THE CHINA CLOSET
The china closet is designed for the accommodation of everything in use on the dining table, with drawers or cupboards for linen and silver, and shelves for dishes. The latter should be arranged with an eye to artistic effect as well as to convenience, platters and decorative plates standing on edge and kept from slipping by a strip of molding nailed to the shelf, pretty cups hanging, and those of more common material and design inverted to keep out the dust. Stand the large and heavy pieces, vegetable dishes, and piles of plates on the bottom shelf, and on the next cups and saucers, sauce dishes, small plates, etc., placing the smaller dishes in front, the taller ones behind. The third shelf may be devoted to gla.s.s alone, with tumblers inverted and bowls and odd pieces tastefully arranged, or to both gla.s.s and silver.
On the fourth shelf place such pieces of gla.s.s and silver as are only occasionally brought into service. Personal taste and convenience dictate to a great extent the placing of the dishes, but absolute neatness and spotlessness must hold sway. No other closet is more p.r.o.ne to disarrangement than the china closet, where the careless disposal of one dish seems to invite the general disorder which is sure to follow. For this reason it demands the frequent rearranging which it should receive. Its walls should harmonize in color with those of the dining room. Small, fringed napkins or doilies on and overhanging the shelves help to impart an air of daintiness and make a pretty setting for the dishes. When the china closet does not connect with the dining room, but is a "thing apart," its shelves may receive the same treatment accorded those in the pantry--white paper or oilcloth covering and valance.
While well-filled linen and china closets appeal to the aesthetic side of the housewife, clothes closets speak directly to her common-sense, managerial side. If she had a say-so in the matter, their name would be Legion, but she must not think over-hardly of the few she has, for they are invaluable developers of her genius for putting "infinite riches in a little room"; while the constant tussle in their depths with moth and dust induces a daily enlargement of her moral biceps--and her patience. May their shadow never grow less (perish the thought!).
CLOSET TIGHTNESS
Before anything goes into a closet see that all the cracks in the floor are entirely filled with putty, plaster of Paris, or sawdust, for otherwise dust and lint will acc.u.mulate in them, and there the beetle will find a house and the moth a nest for herself. Whiting and linseed oil mixed well together until the paste is smooth will make the putty.
The plaster of Paris is easily prepared by mixing the powder with cold water till it is of the right consistency to spread, but it hardens so quickly that only a little can be made ready at a time. Or, dissolve one pound of glue in two gallons of water, and stir into it enough sawdust to make a thick paste. Any of these preparations can be colored to match the floor, put into the cracks with a common steel knife, and made smooth and even with the boards. A better way, however, seems to be to omit the coloring and give the entire floor two coats of paint after the cracks are filled. There are those who prefer covering the floor with enamel cloth; but try as we will, it is all but impossible to fit it so closely that dust and animal life cannot slip under it.
CLOSET FURNISHING
The floors attended to, next see that there are plenty of hooks screwed on the cleat which should extend around three sides of the closet.
They must be at a convenient height, say five feet, and three inches below the first of two or three shelves, to be not over fifteen inches apart, thus making at least two available for use. On the under side of this first shelf screw double hooks, and additional hanging room can be made by suspending a movable rod across the closet on which to hang coat hooks holding garments. Skirts, waists, and coats hold their shape far better when disposed of in this way, and can be packed closely together. A twelve-inch piece of barrel hoop wound with cambric or muslin, and with a loop at the center, is a good subst.i.tute for the commercial hook. On the shelves go hat and other boxes, and various parcels, each to be plainly labeled. A chest of drawers at one end of the closet is handy for the disposal of delicate gowns, extra underwear, furs, summer dresses, etc., while a shoe bag insures additional order. The soiled-clothes hamper belongs, not in the clothes closet, but in the bathroom. Too much emphasis cannot be placed on this. The odor from the linen pollutes the naturally close air of the closet and clings to everything it contains.
CARE OF CLOSETS AND CONTENTS
Wash the woodwork, drawers, floor, and shelves of all closets thoroughly with water containing a few drops of carbolic acid--not enough to burn the hands--and wipe dry. Painted walls which can also be washed are most desirable; if calcimined, the tinting must be renewed each year. If furs are to be put away, brush and beat well, and then comb to remove possible moths or eggs, sprinkle with camphor gum, wrap in old cotton or linen cloth, then in newspaper, and tie securely. Moths, not being literary in their tastes, will never enter therein. All woolens should be put away in the same manner. The closet is clean and sanitary now, and the main thing is to keep it so.
All garments ought to be thoroughly brushed and aired before hanging away, particularly in the summer time, with a special application of energy to the bottoms of street gowns, the microscopic examination of one of which revealed millions of tubercular germs--not a pleasant thought, but a salutary one, let us hope.
