Social Life Part 81

The smoother the boxes, the better; but they can be planed, if they are not.

The shelves are so arranged as to accommodate the different sizes of j.a.panese bric-a-brac. The small cabinet in the upper left-hand corner is simply a smooth bit of the board, finished with two ornamental hinges, either bra.s.s or bronze. The escutcheon is of the same. The circular panel can be either of Lincrusta, bronzed, or to make it a little more unique, a circular hole can be cut in the door, and a pretty blue j.a.panese plate inserted, held in place at the back, and the door lined. The supports are easily obtained by a visit to a factory where they have a turning lathe. The ornamental finish at the bottom is of lightly carved wood, if one can do these things, or a strip can be purchased at a carpenter shop or wall paper store. Still another way out of the difficulty is to get just the length of Lincrusta and tack it on neatly.

Before the hinges and escutcheon are put on, the staining should be done, and the simplest way out of the difficulty is to purchase Pik-Ron, stain whatever color or wood you require, then afterward give it a coat of varnish, coach varnish giving a durable finish that is heavy and beautiful, or the whole cabinet may be covered with the stamped j.a.panese cotton goods in gilt and colors, each shelf being covered before being put in place, and the uprights gilded or stained.

Still again, if the work is of pine, it may be stained a rich bronze, and left with dead finish, which is a very fair imitation of j.a.panese woodwork.

Piano Decoration.

An upright piano should be placed with its back to the room. This position is not only good from a decorative standpoint, but a performer likes to be shielded by the instrument. Here are enumerated various graceful ways to cover the polished bareness of this musical instrument.

To hang a square of tapestry over the back from a bra.s.s rod is exceedingly striking. If possible, let the painted subject relate to music or sentiment, and have it sufficiently large to cover the surface of the piano.

If the tapestry is very fine work its surface should be unspoiled by additions. Across the top of the piano lay a scarf of Liberty silk, or another painted panel. The only bric-a-brac that combines with this drapery is a pair of candelabra, the quainter in style the better.

Algerian stripes, Bagdad tapestry or Persian prints make good backgrounds. Their cost is $1.25 a yard, and width fifty inches. With this as a foundation many schemes may be carried out. Bas-relief heads in plaster can be swung on it without injuring the wood of the piano.

Medallions of Beethoven, Mozart or Wagner can be purchased for $1 each. A long panel of cherubs goes well, or a line of Delft or j.a.panese plates.

A low settle has a comfortable resting place underneath this. Either a box seat upholstered in dark, contrasting stuff, or one of the $4.50 green wooden settles, sold to artists, would serve. A number of cushions placed on the seat against the piano add to the coziness and grace of the decoration.

Lighting.

Rooms should be lighted from the sides, if possible. The great central chandeliers, casting their downward shadows, age every face in the room by emphasizing every line, and bringing out every defect sharply.

Decorating.

In decorating a room a harmony of the shades of one color should be used. Beware of spotty effects. It should really, according to Edmond Russell, "be conceived, as a piece of music is, in a certain key.

There should be sympathy and harmony. Even the pictures should be chosen with as much regard to their surroundings as to their individual merits."

Another important item in the decoration of the home is considering the choice of ground tones with reference to the complexion of its hostess. Guests appear there but casually. She is always there, and no one should elect to occupy a room, whose color tones either totally efface what little color one may possess, or else, by an exaggeration of natural ruddiness, be made a rival of the setting sun.

The effect of color upon the appearance is so important that every change of color, changes not only the color of the skin, but that of the hair and eyes as well.

Edmond Russell once studied a room with reference to complexions, mixing his paints to a relative hue with the general tone of complexions, making it duller and grayer, so that standing near it the skin looked clear and fresh beside it.

"I made the tone," he said, "a little greener and colder than flesh, so that one looked lighter and warmer and was enriched by the contrast. Any who stood in front of that wall looked five or ten years younger than they were."

In using a flower, or other design, for a frieze or dado, they should be conventionalized. This term is used to signify the modification of a real object with its surroundings. The more formal they are the better; no attempt at shading or perspective is necessary, and the square and compa.s.s should be used as much as possible in their designing.

In decorating a room, a dark floor is the beginning, and the walls grow lighter as the ceiling is approached. The richest effects should be congregated at the mantel, with the fire as its central object.

"The ability to combine is a rare one." Ruskin writes truly that, "one rarely meets even an educated person who can select a good carpet, a wall paper, and a ceiling, and have them in harmony." There is too much of a temptation to adopt beautiful things simply because they are beautiful, without pausing to consider the weightier matter of their eternal fitness, or remembering that a thing intrinsically beautiful in itself may become hideous by inharmonious proximity or combination with another beautiful object.

Home of the Soul.

A mystic German writer calls a house, properly ordered, the "home of the soul," carrying out the idea that the house in which an orderly soul lives, is only an expansion of the body built and adorned out of her pa.s.sing experiences. "All sorts of delicate affinities establish themselves between her and the lights and shadows of her abode; the particular picture on the wall; the scent of flowers at a particular window until she seems incorporated into it."

In other words, one's environments, as one's dress, must be in harmony with their individual type, or a permanent discord will result; for instance, Emma Moffett Tyng speaks of a "pond-lily type of woman, soft color, gray blue eyes, pale brown eyes," appealing to her as to the "effect" of the gorgeous, redecorated interior of her home, with flames of color in hangings and rugs, and "her Egyptian gown with its glow and glint of purple and gold. All these things were artistic and beautiful, and perfect in their relations to each other," but in their relation to her nothing could have been worse. The woman, herself, was eclipsed, obliterated. "A Cleopatra, dark and flashing, would make the picture complete. But such a colorless woman needs repose in her surroundings; the low tones of blue and gray, the palest flush of the sunset heavens."

