Lacquered furniture is more formal than the average painted furniture, and often one or two pieces are sufficient for a room. A beautiful lacquered cabinet with its fascinating mounts and its soft, wonderful red or black and gold tones is a thing to conjure with. Lacquered furniture is lovely for some dining-rooms and morning-rooms. The tables should always be protected with glass tops, which also applies to other painted furniture.
One or two pieces of painted furniture may be used in a room with other furniture if they happen to be just the thing needed to complete the scheme. A console table, for instance, with a mirror over it and sidelights, might be just the touch needed between two windows hung with plain taffeta curtains. Like all good things there must be restraint in using it, but there are few things that have greater possibilities than painted furniture when properly used.
Synopsis of Period Styles as an Aid in Buying Furniture.
When trying to select furniture for the home, people often become bewildered by the amount and variety to be found in the shops, and, not knowing exactly what to look for in the different styles, make an inappropriate or bad selection. One does not have to be so very learned to have things right, but there are certain anachronisms which cry to heaven and a little knowledge in advance goes a long way. A purchaser should also know something about the construction and grade of the furniture he wishes to buy. There are good designs in all the grades, which, for the sake of convenience, may be divided into the expensive, the medium in price, and the cheap. The amount one wishes to spend will decide the grade, and one naturally must not expect to find all the beauties and virtues of the first in the last. The differences in these grades lie chiefly in the matters of the fit and balance of doors and drawers; the joining of corners where, in the better grade, the interior blocks used to keep the sides from spreading are screwed as well as glued; the selection of well seasoned wood of fine grain; careful matching of figures made by the grain of the wood in veneer; panels properly made and fitted so they will not shrink or split; careful finish both inside and out, and the correct color of the stain used; appropriate hardware; hand or machine or "applied" carving. In the cheap grades it is best to leave carving out of the question entirely, for it is sure to be bad. Then there are the matters of the correctness of design and detail, in which all the knowledge one has collected of period furniture will be called upon; and in painted furniture the color of the background and the charm and execution of the design must be taken into account, whether it is done by hand or stenciled. Nearly all kinds of woods are used, the difference in cost being caused by the grade and amount of labor needed, the kind of wood chosen and its abundance and the fineness of grain and the seasoning. Mahogany costs more than stained birch, and walnut than gum wood, but there are certain people who for some strange reason feel that they are getting something a little smarter and better if it is tagged "birch mahogany" than if it were simply called birch. Some of the furniture is well stained and some shockingly done, the would-be mahogany being either a dead and dreary brown or a most hideous shade of red, a very Bolshevik among woods. One must remember that the mahogany of the 18th century, the best that there has ever been, was a beautiful glowing golden brown, and when a red stain was used it was only a little to enhance the richness of the natural color of the wood, more of a suggestion than a blazing fact. The wood was carefully rubbed with oil and pumice, and the shellac finish was rubbed to a soft glow. Modern furniture, especially in the medium and cheap grades, is apt to look as if it were encased in a hard and shining armor of varnish.