To be washable as well as durable is also a great point in favour of cotton textiles. The English chintzes with which the high post bedsteads of our foremothers were hung had a yearly baptism of family soap-suds, and came from it with their designs of gaily-crested, almost life-size pheasants, sitting upon inadequate branches, very little subdued by the process. Those were not days of colour-study; and harmony, applied to things of sight instead of conduct, was not looked for; but when we copy the beautiful old furniture of that day, we may as well demand with it the quality of washableness and cleanableness which went with all its belongings.
It is always a wonder to the masculine, that the feminine mind has such an ineradicable love of draperies. The man despises them, but to the woman they are the perfecting touch of the home, hiding or disguising all the sharp angles of windows and doors, and making of them opportunities of beauty. It is the same instinct with which she tries to cover the hard angles and facts of daily life and make of them virtuous incitements. As long as the woman rules, house-curtains will be a joy and delight to her. Something in their soft protection, grace of line, and possible beauty of colour appeals to her as no other household belonging has the power to do. The long folds of the straight hanging curtain are far more beautiful than the looped and festooned creations which were held in vogue by some previous generations, and indeed are still dear to the hearts of professional upholsterers. The simpler the treatment, the better the effect, since natural rather than distorted line is more restful and enjoyable. Quality, colour, and simple graceful lines are quite sufficient elements of value in these important adjuncts of house furnishing and decoration.
CHAPTER XIII
FURNITURE
Although the forms and varieties of furniture are infinite, they can easily be cla.s.sified first into the two great divisions of good and bad, and after that into kinds and styles; but no matter how good the different specimens may be, or to what style they may belong, each one is subject again to the ruling of fitness. Detached things may be both thoroughly pleasing and thoroughly good in themselves, but unless they are appropriate to the place where, and purpose for which they are used, they will not be beautiful.
[Ill.u.s.tration: COLONIAL CHAIRS AND SOFA (BELONGING TO MRS. RUTH MCENERY STUART)]
It is well to reiterate that the use to which a room is put must always govern its furnishing and in a measure its colour, and that whatever we put in it must be placed there because it is appropriate to that use, and because it is needed for completeness. It is misapplication which makes much of what is called "artistic furnishing" ridiculous. An old-fashioned bra.s.s preserving-kettle and a linen or wool spinning-wheel are in place and appropriate pieces of furnishing for a studio; the one for colour, and the other for form, and because also they may serve as models; but they are sadly out of place in a modern city house, or even in the parlour of a country cottage.
We all recognise the fact that a room carefully furnished in one style makes a oneness of impression; whereas if things are brought together heterogeneously, even if each separate thing is selected for its own special virtue and beauty, the feeling of enjoyment will be far less complete.
There is a certain kinship in pieces of furniture made or originated at the same period and fashioned by a prevailing sentiment of beauty, which makes them harmonious when brought together; and if our minds are in sympathy with that period and style of expression, it becomes a great pleasure to use it as a means of expression for ourselves. Whatever appeals to us as the best or most beautiful thought in manufacture we have a right to adopt, but we should study to understand the circ.u.mstances of its production, in order to do justice to it and ourselves, since style is evolved from surrounding influences. It would seem also that its periods and origin should not be too far removed from the interests and ways of our own time, and incongruous with it, because it would be impossible to carry an utterly foreign period or method of thought into all the intimacies of domestic life. The fad of furnishing different rooms in different periods of art, and in the fashion of nations and peoples whose lives are totally dissimilar, may easily be carried too far, and the spirit of home, and even of beauty, be lost. Of course this applies to small, and not to grand houses, which are always exceptions to the purely domestic idea.
There are many reasons why one should be in sympathy with what is called the "colonial craze"; not only because colonial days are a part of our history, but because colonial furniture and decorations were derived directly from the best period of English art. Its original designers were masters who made standards in architectural and pictorial as well as household art. The Adams brothers, to whom many of the best forms of the period are referable, were great architects as well as great designers. Even so distinguished a painter as Hogarth delighted in composing symmetrical forms for furniture, and preached persistently the beauty of curved instead of rectangular lines. It was, in fact, a period in which superior minds expressed themselves in material forms, when Flaxman, Wedgwood, Chippendale and many others of their day, true artists in form, wrote their thoughts in wood, stone, and pottery, and bequeathed them to future ages. Certainly the work of such minds in such company must outlast mere mechanical efforts. It is interesting to note, that many of the Chippendale chairs keep in their under construction the square and simple forms of a much earlier period, while the upper part, the back, and seats are carved into curves and floriated designs. One cannot help wondering whether this square solidity was simply a reminiscence or persistence of earlier forms, or a conscious return to the most direct principles of weight-bearing constructions.
