43 6 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



December, 1913 



Embroidered foot screen, Louis XV period 



ocreens 



Mane Elizabeth Camp 

 Photographs by T. C. Turner and Others 



article of furniture has perhaps held so 

 permanent a place in both the oriental and 

 occidental household alike as the screen, 

 which for centuries has proved its useful- 

 ness as well as its desirability for decorative 

 purposes. 



While its origin is uncertain the screen probably found its 

 way from Korea to China and Japan and thence to Europe 

 and later to America, as reference is made to screens as 

 early as the Tang Dynasty, (618-967), in the East. In 

 Europe the Middle Ages and the Renaissance developed the 

 use of the screen, not alone in the house, but as an archi- 



tectural feature of the church, when it became the sub- 

 division which shut off the choir, chantry or chapel from 

 the main part of the edifice. 



The low marble "podia" which enclosed the "chorus can- 

 tantium" in the Roman basilicas and the perforated "cau- 

 celli" before the altar show the ecclesiastical use of the 

 screen and its scope which later extended to the orna- 

 mental frame, usually of wood or metal to be used as a 

 protection from observation, draughts or heat of the fire 

 and which in feudal times became an essential about the 

 great open fireplaces. 



Many sizes and shapes of screens were made of leather, 



,_ ' _ Courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art 



A twelve-fold Chinese lacquer screen, K'ang-Hsi Period, ( 1662-1 772), gorgeously decorated 



