The Art of Interior Decoration by Emily Burbank (good summer reads TXT) 📕

Avoid in a studio, bungalow or a small flat, where the living-room and dining-room are the same, all evidences of dining-room (china, silver and glass for use). Let the table be covered with a piece of old or modern brocade when not set for use. A lamp and books further emphasises the note of living-room.

Avoid the use of light-absorbing colours in wall papers if you are anxious to create sympathetic cheerfulness in your rooms, and an appearance of winning comfort. Almost all dark colours are light-absorbing; greens, dull reds, dark greys and mahogany browns will make a room dull in character no matter how much sunlight comes in, or how many electric lights you use. Perhaps the only dark colour which is not light-absorbing is a dark yellow.

Avoid the permanent tea-table. We are glad to record that one seldom happens upon one, these days. How the English used to revile them! In the simplest homes it is always possible at the tea hour, to have a table placed before whoever is to "pour" and a tray on which are cups, tea, cream, sugar, lemon, toast, cake or what you will, brought in from the pantry or kitchen. There was a time when in America, one shuddered at the possibility of dusty cups and those countless faults of a seldom-rehearsed tea-table!

Avoid serving a lunch in an artificially lighted room. This, like a permanent tea-table, is an almost extinct fashion. Neither was sensible, because inappropriate, and therefore bad form. The only possible reason for shutting out God's sunlight and using artificial lights, is when the function is to begin by daylight and continue until after nightfall.

If in doubt as to what is good, go often to museums and compare what you own, or have seen and think of owning, with objects in museum collections.

In a New York home one room is devoted to a so-called panier fleuri collection which in this case means that each article shows the design of a basket holding flowers or fruit. The collection is to-day so unique and therefore so valuable, that it has been willed to a museum, but its creation as a collection, was entirely a chance occurrence. The design of a basket trimmed with flowers happened to appeal to the owner, and if we are not mistaken, the now large collection had its beginning in the casual purchase of a little old pendant found in a forgotten corner of Europe. The owner wore it, her friends saw it, and gradually associated the panier fleuri with her, which resulted in many beautiful specimens of this design being sought out for her by wanderers at home and abroad. To-day this collection includes old silks, laces, jewellery, wax pictures, old prints, some pieces of antique furniture, snuffboxes and ornaments in glass, china, silver, etc.

Every museum is the result of fads in collecting, and when one considers all that is meant by this heading, which sounds so trifling and unimportant to the layman, it will not seem strange that we strongly recommend it as a dissipation!

At first, quite naturally, the collector makes mistakes; but it is through his mistakes that he learns, and absolutely nothing gives such a zest to a stroll in the city, a tramp in the country, or an unexpected delay in an out-of-the-way town, as to have this collecting bee in your bonnet. How often when travelling we have rejoiced when the loss of a train or a mistake in time-table, meant an unexpected opportunity to explore for junk in some old shop, or, perhaps, to bargain with a pretty peasant girl who hoarded a beloved heirloom, of entrancing interest to us (and worth a pile of money really), while she lived happily on cider and cheese!

It is doubtless the experience of every lover of the old and the curious, that one never regrets the expenses incurred in this quest of the antique, but one does eternally regret one's economies. The writer suffers now, after years have elapsed, in some cases, at the memory of treasures resisted when chanced upon in Russia, Poland, Hungary, Bohemia—where not! Always one says, "Oh, well, I shall come back again!" But there are so many "pastures green," and it is often difficult to retrace one's steps.

Then, too, these fads open our eyes and ears, so that in passing along a street on foot, in a cab or on a bus, or in glancing through a book, or, perhaps, in an odd corner of an otherwise colourless town, where fate has taken us, we find "grist for our mill"—just the right piece of furniture for the waiting place!

Know what you want, really want it, and you will find it some time, somewhere, somehow!

As a stimulus to beginners in collecting, as well as an illustration of that perseverance required of every keen collector, we cite the case of running down an Empire dressing-table.

It was our desire to complete a small collection of Empire furniture for a suite of rooms, by adding to it as a supplement to the bureau, a certain type of Empire dressing-table. It is no exaggeration to say that Paris was dragged for what we wanted—the large well-known antique shops and the smaller ones of the Latin Quarter being both ransacked. Time was flying, the date of our sailing was approaching, and as yet the coveted piece had not been found. Three days before we left, a fat, red-faced, jolly cabby, after making a vain tour of the junk shops in his quarter, demanded to know exactly what it was we sought. When told, he looked triumphant, bade us get into his cab, lashed his horse and after several rapidly made turns, dashed into an out-of-the-way street and drew up before a sort of junk store-house, full of rickety, dusty odds and ends of furniture, presided over by a stupid old woman who sat outside the door, knitting,—wrapped head and all in a shawl. We entered and, there, to our immense relief, stood the dressing table! It was grey with dust, the original Empire green silk, a rusty grey and hanging in shreds on the back of the original glass. There was a marble top set into the wood and grooved in a curious way. The whole was intact except for a loose back leg, which gave it a swaying, tottering appearance. We passed it in silence—being experienced traders! Then, after buying several little old picture frames, while Madame continued her knitting, we wandered close to the coveted table and asked what was wanted for that broken bit "of no use as it stands."

"Thirty francs" (six dollars) was the answer.

Later a well-known New York dealer offered seventy-five dollars for the table in the condition in which we found it, and repaired as it is to-day it would easily bring a hundred and fifty, anywhere!

As it happened, the money we went out with had been spent on unexpected finds, and neither we nor our good-natured cabby were in possession of thirty francs! In fact, cabby was rather staggered to hear the price, having offered to advance what we needed. He suggested sending it home "collect" but Madame would not even consider such an idea. However, at last our resourceful jehu came to the rescue. If the ladies would seat themselves in the cab, he could place the table in front of them, with the cover of the cab raised, and Madame of the shop could lock her door and mounting the box by the side of our cocher, she might drive with us to our destination and collect the money herself! He promised to bring her home safely again!

As we had only the next day for boxing and shipping, there was no alternative. Before we had even taken in our grotesque appearance, the horse was galloping, as only a Paris cab horse can gallop, toward our abode in Avenue Henri Martin, past carriages and autos returning from the Bois, while inside the cab we sat, elated by our success and in that whirl of triumphant absorbing joy which only the real collector knows.

This same modest little Empire collection had a treasure recently added to it, found by chance, in an antique shop in Pennsylvania. It was a mirror. The dealer, an Italian, said that he had got it from an old house in Bordentown, New Jersey.

"It's genuine English," he said, certain he was playing his winning card.

It has the original glass and a heavy, squarely made, mahogany frame. Strange to say it corresponds exactly with the bed and bureau in the collection, having pilasters surmounted by women's heads of gilded wood with small gilded feet showing at base.