All furniture made under primitive conditions naturally depends upon perpendicular and horizontal forms, because uninfluenced construction considers first of all the principle of strength; but under the varied influences of the Georgian period one hardly expects fidelity to first principles. New England carpenters and cabinet-makers who had wrought under the masters of carpentry and cabinet-work in England brought with them not only skill to fashion, but the very patterns and drawings from which Chippendale and Sheraton furniture had been made in England. Our English forefathers were very fond of the St. Domingo mahogany, brought back in the ship-bottoms of English traders, but the English workmen who made furniture in the new world, while they adopted this foreign wood, were not slow to appreciate the wild cherry, and the different maples and oak and nut woods which they found in America. They were woods easy to work, and apt to take on polish and shining surface. The cabinet-makers liked also the abnormal specimens of maple where the fibre grew in close waves, called _curled_ maple, as well as the great roots flecked and spotted with minute knots, known as dotted maple.
All these things went into colonial furniture, so beautifully cut, so carefully dowelled and put together, so well made, that many of the things have become heirlooms in the families for which they were constructed. I remember admiring a fine old cherry book-case in Mr.
Lowell"s library at Cambridge, and being told by the poet that it had belonged to his grandfather. When I spoke of the comparative rarity of such possessions he answered: "Oh, anyone can have his grandfather"s furniture if he will wait a hundred years!"
Nevertheless, with modern methods of manufacture it is by no means certain that a hundred years will secure possession of the furniture we buy to-day to our grandchildren. In those early days it was not uncommon, it was indeed the custom, for some one of the men who were called "journeymen cabinet-makers"--that is, men who had served their time and learned their trade, but had not yet settled down to a fixed place and shop of their own--to take up an abode in the house with the family which had built it, for a year, or even two or three years, carrying on the work in some out-house or dependence, choosing and seasoning the wood, and measuring the furniture for the s.p.a.ces where it was to stand.
There was a fine fitness in such furnishing; it was as if the different pieces actually grew where they were placed, and it is small wonder that so built and fashioned they should possess almost a human interest.
Direct and special thought and effort were incorporated with the furniture from the very first, and it easily explains the excellences and finenesses of its fashioning.
There is an interesting house in Flushing, Long Island, where such furniture still stands in the rooms where it was put together in 1664, and where it is so fitted to s.p.a.ces it has filled during the pa.s.sing centuries, that it would be impossible to carry it through the narrow doors and pa.s.sages, which, unlike our present halls, were made for the pa.s.sing to and fro of human beings, and not of furniture.
[Ill.u.s.tration: COLONIAL MANTEL AND ENGLISH HOB-GRATE (SITTING-ROOM IN MRS. CANDACE WHEELER"S HOUSE)]
It is this kind of interest which attaches us to colonial furniture and adds to the value of its beauty and careful adaptation to human convenience. In the roomy "high boys" which we find in old houses there are places for everything. They were made for the orderly packing and keeping of valuable things, in closetless rooms, and they were made without projecting corners and cornices, because life was lived in smaller s.p.a.ces than at present. They were the best product of a thoughtful time--where if manufacture lacked some of the machinery and appliances of to-day, it was at least not rushed by breathless compet.i.tion, but could progress slowly in careful leisure. Of course we cannot all have colonial furniture, and indeed it would not be according to the spirit of our time, for the arts of our own day are to be encouraged and fostered--but we can buy the best of the things which are made in our time, the best in style, in intention, in fittingness, and above all in carefulness and honesty of construction.
For some reason the quality of durability seems to be wanting in modern furniture. Our things are fashioned of the same woods, but something in the curing or preparation of them has weakened the fibre and made it brittle. Probably the gradual evaporation of the tree-juices which old-time cabinet-makers were willing to wait for, left the shrunken sinews of the wood in better condition than is possible with our hurried and violent kiln-dried methods. What is gained in time in the one place is lost in another. Nature refuses to enter into our race for speedy completion, and if we hurry her natural processes we shorten our lease of ownership.
As a very apt ill.u.s.tration of this fact, I remember coming into possession some twenty years ago of an oak chair which had stood, perhaps, for more than two hundred years in a Long Island farm-house.