It seems such a pity that the sun, that great destroyer of bacteria, cannot shine into our closets; but until the new architect comes to our rescue with a window, all we can do to sweeten them is to remove the clothing and air by leaving doors and adjacent windows open for a couple of hours. An annual disinfecting with sulphur fumes will destroy all germs of insect life. Use powdered sulphur--it is far more effective than the sulphur candles which are sold for the same purpose.
Stand an old pie plate or other tin in a pan of water; on it build a little fire of paper and fine kindling, pour on the powdered sulphur, and leave to smudge and smoke for twenty-four hours. The closet must be sealed up as tight as possible, every crack, crevice, and keyhole being stuffed with newspaper to prevent the fumes from escaping, the entering door, of course, being sealed after the fumes are started. If one desires the sealing to be doubly sealed, newspaper strips two inches wide and pasted together to make several thicknesses, can be pasted over cracks in doors and windows with a gum-tragacanth solution, prepared by soaking two tablespoons of the gum in one pint of cold water for an hour, then placing the bowl in a pan of boiling water, and stirring till dissolved. This is easily washed off and will not stain or discolor the woodwork. Although there is an impression to the contrary, clothing may be left in the closet with entire safety during the smoking, provided it is well away from the fire. Indeed, clothing needs purifying as much as closet, and an occasional disinfecting will help on the good work of sanitation. After the closet is once rid of moths, tar paper specially prepared for the purpose and tacked on the walls, is effectual in keeping them away, for they seem to "smell the battle afar off."
CHAPTER XII
HANGINGS, BRIC-A-BRAC, BOOKS, AND PICTURES
"Step by step" is a good thought to hold when we reach the fancifying of the house, as we only do after days of planning, nights of waking, over the must-be"s. And, after all, these last accessories are divided from the necessaries by but a hair line, for it is they which give the home its soul--that beautiful, spiritual softness and radiance which we love and which differentiate the home from the house which is but its sh.e.l.l. The life and spirit of the home should be one of growth and development, which can only be achieved in a proper atmosphere and environment; and these it now rests with the home builder to supply in the radiant harmony and softness which flow from these final "tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs," which not only create but reflect character.
THE CHARM OF DRAPERY
Hangings have a considerable share in making the home atmosphere, their mission being to soften harsh angles and outlines and warm cold, stiff plainness into comfort. Window curtains act as an equalizer in bringing the very best out of both light and dark rooms, serving at the same time as a partial background for their contents; while portieres are not only aesthetic but useful in deadening sounds, cutting off draughts, and screening one room from another. "Drapes," those flimsy, go-as-you-please looking bunches of poor taste knotted, cascaded, and festooned over mantels, pictures, and chair backs, we have outgrown, confining our efforts in this line to the silk draught curtain to conceal the inelegant yawn of an open grate; and even this is being supplanted by the small screen.
CURTAINS
Windows must be curtained with relation to their shape and position and the nature of the room. The lower floor of the house, being naturally the heavier, can be curtained in a statelier manner than the lighter upper story. Here is the proper place for our handsome curtains of Irish point and other appliques of muslin or lace on net, and of scrim with insertions and edges of Renaissance, Cluny, and other laces.
These curtains are manufactured in three shades--dark cream or ecru, light ivory, and pure white, the ivory being the richest and most desirable--and in simple, inexpensive designs as well as those costly and elaborate, and usually run about 50, 54, and 60 inches wide, and 3 1/2 yards long. The applique curtain wears better in an elaborate all-over design which holds the net together and gives it body, cheaper designs which can be had as low as $8 being coa.r.s.er in quality and pattern. Nottingham curtains must be discredited among other imitations; they are well-meaning but both tasteless and cheaply ostentatious. Lace curtains are rarely draped, but hang in straight simplicity, most of the fullness being arranged in the body that the border design may not be lost in the folds. They are shirred with an inch heading on rods fastened outside of the window casing over which they extend, and care must be taken, if the pattern is prominent, that corresponding figures hang opposite each other. The double hem at the top is nearly twice the diameter of the pole, with the extra length turned over next to the window, the curtains, when hung, clearing the floor about 2 inches. They usually stretch down another inch, which brings them to just the right length. There is no between length in curtains; they must be either sill or floor length. Over curtains may or may not be used with the lace curtains. They are not necessary but have a certain decorative value, particularly in a large room. Raw silk, 30 inches wide, and costing from $0.75 to $1.50 a yard, is the only fabric sold now for this purpose for drawing-room use. The inner curtains may be simply side curtains, or made with a valance as well, and hang from a separate pole to obscure the top of the cas.e.m.e.nt and just escape the floor, covering the outside edges of the lace curtains without concealing their borders. The over curtain should reproduce the coloring of the side wall and ceiling in a shade between the two in density, but if just the right tint cannot be caught, recourse to some soft, harmonious neutral tint will be necessary. Lining is not used unless there is an objection to the colored curtain showing from the street, when the lining silk or sateen must be of the shade of the lace curtain.
