by Joseph B. Platt Delineator Magazine
November 1933
We celebrate Thanksgiving in Delineator Institute of Interior
Decoration this month by laying a feast of fine American furniture before you.
And we are greatly honored. For it is Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt who
presides over our feast--- and it is she who has provided it.
It is made-by-hand furniture in which the wife of President
Roosevelt is so deeply interested. Val-kill is the quaint old Dutch name of the
industry---and its cottage headquarters and its workrooms are part of the
beautiful Roosevelt estate, overlooking the Hudson River in Hyde Park, New York.
We have all learned this past summer how house guests of the
Roosevelt’s are invited to the “cottage” for tea---and for a swim in the pool
there, including a spirited game of water polo, in which President Roosevelt
often joins. This cottage is the center of Mrs. Roosevelt’s furniture project
which she started some years ago to provide work for unemployed men and women of
the Hyde Park vicinity.
But what is the furniture like? Where can it be seen? What is
the full story behind the adventure? And what is the cost of the furniture?
These were questions we at Delineator longed to have
answered.
In the New York showroom of that famous American decorator,
Elise de Wolfe, we found the answers to the first two questions. For there, many
of the Val-kill pieces are on exhibition and sale. The entire collection of
Val-kill furniture can also be seen and purchased, of course, at the Val-kill
headquarters at Hyde Park. Their perfect workmanship and everlastingly beautiful
design--- American in its finest expression through and through--- so impressed
us that at once we set to work to share them with all our readers.
Mrs. Roosevelt, when consulted, approved of our plan. With
Elise de Wolfe’s cooperation we photographed the two rooms---a combined living
room-dining room, and a bedroom---shown on this page. In both rooms, all the
wood furniture is from the hands of the Val-kill village craftsmen.
And then, in answer to our third question---what is the real
story behind this furniture adventure? ---Mrs. Roosevelt herself gave the full
and satisfying answer. We are happy to be able to set it down for you in her own
works:
“When I first started the Val-kill shop on the Roosevelt
estate in Hyde Park, New York” she says, “I had no idea this venture of
reproducing early American furniture would develop. We began with one room for
our workshop, and one workman---and a great many dreams. Many of our dreams have
come true, and many unexpected pleasures have appeared in the last few years.
“At first back of the desire to produce really beautiful
things, lay another motive. For some years I had been rather intimately
acquainted with the back rural districts of our state, and realized very clearly
the problems of country life. If it were possible to build up in a rural
community a small industry which would employ and teach a trade to the men and
younger boys, and give them adequate pay, while not taking them completely from
the farm, I felt that it would keep many of the more ambitious members in the
district, who would otherwise be drawn to the cities.
“It was with this in mind that we decided to make furniture
our test case. And every year we have added more space and more workmen. While
it is still a very small factory which depends on expert craftsmen to turn out
the work, we have managed to employ workmen in the district and train them to
our needs. A great many young boys have been employed in various
capacities---mostly in the finishing department, and it is in them that I really
take the greatest interest, because inherently they are particularly adapted to
this sort of work.
“Originally of good stock, these boys’ families have probably
occupied the same farm-land for several generations. The qualities that made
their grandparents such fine workmen and craftsmen---for in the old days, the
farmer did more for the house than he does today---are still latent in these
youngsters. The boys usually start in knowing nothing about the work, but
gradually and surely they develop a real appreciation for their tasks. It may
take several months, but there always comes a day, when, rather shyly, as if
ashamed of such a feeling in this machine age, they ask me to tell them what I
think of the finish on a table or chair that they consider is better than any
previous effort. Their sense of pride has been aroused, and from then on it is a
game with them to see sho can produce the finest patina on a piece---and that
requires plenty of muscle and long hours of rubbing. But they understand they
are accomplishing something, even if they are a little vague as to what
‘something’ may be.
“It has been more than interesting to see how their viewpoint
has changed from the feeling that a job was a certain number of hours’ hard work
for just so much pay to the craftsmanship idea of doing their best for the pure
love of doing.
“I have always contended that there is little difference
between a hundred fifty year old antique and a fine modern reproduction,” Mrs.
Roosevelt continues. “: Apart from beauty of line and texture of the surface, an
antique should be cherished for the association it calls to mind. Unfortunately
there are few of us who possess pieces that have been in the family for many
years. And I get just as much thrill from seeing a piece gradually emerge to
perfection in my own workshop as I do examining a priceless chest-on-chest in
the metropolitan Museum. There is real enjoyment in watching the progress of a
butterfly table, from the time the wood is chosen to the assembly, and seeing
the grain of the wood imperceptibly appear through the varnish and finishing
oils. And every lover of furniture knows the feeling of enjoyment when the
fingers are passed over the table top with a fine patina that tells the expert,
by the almost invisible ridges on the surface, that it was planed by hand.
“Really I have two interests in Val-kill: the actual pieces
that are made there, and the development ---mental as well as material---of the
workmen. I get a more personal sense of possession, I think, out of the cottage
and its interior, which I saw assembled painstakingly, than the average person
does with his own house. But everyone cannot be in the furniture business, or
even reproduce old glass, china, pewter or rugs---though there would be many
happier small communities if this were possible.
I am convinced of the worth of such an experiment not only as
a business venture, but as a real aid to the people in the district.
“We are still in the frontier period in this country in spite
of our complicated civilization. We have not yet settled down to the worship of
certain customs and traditions as they have in Europe. Our taste is still
fluctuating and we are not always sure whether we can trust it. This is one of
the reasons why we buy antiques so willingly and are so hesitant about trusting
our taste in modern furniture. We must begin to realize, however, that it is the
good taste of the individual today which makes the valuable antique of the
future.”
As to our fourth question---the cost---Mrs. Roosevelt has
just told us of the infinite care and work that go into the making by hand of
these Val-kill originals. This naturally makes the prices higher than on much of
the present-day factory-built furniture. But the Val-kill furniture is so
beautiful and so perfectly and lastingly constructed that the owning of even a
single piece would bring joy that cannot be measured in money. As a wedding
present-or an extra-special Christmas gift---what could be more gloriously
welcome? There will be historic value too and memories of this exciting moment
in America’s development that will cling to Val-kill furniture and go with it
through all coming generations.
But Mrs. Roosevelt’s own point of view on the pleasure of all
enduring things is so satisfying and so delightfully Rooseveltian that we must
give it to you exactly as she phrases it:
“There is something fascinating in the idea of preserving not
only our name, but some tradition of what manner of person we were, in the
memories of our great-great-grandchildren a hundred years and more from now. Few
of us can hope to do things noteworthy enough to be remembered long after our
contemporaries are forgotten, but there is still one way left.
“If we acquire something so beautiful, in the best sense of
the word, that it will be preserved for its own sake and so sturdy in its
construction as to defy time, we may be sure that it will be handed down from
generation to generation with some clinging tradition as to who we were and what
we did.”