When I found it, it had been long relegated to kitchen use and was covered with a crust of variously coloured paints which had acc.u.mulated during the two centuries of its existence. The fashion of it was rare, and had probably been evolved by some early American cabinet-maker, for while it had all and even more than the grace of the high-backed Chippendale patterns, it was better fitted to the rounded surfaces of the human body. It was a spindle chair with a slightly hollowed seat, the rim of the back rounded to a loop which was continued into arm-rests, which spread into thickened blades for hand-rests. Being very much in love with the grace and ease of it, I took it to a manufacturer to be reproduced in mahogany, who, with a far-sighted sagacity, flooded the market with that particular pattern.
We are used--and with good reason--to consider mahogany as a durable wood, but of the half-dozen of mahogany copies of the old oak chair, each one has suffered some break of legs or arms or spindles, while the original remains as firm in its withered old age as it was the day I rescued it from the "out-kitchen" of the Long Island farm-house.
For the next fifty years after the close of our colonial history, the colonial cabinet-makers in New England and the northern Middle States continued to flourish, evolving an occasional good variation from what may be called colonial forms. Rush-and flag-bottomed chairs and chairs with seats of twisted rawhide--the frames often gilded and painted-- sometimes took the place of wrought mahogany, except in the best rooms of great houses. Many of these are of excellent shape and construction, and specially interesting as an adaptation of natural products of the country. Undoubtedly, with our ingenious modern appliances, we could make as good furniture as was made in Chippendale and Sheraton"s day, with far less expenditure of effort; but the demon of compet.i.tion in trade will not allow it. We must use all material, perfect or imperfect; we cannot afford to select. We must cover knots and imperfections with composition and pa.s.s them on. We must use the cheapest glue, and save an infinitesimal sum in the length of our dowels; we must varnish instead of polishing, or "the other man" will get the better of us. If we did not do these things our furniture would be better, but "the other man"
would sell more, because he could sell more cheaply.
Since the revived interest in the making of furniture, we find an occasional and marked recurrence to primitive form--on each occasion the apparently new style taking on the name of the man who produced it.
In our own day we have seen the "Eastlake furniture" appear and disappear, succeeded by the "Morris furniture," which is undoubtedly better adapted to our varied wants. At present, mortising and dowelling have come to the front as proper processes, especially for table-building; and this time the style appears under the name of "Mission furniture." Much of this is extremely well suited for cottage furnishing, but the occasional exaggeration of the style takes one back not only to early, but the earliest, English art, when chairs were immovable seats or blocks, and tables absolute fixtures on account of the weighty legs upon which they were built. In short, the careful and cultivated decorator finds it as imperative to guard against exaggerated simplicity as unsupported prettiness.
Fortunately there has been a great deal of attention paid to good cabinet work within the last few years, and although the method of its making lacks the human motive and the human interest of former days--it is still a good expression of the art of to-day, and at its best, worthy to be carried down with the generations as one of the steps in the evolutions of time. What we have to do, is to learn to discriminate between good and bad, to appreciate the best in design and workmanship, even although we cannot afford to buy it. In this case we should learn to do with less. As a rule our houses are crowded. If we are able to buy a few good things, we are apt instead to buy many only moderately good, for lavish possession seems to be a sort of pa.s.sion, or birthright, of Americans. It follows that we fill our houses with heterogeneous collections of furniture, new and old, good and bad, appropriate or inappropriate, as the case may be, with a result of living in seeming luxury, but a luxury without proper selection or true value. To have less would in many cases be to have more--more tranquillity of life, more ease of mind, more knowledge and more real enjoyment.
There is another principle which can be brought into play in this case, and that is the one of buying--not a costly kind of thing, but the best of its kind. If it is a choice in chairs, for instance, let it be the best cane-seated, or rush-bottomed chair that is made, instead of the second or third best upholstered or leather-covered one. If it is a question of tables, buy the simplest form made of flawless wood and with best finish, instead of a bargain in elaborately turned or scantily carved material. If it is in bedsteads, a plain bra.s.s, or good enamelled iron or a simple form in black walnut, instead of a cheap inlaid wood--and so on through the whole category. A good chintz or cotton is better for draperies, than flimsy silk or brocade; and when all is done the very spirit of truth will sit enthroned in the household, and we shall find that all things have been brought into harmony by her laws.
