The Art of Interior Decoration | Page 7

a country
house and a city abode, there will be no difficulty in solving the
problem. Formality may be left to the town house or flat, while during
week-ends, holidays and summers you can revel in supreme comfort.
Every man or woman is capable of creating comfort. It is a question of
those deep chairs with wide seats and backs, soft springs, thick, downy
cushions, of tables and bookcases conveniently placed, lights where
you want them, beds to the individual taste,--double, single, or twins!
The getting together of a period room, one period or periods in
combination, is difficult, especially if you are entirely ignorant of the
subject. However, here is your cue. Let us suppose you need, or want, a
desk--an antique desk. Go about from one dealer to the other until you
find the very piece you have dreamed of; one that gives pleasure to you,
as well as to the dealer. Then take an experienced friend to look at it. If
you have every reason to suppose that the desk is genuine, buy it. Next,
read up on the furniture of the particular period to which your desk
belongs, in as serious a manner as you do when you buy a prize dog at

the show. Now you have made an intelligent beginning as a collector.
Reading informs you, but you must buy old furniture to be educated on
that subject. Be eternally on the lookout; the really good pieces,
veritable antiques, are rare; most of them are in museums, in private
collections or in the hands of the most expensive dealers. I refer to
those unique pieces, many of them signed by the maker and in perfect
condition because during all their existence they have been jealously
preserved, often by the very family and in the very house for which
they were made. Our chances for picking up antiques are reduced to
pieces which on account of reversed circumstances have been turned
out of house and home, and, as with human wanderers, much jolting
about has told upon them. Most of these are fortified in various
directions, but they are treasures all the same, and have a beauty value
in line colour and workmanship and a wonderful fitness for the
purposes for which they were intended.
"Surely we are many men of many minds!"
PLATE V
The sofa large, strong and luxuriously comfortable; the curtains simple,
durable and masculine in gender. The tapestry and architectural picture,
decorative and appropriately impersonal, as the wall decorations should
be in a room used merely for transacting business.
[Illustration: A Corner of the Same Office]
Some prefer antiques a bit dilapidated; a missing detail serving as a
hallmark to calm doubts; others insist upon completeness to the eye and
solidity for use; while the connoisseur, with unlimited means,
recognises nothing less than signed sofas and chairs, and other objets
d'art. To repeat:--be always on the lookout, remembering that it is the
man who knows the points of a good dog, horse or car who can pick a
winner.
Wonderful reproductions are made in New York City and other cities,
and thousands bought every day. They are beautiful and desirable
pieces of furniture, ornaments or silks; but the lover of the vrai antique

learns to detect, almost at a glance, the lack of that quality which a fine
old piece has. It is not alone that the materials must be old. There is a
certain quality gained from the long association of its parts. One knows
when a piece has "found itself," as Kipling would put it. Time gives an
inimitable finish to any surface.
If you are young in years, immature in taste, and limited as to bank
account, you will doubtless go in for a frankly modern room, with
cheerful painted furniture, gay or soft-toned chintzes, and inexpensive
smart floor coverings. To begin this way and gradually to collect what
you want, piece by piece, is to get the most amusement possible out of
furnishing. When you have the essential pieces for any one room, you
can undertake an ensemble. Some of the rarest collections have been
got together in this way, and, if one's fortune expands instead of
contracting, old pieces may be always replaced by those still more
desirable, more rare, more in keeping with your original scheme.
To buy expensive furnishings in haste and without knowledge, and
within a year or two discover everything to be in bad taste, is a tragedy
to a person with an instinctive aversion to waste. Antique or modern,
every beautiful thing bought is a cherished heirloom in embryo.
Remember, we may inherit a good antique or objet d'art, buy one, or
bequeath one. Let us never be guilty of the reverse,--a bar-sinister piece
of furniture! Sympathy with unborn posterity should make us