That we have in New Zealand to-day a not very wide choice of atrocious furniture is only partly the fault of a somewhat slow-moving industry.

Our furniture makers say, with some show of justice, that they know what the public want and what they make is just that. Furniture is governed, like women's dress, not by function, good taste, or even common sense, but by fashion.

Recently it was the fashion to show antiques if you had them, or to buy imitations if, as was more likely, your family had left you no heirlooms to air. Now, while nearly all furniture that is over a century old has the beauty of honest materials handled with affection, the approximation to their appearance that can be obtained by modern machine production will deceive nobody.

But this phase is passing and there is a swing to the disastrous “moderne.” Here snobbery raises its ugly head in a new form. Not antiquity but volume seems to be the measure of quality. The customer wants to show he can afford a “heavy” piece? Very well, he shall have one. He likes to be abreast of the times? Very well, he shall have strips of chromium and modernistic flashes all over the place.

The only way to return to health and sanity is through a renaissance. In this re-birth, the parents will be function and means (material plus method) but the child will grow in its own strength and will achieve its own grace.

Is it too optimistic to hope that two world wars and a depression have chastened our self-assertion and blown away some of our sentimentality? We feel that the younger people now making homes would, in fact, buy lighter, simpler, more honest furniture if it were to be had.

In New Zealand, furniture is a factory product and we need not hanker after a lost handcraft which is doomed even in the old countries. But there is no reason why our industrially made furniture should not have true New Zealand character. We have a great variety of timber with natural warmth and interesting grain, so long as this is not blotted out by dark stains and heavy lacquers. Eventually also, we shall wake up and use for upholstery the abundance of deer, cattle, and sheep skins that must otherwise go to waste.

One thing is quite certain: no matter how methods and materials may change, beauty can be achieved in anything made by man for a reasonable purpose. But the beauty of furniture made in our time will be relevant to machine production, and suitable for informal living, confined spaces, and busy lives.

All beauty is at first surprising, and it is at this element of surprise that the furniture salesman boggles. We must try and help our generation to overcome its reluctance to think clearly about design; so that at least the younger folk will accept good contemporary furniture, not because it is “the thing,” but because it is good.