[Ill.u.s.tration: SOFA DESIGNED BY MRS. CANDACE WHEELER FOR NEW LIBRARY IN "WOMAN"S BUILDING," COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION]
Although the furnishing of a house should be one of the most painstaking and studied of pursuits, there is certainly nothing which is at the same time so fascinating and so flattering in its promise of future enjoyment. It is like the making of a picture as far as possibility of beauty is concerned, but a picture within and against which one"s life, and the life of the family, is to be lived. It is a bit of creative art in itself, and one which concerns us so closely as to be a very part of us. We enjoy every separate thing we may find or select or procure--not only for the beauty and goodness which is in it, but for its contribution to the general whole. And in knowledge of applied and manufactured art, the furnishing of a house is truly "the beginning of wisdom." One learns to appreciate what is excellent in the new, from study and appreciation of quality in the old.
It is the fascination of this study which has made a multiplication of shops and collections of "antiques" in every quarter of the city. Many a woman begins from the shop-keeper"s point of view of the value of mere age, and learns by experience that age, considered by itself, is a disqualification, and that it gives value only when the art which created the antique has been lost or greatly deteriorated. If one can find as good, or a better thing in art and quality, made to-day--by all means buy the thing of to-day, and let yourself and your children be credited with the hundred or two years of wear which is in it. We can easily see that it is wiser to buy modern iridescent gla.s.s, fitted to our use, and yet carrying all the fascinating l.u.s.tre of ancient gla.s.s, than to sigh for the possession of some unbuyable thing belonging to dead and gone Caesars. And the case is as true of other modern art and modern inventions, if the art is good, and the inventions suitable to our wants and needs.
Yet in spite of the goodness of much that is new, there is a subtle pleasure in turning over, and even in appropriating, the things that are old. There are certain fenced-in-blocks on the east side of New York City where for many years the choice parts of old houses have been deposited. As fashion and wealth have changed their locality--treading slowly up from the Battery to Central Park--many beautiful bits of construction have been left behind in the abandoned houses--either disregarded on account of change in popular taste, or unappreciated by reason of want of knowledge. For the few whose knowledge was competent, there were things to be found in the second-hand yards, precious beyond comparison with anything of contemporaneous manufacture.
There were panelled front doors with beautifully fluted columns and carved capitals, surmounted by half-ovals of curiously designed sashes; there were beautifully wrought iron railings, and elaborate newel-posts of mahogany, bra.s.s door-k.n.o.bs and hinges, and English hob-grates, and crystal chandeliers of cost and brilliance, and panelled wainscots of oak and mahogany; chimney-pieces in marble and wood of an excellence which we are almost vainly trying to compa.s.s, and all of them to be bought at the price of lumber.
These are the things to make one who remembers them critical about the collections to be found in the antique shops of to-day, and yet such shops are enticing and fashionable, and the quest of antiques will go on until we become convinced of the art-value and the equal merit of the new--which period many things seem to indicate is not far off. In those days there was but one antique shop in all New York which was devoted to the sale of old things, to furniture, pictures, statuary, and what Ruskin calls "portable art" of all kinds. It was a place where one might go, crying "new lamps for old ones" with a certainty of profit in the transaction. In later years it has been known as _Sypher"s_, and although one of many, instead of a single one, is still a place of fascinating possibilities.
To sum up the gospel of furnishing, we need only fall back upon the principles of absolute fitness, actual goodness, and real beauty. If the furniture of a well-coloured room possesses these three qualities, the room as a whole can hardly fail to be lastingly satisfactory. It must be remembered, however, that it is a trinity of virtues. No piece of furniture should be chosen because it is intrinsically good or genuinely beautiful, if it has not also its _use_--and this rule applies to all rooms, with the one exception of the drawing-room.
The necessity of _use_, governing the style of furnishing in a room, is very well understood. Thus, while both drawing-room and dining-room must express hospitality, it is of a different kind or degree. That of the drawing-room is ceremonious and punctilious, and represents the family in its relation to society, while the dining-room is far more intimate, and belongs to the family in its relation to friends. In fact, as the dining-room is the heart of the house, its furnishing would naturally be quite different in feeling and character from the drawing-room, although it might be fully as lavish in cost. It would be stronger, less conservative, and altogether more personal in its expression. Family portraits and family silver give the personal note which we like to recognise in our friends" dining-rooms, because the intimacy of the room makes even family history in place.
