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The architects were the first to grow and the first to become professionalized. Courses in architecture sprang up in many of the universities and the requirements for graduation became more and more stringent, so that as much as ten years ago hundreds of men were being turned out every year who could justly be called
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4INTERIOR DECORATING
professional men, for they had taken a fairly thorough course of training in mathematics, history of art, archaeology and some engineering. They assumed a position of honor and respect in the community and a good many of them justified it. At this time the decorators were still in a chaotic state. There was no course of study required of them. Most of them remained furniture manufacturers or salesmen who had begun to read books, to travel abroad and see work that had been done in former ages; and besides these there were the antique dealers who brought the productions of olden times to this country and who had to study more or less about them to know how they should be used. In addition to both of these, there were draughtsmen who found the architectural field very unsatisfactory and who thought the decorative field might be more profitable. Then public taste began to improve and new demands were made for more skillftd men, men of greater knowledge and proficiency, men capable of producing furniture and decorations that would stand the test of artistic criticism and the growing knowledge of decoration which was coming to be a possession of a large number of laymen in the community. In the past few years schools of decoration have grown up everywhere, and although their requirements cannot be considered as imposing as those of the architectural departments in our colleges, they do bestow on their graduates some approximation to professional training.
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