66 
House & Garden 
Why not furnish your Summer Home 
in Reed Furniture that is different? 
These pieces are Unusual in Character, combining 
Comfort with Smartness, and may be had 
in any color scheme 
Exclusive Designs for 
DRAWING AND LIVING ROOMS 
SOLARIUMS, CLUBS, AND YACHTS • 
CRETONNES, CHINTZES, UPHOLSTERY FABRICS 
.Interior Decorating 
TR5 REED SHOP, Inc. 
581 Fifth Avenue 
NEW YORK 
“Suggestions in Reed Furniture” forwarded on receipt of 25c postage 
The Chimney as an Architectural Factor 
{Continued from page 64) 
dividual cases and, by their just distri¬ 
bution, impart both agreeable emphasis 
and balance to the whole mass. 
With formal architecture, chimneys 
must contribute to the impression of 
symmetry, and this end may be gained 
by placing them at the ends of build¬ 
ings; or rising from the centre as a core, 
so to speak, of the structure; or as sep¬ 
arate units in quadruple or double array, 
equidistant from the centre of the mass; 
or in groups disposed at regular inter¬ 
vals. To maintain due symmetrical 
stress it is Hot necessary to masque 
chimneys behind balustrades or disguise 
them as urns, as was done in some Re¬ 
naissance buildings, or pervert them into 
the form of pillars—a device resorted to 
by several Tudor architects, thoroughly 
illegitimate because pairs or triplets of 
Doric columns with entableture atop 
and nothing to support are manifestly 
absurd. 
Using the Balustrade 
A balustrade added to a building has 
more to do with determining its appar¬ 
ent scale than any other single feature. 
Next to the balcony, in this respect, we 
may rank the chimney. The actual mass 
of a chimney naturally has much to do 
with its relation to the scale of the whole 
composition. But next to actual physi¬ 
cal mass, by which we mean height, 
breadth and depth or girth, the design 
and the manner in which the design is 
manipulated will prove of tremendous 
influence in the same direction. Let us 
take a concrete example to explain the 
working of this truth. 
Inigo Jones and his successors often 
massed a number of flues in one large 
rectangular shaft without external struc¬ 
tural divisions. To keep such shafts 
from appearing top-heavy and out of 
scale, as they undoubtedly would have 
done unless some measure had been 
taken to prevent it, they had recourse 
to the principle that the apparent size 
of a surface is reduced by the introduc¬ 
tion within its limits of a pattern or the 
interruption of lines. Accordingly, they 
broke up the flat surface by introducing 
tall, flat pilasters with caps proportioned 
to their width, by a block cornice pro¬ 
portioned to the width of the shaft, the 
sides being disposed in panels surround¬ 
ed by enriched moldings; by pilasters 
at the angles of the shaft with appro¬ 
priate caps and bases; or by some simi¬ 
lar device calculated to produce the de¬ 
sired diminishing effect. 
The Base, Shaft and Cap 
Contour, to be sure, is closely related 
to design in the foregoing respect, but 
it is well that we should analyze chimney 
contour into its component factors and 
also review the shapes that may legiti¬ 
mately be employed. The three chief 
exterior features of a chimney are its 
(1) base, (2) shaft, and (3) cap. The 
opportunity for manipulating these fac¬ 
tors alone is unlimited. In the shapes 
of shafts we have not only the rectangu¬ 
lar, cylindrical and octagonal forms, 
but sundry variations of these, including 
even spiral shapes. Besides the rectan¬ 
gular base above the roof line, or above 
the eaves, from which the shaft proper 
springs, and upon which it may be set 
obliquely if desired, there is the base 
built up from the ground as a projec¬ 
tion from the wall, with diminishing 
set-offs and battered weatherings. The 
• cap opens up a rich field of possible 
treatments from a mere necking and 
cornice capping to a deep ornate frieze 
and battlements or a conical or four- 
gabled top with a finial or weather-vane 
surmounting it. Again, for the chimney 
with an open top, and derived from the 
foregoing precedents, there is the cover 
or chimney-pot which may be given no 
end of forms. 
Decoration pure and simple, apart 
from contour, may be gained by adroit 
manipulation and combination of ma¬ 
terials, by the use of patterned units, by 
the setting of the units, as, for instance, 
using herring-bone courses of bricks, by 
the introduction of panels which may be 
made to assume almost any form, and 
by the incorporation of deliberately dec¬ 
orative devices such as sculpture or or¬ 
namental patterns in the flat executed 
in contrasting color. It is preferable, in 
most instances, that the decoration 
should stres§ structural lines and occur 
at base or cap. 
A Group of Adopted Houses 
{Continued from page 51) 
the gods, and go on living happily in the 
midst of all the beauty around them, 
to the sound of the little waves breaking 
on the beach. For since when has 
beauty, which is beyond value, been 
without price? And fences, however 
laden with honeysuckle, however pre¬ 
cious in the sight of the landscape gar¬ 
dener, are never anything more to a 
gok than a challenge to get on the other 
side. 
Tea on Smooth Lawns 
Gardens and green paint are the two 
main things that have been added to 
these old houses. The bright green shut¬ 
ters and balconies give them a gay for¬ 
eign air, and the gardens and grape ar¬ 
bors and box hedges add that gracious 
sense of a life led outside the house, of 
tea on smooth lawns, and dinners begun 
on the terrace when the light is fading 
and finished by candle light and the first 
stars that are the charm of so many for¬ 
eign places and that are fortunately fast 
becoming noticeably more common in 
this country. 
Behind the “Chateau Hash” is a pear 
tree with a circular table painted bright 
blue built around its trunk, and marble 
squares from an old floor used as flag 
stones underneath. Here breakfast and 
tea take on new qualities from their set¬ 
ting, just as coffee drunk by the box 
hedge that overlooks the river, with the 
garden fountain splashing in its blue 
basin, is quite different from any coffee 
served after dinner inside four walls. 
It isn’t a very tremendous matter to put 
a table around a tree, or to plant a box 
hedge on the edge of a terrace, but it 
makes all the difference between the 
commonplace and the distinguished. 
From the balcony of the house near 
the river, which was once the old inn, 
one gets a sense of the mysterious 
beauty of the spot—a carved balcony, 
hidden from the road by syringa and red 
rambler roses and lilacs. The strange 
tropical quality of the place,, as troubling 
to the imagination as one of Conrad’s 
stories, the lights of the opposite shore 
glittering in the branches of the old 
apple trees across the road, the brilliant 
silent traffic of the river, the smell of the 
box and honeysuckle—^all these carry 
one’s thoughts out beyond the valley 
and the hills, out to the islands of the 
South Seas, where the little waves make 
the same noise as the river does here, at. 
the bottom of the road, between the tall 
acacia trees, at the landing from which 
in Revolution times Molly Sneeden 
rowed her fares to Dobbs Ferry. 
