Jane Student
Prof. Chiang-Schultheiss
English 100
June 26, 2002
Old is Better than New
My brother-in-law Marcus loves antiques. That was the main reason why his grandmother left him an old cupboard in her will. He had often admired it in her home and told her how much he liked it. The cupboard is now in Marcus’ house, where it gives character to the cloak-room. It is a traditional Swedish cupboard, hand-made over 200 years ago and painted in the rustic style that was characteristic for the taste of the countryside people of that time. Its colors have faded, but it is truly gorgeous and invites you [DCS1]to take a closer look at all its details. You [DCS2]can picture the carpenter working on it in his little workshop, adding wood-carvings just for the beauty of the cupboard and making sure this piece of furniture would be able to serve many generations of a family. Not everybody shares Marcus’ love for antiques though. Nowadays many people are drawn to novelty. Fashion changes constantly, and new trends are born every day. Should it be your [DCS3]goal to follow the trends and upgrade your personal belongings to the latest and the newest on the market? When it comes to furniture, the answer might surprise you. I have found that antiques often can be a better choice than newly manufactured furniture when it comes to economy, quality and adding personality to you home.[DCS4]
If you buy a new cabinet, you will find that the value of it starts to decrease as soon as you bring it home. If you sell it a year later, the money you will get for it will not come anywhere near the original price tag[DCS5]. With an antique piece of furniture, it may very well be just the other way around. For example; you buy an old, used cabinet and you use it until you for some reason decide to sell it. When you find out the current value of the cabinet, you might be in for a pleasant surprise. There is actually the chance for you to make a profit. If you do not make a profit, you can still count on getting a higher percent of the purchase price back than you would in the case of new furniture. Antiques do not loose their value altogether, instead it increases over the years.
Another good reason for buying an antique is the quality[DCS6]. Nowadays most furniture is mass-produced[DCS7], which often affects the quality. It is not built to last a lifetime and the workmanship leaves much to ask for. Solid [DCS8]wood is used very sparingly and the substitutes will unfortunately get scratched and chipped all too easily. If a new piece of furniture is hand-made of solid wood by a carpenter, it might cost a small fortune. If you instead choose an antique, from the early 20th century or older, you can find excellent workmanship and exquisite design for a price very close to that of new furniture. You will also know that this piece has withstood time for many years, and is most likely to live through many years to come.
The workmanship [DCS9]also has a major impact on the design. Often older furniture will have beautiful wood-carvings, not only on the outside, but also on the inside. Very often nails and screws are placed so that they are hidden, or not used at all. Paintings might adorn parts of it and often creative solutions are used to make the furniture more useful and beautiful. Age actually becomes it, giving the wood more luster and personality.
Investing in antique furniture will let you enjoy the feeling of owning something unique, something that you will not find in every home. Even if the major part of your furniture is new, a few antiques will personalize your home to a great extent. You can also take pleasure in the thought that you are creating family history and heirlooms. It can be very rewarding to own a piece of history, one that you can pass on to your family. Imagine the feeling of sitting in the same chair that your grandmother’s mother sat in when she was your age. Now imagine your future heirs in that very chair.
Now what if Marcus one day would get tired of his cupboard and decide to sell it? It is not very likely, but if he did, he could buy himself several new ones. Since he did not know what the cupboard was worth, and was very curious to find out, he contacted an antique dealer to get an estimate. The antique dealer listened to his description of the cupboard and was so interested that she offered to come home to Marcus [DCS10]to take a closer look at it. After examining it, she offered to buy it for $8000. Marcus declined the offer and realized he had without knowing it inherited a small fortune from his grandmother. In this case, old certainly was better than new.
[DCS1]Replace the 2nd person throughout your essay. It makes is sound too casual. Here’s an example here: “…invites visitors to take….” By doing this you shift the point of view back into the 3rd person.
[DCS2]Same thing here with POV. Try somethink like “It is easy to picture…” Be creative. You can almost always find a way to rephrase the 2nd person POV use of you, your, yourself, etc.
[DCS3]I’ll let you work on this and other instances. Be creative as you think of even better ways to phrase the sentence. You might have to reconstruct the entire sentence, but I assure you the time you spend on it will be well worth the result of your honed prose.
[DCS5]Here is one more example, then I’ll stop; you can even make your sentences more concise: “The value of a new cabinet starts to decrease as soon as it is put into a home, even if it is sold just a year later.” The two sentences really say the same thing, so work on combining ideas to avoid redundancy. Again, there are lots of ways to combine and condense these 2 sentences so that your prose is lean.
[DCS6]I think in this paragraph it will be better developed if you give more examples of the construction of furniture. I don’t know if you know much about different kinds of joints and methods of contruction, etc. but if you do those examples will clarify what you mean. Also in this paragraph you are digressing into a discussion about the workmanship, which you discuss in the next paragraph. To some degree you are splitting hairs here, for your point is to contrast mass-produced furniture versus handmade furniture. You can do that, but again zero in on the relative quality of each. Will the mass-produced furniture fall apart? Is it solid wood or particle board with vaneer on top?
[DCS7]Elaborate more on what you mean: assembly line productions? Ikea furniture? Give some examples of the mass-produced furniture or manufacturers (maybe like the type you find in Target, Walmart, etc.
[DCS8]give an example or 2 of solid woods: oak? Mahogany? So that your reader can visualize what you mean.
[DCS9]This paragraph is good, but give more details. Some of the material from the paragraph above it will work better in this paragraph.
[DCS10]Sounds a bit like she was a prodigal dealer! Rephrase to more clearly convey your thought here.
[DCS11]First, you’ve done a super job of framing the essay in the intro and conclusion paragraphs. Nice work. Most of your paragraphs are well unified, meaning they stay on topic except for the 2 paragraphs on value and workmanship. You’ve mixed some of the material. Try to separate them out better. Overall, I want to see more examples, especially in the areas I pointed out already. The really good thing I’m so happy to see is that you DON’T have any major sentence level problems with fragments, run-ons, comma splices, etc. or even in grammar. Very refreshing to see in a rough draft. So most of your work now needs to focus on 2 areas: adding more examples (content) and fixing the use of the 2nd person POV. I think I’ve given you enough examples in the early part of the essay to illustrate how easy it is to shift the POV back into the 3rd person. Good luck on the revision; it should be easy for you. --DCS