Beauty in Home Furnishings

Front matter

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BEAUTY IN HOME FURNISHINGS ad ~ ek om, ~ ~~ 7

Contents

CHAPTER : ae bie ‘PAGE VI. FiLoor CovEeRINGS AND WALL DECORATION Weta fo Tapestry as hangings, Spanish rugs, Alpujarra rugs, Aubusson rugs, hooked rugs, linoleum, wallpaper, bell pulls, samplers.

VII. DECORATIVE METAL FURNISHINGS : ; . 222

Decorative metal curtain fixtures, tole, pewicn furniture brasses, firebacks, door Pacers

CHAPTER I DECORATIVE TABLES, CHAIRS AND Desks

Y : ] HEN we invite friends to share our hearth we like to know their antecedents. So, too, a growing number of persons now believe that we should know something of the chairs and tables, hangings, floor coverings and other decorative accessories that we take under our roof tree. The significant development of the last few years in the design of furnishings for the home and the new tendencies in color, ornamentation and form have added to the interest of almost every article that enters into the decorative ensemble of a room. An important characteristic of this movement is the salvaging from significant periods of the past of many beautiful forms, patterns, and motifs, and adapting them to the varied demands of modern life.

All this new beauty and old beauty newly applied might have been an embarrassment of riches except that the home

St eee ee ae ee ee a ee eee decorator is no longer content as he was a few years ago to select indiscriminately. From the wide variety of design in furniture and fabrics, pottery and glass he has learned to exercise intelligent choice. The householder of today knows something of period design, wood and fabrics, and he has an appreciative eye for fine lines in furniture or a good pattern in a hand blocked linen. Colonial, Tudor, Spanish, Directoire—these are only a few of the styles that we are bringing into our homes in a hundred different forms, and among these the home decorator must know the good from the mediocre. |

REFECTORY TABLES

“Wirt its hospitable length and air of solidity, the refectory table, gradually transmitted westward from the beginnings of the Christian era, is not only a modern American dining room accessory, but it serves a useful and decorative purpose in living room and library. Made of oak, walnut, pine or maple, it provides a contrast of wood for many settings—for in the Early and Middle Ages the refectory table swept through all Europe.

Contemporary designs derive from the Italian, ‘aoiune French, English; a favorite one gives the top of the table a generous overhang, especially on the ends, and places the heavy stretchers low. The Tudor type of these tables had

REFECTORY TABLES bulbous legs, enriched with carvings which today, in a rare English antique or in a modern reproduction, are found in Elizabethan rooms with oak paneled walls and decorated plaster ceilings. Later, in Jacobean times, the legs of the tables became less heavy, and the baluster and other turned legs came into fashion. These English types of refectory tables are always of oak, the wood used in England for furniture at that time.

Refectory tables take their name, of course, from their use in the long refectory of monasteries or castles. Before the dining room was developed in England, when the great hall of a castle was living room and dining room combined, long trestle tables were in use. One referred to by Jourdain, in her book, “English Decoration and Furniture,” was fiftyfour feet in length, this allowing ample room for the noble lord and all his retainers to sit down in a patriarchal manner that has since been lost. When the collapsible trestle table was superseded by the solidly built table, the new type was known as a “joined” table, because it was put together by a skilled carpenter, or “joiner.”

Antique examples of these collapsible types of refectory tables are, indeed, rare today. Yet, in early America, they were much more often found than the four-legged, solidly joined table. Made of oak or of pine and maple, the trestle table was so constructed that it could be taken apart and . placed out of the way when not in use. Its supports consisted of a pedestal at each end, and sometimes one in the middle, connected by a single stretcher, held in place by stout pegs or tendons. The trestle table apparently remained in use in the Colonies much later than in England; as did, in its turn, the four-legged stretcher type, with all its parts solidly joined.

Comparatively few of the “joined” type of refectory table were used here—except in the Southwest, where they had a mission type—for Colonial joiners in these latitudes were making pine and maple tables more suitable for the habitations of the less opulent Colonial pioneers.