In moderate houses, even the drawing-room is too much a family room to allow it to be entirely emanc.i.p.ated from the law of use, but in houses which are not circ.u.mscribed in s.p.a.ce, and where one or more rooms are set apart to social rather than domestic life, it is natural and proper to gather in them things which stand, primarily, for art and beauty--which satisfy the needs of the mind as distinct from those of bodily comfort. Things which belong in the category of "unrelated beauty" may be appropriately gathered in such a room, because the use of it is to please the eye and excite the interest of our social world; therefore a table which is a marvel of art, but not of convenience, or a casket which is beautiful to look at, but of no practical use, are in accordance with the idea of the room. They help compose a picture, not only for the eyes of friends and acquaintances, but for the education of the family.
It follows that an artistic and luxurious drawing-room may be a true family expression; it may speak of travel and interest in the artistic development of mankind; but even where the experiences of the family have been wide and liberal, if the house and circ.u.mstances are narrow, a luxurious interior is by no means a happiness.
It may seem quite superfluous to give advice against luxury in furnishing except where it is warranted by exceptional means, because each family naturally adjusts its furnishing to its own needs and circ.u.mstances; but the influence of mere beauty is very powerful, and many a costly toy drifts into homes where it does not rightly belong and where, instead of being an educational or elevating influence, it is a source of mental deterioration, from its conflict with unsympathetic circ.u.mstances. A long and useful chapter might be written upon "art out of place," but nothing which could be said upon the subject would apply to that incorporation of art and beauty with furniture and interior surrounding, which is the effort and object of every true artist and art-lover.
The fact to be emphasised is, that _objects d"art_--beautiful in themselves and costly because of the superior knowledge, artistic feeling, and patient labour which have produced them--demand care and reserve for their preservation, which is not available in a household where the first motive of everything must be ministry to comfort. Art in the shape of pictures is fortunately exempt from this rule, and may dignify and beautify every room in the house without being imperilled by contact in the exigencies of use.
Following out this idea, a house where circ.u.mstances demand that there shall be no drawing-room, and where the family sitting-room must also answer for the reception of guests, a perfect beauty and dignity may be achieved by harmony of colour, beauty of form, and appropriateness to purpose, and this may be carried to almost any degree of perfection by the introduction and accompaniment of pictures. In this case art is a part of the room, as well as an adornment of it. It is kneaded into every article of furniture. It is the daily bread of art to which we are all ent.i.tled, and which can make a small country home, or a smaller city apartment, as enjoyable and elevating as if it were filled with the luxuries of art.
[Ill.u.s.tration: RUSTIC SOFA AND TABLES IN "PENNYROYAL" (IN MRS. BOUDINOT KEITH"S COTTAGE, ONTEORA)]
But one may say, "It requires knowledge to do this; much knowledge in the selection of the comparatively few things which are to make up such an interior," and that is true--and the knowledge is to be proved every time we come to the test of buying. Yet it is a curious fact that the really _good_ thing, the thing which is good in art as well as construction, will inevitably be chosen by an intelligent buyer, instead of the thing which is bad in art and in construction. Fortunately, one can see good examples in the shops of to-day, where twenty years ago at best only honest and respectable furniture was on exhibition. One must rely somewhat on the character of the places from which one buys, and not expect good styles and reliable manufacture where commercial success is the dominant note of the business. In truth the careful buyer is not so apt to fail in quality as in harmony, because grade as well as style in different articles and manufactures is to be considered. What is perfectly good in one grade of manufacture will not be in harmony with a higher or lower grade in another. Just as we choose our grade of floor-covering from ingrain to Aubusson, we must choose the grade of other furnishings. Even an inexperienced buyer would be apt to feel this, and would know that if she found a simple ingrain-filling appropriate to a bed-chamber, maple or enamelled furniture would belong to it, instead of more costly inlaid or carved pieces.
It may be well to reiterate the fact that the predominant use of each room in a house gives the clew to the best rules of treatment in decoration and furniture. For instance, the hall, being an intermediate s.p.a.ce between in and out of doors, should be coloured and furnished in direct reference to this, and to its common use as a thoroughfare by all members of the family. It is not a place of prolonged occupation, and may therefore properly be without the luxury and ease of lounges and lounging-chairs. But as long as it serves both as entrance-room to the house and for carrying the stairways to the upper floors, it should be treated in such a way as to lead up to and prepare the mind for whatever of inner luxury there may be in the house. At the same time it should preserve something of the simplicity and freedom from all attempt at effect which belong to out-of-door life. The difference between its decoration and furniture and that of other divisions of the house should be princ.i.p.ally in surface, and not in colour. Difference of surface is secured by the use of materials which are permanent and durable in effect, such as wood, plaster, and leather. These may all be coloured without injury to their impression of permanency, although it is generally preferable to take advantage of indigenous or "inherent colour" like the natural yellows and russets of wood and leather. When these are used for both walls and ceiling, it will be found that, to give the necessary variation, and prevent an impression of monotony and dulness, some tint must be added in the ornament of the surface, which could be gained by a forcible deepening or variation of the general tone, like a deep golden brown, which is the lowest tone of the scale of yellow, or a red which would be only a variant of the prevailing tint.
