Treatment Of A Guest Room
HERE we can indulge our tastes for beautiful quality of materials
and fine workmanship, as well as good line and color, so we describe
a room which has elegant distinction and atmosphere, yet is not a
so-called period room rather a modern room, in the sense that it
combines beautiful lines and exquisite coloring with every modern
development for genuine comfort and convenience.
The walls are paneled and painted a soft taupe there are no
pictures; simply one very beautiful mirror in a dull-gold frame, a
Louis XVI reproduction.
The carpet made of dark taupe velvet covers the entire floor. The
furniture is Louis XV, of the wonderful painted sort, the beautiful
bed with its low head and foot boards exactly the same height,
curving backward; the edges a waved line, the ground-color a lovely
pistachio green, and the decoration gay old-fashioned garden flowers
in every possible shade.
The bureau has three or four drawers and a bowed front with
clambering flowers. These two pieces, and a delightful night table
are exact copies of the Clyde Fitch set in the Cooper Hewitt Museum,
at New York; the originals are genuine antiques, and their color
soft from age. A graceful dressing table with winged mirrors, has
been designed to go with this set, and is painted like the bureau.
The glass is a modern reproduction of the lovely old eighteenth
century mirror glass which has designs cut into it, forming a
frame.
For chairs, all-over upholstered ones are used, of good lines and
proportions; two or three for comfort, and a low slipper-chair for
convenience. These are covered in a chintz with a light green
ground, like the furniture, and flowered in roses and violets, green
foliage and lovely blue sprays.
The window curtains are of soft, apple-green taffeta, trimmed with a
broad puffing of the same silk, edged on each side by black
moss-trimming, two inches wide. These curtains hang from dull-gold
cornices of wood, with open carving, through which one gets glimpses
of the green taffeta of the curtains.
In another suite we have a boudoir done in sage greens and soft
browns. The curtains of taffeta, in stripes of the two colors. Two
tiers of crème net form sash curtains.
The carpet is a rich mulberry brown, day-bed a reproduction of an
antique, painted in faded greens with pannier fleur design on back,
in lovely faded colors, taffeta cushions of sage green and an
occasional note about the room of mulberry and dull blue. Electric
light shades are of decorated parchment paper.
Really an enchanting nest, and as it is in a New York apartment, and
occasionally used as a bedroom, a piece of furniture has been
designed for it similar to the wardrobe shown in picture, only not
so high. The glass door, when open, discloses a toilet table,
completely fitted out, the presence of which one would never
suspect.
Boudoir in New York
Apartment. Painted Furniture, Antique and Reproductions
The sash-curtains are of the very finest cream net, and the window
shades are of glazed linen, a deep cream ground, with a pattern
showing a green lattice over which climb pink roses. The shades are
edged at the bottom with a narrow pink fringe.
The bed has a cover of green taffeta exactly like curtains, with the
same trimming of puffed taffeta, edged with a black moss trimming.
The mantelpiece is true to artistic standards and realizes the
responsibility of its position as keynote to the room. Placed upon
it are a beautiful old clock and two vases, correct as to line and
color.
Always be careful not to spoil a beautiful mantel or beautiful
ornaments by having them out of proportion one with the other. Plate
XXIV shows a mantel which fails as a composition because the bust,
an original by Behest, beautiful in itself, is too heavy for the
mantel it Stands on and too large for the mirror, which reflects it
and serves as its background.
Keep everything in correct proportion to the whole. We have in mind
the instance of some rarely beautiful walls taken from an ancient
monastery in Parma, Italy. They were ideal in their original
setting, but since they have been transported to America, no setting
seems right. They belonged in a building where there was a
succession of small rooms with low ceilings, each room perfect like
so many pearls on a string. Here in America their only suitable
place would be a museum, or to frame the tiny "devotional" of some
precious Flower of Modernity.
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