Di´a-bob, n. 1. An object of amateur art; anything improbably decorated; hand-painted. 2. Any decoration or article of furniture manufactured between 1870 and 1890.
Di-a-bob’i-cal, a. Ugly, while pretending to be beautiful.
Who invented the diabob? The infamy is attributed to John Ruskin. At any rate, humble things began to lose the dignity of the commonplace; the rolling-pin became exotic in the parlor. The embroidery blossomed in hectic tidies, splashes and drapes. Hand-painting was discovered.
So, from the Spencerian skylark to the perforated “God Bless Our Home.” Now the jigsaw was master; now, the incandescent point that tortured wood and leather into nightmare designs. Plaques began their vogue. (See Gefoojet.)
Diabobical was the hammered brasswork; diabobical the sofa cushion limned with Gibson heads. The decorative fan, genteel; the pampas grass, dyed bright purple; the macramé bags and the seaweed pictures passed; came the embossed pictures stuck on bean-pots and molasses jugs; came the esthetic cat-tail and piano-lamp, “A Yard of Daisies,” and burnt match receivers and catch-alls, ornamented by the family genius.
Ah, Where are the moustache cups of yesteryear?
This object made of celluloid,
This thing so wildly plushed,—
How grossly Art has been annoyed!
How Common Sense has blushed!
And yet, these diabobs, perhaps
Are scarcely more outré
Than pictures made by Cubist chaps,
Or Futurists, today!
