Twentieth Century Culture and Deportment / Or the Lady and Gentleman at Home and Abroad; Containing Rules of Etiquette for All Occasions, Including Calls; Invitations; Parties; Weddings; Receptions; Dinners and Teas; Etiquette of the Street; Public Places, Etc., Etc. Forming a Complete Guide to Self-Culture; the Art of Dressing Well; Conversation; Courtship; Etiquette for Children; Letter-Writing; Artistic Home and Interior Decorations, Etc.

by Maud C. Cooke

Some Lovely Rooms.

Edmond Russell has treated two rooms exquisitely. A gold and ivory parlor, tinted, walls and ceiling in a grayish white with a greenish tinge, and this is mottled with gold flecked lightly over the surface. The broad frieze is adorned in free, simple style with leaves and blossoms of magnolia. Everything in this room should be light and delicate in color. The soft gold and ivory would be nullified by heavy walnut window casings; red and green carpet, red or blue plush furnishings, or vivid hangings would ruin the effect. Pictures in such a room should be preferably water-colors with pale gray mats, and gold or white frames. Oil paintings are only permissible when dreamy and vaporous in tint. Light, delicate colors in upholstery, creamy madras for curtains. The carpet may be a little darker, verging on some of the delicate, woody browns. Any bric-a-brac should be in pale shades of yellow or rose.

The tender lights of this room seem to clear and soften the complexion of the occupants.

Another is a dining-room of copper, bronze and terra cotta shades. A pale tint of copper to the background overlaid with dashes of bronze and strong copper color. The frieze is a succession of pine boughs, lightly fringed with their needles. Above the sideboard is a panel representing magnolia blossoms, and their heavy polished leaves, with brown in stem and shadows. The effect of this color scheme is to give a suggestion of warmth and cheer. The gold and copper used in flecking the wall are merely the two shades of the common bronze powder.

RICH PIECES OF FURNITURE.

Still another nest of a sleeping-room comes to mind, a creation of Moscheles. Floor covered with white bearskin rugs, furnished with a delicate tint of robin’s-egg blue. Toilet table strewn with every imaginable luxury in old ivory and silver. Panels in the wardrobe and doors filled with paintings by Burne-Jones, classic figures given the preference.

These rooms are given as examples of harmony of coloring. Great expense is not always necessary to secure this artistic harmony. Money goes a long way, but good taste and ingenuity will go just as far, with a minimum of expenditure.

There is a little room, a symphony in green and gold, created by one girl’s taste, a pale seafoam green that is delightful to the eye. The woodwork, banded with a narrow strip of gilt, is of this color, and the enterprising young woman painted it all with her own hands. The curtains at the three windows are of the freshest and purest white muslin, prettily ruffled. They are the kind that always look as if they had just been laundered and they are tied back with pale green ribbons that make them look the more exquisitely neat. The floor is covered with plain matting, which particularly recommended itself, by the way, because it was inexpensive.