A useful form of modern refectory table has an exten-— sion top. This style, known generally as a draw table, is constructed with extension leaves placed under the top, which can be pulled out on occasion, and which, by an ingenious arrangement of supports, provides additional table surface at either end. This is a convenient arrange- | ment where the table is to be used in the living room.

Furniture makers of today, keeping up with the increasing demand for authentic copies of the old forms, have made excellent reproductions of both the draw table and the solid-top table. In the best of these copies the craftsmen, while taking advantage of some modern methods of construction, retain all the old methods that helped to achieve durability and decorative effect. |

Refectory tables, except, perhaps, the highly individual

REFECTORY ‘TABLES

Tudor style with the large bulbous legs, fit into many kinds of interiors. They make useful side tables in a library or living room which may have chairs and couches and hangings of a period much later than the early American. The low-placed stretcher and wide overhanging tops give them picturesqueness; and, even in the simple ones made by countty carpenters of Colonial days, there is a grace that can be made use of by the judicious even among more sophisticated furniture.

With the growing custom of combining dining room and living room an adapted aspect of the great castle hall is coming back—English or Spanish. Perhaps that is one reason why these long and hospitable looking tables fit in well at one end of a large living room that has a capacious fireplace and a gallery—both characteristic of European periods and architecture when refectory tables were used. Reproductions in pine and maple can be made of a pattern to fit in with room ensembles in the simple early New England style. Especially appropriate for a room paneled with straight pine boards, or for a renovated farmhouse kitchen, with its plastered walls and ceiling of open beams, is a primitive trestle table made a little broader than the single wide board of pioneer days, so as to accommodate our present-day dining table arrangements.

} ‘ s GATE-LEG TABLES

MoperN apartment living has reacted upon the design of the gate-leg table and diminutive sizes have resulted which would have been scorned three hundred years ago in the good old Jacobean days when this table of many legs was developed. Unlike pewter with its limitations as to modern use, the gate-leg table is again almost as indispensable as it was in the English and American households of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. |

First developed in England in the age of oak furniture (for the gate-leg table, contrary to general belief, is not an American invention), oak became the traditional timber for a gate-leg table. A few were constructed in maple and fruit woods, but even after the introduction of walnut in Queen Anne’s time and the later use of mahogany these tables of many legs were generally built in oak. Now gateleg tables are being made of walnut because this wood harmonizes better than oak with other pieces of our modern furniture. | | |

In the movement today toward smaller sizes in the gate-leg table, designers have developed very small tables which, when not in use, are stored in pairs beneath the oval top of a table of regular height. Coffee tables in this type of furniture are also made, the low height from the floor giving a piquant quaintness to this ancient pattern.

GATE-LEG TABLES

The folding up arrangement of the gate-leg table was a great achievement in the first part of the seventeenth century. The gate-leg table may have had a predecessor in the “‘wassail table,” a piece of furniture used in the taverns of those days. It was a heavily built affair in the form of half an octagon with a flap hinged on the broad side. When not in use the wassail table was pushed against the wall with the flap folded over the top like a card table of a later time. When open the leaf was supported, as in the gate-leg table of today, by a leg with an upper and lower stretcher connecting with an inner leg. Other forms _ show the slow evolution of the gate-leg table before we discover the charmingly proportioned piece of furniture with the well-turned legs of Jacobean times.

The rise of the gate-leg table from its humble past as a piece of tavern furniture was greatly helped by the introduction of three beverages and a game of cards into England in the middle of the seventeenth century. England’s expanding sea trade had brought to the home country the new China drink of tea that Pepys speaks about in his diary. This new beverage sold for six to ten guineas a pound, but its use became fashionable and it was soon popular among the better classes in spite of the high price.

