5. The article should also be convenient for use. The socket of a candle stick should be of the proper size to hold ordinary candles. A pen-tray should be long enough to hold pens and pencils and should not be easily upset. A chair seat should be the right distance from the floor, and the rail in front should be high enough to allow the sitter to slip his feet under it and so rise easily. The requirements of convenience set limitations to design. Proportions must conform to intended use.

6. Lastly, when an interesting object has been chosen, when proper materials and sound construction have been determined upon, when it has been planned for convenience in use, so that the size and shape are approximately fixed, then the sense of beauty plays, as it were, with these possibilities, feeling for the most satisfying proportion of parts to whole and parts to each other, trying one arrangement after another, studying how to secure a rhythmic repetition of the same motive, how to break up an outline or a surface harmoniously into principal and subordinate parts, and how to keep it as a unit well balanced.

In analyzing more particularly what it is with which the craftsman plays in creating beauty in these little wooden structures, four considerations are of prime importance: (1) mass, (2) line, involving light and shadow, (3) color, (4) finish.

1. Mass. The first consideration is the appearance of the object as a whole. It is to be thought of as a silhouette, as an object standing between the observer and the light, so that the general proportions are obvious; that is, the relation of width to height, of part to whole, and of part to part, including a consideration of vacant spaces as well as occupied spaces, should be clearly defined. Seen or imagined from this point of view, the details are lost, no lights or shadows are conspicuous, but only the general mass. It must have the beauty that one sees when the trees, rocks, and hills are silhouetted in a pattern of pleasing proportions against a twilight sky. In other words, the first and fundamental esthetic test and requisite is that the proportions as a whole should be pleasing.

The basket, candlestick, lantern, and so on, which in the following pages are suggested for making, are studied from this point of view; they are planned to keep the height and width and depth in pleasing relation each to each, and to so proportion open with closed spaces as to secure an artistic arrangement of parts. In other words, the composition made by placing the object against a lighter or darker surface should be pleasing in dark and light.

2. Line. When these general masses and spaces are approximately determined, the next step is to fix the character of their boundaries. The outlines are to be refined and embellished, and here we may have all the variety that lies between that severity of line found in the earlier European furniture - whether Scandinavian, Italian, Spanish or English, and the elaborateness of carved and turned and fluted styles, such as is characteristic of the later Elizabethan or Gothic furniture. How simple or how intricate, how bold or how delicate the lines shall be, depends partly upon the nature of the material, partly upon the skill and the judgment and the taste of the craftsman, and partly upon the use to be made of the object.

The nature of the line affects directly the high lights and shadows that appear when the object is well lighted. Good lines will produce interesting notes of light and dark. They will "catch the light" and "throw shadows" at pleasing rhythmic intervals, making interesting patterns in "notan"3. This is the merit of artistic moldings, turned work, carving, and inlay, that they make possible intricate and diversified compositions of dark and light (and in the case of inlay, of color), that are impossible in severe, plain styles. On the other hand, the attractiveness of plain forms lies in their very simplicity. Moreover, as the plainer early European or Japanese styles involve fewer elements to be spaced, the chances for the beginner to get better designs in them is greater than in the more elaborate styles. So, until considerable mastery in handling space relations in wooden structures is gained, the beginner is advised to work in the spirit of these plainer, simpler styles.