BLUE—A DAYLIGHT COLOUR. Some colours respond to artificial light much better than others. Most shades of blue are not suitable for decorating dinner tables, because they turn almost brown, or at best a dull mauve. In choosing violets, therefore, for evening wear, it will be found that the blossoms which have thin, rather washed-out petals of the lightest purple will look best, the full blue not being nearly so effective. For luncheon, an arrangement of purple clematis in vases on the palest pink ground is lovely, but does not look quite so well by gas-light, though here again if the least velvety flowers are chosen for evening, a good effect can be obtained.
Yellow is a splendid evening colour, but must be bright, or it will look merely cream. A dining-room panelled in light oak, adorned with yellow marguerites alone, is very pleasing to the eye. In the spring, laburnum makes a novel dressing for a dining-table; care, however, must be exercised with this flower, as the pods are poisonous. Blue also looks well with brown in the day-time; larkspurs, forget-me-nots, plumbago, campanulas, nemophilla, etc., all look very well. We know how artistic blue porcelain is on oak shelves, and, if the flowers have a white eye or are veined with white, the effect is somewhat the same. Scarlet is a good gas or electric light colour, but it must be used judiciously, and as a rule only be mixed with white, just as the ladies at a regimental ball are generally only allowed to robe themselves in this pure shade.
SIMPLICITY. Now-a-days the decorations are rarely made so high that one cannot see the other side of the table. Though this arrangement might occasionally be useful in hiding the face of an enemy, on the whole it was found inconvenient; accordingly they have climbed down; the “bazaar-stall” fashion is also disappearing, and flat table-centres are used instead, or none at all. Simplicity is the great cry now, and though of course it may be costly, a charming effect is obtained with fewer flowers than was formerly considered correct, and is moreover easily imitated by an artistic eye in less expensive blossoms.
Some of the flowers to be had in each respective season are enumerated on p. 86. It will be noticed that where plenty of out-door blossoms are to be had, the hot-house varieties are omitted.
TABLE OF NATURAL AND FORCED FLOWERS FOR EACH MONTH.
The cost of a flower is always in proportion to its blooming time. If lilies of the valley are wanted in August, they must be paid for heavily, as retarded bulbs (those which have been kept in ice) are used to produce them.