Page:Every Woman's Encyclopedia Volume 1.djvu/607

 58i WOMAN'S HOMK FUIRNIiSHING No. 5. LIBRARIES By HELEN MATHERS Continued from paift 464, Part 4 The Simple Library— Beautiful Bookcases— Comfortable Furnishing— The Magnificent Library and the Humble Sanctum bookcase is the most beautiful of all, with its open metalwork, through which you sco and almost handle the books. Plain high mahogany bookcases, with ledges below glass doors, and sliding panels underneath for paper, books, and so on. look extremely well, filling two sides of a room. Flowers and china on the ledge contrast well with such a background, and you can afford to be a little frivolous with your colours. One of the most charming libraries I ever saw was a " chrysanthemum " one. The carpet, subdued in effect, was shaded from brown up to orange ; there were orange satin curtains ; all woodwork and the overmantels were white ; the latter had dishes of old yellow Worcester on the top, and yellow and orange flowers on the brackets and shelf. A looped Liberty curtain partly divided the room, and a Dutch marqueteri'e bureau and couch showed beyond with a gleam of chrysanthemum gold leather walls behind. Of course, the better the bindings, the more conv enable the room, but a book- shelf filled with the dapper little sevenpenny 'you may call almost any room a library a study and smoking-room combined the pleasanter it is. The simplest way of making an ordinary room look like a study is to put up two shelves, a good way apart, above the floor, aad let these run right round the room, with a shelf on top on w^hich to place china, small pictures, etc., the shelves to be bordered with a dark stamped leather border, and filled, more or less, with books. Some easy-chairs, a couch, a writing-table, and another for general use, complete a room made all the pleasanter for some masculine litter about and smoking para- phernalia — a man should be allowed to smoke all over his house if he pleases. This, of course, is the plainest possible way of making a library ; but Chippendale bureaux, with bookcases above, are a joy to behold, and keep safely one's most cherished volumes. A long Sheraton book- case filling a recess, or placed against the >vall. is the making of almost any room. For those who can afford it, the Adams A charming library, filled with that Atmosphere which a scholar alone can create, and yet a and comfortable chairs, and of an indefinaHe restfulness room, fillcL
 * that has books in it. and the more it is