The introduction of an opposing or contrasting tint, like pale blue in small ma.s.ses as compared with the general tint, even if it is in so small a s.p.a.ce as that of a water-colour on the wall, adds the necessary contrast, and enlivens and invigorates a harmony.
No colour carries with it a more appropriate influence at the entrance of a house than red in its different values. Certain tints of it which are known both as Pompeiian and Damascus red have sufficient yellow in their composition to fall in with the yellows of oiled wood, and give the charm of a variant but related colour. In its stronger and deeper tones it is in direct contrast to the green of abundant foliage, and therefore a good colour for the entrance-hall or vestibule of a country-house; while the paler tones, which run into pinks, hold the same opposing relation to the gray and blue of the sea-sh.o.r.e. If walls and ceiling are of wood, a rug of which the prevailing colour is red will often give the exact note which is needed to preserve the room from monotony and insipidity. A stair-carpet is a valuable point to make in a hall, and it is well to reserve all opposing colour for this one place, which, as it rises, meets all sight on a level, and makes its contrast directly and unmistakably. A stair-carpet has other reasons for use in a country-house than aesthetic ones, as the stairs are conductors of sound to all parts of the house, and should therefore be m.u.f.fled, and because a carpeted stair furnishes much safer footing for the two family extremes of childhood and age.
The furniture of the hall should not be fantastic, as some cabinet-makers seem to imagine. Impossible twists in the supports of tables and chairs are perhaps more objectionable in this first vestibule or entrance to the house than elsewhere, because the mind is not quite free from out-of-door influences, or ready to take pleasure in the vagaries of the human fancy. Simple chairs, settles, and tables, more solid perhaps than is desirable in other parts of the house, are what the best natural, as well as the best cultivated, taste demands. If there is one place more than another where a picture performs its full work of suggestion and decoration, it is in a hall which is otherwise bare of ornament. Pictures in dining-rooms make very little impression as pictures, because the mind is engrossed with the first and natural purpose of the room, and consequently not in a waiting and easily impressible mood; but in a hall, if one stops for even a moment, the thoughts are at leisure, and waiting to be interested. Aside from the colour effect, which may be so managed as to be very valuable, pictures hung in a hall are full of suggestion of wider mental and physical life, and, like books, are indications of the tastes and experiences of the family. Of course there are country-houses where the halls are built with fireplaces, and windows commanding favourite views, and are really intended for family sitting-rooms and gathering-places; in this case it is generally preceded by a vestibule which carries the character of an entrance-hall, leaving the large room to be furnished more luxuriously, as is proper to a sitting-room.
The dining-room shares with the hall a purpose common to the life of the family, and, while it admits of much more variety and elaboration, that which is true of the hall is equally true of the dining-room, that it should be treated with materials which are durable and have surface quality, although its decoration should be preferably with china rather than with pictures. It is important that the colour of a dining-room should be pervading colour--that is, that walls and ceiling should be kept together by the use of one colour only, in different degrees of strength.
For many reasons, but princ.i.p.ally because it is the best material to use in a dining-room, the rich yellows of oiled wood make the most desirable colour and surface. The rug, the curtains, the portieres and screen, can then be of any good tint which the exposure of the room and the decoration of the china seem to indicate. If it has a cold, northern exposure, reds or gold browns are indicated; but if it is a sunny and warm-looking room, green or strong India blue will be found more satisfactory in simple houses. The materials used in curtains, portieres, and screens should be of cotton or linen, or some plain woollen goods which are as easily washable. A one-coloured, heavy-threaded cotton canvas, a linen in solid colour, or even indigo-blue domestic, all make extremely effective and appropriate furnishings. The variety of blue domestic which is called denim is the best of all fabrics for this kind of furnishing, if the colour is not too dark.