AS I GROW OLDER, I become more convinced that I was born out of time - that all my sensibilities set me on the stage of life a century ago and it was only a quirky accident that brought me into the world in 1947. As today's high-tech and synthetic-stucco world encroaches upon me, I retreat more and more into an earlier "modern" age that had greater vision and clarity. It also produced some of the most remarkable architecture, interior design and decorative art that the world has ever seen.

The Belgian dining-room table is set with a 1910 Syracuse china pattern called "Indian" and Secession enameled stemware by the Austrian firm Theresienthaler. The pastel and charcoal drawing is a figure study of a worker done by artist Weinhold Reiss in 1931-32 in preparation for his Cincinnati Union Terminal murals.

Our home is a place where these early design trends from many countries live together in some harmony. There are works of turn-of-the-20th-century designers from England, Scotland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria and the United States. While the collection includes French art nouveau and Art Deco pieces, English and American arts-and-crafts period oak and mahogany predominate. Their sturdy, straightforward good looks are ideally suited backdrops for the display of metal, wood, ceramics, glass and works on paper.

The design movements of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were revolutionary in their time. They questioned public taste, established principles for design excellence, and encouraged artists and craftspeople through publications, art and architecture journals, competitions and exhibitions. In an age of steamships and transcontinental rail - a century before e-mail - ideas flowed from one country to another with remarkable speed. That made much of this decorative art and architecture international in its appeal.

Though innovative designers were frequently derided, each movement attracted a select clientele and eventually was accepted - even embraced - by the public. The flip side of popular acceptance was a gradual loss of integrity, quality and favor. Icons of these periods that hadn't been purchased by progressive-minded museums or private collectors ended up in basements, attics and trash heaps.

Today's renewed popularity of works from the Austrian and German secession, English and American arts-and-crafts, art nouveau and art deco has come about for the same reason that these movements were originally popularized.

Six-year-old Lauren Lang's room features a wall painted to look like the outdoors, complete with white picket fence, towering tree and friendly critters.

Both then and now, they promote high quality and appreciation for handcrafted - or at least hand-finished - goods that reveal the richness and the idiosyncrasies of handiwork. Early modern-design movements reflected a search for stylistic purity, color harmony and integrity of the finished product. This is a goal rarely met in the 21st-century modern marketplace.

In recent years, books and exhibition catalogs have educated people and have made them aware that the exciting qualities of these movements lie in their comprehensive treatment of every facet of design. Homeowners, for instance, can see how color and ornament linked wallpapers, upholstery, rugs and draperies with furniture to create integrated room settings.

Public exposure has also stimulated reproduction of historic furniture, fabrics and accessories. Shoppers can now re-discover the abstract and cubist geometry of Joseph Hoffman and the unique approach to color and form of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. They can decorate with the rich gold swirls and jewel-like colors of Gustav Klimt or the sensual curves of vines, birds and flowers of French art nouveau and German jugenstil.

The stylized floral designs and handsome nonhistoricist furniture popularized by William Morris, Charles Voysey and a host of British visionaries are available in reproductions of their fabrics, rugs and furniture, as are the striking geometries, assertive forms and luxury materials of French art deco. The simplicity and calm reflected in the American arts-and-crafts movement has made this unquestionably the most widespread rebirth of a century-old style.

George Logan, a Glasgow artist and contemporary of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, designed this tea set in 1903 for the English firm Foley Art China, Peacock Pottery. It depicts the Glasgow rose that inspired American craftsmen such as Roycroft artist Dard Hunter.

Our personal collection has roots in my professional interest in architecture and interior design of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. That led to an interest in learning about and collecting decorative and applied arts of these periods. It also led to building a design-research library that includes catalogs and instructional manuals, pattern books, encyclopedias of ornament and illustrated books by designers whose styles epitomize art nouveau, art deco and arts-and-crafts aesthetics. My partner has been an enthusiastic and supportive participant in this search and education process.

Our taste is more finely tuned then it was 20 years ago. It is now rare to find additions to our collections at local antique fairs or antique malls. I never imagined back then that we would plan vacations to coincide with major antique shows in New York, Florida, Los Angeles or Amsterdam, or that we would be leaving bids at British and German auction houses or on the Internet.

A pewter clock and silver vases with enamel are by Archibald Knox, a leading designer for the Liberty Company in London in the first decade of the 20th century. The silver and enamel rose bowl was crafted by Edward Spencer in 1912 for the Guild of Artificers. Above the dresser is a scenic vellum tile by the Rookwood Co. of Cincinnati.

As our knowledge and taste have grown, so has our spending. Some people would put their money toward new clothes, skis or big-screen televisions. For us there is more satisfaction in the wood and brass inlays on a German mantel clock, or the stylized floral designs in painted velvet on a Liberty tablecloth, or the bronze bas relief on a commemorative medallion, than there is in the products of today's market.

I have always been curious about older cultures. But more than that, I have maintained a romantic, sometimes nostalgic view of the world - a conviction that things were more beautiful, more expressive and better crafted back then. It has become one of the great pleasures of life to surround myself with furniture and decorative arts that evoke the ambiance of an earlier place and time but are - even in this new millennium - extraordinarily modern.

Lawrence Kreisman is program director for Historic Seattle. He serves on the Seattle Landmarks Preservation Board and is author of "Made to Last: Historic Preservation in Seattle and King County." Barry Wong is Seattle Times staff photographer.