Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/334

 WOMAN'S HOME 312 pour out wine as if it were an oblation ; and there are rooms through which a turbulent floo<l of voung life flows daily. It is with this latter, the dining-room of every-day htc that this article is concerned chiefly. I can only make a few homely suggestions, easy to 'follow, and insist on nothing being retained in auy dining-room that is not for comfort and that the walls should be left entirely' undecorated. Unless pictures or prints ' really worthy of the dignity of isolation are obtainable, it is well to remember that a striped paper all of one colour rests the eye much more than one with a pattern on it. Colour in the Dininsf-room For a simple dining-room, one within the reach of a moderate purse, a capital effect is produced by a white striped paper, white woodwork, a red or blue Turkey carpet, bright red or bright blue silk curtains, sparingly appliqued with Oriental embroi- dery, an embroidered Persian overmantel, and table centre of either red or blue. Add a high screen of gold, red, or gold and blue leather paper, and a few, a very few, good engravings, and furnish with dark oak for preference, as it looks w^ell, wears well, and is now, during the craze for old furniture, extraordinarily cheap. For a red room, flowers of every shade from pink to bright red are admissible, but crimson must be excluded, whilst for a blue room nothing is prettier than mauve, purple, and blue. A dull-blue bowl filled with purple flags or mauve rhododendrons is a lovely sight in a blue room, just as a red bowl filled with pink sweet peas shaded to magenta is the right thing for a red one. In the latter you can get a wonderful effect by placing a tree of Japanese apple-blossom l)chind the red or scarlet screen, and putting some sprays in jars on the mantelpieces; but the most beautiful colour effect in flowers I ever produced was with masses of every shade of pink and rose poppies in a red dining-room furnished with oak. Pictures and their Value For a dining-room, as in other rooms, you should, above all things, take care of your corners — a pedestal, a stand, anything that will carry high foliage up, and so break the flatness of the room, is extremely valuable in effect, (rreen boughs look better than anything else, if tall flowers of the right colour are not available. For the possessor of good pictures a different scheme of colour altogether is required, or indeed almost a lack of it ; though I must confess to a leaning towards certain shades of red as a background for oil paintings, and I have seen wonderful effects produced by Venetian gold frames hanging against blue. As a rule, a dull shade of green is the favourite. Granted, then, that one has splendid pictures, and knows how to hang them, all the furnishings in the room should be soberly splendid and subdued, that they may not dispute supremacy with the glowing richness on the walls. Pictures are like human beings, and respond to harmonious lighting and surroundings. The dining-room illustrated is a white room. On the right of it is a Jacobean cabinet of walnut and oak, inlaid with* mother-o'-pearl and gold spirals — a beautiful example of the art of the period. The round table is of polished mahogany, with a piece of wood running round the top, and meals are served on it without a cloth, and with worked linen doyleys under the plates. The spiral stand is a freemason's candlestick, and a Sheraton knife-box is hung against the wall. This room is in a house three hundred years old, on the Cotswolds, very quaint and full of old, beautiful things, bought lovingly bit by bit. True beauty of surroundings does not depend on money, but on the elimination of foolish, useless things, on the prominence given to what ministers to the wants of either mind or body, and, therefore, is beautiful in its essential usefulness. A good example of how to furnish a room panelled to a height of five feet in old oak may also be given. A Panelled Dinins:-rooni The ledge above the panelling, when bordered with roses or almost any big flower, gives the effect of a lovely frieze ; the ceiling is white, crossed with oak beams, from which are suspended silk-shaded electric lights. A great mirror framed in oak fills one end of the room ; there is a dresser with old blue china and jugs, and more blue china on a shelf above the great open fireplace and on a shelf above the door. The furniture is old oak, with blue cushions in the carved armchairs; the floor is covered with very thick, coarsely woven matting, and Per- sian rugs everywhere. In a corner cup- board is old pewter ; the window has leaded panes with a carved oak settle placed against it. I do not think one heirloom carries the virtue with it of sunshine, fresh air, simplicity of taste. If you cannot get the two first, you can furnish your dining-rooms with the latter, and given a table at which a man can sit in comfort with his surroundings — if there be a garden, or, better still, a landscape to look out at by day, then indeed his lordliest furnishing comes from without — an easy- chair in which he can rest and smoke the pipe of peace, cool walls, flowers that insensibly satisfy some colour-want in him of which he is ignorant, what does he care for luxury ? There should be a bookcase handy — a room without books is all w^rong — but there should be no " pretty-pretties " in it ; it should be a place to rest and eat in in comfort, with a couple of deep, comfortable armchairs at least. I confess to a great liking for a blue dining- room. Sheraton and Chippendale go ex- tremely well with that colour, and I have in