Many of these suggestions on furniture design are being carried out in fitting up the model house described in our introductory chapter. A small house like this, limited to one story, does not permit great variety in its furnishings. Certain standard conditions, however, were to be met here, as everywhere else, and the young designers found much pleasure and great profit in working out the furniture problems. Some of the construction details will be given in the later chapters.
_Arrangement Follows Selection._--The problem of furnishing a home is not fully settled when the questions of design have been answered and the right selections made. After selection comes arrangement, or, to speak more accurately, after a certain amount of selection a certain amount of arrangement; for, as has already been suggested, there is considerable dependence of one upon the other. It is not wise to drop the arrangement till the selection is complete, for the simple reason that the happiest choices are often the late ones, determined by the disposition of the earlier ones. And yet in the main the order as stated is the true one. It should be noted, too, that in arrangement there is a larger field for the exercise of individuality and taste. While artistic principles still hold sway, they yield more readily to exceptional interpretation by the ruling spirit of the household, to the demands of style, and to the larger number of possibilities for pleasing effects when the question is one of the arrangement of things already well chosen for their usefulness and for their artistic value.
[Illustration: A dainty bed in white maple]
_Utility the Controlling Principle._--The problems of arrangement, however, are by no means vague and uncertain. The natural law of adaptation to purpose is not difficult to follow. In some rooms obedience to it has become a settled custom. No one, for example, would think of placing the dining table in any other place than the centre of the dining-room or, if the room be a long one, in the centre of one end. The sideboard, serving table, and china closet likewise fall into their natural places. So also the bedroom and the hall, though perhaps to a less degree, present comparatively easy problems in furniture arrangement when due regard is paid to the purposes for which such rooms are designed.