Coffee and chocolate were also introduced about this time and the afterwards famous coffee houses began to spring up all over London. And then cards, those “Devil’s

Books” banned by the Puritans, became popular after the Restoration in 1660 and thus another need was created for an occasional table that could be folded up and placed out of the way when not in use. The gate-leg table, lighter and less bulky than the other tables of the day, answered this purpose admirably and eventually became in Colonial America a part of the furnishings of every household.

BUTTERFLY TABLES

REVIVED from our Colonial past, the butterfly table is once more becoming as useful and as universal a piece of furniture as it was in New England in the eighteenth century. A distinctly American product of the joiner’s art, this form of “flap table,” with its two leaves supported by a triangular-shaped wing, from which it receives its name, may now be had in many forms, including modern adaptations of the old designs as well as careful reproductions.

- Butterfly tables are popular in maple—one of the many woods in which it was found in the past. Pine as well as cherry, and, in rare instances, oak, were also employed in its early manufacture. To pick up an old butterfly table nowadays is good fortune, for antiquarians in recent years _ have cornered most of the fine examples. A table had to be both hardy and lucky to live through the years when ~ furniture of humble woods and simple craftsmanship was not valued very highly. :

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BUTTERFLY TABLES

_ Often in the old days the butterfly table was made low in height as well as wonderfully light. These characteristics fit its modern copies well for use as a coffee table or a convenient bit of furniture to place by a couch or the side of an easy chair to hold books, magazines or smoking pataphernalia.

Characteristic of the table are the legs that slant outward at the side, graceful and deeply turned. A generous over hanging of the top of each end is also a good point, as well as thinness of wood in top and in wing.

Many of the old pieces had a small drawer, always provided with a wooden knob, and in some cases made with slanting sides to conform to the lines of the slanting legs. The stretchers, placed near the bottom of the legs, were generally of unturned wood, although beautiful examples of turned stretchers have been discovered. On the old tables the many generations of feet that have rested on these conveniently placed stretchers have rounded the top edge, and this mark of the antique has now become a decorative touch on the modern reproductions.

The butterfly table in its smaller sizes finds a ready and constant usefulness in the modern home. One can hardly have too many small tables, and the butterfly with its two side leaves may be made to contract or expand itself. As an end table for a couch it gives, in its simple and natural finishes of wood, just the proper contrast to the upholstered furniture, and in a room with other furnishings of a Colonial type it aids tremendously in en Ene the old-time atmosphere.

Butterfly tables seem to have first appeared about 1700, although, from their similarity in line to Jacobean furniture, they may well have been made long before that. Tables with leaves came into use in England almost a centuty before our earliest known butterfly table, and the _gate-leg table—a distant relative of the butterfly—was developed about the middle of the seventeenth century.

Most of the butterfly tables that have come down to us have been traced back to Connecticut, although other parts of New England have contributed a few examples. In the early days furniture was always made to order by local carpenters or cabinetmakers, a method of manufacture which accounts for the delightful variation in design among the antique specimens that have survived 200 years of use. One finds many styles of round-topped tables, oval and square-sided ones with the wings showing great diver-. sity in form. Some of the wings are cut in a simple, graceful curve, while in others the outer line is made up of double curves, suggesting the outline of classic oS used so much in later Colonial furniture.

- LOVE SEATS

LOVE SEATS

So useful today is the small sofa known as the “love seat,” that one might almost believe it to have been originally designed for modern interiors. In a not too large living room love seats, one on either side of the hearth, invite without projecting too far into the room. Between windows or in the curve of a piano or under a window where a chair would be too insignificant and a sofa too long, the love seat is often just the thing. |

The varied shapes of curved and straight backs permit the love seats to be used as a delightful contrast with other pieces of furniture. In a bedroom or dressing room it provides a note of luxury as well as an air of comfort; in a studio apartment it aids in achieving a touch of individuality; and in foyers its compactness makes it especially welcome. | |

The French forms of the love seat being made today by fine furniture makers are charming. For rooms where a distinct note of elegance is required, the examples reflecting the curves and elaborate carving of Louis XV or XVI furniture may be had either in ancient patterns of damasks, needlepoints and velvets or in the brighter modern mode of these fabrics. Characteristic of the design of this period is the walnut frame extending completely around the back and arms. The luxurious lines and air of richness in the upholstery fabrics recall the salons and the drawing rooms of the great French courts.

