December, Ig11 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
xi 
commenced. If one feels that the scheme 
for walls, curtains, ceilings and woodwork, 
which may be chosen in accordance with 
the dictates of good taste, would seem to 
approach monotony, let it be remembered 
that the notes of color which will be in- 
troduced by bindings of books, surfaces of 
brass, the green of growing plants, silken 
cushions, or well chosen bric-a-brac, etc., 
will supply relief from anything approach- 
ing monotony, and the well chosen rugs will 
do much to introduce just the color note 
desired in the room. 
FURNISHING PROBLEMS: LIVING-ROOM, 
DEN, AND DINING-ROOM. 
READER of AMERICAN HOMES AND 
GARDENS requests suggestions for 
color schemes in the decoration of the 
space above wainscoting of living-room 
and den. These rooms are paneled to a 
height of four and one-half feet, and have 
beamed ceilings. The woodwork is North 
Carolina pine stained nut-brown, and the 
furniture selected for both rooms has the 
same finish. The reader had planned to use 
yellow above the paneling, which paneling 
extends four and one-half feet above the 
floor. Suggestions are also requested for 
dining-room decoration, in which room the 
paneling runs up to a height of five feet 
from the floor, finished with a plate-shelf, 
the furniture of the dining-room being 
quartered oak stained nut-brown like the 
room’s woodwork. 
ELLOW as a color scheme for the 
living-room and den would prove most 
satisfactory, but inasmuch as these two 
rooms have a southwestern exposure which 
furnishes good light at all hours, it would 
be the better plan to reserve the yellow for 
the dining-room, using a gray-green or an 
old Italian blue for the living-room and in 
the den. Either gray-green or the blue will 
harmonize with the nut-brown color of the 
woodwork and of the furniture. The 
decorations should be given the gray-green 
unless there are notes of color in the other 
furnishings of a nature that would provide 
a better harmony if the Italian blue were 
used. The space between the ceiling beams 
had best be tinted a slightly lighter shade 
than the woodwork itself. Tinting the 
space between the beams with color is often 
done but almost always brings into a room 
a sense of formal coldness and often an 
effect that is bizarre and not homelike. 
VER the living-room mantelpiece it 
would be well to insert a plaster bas- 
relief of some sort or size; Donatello’s 
“Singing Boys” would be an excellent sub- 
ject for this purpose. The bas-relief frieze 
in question can be obtained in plaster with 
old ivory finish in almost any large shop 
dealing in plaster casts, or it could be or- 
dered directly from reliable manufacturers 
of such casts, whose addresses may always 
be obtained by application to various direc- 
tors of art museums throughout the coun- 
try, if the home-builder does not happen to 
know of them. 
Instead of considering the room which 
is called a den as such, it would be well to 
plan to have it a library and to furnish it 
accordingly. All one’s books and the desk 
could be placed in this room, just leaving 
the living-room free for a family sitting- 
room. Built-in book shelves should occupy 
the space between the window and the liv- 
ing-room door, with a desk opposite where 
light could be had from the window. These 
shelves should run up four and one-half feet 
so that the top may be in line with the 
wainscoting. Curtains of coarse ecru net 
or scrim, gathered on small brass rods both 
top and bottom, should be fastened to the 
windows themselves so the curtains will not 
Solid St. Jago Mahogany Reading Stand, as illustrated 
—in Wood, Workmanship and Finish a Representative 
Example of TOBEY HAND-MADE FURNITURE—$25 
Few persons, comparatively, appreciate the wide differ- 
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THE LOBBY BURNT URE COM PANY 
CHICAG O— Wabash Avenue and Washington Street 
NEW YORK—Eleven West Thirty-Second Street 
woods by special machinery. 
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