The lesson to the eye was simply and directly effective; the pictures
told their story as no printed word could have done, and furniture
manufacturers and dealers all over the country, feeling the pressure
from their customers, began to put on the market the tables, chairs,
divans, bedsteads, and dressing-tables which the magazine was portraying
as examples of good taste. It was amazing that, within five years, the
physical appearance of domestic furniture in the stores completely
changed.
The next undertaking was a systematic plan for improving the pictures on
the walls of the American home. Bok was employing the best artists of
the day: Edwin A. Abbey, Howard Pyle, Charles Dana Gibson, W. L. Taylor,
Albert Lynch, Will H. Low, W. T. Smedley, Irving R. Wiles, and others.
As his magazine was rolled to go through the mails, the pictures
naturally suffered; Bok therefore decided to print a special edition of
each important picture that he published, an edition on plate-paper,
without text, and offered to his readers at ten cents a copy. Within a
year he had sold nearly one hundred thousand copies, such pictures as W.
L. Taylor's "The Hanging of the Crane" and "Home-Keeping Hearts" being
particularly popular.
Pictures were difficult to advertise successfully; it was before the
full-color press had become practicable for rapid magazine work; and
even the large-page black-and-white reproductions which Bok could give
in his magazine did not, of course, show the beauty of the original
paintings, the majority of which were in full color.
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