Little drapery is needed in casement windows where they are divided by mullions. The English draw curtain is admirable for this purpose. It can be made of casement cloth with narrow side curtains and valance of bright material. A charming combination was worked out in a summer cottage. The glass curtains were of black and white voile with tiny figures introduced. This was trimmed with a narrow black and white fringe, while the overdrapery had a black background patterned with old rose.
GROUPED WINDOWS WITH SQUARE PANES, LACE GLASS CURTAINS AND CRETONNE OVER CURTAINS
In the field of architectural progress, more especially during the last few years, there have arisen vast possibilities for the development of odd windows. These, if properly placed, showing correct grouping, are artistic, not only from the outside, but from the inside as well. The artistic woman, realizing the value of color, will fill a bright china bowl with glowing blossoms and place it in the center of a wide window sill, where the sun, playing across them, will carry their cheerful color throughout the room. She also trains vines to meander over the window pane, working out a delicate tracery that is most effective, suspending baskets of ferns from the upper casement, that she may break the length of her Colonial window. Thus through many artifices she causes her simple room to bloom and blossom like a rose.
FOR FRENCH DOORS, USE MUSLIN WITH SILK-LINED OVERHANG
The progress made in window architecture is more apparent as we study the early types. Then small attention was paid to details, the windows placed with little thought of artistic grouping. Their only object to light the room, often they stood like soldiers on parade, in a straight row, lining the front of the house.
Out of the past has come a vast array of period windows, each one of which is of interest. They display an unmistakable relationship to one another, for while we acknowledge that they differ in detail and ornamentation, yet do they invariably show in their conception some underlying unity. There is no more fascinating study than to take each one separately and carefully analyze its every detail, for thus only can we recognize and appreciate the links which connect them with the early American types.
We happen upon them not only in the modified Colonial structures, but in houses in every period of architecture. It may be only a fragment, possibly a choice bit of carving; or it may be a window composed in the old-fashioned manner of from nine to thirty panes, introduced in Colonial days for the sake of avoiding the glass tax levied upon them if over a certain size. A charming example of a reproduction of one of these thirty-paned windows may be seen in a rough plaster house built in Salem, after the great fire. The suggestion was taken from an old historic house in a fine state of preservation in Boxford, Mass.
The first American homes derived their plans and their finish from medieval English tradition. They were forced to utilize such materials as they were able to obtain, and step by step they bettered the construction and ornamentation of their homes. As increasing means and added material allowed, they planned and executed more elaborately, not only in size and finish, but in the adding of window casings, caps, and shutters.