Almost any sort of pretty net or scrim curtain is appropriate for the downstairs windows, with a preference in favor of the more dignified lace in the drawing-room. With the other rooms we can take more liberty. The ruffled curtain is sash length and looped with a band of the same, or with a white cotton cord and ta.s.sel at the middle sash if the window be short, otherwise midway between it and the sill. There are fine fish nets, or _tulle de Cadiz_, 45, 50, and 60 inches wide at 50 cents a yard, which make charming living- or dining-room curtains, edged on three sides with the new 1-inch fringe or fancy edge, at 5 and 10 cents a yard, which comes for that purpose; and madras, plain or figured, is also good, a pretty combination being the fish net with colored madras over curtain. Raw-silk curtains are in use, too, but anything which stands too much between the home dwellers and the air and light is best avoided. Silk curtains are usually trimmed with a brush edge. Gla.s.s curtains are only necessary as a screen or to soften the harsh outline of a heavy curtain, and must be as transparent and inconspicuous as possible, the right side toward the gla.s.s. They are sill length, shirred to a small bra.s.s rod set inside the casing, and draped if the over curtain hangs straight, to maintain a balance.
Those used on windows visible at once from the same quarter must be alike. The lace panels with a center design which we sometimes see in windows, but more frequently in doors, are too severe to be either graceful or ornamental. The vestibule door is best treated to correspond with the drawing-room windows, with an additional silk curtain to be drawn at night; or the silk curtain harmonizing with the woodwork of the hall may be used alone.
The curtaining of bedroom windows has already been discussed at some length. Swisses, dimities, figured muslins, and madras, either alone or supplemented by a valance, an over curtain, or both, of madras, chintz or cretonne, are preeminently the bedroom curtains, and may either be draped or hang straight, depending somewhat on the shape of the window. The long, narrow window needs the broadening effect of the draped curtain, the illusion of width being further increased by extending the curtain out to cover the cas.e.m.e.nt, while the straight-hanging curtain gives additional length to the short window.
Frilled curtains are usually looped, and seemingly increase the size of the room by enlarging the area of vision. An extra allowance of 6 inches is made for draping, with an additional inch or two for shrinkage. The charm of simplicity is always to be borne in mind when curtaining a room.
PORTIeRES
Portieres must serve their purpose, which is most emphatically _not_ that of "drapery" in the sense in which the word has been so much used, but of convenience and utility, beauty, of course, being the twin sister of the latter nowadays. Figured portieres with plain walls, and vice versa, are the rule, the coloring blending with both floor and walls and coming between the two in density. Again the neutral tint comes to the rescue if difficulty in matching is met. There is almost an embarra.s.sment of riches in portiere materials in plain and figured velours, woolen brocades, soft tapestries, furniture satins, damasks, velvets, etc., but we are learning the true art value of the simpler denims (plain and fancy), reps, cotton tapestries, rough, heavy linens, and monk"s cloth--a kind of jute--for door hangings. The plain goods in dull, soft greens, blues, and browns, with conventional designs in applique or outlining, are not only inexpensive but artistic to a high degree, and are easily fashioned by home talent. Plain strips, too, are used for tr.i.m.m.i.n.g, and stencil work, but the latter requires rather more artistic ability than most of us possess. Whatever the material, it must be soft enough to draw all the way back and leave a full opening, but not so thin as to be flimsy and stringy. The portiere is either shirred over the pole or hung from it by hook safety pins or rings sewed on at intervals of four inches. Double-faced goods have the hems on the side on which they will show least, with any extra length turned over as a valance on the same side. The finished curtain should hang one inch from the floor and will gradually stretch until it just escapes--the proper length. Single-faced materials are lined to harmonize with the room which receives the wrong side. Lengthwise stripes give a long, narrow effect, while crosswise stripes give an apparent additional width, and plain materials seem to increase the size of a doorway. Rods may be either of a wood corresponding with the other woodwork, or of bra.s.s, with rings, sockets, and brackets of the same material, the bra.s.s rod to be an inch in diameter and the wooden 1 1/2 inches or more and set inside the jambs.
Portieres are also of service in softening the opening of a large bay window, making a cozy corner, or cutting off an awkward length of hall.
When a doorway is very high it is better to carry the portiere to within a foot or so of the top, leaving the opening unfilled, or supplying a simple grille of wood harmonizing with the wood of the door. A pretty fashion is to introduce into this s.p.a.ce a shelf on which to place pieces of bra.s.s or pottery. Beaded, bamboo, and rope affairs are neither draperies nor curtains, graceful, useful nor ornamental, and are consequently not to be considered.