In England the love seat first appeared during the reign of Queen Anne and was a much more sturdy piece of furniture than its French counterpart. With back and arms covered with upholstery and only the legs showing the walnut that was characteristic of the furniture of that period, a Queen Anne love seat is as comfortable as it looks. Characteristic of this style are the outward curving arms. The varied backs in their odd forms suggest the Dutch influence of Queen Anne’s day. Curved cabriole legs, sometimes with stretchers, are the usual supports of these old styles that inspire the modern designer.

The love seat was such a useful piece of furniture that after its appearance it continued to be popular throughout the eighteenth century. Chippendale made love seats in mahogany with the ball and claw foot that is a mark of the early furniture of the great London designer. Love seats in the Heppelwhite and Sheraton styles dating from about the end of the eighteenth century, of straight, fluted mahogany legs, delicately carved, perhaps with the wood of the arm support and the front edge of the seat reeded, have a compactness that permits them to associate easily with almost any modern furniture. In love seats made in Colonial America there is an austerity about their tight

‘ LOVE SEATS upholstery, and absence of the thick seat cushions that is not found in the earlier French and English types.

Just who designed the first love seat is not known. We do know that it was a French development of the settee or the bench, for in the dictionary of Furetiére, published in 1690, he defines canapé, the French for sofa, as “a kind of backed chair, very wide, in which two persons can sit comfortably. The word is new to the language and some say sopha.” . |

In England no doubt a similar transition took place, as the ancient settle was slowly transformed into a settee and later perhaps into a love sofa. In Queen Anne’s time the love seat was also called a “courting chair.” Some of the early forms had three legs along the front, following, no doubt, the style of settees that look like two chairs placed side by side. ~ Love seats always followed the style changes of chairs in the way of upholstery, kind of wood and general design. In those early days, as well as not so long ago with us, a love seat and a chair or two of the same general design and decoration were made to be used together as a suite. The love seat is still used in pairs where possible, as was sometimes done in the eighteenth century. The upholstery in Queen Anne’s day was generally in needlework such as petit point, crewel embroidery, damask or velvet.

In the upholstery of the love seats made today gay cretonnes and chintzes ate especially popular. On types that suggest in their lines the simplicity of the French provincial furniture the cheerful tiny figured chintzes of the eighteenth century have reappeared, as well as patterns of flowers and gorgeous birds in the modern mode. These seats had always an air of diminutiveness and so the recent trend toward greater compactness in the cushioning of. the backs and arms of some examples is only following sound tradition. Tufting is reappearing on other styles. One love seat seen recently was upholstered in a silk damask of small red and green flowers, with the ~ tufting buttons in bright green—a cheerful modern touch.

WINDSOR CHAIRS

THE popularity of the simple forms of furniture of other days has brought into prominence the Windsor chair. This product of Colonial chairmakers has had many admirers in the past, but mainly among the antiquarians. Today, — however, homemakers who wish an “early American” touch in their living room or bedchamber are picking up this graceful piece of furniture, either in the original or in reproduction. | i | Although the Windsor chair is of English origin, the Colonies used it extensively, if one may judge by the great variety of forms in which it appeared. No one knows just

WINDSOR CHAIRS how it came by its name. One legend runs that the first of these chairs was made of wood from Windsor Forest, in England.

Wallace Nutting, in “A Windsor Handbook,” gives, besides a good deal of other valuable information on the subject, descriptions of over 125 designs. Most Windsor chairs produced on this side were made in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. There were chair-makers who made nothing but Windsor chairs. A wide choice was obtainable as regards not only the detail of the design but vatious forms also of sidechairs, armchairs, settees, “love seats,” stools, highchairs for children and small chairs for — older youngsters.

