Louis Quinze Screen.
Should you desire it, the screen can be painted black or any other color, and the decorations bronzed instead of gilded. The bronzes come in different shades, and the color of real bronze can be easily copied.
A Panel of Field-Corn
As an ornament for the dining-room is very decorative and easy to make. When the corn ripens, select some nice, firm, golden ears, with husks and without; then break off pieces of cornstalk and group them together, as in the illustration; cover a board of requisite size with a piece of old black velvet; if you have no velvet, paint the board black, and after tying the corn firmly together, tack it securely on the board, and the dark background will bring out the many yellow tints of the decoration beautifully; fasten two screw-eyes in the back of the board, by which to attach the wire, and the panel will be ready to hang on the wall.
The corn can also be fastened to a rough board of the desired size and the panel and decoration bronzed, using green bronze for the background and portions of the group, while all the edges and prominent points should be of copper-colored bronze.
Early in November the many varieties of gourds ripen, and their odd and fantastic forms seem like nature’s suggestions of the unique in ornamentation. So suggestive are they that it needs but little originality to make them into many useful and beautiful articles. As a decoration for looping over the poles of portières, and for holding back draperies, these
Ornamental Gourds
are convenient. They must first be allowed to become perfectly dry; then they can be made into tasselled festoons. Take six mock-oranges, which imitate so closely our real oranges in color, size, and form, and cut a hole about the size of a silver dime in the top and bottom of each one; then shake out the seeds. To make the openings in the gourds, first bore a small hole with the point of a large needle, then twist the needle around and around until it will easily pass through. Next, carefully enlarge the opening with a sharp penknife until it is of the stated size. Make a rope two yards and a half long of Persian colored wools or worsted; on the end fasten a slender tassel, six or seven inches long, made of the same worsted; now string one of the bright orange-gourds on the rope down against the tassel, which should be large enough to prevent the gourd from slipping off; make another similar tassel, and attach it to the rope about twelve inches from the first one, and thread another gourd on the rope, bringing it down against the second tassel; proceed in like manner with the remaining gourds, making a tassel for each one, and you will have a decoration unlike any to be found elsewhere.
We are all more or less familiar with the