I believe these words hold as true today as ever.

 

"The search for beauty is, in itself, the most wholesome of all quests."

 

"There is among people of educated taste an increasing demand for craftsmanship possessing purity of design and stability of construction, which are the essential elements of enduring worth. The advantage of surrounding ourselves in our homes, in our churches, and in our public buildings with objects of intrinsic merit hardly needs to be urged. Apart from the conscious pleasure and the unconscious education which such surroundings afford, there is the economic gain of permanence, achieved through careful workmanship, and through the fact that handicraft which possesses beauty and originality is independent of passing fashion. We see this in the many admirable pieces of work which have come down to us from former times and are now doing service for a third or fourth generation of owners.

 

There are not, however, enough antiques to meet our requirements, and if there were, the craftsmanship of one century could not entirely satisfy the needs of the next, so the art-worker of today chooses for study the best types of former times, and from these evolves others which show the distinctive character of his own epoch and the impress of his own thought."

 

Louis Comfort Tiffany