One day, after I had been making some such remarks as these, an old lady said to me, " I have been furnishing my house for the last thirty years : you do not expect me to begin all over again." I assured her indeed that I did not. I think the fact of her having kept alive her interest in it for so long proved that there must have been a great deal in it, both beautiful and useful. I find it is generally thought that such ideas as these of mine are meant to bring about wholesale destruction of household goods, and immediate purchase of new ones of a different kind. Nothing would be farther from my wishes. The greatest sacrifice I would desire is the carrying-out of the axiom, " Keep nothing in your house but what you know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." This done, and then in every future purchase the principles exercised that I have suggested, I should feel that much will have been gained, much simplicity, much comfort, much beauty. And there is a way of arranging a house and its furniture, with regard to natural function and habit and convenience, so that it produces a certain charm and harmony of effect, and the comfort and hospitality of a home. Houses have their character, their physiognomy, as well as people ; it is by studying their peculiarities, suppressing this or that defect, and bringing out this or that good quality, that we can inhabit and enjoy them to the best advantage. In this way can they be brought into harmony with the divine order of nature, instead of being, as they often are, discordant with her simplicity and economy.
Lucy Crane, Art and the Formation of Taste, Chautauqua Press (Boston: 1887) pp. 58-59.
William Morris refers to a similar maxim in Hopes and Fears for Art (1882), in the version: "Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful." Lucy was the sister of Walter Crane, the famous illustrator of children's books. They had collaborated on what is perhaps the most famous work of each, the Household Stories from the Collection of the Brothers Grimm. The Cranes, significant members of the Arts and Crafts Movement, were acquainted with William Morris; Lucy quotes some of the lectures on which the work is based at several points.
One of the things that makes this very interesting is that in Lucy we find a clear cross-fertilization of serious philosophical work on taste and the more popular artistic work of the Arts and Crafts Movement. My guess is that the particular strand of philosophical work on taste that influenced Lucy is Archibald Alison's Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste (1790); but it would bear further inquiry. In any case, a general theory of taste is used to undergird the Arts and Crafts Movement, making Crane's book an interesting primer on the theoretical side of the movement, as well as an interesting example of the practical influence of philosophical discussion of the notion of taste.