_ An old Windsor chair was always made of several kinds of wood. The bowed top of the back was generally of ash, hickory or oak; the seat was of pine; the spindles whittled out by hand, were of a tough, flexible wood, such as hickory or oak. When well put together a Windsor could not be taken apart without breaking. Not a nail or screw was used.

. One of the characteristics of a good Windsor chair is the quality of the turnings on the legs and stretchers. Decided shapes with deep cuttings and graceful vase forms on the legs and pronounced bulbs on the stretchers make the handsomest chairs. The splayed or outward-slanting leg is especially characteristic.

‘A Windsor fits well in rooms of not too formal arrangement (for one must remember that after all this - chair was a type of American “provincial” furniture). Nevertheless, even in the old days its comfort and grace were recognized.

The Windsor was undoubtedly a gradual development. A chair was needed that would stand being dragged over flagged floors and hearthstones and yet that would be as light as possible. No other piece of furniture was as cleverly constructed for such use as was the Windsor. It was teally a folk product that grew up under the hands of village craftsmen, and at no time in its career was its design added to by a professional designer.

Of the several general types of Windsors, the bow-back type is perhaps the most widely known. This had a curved support, forming arms that ran completely around the back. Another style had a higher back formed of another — bow, and was known as the double bow-back. The fanback Windsor had a back of tall spindles terminating in a flat top. A comb-back was an added top made of spindles (its shape suggesting a tall comb), designed for use as a head rest. Many combinations were possible.

Windsor chairs with a single broad piece of wood or splat running down the centre of the back are an acess form and were not made in this country.

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ROUNDABOUT CHAIRS

ROUNDABOUT CHAIRS

BECAUSE of its oddity of form, the Colonial roundabout chair is sought by furnishers. Known also as a corner chair (in the old days it was called a half-round chair and a three-corner chair), the roundabout is one of the less frequently encountered forms of old-time furniture. The chair receives its various names from its unusual back, which curves around two of its sides, making for comfort. Antique hunters have found it still doing duty here and there in rural New England. Current reproductions or adapted forms ate to be had.

The roundabout chair is still useful in a room that has other pieces of old-time furniture. For summer homes with a wide fireplace a pair of these chairs make fine hearth seats, especially when they are of the plainer early American types with straight and simply turned woodwork and rush woven seats. :

The roundabout chair first appeared in the beginning of the seventeenth century, during the reign of Queen Anne, when chairs were displacing stools and benches. It was during this time that many other experiments in new chair forms were made. | 3

In the examples of the roundabout chair that have been handed down, one may trace an evolution from its first forms to its decadence. One early type was called a wheel

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reat + to as S siebs a ee ae chair, so named because the stretchers a at connect all of es DO the six legs cross each « other like th Four of the legs ron ip to support the back, which has — panels of cane. It has been surmised that some examples of this type may have been of Eastern origin. In these forms bamboo pegs and fine cane were used. Characteristic especially of the Queen Anne types is the front leg, terminating in either a Spanish or a Dutch foot, while the other three legs end in simple knobs. |

The roundabout chair soon after its appearance became a popular form of furniture. Examples that have come down to us reflect not only the Queen Anne cabriole legs and curved chair fronts, but also, as the eighteenth century advanced, many features of the later style we know as Chippendale. On roundabout chairs in Chippendale style the ball and claw foot and intricately designed splats in pierced patterns familiar in furniture of cat Ss time are incorporated. _ The roundabout chair, being first developed in the age of walnut, is naturally first found in that wood, with the Jater styles in mahogany. In America, chairs of hickory and maple, generally in simpler styles than those in the harder woods, were popular. Most of these were rush seated. The more pretentious chairs had upholstered seats.

