To Add Cheer and Color

WHERE the dining room happens to be gloomy, with insufficient light and an uninviting outlook, much can be done to add cheer and color by the use of painted furniture and brilliant draperies against light tinted walls. One effective method of furnishing such a room would be by the use of blue green painted furniture that can be found in simple designs, with a drop-leaf table and bow-back Windsor type of chair. The walls should be cream and the draperies blue green, with red and orange figures. Add a table runner of plain dull blue with gay ends of appliqued figures like the drapes, and the warmth of growing plants and ferns, and the gloom is sure to vanish.

For a small apartment or country dining room the Sheraton style of furniture is especially suitable. The simple gracefulness of its lines will add dignity to any room in which it is used, and the pieces will not be large or massive enough to dominate the room. Sheraton furniture calls for light colored walls and white woodwork and will lend itself admirably to almost any color scheme chosen. A plain white paneled wall makes an excellent background. Walls papered in cream oatmeal paper, with curtains of some gay pattern of printed linen or English chintz, are also in keeping. A plain or block pattern rug would be effective.

In a dining room which is to be in daily use by a family with growing boys and girls, where the highly polished furniture is bound to suffer innumerable scratches or the children to suffer unendurable restraint, the wisest and happiest choice of chair is the most durable and closely woven reed that can be purchased. These chairs look particularly well with the drop-leaf or gate-leg tables, and can be stained or painted to suit the other furnishings of the dining room. When the tea cart or fernery are of the same reed construction as the chairs the effect is more pleasing.

If the kitchen is small, as it usually is in the modern house or apartment, and the office work of the housekeeper must take place in some other room, one corner of the dining room will have the advantage of being near the place where tradesmen are to be paid and where bills are received. A desk such as that shown on the next page is an ornament to any room. A desk in the same general period and design as the console or buffet should be chosen. When dining room and living room are combined, the end devoted to the dining room may well have the desk and books surrounding the long refectory table, which will then serve as a library or dining table as needed.

Part 4 of a 1924 magazine article on choosing Dining Room Furniture

A Console Is Decorative

THE dining room should not serve, as it so often does, as a show room for cut glass, china, curios and souvenirs. This is one of the reasons why the console or the pair of consoles, when space permits, and a quaint old lowboy to hold the linen have a better place in the decorative plan of the dining room than the buffet or sideboard. The objects placed on the console should be few in number, and the temptation to overcrowd it is less than it would be with the more spacious and clumpsy sideboard.

Whatever is hung above the console should be carefully selected with respect to shape and proportion. If a mirror is chosen it must be hung vertically instead of horizontally. If the console is a long and narrow one, a decorative grouping of objects that will be found attractive would be a pair of candle-sticks, with very tall candles on either end, a silver cup or dish of fruit in the center, and on the wall above a glass framed mirror of correct proportions. To make the grouping still more symmetrical simple side brackets for the lights may be placed on each side of the mirror.

However, much we try to avoid pairs in all the other rooms of the house, the dining room is one place where paired chairs, consoles or mirrors give a feeling of satisfaction and a note of balance and dignity that is needed. Not only does the paired arrangement of consoles serve admirably as a decorative grouping, but it provides the additional space needed for serving without encroaching to any degree upon the floor space. A well balanced grouping is formed with a Queen Anne serving table, rush-bottomed fiddle back chairs on either side and on the wall above a mirror with a carved broken pediment. The only objects on the serving table to complete the balanced effect are two well proportioned candelabra.

A painted console, with painted chairs to match on either side, may be appropriately combined with a flower painting to form an attractive group and besides being simple and in good taste is very decorative.

In a house where the woodwork of the dining room is stained brown a set of furniture of brown stained oak following the Jacobean design would be charming. Cane panels introduced in the sideboard and chairs will give marked individuality to the various pieces. Rough walls and printed linen or cretonne for the hangings would be a suitable background for this set.

Part 3 of a 1924 magazine article on choosing Dining Room Furniture

Appropriate Dining Room Chairs

THE dining room chairs at the left and in the middle of the group shown on this page are appropriate and beautiful designs to be used with any type of gate-leg table or the plainer makes of refectory tables now in vogue for the combination dining and living room. There are a number of variations of the Chippendale design, such as the one illustrated at the right of the group shown here, which are appropriate for small dining rooms in Colonial or Chippendale furnishings. These have cushioned seats that may be covered in leather, tapestry or denim in a color to harmonize with the chosen color scheme. Arm chairs to match may also be purchased.

It is possible always to obtain both chairs and tables that are honest and strong in construction, but which are neither clumsy nor ugly in shape. Decoration should follow to fit the structural shape, and gentle curves soften the lines of construction without weakening the article. Pieces of furniture made in past ages that have stood the test of time and changing conditions have an unquestioned value today, but there is a serious problem as to how their reproductions may be used in modern times.

The wisdom of strict adherence to period furniture for general use in the dining room, or elsewhere in the house, is questionable because its cost is usually out of all proportion to the result obtained. There are many beautiful and artistic but much less expensive pieces that are perhaps more in keeping with modern use. One satisfactory method is that of combining periods under close decorative influence. Thus in one dining room with an Adam mantel and gate-leg table, the chairs were Heppelwhite with a Sheraton arm chair and desk. In another dining room the furniture is not a full suite, but odd pieces all of Italian design.

If there is one room in the house where a feeling of gayety and hospitality should abound it is the dining room. Too often dark and somber conventional furniture, together with clumsy plate rails and bold and striking wall paper designs have made of this room a deplorably ugly and gloomy place.