Some Lovely Rooms.

Edmond Russell has treated two rooms exquisitely. A gold and ivory parlor, tinted, walls and ceiling in a grayish white with a greenish tinge, and this is mottled with gold flecked lightly over the surface.

The broad frieze is adorned in free, simple style with leaves and blossoms of magnolia. Everything in this room should be light and delicate in color. The soft gold and ivory would be nullified by heavy walnut window casings; red and green carpet, red or blue plush furnishings, or vivid hangings would ruin the effect. Pictures in such a room should be preferably water-colors with pale gray mats, and gold or white frames. Oil paintings are only permissible when dreamy and vaporous in tint. Light, delicate colors in upholstery, creamy madras for curtains. The carpet may be a little darker, verging on some of the delicate, woody browns. Any bric-a-brac should be in pale shades of yellow or rose.

The tender lights of this room seem to clear and soften the complexion of the occupants.

Another is a dining-room of copper, bronze and terra cotta shades. A pale tint of copper to the background overlaid with dashes of bronze and strong copper color. The frieze is a succession of pine boughs, lightly fringed with their needles. Above the sideboard is a panel representing magnolia blossoms, and their heavy polished leaves, with brown in stem and shadows. The effect of this color scheme is to give a suggestion of warmth and cheer. The gold and copper used in flecking the wall are merely the two shades of the common bronze powder.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RICH PIECES OF FURNITURE.]

Still another nest of a sleeping-room comes to mind, a creation of Moscheles. Floor covered with white bearskin rugs, furnished with a delicate tint of robin's-egg blue. Toilet table strewn with every imaginable luxury in old ivory and silver. Panels in the wardrobe and doors filled with paintings by Burne-Jones, cla.s.sic figures given the preference.

These rooms are given as examples of harmony of coloring. Great expense is not always necessary to secure this artistic harmony. Money goes a long way, but good taste and ingenuity will go just as far, with a minimum of expenditure.

There is a little room, a symphony in green and gold, created by one girl's taste, a pale seafoam green that is delightful to the eye. The woodwork, banded with a narrow strip of gilt, is of this color, and the enterprising young woman painted it all with her own hands. The curtains at the three windows are of the freshest and purest white muslin, prettily ruffled. They are the kind that always look as if they had just been laundered and they are tied back with pale green ribbons that make them look the more exquisitely neat. The floor is covered with plain matting, which particularly recommended itself, by the way, because it was inexpensive.

As to Furniture.

Every article of furniture in the room is of the prevailing green and there are no off shades, for they were all painted from the same can of paint. The bedstead was nothing but common pine, made to order at the factory, and it is of a quaint design that originated in the same fertile brain that is responsible for all the rest of the perfect appointments. The headboard is in the shape of a shield and there is painted thereon a spray of wild roses to bring to the sleeper over whom they bend sweet dreams of perpetual summer time. And the white counterpane and snowy pillows in the setting of green and gold make it a most inviting place of repose.

The chairs were resurrected from the debris in the family attic. There are two heavy old-fashioned ones of curly maple, and they are cushioned with a brocaded green and gold material that exactly match the green of the furniture. Then there is a comfortable little rocking chair cushioned with the same material and painted in green with many stripes of gold.

But it is the dressing table that is the most charming of all the unique devices that make the room attractive. It was a battered old washstand at first, but now it is a work of art. It is painted, of course, in green and gilt, and there is a spray of wild roses on the front. Above it is a green and gilt framed mirror with a spray of the favorite wild roses again overhanging the top part. Over mirror and washstand and all is draped a canopy of white muslin. Among the other articles that find place on the table is a little fairy lamp with a shade of green tissue paper that gives the softest light imaginable.

A comfortable green window seat in the corner is well supplied with pillows covered in green and gold brocade, and up and around the window there clambers an old English ivy.

There is an oddly fashioned bookcase in another corner. You would never guess it, of course, but it was constructed out of two dry goods boxes. It is painted green inside and out and fitted up with four shelves. A green silk curtain hangs from a bra.s.s rod, and about the edge of the bookcase is a gilt cornice. The top is covered with bric-a-brac.

For pictures there is an etching or two on the wall in green and gold frames, and you have a room the very sight of which is cool and refreshing, and which cost its owner some time and some planning, but very little money.

Pictures.

Be careful of the pictures and their relations to the walls. Rooms should rather be a setting for a beautiful moving picture of the shifting groups of people in it.

Too much gilding, too many gaudy oil paintings attract the eye and distract the mind.

There is a simple picture in my room, red curtains, a white-robed child kneeling, that is all, but everything in it harmonizes, and it harmonizes with the furnishings of the room, and my eye is often drawn toward it.

One authority objects to portraits as a decoration. "Their presence, if at all impressive, is too stimulating."

Picture frames should never be so gorgeous as to distract the mind from the picture. "Frames are to protect the picture and relate it to the walls."

Group etchings together and put engravings in the portfolio. Over low bookcases pictures should be large, and in this form they give a style to the room. Water colors look admirable if treated in this manner, and if two bookcases are put together so as to form one, divide the pictures by a bracket, on which place a jar of some unique pattern.