About the last quarter of the eighteenth cei tury the roundabout chair ceased to be manufactured. Y was not

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Cinsideretbelce el elegant, and dréss fashions were changing Apparently other forms were experimented with, and a chair made about this time shows all the characteristics of mt mx or the more elaborate pieces. Chait making me

a have’ 7 e een a profitable industry. As the country developed — 2 anc Pilleserew more prosperous, chairs would be bought for greater convenience or to take the place of stools. From the first part of the eighteenth century, when the roundabout appeared in America, the use of chairs increased greatly. |

YORKSHIRE CHAIRS

_ Tue influence of Tudor and Norman architecture in coun-

4 9 the walnut, mahogany, pine and maple now in fashion

nd make richer than ever the array of period furniture

‘tom which the householder may choose. Even rooms whose - ti ete general effect may be far froni those of the third quarter of the seventeenth century (when these chairs were first made) will welcome them because of their picturesqueness. |

With old-style cushions of red, tied on with tasseled cords, a set of these chairs in a dining room gives a distinctive effect—especially with a refectory table and a simple Tudor fireplace. But in living rooms as well, one of these quaint, ornate chairs may relieve an otherwise dull corner. For entrance halls a pair of them may be used with a Jacobean tavern table or to flank a fine bit of early English tapestry. Although armchairs do not seem to have been included in this type in the seventeenth century, one may buy today Yorkshire chairs equipped with arms and upholstered in fabric reminiscent of that period.

The Yorkshire, or, as it is sometimes called, the Derbyshire chair is a quaint piece of old-time “joiner’s” work and carving. Made in Yorkshire and in the adjoining country of Derbyshire, it is one of those curious styles in furniture which appeared locally so often in the English countryside. Antique specimens for those who demand originals are extremely rare in this country, although they "may be picked up in England. But accurate reproductions are now made, faithful copies of the old forms, so well put together that they will last as long as their threehundred-year-old prototypes.

FANCY CHAIRS

Highly decorative, this chair was one of the first of the open-back varieties the English developed, following the solid back or Wainscot chair of Elizabethan times. As was the custom in England when these chairs were in fashion, the seats are solid wood, slightly recessed to hold a cushion. Heavy stretchers give the chair a sturdy appearance, and the front stretcher as well as the two front legs are turned in the simple ball manner of the period.

Just how the design of the Yorkshire chair originated is something of a mystery. Some authorities see Italian influences in it, while others find Spanish and Portuguese motifs. Frederick S. Robinson, in his book, ‘English Furniture,” states that the strong Scandinavian suggestion in the design may have come from the commercial intercourse of ancient Yorkshire with Scandinavia. There is, indeed, an interesting likeness in the curved tops of the uprights of the back to the prow of old Viking ships. While the Yorkshire chair is certainly as indigenous to the soil as any piece of furniture may be, the carved open-back type of chair— of which it is one example—was found in Spain, Italy and other European countries at the time or before the English type was developed.

FANCY CHAIRS

To the gay diversity of the modern interior the fancy chair is now contributing a cheerful addition. The old-fashioned be "

ad term, fancy chair, designates ’chairs which in the early nineteenth century became, through the addition of painted decoration, more lively pieces of furniture than the conventional mahogany, pine or maple of the day. Along with these distinctly American types of decorated chairs are chairs of Spanish inspiration in dull red with elaborate carvings in gilt, old English lacquered chairs and cheerful bits of simple woodwork, decorated in reds and blues and greens, from Italian countrysides. The modern decorator finds that the introduction of an odd quaintly ornamented - chair aids much in achieving a note of variety.

Fancy chairs are especially appropriate in sun rooms and breakfast rooms, although they are also found in living rooms and’even bedrooms. Of course the setting where the rather simple American type of chair.shows to best advantage is an interior of Early Republic influence wherein ‘Sheraton and Empire furnishings blend into some of the best of the early Victorian times. In fact, the last representatives of the fancy chair of the past were products of the early Victorian epoch. Decorated chairs have been found dating up to the first half of the nineteenth century. The earliest examples are the best, however.