Part 2 of a 1924 magazine article on choosing Dining Room Furniture

SINCE the small house and apartment have become the rule instead of the exception, many of the dining rooms in our modern country or suburban homes and in our larger cities are of such limited proportions that the task of finding suitable furnishings has become a difficult problem. The old conventional and ponderous ten-piece dining room suite is wholly unsuited to its newer and smaller quarters and is especially out of place when the dining room is combined with the living room, as is often the plan now.

Fortunately many of the manufacturers are placing on the market good and far more attractive designs in dining room furniture, intended to be used in small rooms, and house-wives are gradually seeing the wisdom of furnishing with the more interesting odd pieces—the gate-leg or drop-leaf tables, and rush-seated Windsor or ladder-back chairs, and in place of the bulky buffet or side-board the more graceful console, which can be used both as sideboard and serving table. The built-in china closet of beautiful and simple design, with the drawer for silver and the cupboard space beneath for the linen, serving trays and other dining room accessories in daily use, solves the sideboard problem in the best way for the small house and is in perfect harmony with the room itself, forming a decorative addition of real architectural value.

It is not always easy for the inexperienced house furnisher to choose among all the various designs and periods of dining room furniture just that group of pieces which will fit into his own home and be in harmony with the rest of the furnishings and with the atmosphere of his particular place. It is comparatively easy, however, to learn to distinguish between the furniture that is well designed and that which is poorly made; to know something of the period styles and be able to tell the difference between Chippendale, Sheraton, Jacobean and Heppelwhite furniture.

It is best always to try to imagine the various pieces as they would appear in the dining room in which they are to be placed; if the house is distinctly Colonial in feeling we would naturally choose Colonial furniture or designs interpreted in mahogany, such as Queen Anne, Chippendale or Adam. Some of the antique or modern painted pieces could be used if the simpler and less ornate designs are chosen. The choice of mahogany chairs modeled upon the Sheraton design, with the straight lines generally employed in this style and the typical arm support gracefully extended was a happy one to fit in with the gate-leg table of the same wood and the mahogany bureau desk.

Part 1 of a 1924 magazine article on choosing Dining Room Furniture

FURNISHINGS, whether furniture – or rugs or hangings, are made and offered for sale, in excellent designs, patterns and colors, which will adapt themselves to any standard of decoration, simple or elaborate. Take into consideration, first, how much money it is expedient to use, and decide to purchase only the things which will meet the following requirements : beauty, stability and suitability.

Do not be influenced when buying to take a thing because it is “the style.” No one who really knows cares whether a thing is “stylish” or not, if it is good. I own several pieces of furniture which are more than a hundred years old, and they are as good in line today as they were when new.

They are good because they were good then, and not for any other reason. Being a hundred years old does not make them good, for if they had not been of excellent lines and well made they would not possess excellent lines nor would they have stood the years of wear. Beauty does not change; tapestries and velours of beautiful colorings are as beautiful today as when first used, for colors which were bad ten, twenty or thirty years ago are just as unattractive today. Good furniture, good floor coverings and good colors do not go “out of fashion.” The lovely things my grandmother owned are lovely now. Has the charm and beauty of the Windsor chair ever diminished? Not one iota. The Windsor chair is made for comfort, the lines wonderfully lovely always.

Advice on buying furniture from a 1924 publication

ALL the modern furniture in the living room pictured has been chosen because of its distinct Duncan Phyfe characteristics, or else for its suitability for blending harmoniously with the modem renditions of this style. The sofa has real distinction, a swing and flare of line ennobled by its delicately carved frame of mahogany and its fine upholstery. The atlas globe is remarkable for the beauty of its Phyfe stand of mahogany; the flip-top card table shows a lyre motif in its under-construction ; the small side chair, one of a pair, shows the use of the lyre motif also in its back. A wing chair of about this time and a comfortable flounced armchair add notes of variety in their harmonious contrast of style, since they have been chosen from the same general period, even though they are not of actual Phyfe inspiration. The tambour desk and a Sheraton book cabinet, the latter not to be seen in the picture, are further departures which add to the variety of the room without detracting from its pervading style. A large Phyfe table of oblong shape, drop leaves and reverse-curve legs may be used in another part of the room if desired.

In a room of this sort the walls may be neutrally putty or gray, or else they may be figured quaintly after the more classic manner of the third American period. In the latter case the rugs should be plain, but in the former, if desired, they may show the soft-colored patterns of the Oriental designs. The window treatments should be governed by a certain dignity of rich restraint: overdrapes may give the effect of a heavy silken surface—cotton velvets, prim damasks or vegetable taffetas over silk gauze proving an ideal choice.

The pictured dining room, in which the furniture shows strong Duncan Phyfe characteristics, makes use of a landscape set for the papering of its walls above the wainscot. Printed in pale warm sepia tones, and used with a deep ivory paint for the woodwork, this background causes the furniture of dusky mahogany to appear at fine advantage.

The extension table, a masterpiece of simple dignity, is priced at only ninety-two dollars; a very delightful serving table is fifty-three dollars and a half; the seventy-two-inch buffet is one hundred and eight dollars; the china cabinet, which has all the distinction of an original secretary or highboy of the period, costs only one hundred and four dollars; and the side chairs are twenty-two dollars each.

Part 3 (final part) of a 1927 magazine article on Duncan Phyfe Furniture