32 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 
January, 1914 
ther violence must be done to the schedule and the modi- 
fications which were made to reconcile the original schedule 
with the amount appropriated pale into insignificance when 
compared with those which theory must now concede to prac- 
tice. For one room it may seem to be necessary to have a 
rug of a certain color and it may be that to obtain the 
requisite color a rug more expensive than that provided by 
the schedule must be purchased. Or else it may easily 
happen that, owing to some miscalculation, the sum allowed 
for the purchase of some absolute necessity will be found too 
small. The necessity, of course, must be had, which means 
that something else must either be done without or purchased 
at a cost much lower than was originally intended. 
It has often been found that such a condition was really a 
blessing in disguise, for considerable experience in domestic 
furnishing has proved that it is often wise not to make the 
fittings so complete that there is literally nothing further 
to be done. It may be that a gift is to be made to the owners 
of the new home and an obvious need may readily suggest 
the form which the gift may assume. 
Then again some extremely simple and inexpensive item 
of furnishing may, after a time, give way to something much 
more suitable to permanently adorn the home — some taste- 
ful arrangement which may be really only a makeshift yield 
place to what is just the correct thing but which could not 
be achieved at the time the furnishings of the house were 
installed. The owner of a very tasteful home in a western 
city was selecting the furnishings of the house when it was 
found that a decided curtailment of the expenditure for 
some room must be made. The dining-room was chosen 
as the place where the reduction would be most practical and 
the room was tastefully furnished with the simplest of 
kitchen “dressers” as a buffet, a drop-leaf table and the 
plainest of kitchen chairs, all painted a deep ivory — almost 
a brown, and this very primitive furniture carefully placed 
with the “dresser” filled with Canton china remained in 
place until the time arrived when the most graceful of wal- 
nut dining-room suites of the period of William and Mary 
could be acquired. Had the temporary makeshift not been 
made there would have been purchased a suite of furniture 
not at all what was desired and yet too costly to be readily 
given up, and the dining-room would never have become the 
perfectly furnished room which it is at present. 
There is probably no part of the house where makeshifts 
in the way of furnishings may be so easily resorted to as in 
the bedrooms. 1 he possibilities of wooden boxes when clev- 
erly converted into dressing stands by draperies of cretonne 
or chintz are too well known to require description here. One 
bedroom of a country house was furnished with dressing 
stand and wash stand made of packing boxes fitted with 
shelves and draped with dimity where, upon a white ground, 
there were tiny sprigs or roses. A white iron bed had head- 
board and foot-board covers of the same fabric and a 
valance of the dimity was hung about the four sides and a 
bedspread, also of the same material, was used. The bed- 
room, when thus arranged was so beautiful that it was hard 
to wholly understand why all this improvised furniture gave 
way, in the course of time, to a bedroom suite, more con- 
ventional, even if not any more attractive. 
Upon floor coverings there may be exerted much ingenuity 
which is another means for economy. The so-called “fluff” 
rugs made of old carpets are beautiful and are practically 
indestructible. Should there be a sufficient quantity of different 
kinds of carpet — not too much worn — there may be made a 
rug of fair size, say 9x12, which after doing duty as a sub- 
stitute until a better floor covering can be had for the living- 
room may be passed on to some other room where it may 
find a permanent abiding place. 
Articles of the simplest kinds, and often of the smallest 
value, may, by clever arrangement, appear surprisingly beau- 
tiful. In the living-room of one city apartment the walls 
were covered with a paper showing an all-over pattern in 
two tones of golden brown. It was the ambition of the 
owner to place over the mantel a copy of a portrait by 
Holbein but such a picture would have cost at least several 
hundred dollars and the exchequer, exhausted when the 
actual furnishings of the living-room had been purchased, 
could not furnish the necessary funds. Nothing could have 
been more beautiful, however, than the substitute which was 
arranged. An inexpensive but very beautiful bas-relief — 
one of Donatello’s casts of the Madonna and Child — was 
stained to imitate the tones of old ivory and was hung 
against a square India print which was purchased in the 
basement of one of the department shops. The print, which 
has been somewhat altered in shape to fit the plaster cast, 
shows a border about ten inches wide all around the bas- 
relief and the richness of the border’s design and the beauty 
of the blue, old gold and wood colors of the roughly printed 
surface are so successful a background for the ivory colored 
cast that the acquisition of the Holbein has been indefinitely 
postponed. 
Draperies may be contrived of fabrics so very inexpensive 
that they may be discarded when other draperies more 
worthy of a permanent place have been secured. The shops 
are full of heavy fabrics which cost but a trifle and yet are 
beautiful and well adapted for use as portieres or over- 
hangings until the desired velours or damasks can be secured 
and very inexpensive madras, scrim, or even figured swiss, 
make the most useful and serviceable of window hangings 
while lace curtains are en route. 
Just so with many other details of domestic furnishing. 
Tasteful yet inexpensive dishes may find a place upon the 
table until the coveted “monogram” china is to be had and 
table linen and towels of plain quality may be used until 
Dame F'ortune smiles or a ship may come in laden with the 
Irish or Scotch linens to take their destined place. 
HH Simounsu 
TULIP WARE 
( Continued from page 29) 
h H a n a n n u a : « h h a a h.h h n nn n a n n n a « st n k n : a : a n u tin n a ; « u « h h h h h.h, 
in clay, but in the pictorial devices with which they now 
and again embellished their more ambitious attempts they 
portrayed certain customs and usages that we should other- 
wise never have known about. 
This element adds greatly to the interest of collecting 
I ulip ware. One never knows when he may run upon some 
discovery regarding manners and methods through the 
agency of a plate. If one really wishes to find novel pieces 
he must be constantly on the look-out in every imaginable 
place, just as he would for any other kind of pottery or 
china, and he must be willing to poke into all sorts of un- 
promising nooks and corners. One can never tell where 
the treasure may lie. The double guerdon of decorative 
value and the acquisition of curious folk knowledge awaits 
the collector of Tulip ware. 
Indeed, the decorative value of Tulip ware is one of its 
chiefest charms, inasmuch as its utilitarian service vanished 
long ago with the change in conditions and the development 
of more practicable, if less picturesque, wares; naturally, 
one would not expect to meet with Tulip ware in the draw- 
ing-room. Nevertheless, it need not be relegated to the 
kitchen, and it finds a proper place in the dining-room and, 
by reason of its historical associations, it may, with pro- 
priety be introduced into the decorative scheme of a living- 
room where accessory color arrangements permit. There is 
something almost oriental in the general effect of Tulip ware 
so far as its color and texture is concerned, although its pat- 
terns, often almost approaching Persian design, are truly 
Colonial in effect, which renders Tulip ware a valuable ad- 
junct to the decoration of a room in Colonial style. 
