326 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
September, 1911 
Indian Designs and Stencil Work in 
Bungalow Decoration 
By Edward Fesser 
country is becoming more apparent every 
year, and whether he erects a bungalow 
or a rustic cottage upon his property, he 
instinctively desires a certain individuality 
to characterize his home. The bungalow 
can be built in a hundred different ways, costing anywhere 
from five hundred to five or ten thousand dollars, but in 
each instance the interior decorations should bear some re- 
lationship to the architecture of the exterior. 
For the rustic bungalow, many appropriate and beautiful 
designs can be borrowed from the North American Indian, 
whose handicraft may be seen in any museum of natural 
history. The most enduring and satisfying effect for the 
living-room is strict 
simplicity, combined 
with certain harmo- 
nious. blendings of 
color to add cheer- 
fulness to the sur- 
roundings. 
The flooring should 
be laid with narrow, 
matched boards 
(hardwood, of 
preferred), 
and stained either a 
dark green or a rich 
shade of brown, so 
that the grain of the 
wood will show 
through the stain. A 
grass rug can be 
bought for very little 
course, 
money, and this 
should be large 
enough to cover the 
floor within two or 
three weet. sof the 
walls. The rug, when 
bought, should have 
no pattern or design 
Oni Ask te © you 
have studied out and 
decided upon the 
general color scheme 
for the room, your 
own ingenuity will 
devise an appropri- 
atew border for the 
grass rug, which you 
can stencil yourselt 
by following the few 
simple suggestions given below. A few bright Indian rugs 
or saddle-blankets thrown about the floor will give the touch 
of color necessary to brighten up the room. 
For the wainscoting, the most effective device is the use 
of slabs with the bark on, which can be procured in un- 
limited quantities from the nearest sawmill. A slab, in the 
vernacular of the sawmill, is one of the four slices of a tree 
Fig. 1—A rustic framework of birch, with design stenciled on Java coffee sacks 
or log with the bark on, leaving a rectangular timber for 
building purposes—and these slabs are sold for a song. 
Saw the slabs four feet in length, and nail them perpendic- 
ularly to the walls of the room, surmounting the whole with 
a shelf six inches wide, which can be stained a dark color. 
Irregular slabs showing large knots can be picked out to 
frame the doors and windows. If there be white birch in 
the vicinity, in any quantity, by all means use the slabs from 
this wood for the main living-room; but it will have to be 
sawed to order by the millman, as white birch is a soft wood 
and offers no inducements to the ordinary commercial 
lumberman. 
For the walls above the wainscoting, use some textile 
material that has a perfectly plain texture, without a pat- 
tern, in a subdued tone of green, gray, olive, or dark red, 
and surmount this 
wall-covering with a 
frieze sufficiently 
wide to be propor- 
tionately in keeping 
with the height of the 
room. The frieze 
may differ in tint and 
texture from the wall- 
covering, and can be 
stenciled with an 
Indian design con- 
forming with that 
chosen for the bor- 
der of your grass 
rug. 
By using slabs of 
different woods for 
the wainscoting of 
different rooms, a lit- 
tle contrast may be 
shown, and at the 
same time the same 
scheme can be main- 
tained throughout 
the house. Individu- 
ality can be empha- 
sized in the color of 
the textile wall-cover- 
ing, as well as origi- 
nality in the designs 
of the rug - borders 
and friezes. Cedars 
showing six inches at 
the butt end can be 
sawed in half, length- 
wise, and used for 
the den wainscoting, 
alternating the butts 
and tips, the agreeable odor of the cedar making the room 
the more attractive. The exterior coating, or bark, of the 
cedar, which is very thin and broken, should be entirely re- 
moved by means of a stiff wire brush. 
The art of stenciling is as old as the the hills, the oldest 
known craftsmen being the Japanese. There are many 
methods employed in both making and using stencils, the 
3 
Sen (hk 
