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AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



November, 19 13 



machinery, which was especi- 

 ally made for him and was 

 embellished with a painted 

 decoration of locomotives, 

 steam plows and other me- 

 chanical devices, and which 

 was so carefully treated that 

 it lost none of its decorative 

 effect even in the handling of 

 so difficult and unwieldly a 

 subject. 



Another instrument which 

 shows the "intimate" touch 

 in quite a different character 

 is a piano used in the music- 

 room of a country house, 

 with reproductions in car- 

 touches on opposite sides of 

 the case, of favorite spots in 



"Danse des Galants." By A. E. 



the owner's garden. In still another instance, even more 

 strongly personal, a view of the owner's house and estate 

 forms the decoration of the piano top, with views of the 

 grounds in panels around the case, while three miniature 

 portraits of his children adorn the music rack. 



A scheme of great beauty and delicacy of color which 

 has also been used in the decoration of a piano for a coun- 

 try house music-room was the shell-like, opalescent coloring 

 suggested by Niagara Falls. On the case in this instance 

 the rainbow tints of the water and the spray were intro- 

 duced as the fundamental color. Another conception of 



water, in which the move- 

 ment of the sea was ex- 

 pressed, was in a piano case 

 with a treatment throughout 

 of waves, shells and seaweed 

 in their natural colors. The 

 supports or legs of this piano 

 were composed of sculptured 

 figures in wood of sea-maid- 

 ens seated upon dolphins. 



In strong contrast to this 

 is one in which the scheme 

 of decoration is the early 

 Spring with its first green, 

 and warm tints of the last 

 year's dried leaves and 

 grasses half concealed by 

 snow. This was placed in a 

 Blackmore. Louis XV Piano room of corresponding color 

 treatment. Another example in which the sentiment and 

 poetry of the woods were employed as decorative features 

 was a piano intended for use in the picture gallery of a town 

 house, in which landscapes predominated. This piano in 

 its original condition of highly polished mahogany would 

 have been a disturbing note in such an environment, so it 

 was decided to use as a color scheme lowtoned reproduc- 

 tions of our native wild-flowers, treated conventionally, but 

 still recognizable as the individual flower, grouped in gar- 

 lands and festoons, with the result that the mahogany sub- 

 stituted as a background, the pine needles carpeting the 



Grand Piano in the Adam Style 



