in a series of articles which deal with the home problem in relation to the problem of more life for all, to inquire whether simplification can be the means of expanding life by increasing beauty.