Men of science may cry "Down with draperies!"--but we members of that choicer cult known as domestic science stand loyally by them, for though in draperies there may he microbes, there is also largess of coziness and geniality.
BRIC-A-BRAC
The old-fashioned "whatnot" with its hungrily gaping shelves is responsible for many crimes committed in the name of bric-a-brac, and calls to mind sundry specimens with which proud owners were wont to satisfy its greed: the gla.s.s case of wax or feather flowers, flanked and reenforced by plush photograph frames, sh.e.l.ls, china vases shining "giltily," silvered and beribboned toasters, peac.o.c.k-feather fans, with perhaps a cup and saucer bearing testimony to our virtue with its "For a good girl," and other fill-upables, gone but not forgotten. And then followed a time when mantels and bookcase tops bore certain ills in the way of the more modern painted plaques, strings of gilded nuts, embroidered banners, and porcelain and bra.s.s clocks so gaudy and bedizened as to explain why time flies. But the architect has come to the rescue with his dignified, stately mantel which repels the trivial familiarity of meaningless decoration, and the bookcase whose simple, quiet elegance is in itself decorative. Blessed be the nothingness which allows Miladi to build her own art atmosphere untainted by gifts of well-intentioned but tasteless friends.
THE GROWTH OF GOOD TASTE
The germs of the capacity for good taste are born in most of us, but must be sedulously cultivated before they can rightly be called taste, and bric-a-brac presents the best of possibilities for their development. Begin by buying one piece which you know to be beautiful--simple and refined in outline, choice in design, modest in coloring, and fit for the use to which it is to be put--live with it, study it, master it. It will take on many unexpected charms as you grow to know it, and when you are ready to select the next piece you will find that the germ of your talent for discrimination has quietly become other ten talents and grown into a reliable ability to separate the chaff from the wheat. Each acquisition will have its own peculiar individuality which, once conquered, means a liberal education.
USEFULNESS WITH BEAUTY
While all bric-a-brac should be beautiful, some certain kinds, such as lamps, clocks, and jardinieres, are also essentially useful, and these have undergone a wonderful transformation during recent years as a result of the movement toward simplicity, honesty of purpose, and fitness. It would be hard to imagine anything more incongruous than the porcelain lamp decorated with flowers of heroic endurance which blossomed unwiltingly on, regardless of the heat; or the frivolously decorated clock when the pa.s.sing of time is so serious a matter; or the gaudy jardiniere, whose coloring killed the green of the plant it held.
But we have grown past this. Now our light at eventide is shed through a simple, plain-colored shade of porcelain or of j.a.pan paper and bamboo (if one cannot afford the plain or mosaic shades of opalescent gla.s.s), from an oil tank fitted into a bowl of hand-hammered bra.s.s or copper, or of pottery, of which there are so many beautiful pieces of American manufacture in dull greens, blues, browns, grays, and reds. These lamps are not expensive--no more so than their onyx and bra.s.s forbears--and are quiet, restful, beneficent in their influence.
Jardinieres we find in the same wares and colorings, which not only throw the plant into relief but tone in with the other decorations of a room in which nothing stands out distinct from its fellows, but all things work together for harmony. Clocks no longer stare us out of countenance, but follow, in bra.s.s, copper, or rich, dark woods, the st.u.r.dy simplicity of their ancestor, the grandfather"s clock, and so become worthy of the place of honor upon the mantel, where candlesticks, antique or modern, in bra.s.s or bronze, also find a congenial resting place.
[Ill.u.s.tration: The drawing-room.]
CONSIDERATIONS IN BUYING
There are so many vases, jugs, bronzes, medallions, jars, and bowls that one must needs walk steadfastly to avoid buying just for the pleasure of it, whereas each piece must be chosen with reference to the place it is to occupy and to its a.s.sociates. Any piece of genuine j.a.panese art ware, of which Cloisonne is perhaps the best known; old or ancestral china; objects of historical interest; different examples of American pottery, among others the Grueby, Van Briggle, and Teco, with their soft, dull glazes, and the Rookwood with its brilliantly glazed rich, mellow browns, its delicately tinted dull Iris glaze, and other styles which are being brought out; Wedgwood with its cameo-like reliefs; the rainbow-tinted Favrile gla.s.s; the Copenhagen in dull blues and grays--all these embody, each in its individual way, the requirements of art bric-a-brac.
But the brown Rookwood will overshadow the Copenhagen, and the multicolored Cloisonne will kill the Iris, and so each piece must have a congenial companion if any. And above all, don"t crowd! Bric-a-brac needs breathing room, and individual beauty is lost in the jumbling together of many pieces in a heterogeneous maze of color, which confuses and wearies the eye. All the fine-art product asks is to be let alone--a small boon to grant to so great worth.