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Quite a number of architects have, of course, supplemented their college curriculum with considerable study on the outside. They have sometimes worked abroad, where more attention is paid to interiors. They hkve read many books and have qualified themselves very thoroughly for the work they would undertake. But this again is the exception and not the rule, and I think it may be said that quite as many of the architects who graduated ten years ago are just as ignorant of decoration as the decorators who came into the field at that time are of structure. The only difference seems to be that the latter are made to realize their ignorance at every turn, while the former in all the glory of their professional supremacy insist upon being the arbiters, if not the dictators, of the problems that arise between them.
The other more materialistic contention that the architects are selling goods under cover is more difficult to handle. Very frequently, I am told, these men have wives who pose as decorators, and, when they finish with a job, their wives begin to handle it under their direction. Some of them have decorators in their offices who obviously draw salaries for the purpose of selling the client after the architect is finished with him. Some of the architects confess quite frankly
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THE ARCHITECT AND DECORATOR 9
that they consider themselves architects up to a certain point namely, up to the point of finishing the structure and then they automatically become decorators! A great many decorators have become dependent upon the use of furniture supplied by a half dozen large manufacturing concerns who offer their productions at a certain retail price which they subject to a reasonable discount to the trade so that decorators may secure a profit. By taking clients to these manufactories and selling them merchandise from samples the architects have also availed themselves of these wholesale dealers' productions, and the argument is that instead of making their purchases through a decorator and allowing the decorator his profit and then charging an architect's commission on the full price of the furniture, they have offered to sell the furniture to the client at the wholesale price plus the architect's commission, thus underbidding the decorator in such a way that it becomes impossible for him to compete.
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