International studio (26.1905)

\ H REAVING IN A WESTCHES-
\ /\ / TER FARM HOUSE
\/ \ / BY HARRIOT STANTON
V V BLATCH
AN EPIC poem might be written about the simple
folk on a sequestered Westchester farm, who work
for the joy of working, who, shut off from the
stream of modern industry, have dung, by family
tradition, to the eighteenth century handicrafts.
But as no poet has seen the varied textiles which
have been woven on the hand looms in the West-
chester hills, nor the simple furniture which has
been made for home consumption, the utensils
which have been wrought, and all in the off-hours
of farm work, it becomes necessary for the matter-
of-fact recorder to meet the doubt, "Is it possible ?"
and to take up the more up-to-date challenge,
"Does it pay?"
It is a strange challenge, since all the leading
economists have come to
admit that the product of
the housewife's energy,
though not sold or paid for,
is wealth. Wealth does not
always mean the relation of
buyer and seller. To create
for oneself is perhaps one of
the vital sides of the handi-
craft movement. At any rate,
our little farm seems to sug-
gest that truth.
If one at all understands
the vitalizing effect of art,
and the deadening effect of
dull, continuous drudgery,
one can appreciate why this
farm is alive while many
farms are centres of degen-
eracy. A scattered popula-
tion cannot have theatres,
concerts, museums. It can
only get the inspiration of

art in its democratic form, that is, in handicraft.
And that was the way in the olden time the farm
population kept its blood stirring. We speak of the
typical abandoned farm district as lying outside the
stream of life, but, more correctly, it has been
robbed of life's energizing principle. Farms cannot
be in the centre of Broadway, they must lie back in
thinly populated hills and dales. And they have
been left, like the modern housewife, with nothing
but the ephemeral occupations.
The sequestered Westchester farm house illus-
trates, on the other hand, all the valuable influences
of creating beauty and working in joy. Life has
there been reduced to the simplest forms. There
are no superfluities, and, while the usual farm work
is vigorously carried on, drudgery is saved at every
turn. In that house there are no aimless tidies, no
"throws" nor ribbons, no china dogs nor wax
flowers to catch dirt and call for the use of precious
hours in dusting. The meals are taken on the
polished oak table, thus saving the buying and
washing of tablecloths. The food is cooked in
earthenware casseroles and brought to the table in
the same vessels, so the buying and the washing of
vegetable dishes is avoided. Utility and beauty are
the watchwords. A woman turns from her stove to
the loom to weave the curtains, the dress, the apron
shown in the illustrations. She has time for this
and leisure beside to read and think, for she has cut
out of her life all that is neither useful nor beautiful.
A man lays down his hoe in the heat of the day and,


PRODUCTS OF A WESTCHESTER FARM

CII