INTERIOR DECORATION 



3014 



INTERIOR DECORATION 



building the great stockade, and finally in con- 

 structing his tree house, will be read by boys 

 and girls with great delight as long as books 

 are read at all. 



We may wonder if Crusoe tried to decorate 

 his house in any way. We think he did, for 

 the instinct for a beautiful home is present 

 in everyone. The cave men and the cliff 

 dwellers drew pictures on the walls and roofs 

 of their dwellings, and these we have discovered 

 after thousands of years. The Indians covered 

 their tepees with shapes and figures and all 

 kinds of symbols, using the brightest colors 

 they could obtain. The dugout of the herder 

 on the plains and the rough shack of the miner 

 are sure to show some bit of decoration. Per- 

 haps it is only a gaudy picture from a play- 

 bill or the bright cover from a magazine; but 

 whatever it is, it has been put there by some 

 one to satisfy his love of beauty. 



When you were little you surely spent many 

 hours in "playing house." Perhaps you laid 

 out floor plans in a corner of the yard or play- 

 ground, using bits of broken china or bright 

 pebbles, laid in rows, to separate one room 

 from another. Or, j'ou might have found a 

 packing case or a soap box in the barn or 

 woodshed, and furnished it with paper tables, 

 chairs and cupboards. There are many ways 

 of playing house, and all of them are interest- 

 ing. Some people never tire of it, and keep on 

 making tiny rooms and houses, using paper 

 and cardboard to build with, and expressing 

 with these materials some very artistic ideas. 

 Working out problems in house furnishing and 

 using only paper, cardboard and water colors, 

 or colored crayons, is a fine way to train one's 

 taste and judgment in this direction. Even 

 though we may never build an actual house, we 

 can experience the pleasure of building and 

 furnishing these houses of cardboard and paper. 



The first figure in the color plate shows a 

 model for a kitchen. The walls are of card- 

 board, and the corners have been fastened 

 together with strips of thin muslin, so the little 

 room may be folded flat and laid away, when 

 not in use. The floor is not attached to the 

 walls, but is cut large enough to extend beyond 

 them, forming a sort of platform, on which 

 the walls may stand. 



The color scheme of the kitchen has been 

 as carefully planned as though it were the 

 most important room in the house, as indeed, 

 it is! For the kitchen is the housekeeper's 

 laboratory, and in it she who prepares the food 

 for the family must spend many hours each 



day. The kitchen, therefore, should be bright 

 and cheerful, absolutely clean and sanitary, and 

 full of labor-saving devices. The planning of 

 a design for a clean, comfortable and beautiful 

 kitchen is a most interesting problem. 



In the working out of these problems in 

 house decoration, a good supply of colored 

 papers, in a variety of tones, is necessary. 

 There should be tones of brown and gray, to- 

 gether with black and white for the wood- 

 work. Greens, blues, grays, oranges and black 



K> frieze of cream manila paper. 





FIG. 1 

 First step in preparing back wall. 



are essential for rugs. Delicate tones of all 

 colors will be needed for wall spaces. Fancy 

 papers will be found useful for hangings, pil- 

 low covers, etc. These manufactured colored 

 papers supply a fine color quality that cannot 

 be produced with water colors or with colored 

 crayons. 



In the second figure in the color plate is 

 shown a model for a dainty bedroom. The 

 color scheme is blue and white, with touches 



FIG. 2 

 Second step in preparing back wall. 



of brilliant orange. The floor is covered with 

 a rug in two tones of blue; the walls are light 

 blue, with a pattern in orange, and the wood- 

 work is white. The little model, worked out 

 in these colors, suggests a scheme that might 

 well be applied in an actual room, intended 

 for a young girl. 



