This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER III THE RENAISSANCE WITH appropriate humility and with profound apologies to the true artist, and to art's historians as well, do I introduce into a handbook of home furnishing the profound and inexhaustible subject of the Renaissance. But even as the sun dominates the world, yet illumines its smallest corner, so the great light of the Renaissance is reflected in the many minor designs with which we are familiar, not, perhaps, knowing their origin. Architecture and painting express the period, and sit enthroned as the great results of the great awakening; but the humbler and more intimate departments of art, the smaller productions that we hug to our hearts as being more human, these also reflect the time with fidelity. There is scarce a detail of a modern chair, nor a design on a tapestry that is not traceable to the great period. The smallest things of the home show it quite as much as the works great artists left behind them to vex and perplex the maturest counsel of the less talented. It is then far from disrespectful for the home beautjfier to consider that the Renaissance speaks also unto such as he. Once having rid ourselves of the fear of the company of gods, let us walk boldly among them and see what they have given us, that we may the better understand what is around us, recognise its beauty, and know the why. In walking through the spring woods or between the autumn hedge-rows it is surely pleasant to be able to say to each flower in passing, " I know you, sweet friend, you are cousin to the pink; and you, a sister of the sweet-pea." But this is nothing to the joy that stirs the blood when the educated eye detects among antique furnishings a scroll, a shell, --a construction or detail that is traceable at once to the...