The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890, page 69 by Various Authors
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nd makes less impression on the public. Our English-speaking communities do not even think of sculpture as a thing to look to for any refined enjoyment. How far the labors of a dozen living men, all Frenchmen but two or three, may have sufficed during the past score of years to change the public mind in this matter, I am not ready to say; but, surely, it has not been the general thought that sculpture is anything more than an expensive and perfunctory way of doing one's duty to a great occasion or a great man. This, however, is temporary. The good sculpture exists and will be recognized. So much for expressional art.
But, as for the arts of decoration, once more, there is not so much to be said. As yet the way to subdue technicalities and enthrone design has not been discovered. The way to produce beautiful buildings is known to none. The way to produce good interior decoration, good furniture, good jewelry, beautiful stuffs, has only been seen by here and there one, and his lead no one will follow. The fact of his having done a fine thing, or of his doing fine things habitually, acts not as an attraction to others, but as a warning to them to keep off. Every artist strives to do, not as his neighbor has done, and better, but as his neighbor has not done. The potteries work no better, because of one pottery which turns out beautiful work. The wall-paper makers still copy, slavishly from Europe and Japan, fortunately if they do not spoil in copying, in spite of the occasional production of a wall-paper which an artist has succeeded in. The carpet-weavers caricature Oriental designs by taking out of them all movement and spirit, while their best customers buy the original rugs. If some rich man were to make a museum of modern decorative art, from which he would carefully exclude all that which was not in some way fresh and intelligent, and if not good, at least promising, a room like this one would hold all his trophies, even though he should use his millions to ransack Europe and America. It is nobody's fau