ABSTRACT
Women were often also creators of decorative arts that were intended to furnish and decorate the home. The most obvious opportunity for the exercise of a woman's artistic faculty seems to lie in needlework. Woman is not inferior to man but other than man her highest qualities are those in which man cannot compete with her, just as she cannot cope with him in things wherein his strength lies. Wood-carving is another branch of applied art to which the attention of ladies has been recently directed, and there is ample scope for its introduction in domestic decoration. It was a woman who wrote beseeching men that they would "honour the reader with truth, if not with praise". It is the fault of the education of ladies that they realise so little what goes to make proficiency in decorative art or in anything.
