"Swingman" wrote in message
...
"John Grossbohlin" wrote in message

While having a similar discussion with a guy who made a Bombay Chest out
of
solid mahogany he cynically summed up Mission as follows: "You can shape
all the pieces with your planner."

... and that, apparently, was considered one of the pluses of it's near
kin/predecessor, Arts and Crafts:

"Frank Lloyd Wright's lecture, "The Art and Craft of the Machine,"
delivered
at the Chicago Society of Arts and Crafts in 1901, in which, after
invoking
the name of William Morris, he went on to decla "The machine, by its
wonderful cutting, shaping, smoothing, and repetitive capacity, has made
it
possible to so use it without waste that the poor as well as the rich may
enjoy today beautiful surface treatments of clean, strong forms""

The essence of A&C, "Mission" being a close cousin of sorts, was to use
the
"machine" to relieve the tedium of repetitive, manual tasks which the
artisans of prior ages were slave to.

Interesting quote from Wright. Though I never thought of Wright as trying to
go mass market he clearly understood what the technology could do. I'd think
today's wonder machine, i.e., the one that brings variety to the masses,
would be the CNC machines. With CNC the masses can afford fancy looking
stuff like Chippendale, Queen Anne, etc...

John