62 
House & Garden 
Furnishing the Room From Cretonne 
{Continued from page 60) 
with tail feathers of spun gold. All 
this on this pheasant cretonne, together 
with dahlias of magenta and old pink, 
rose phlox, old yellow tulips, and feath¬ 
ery combs of purple and black and 
gold. Truly a feast for the senses, and 
quite beautiful enough to be framed 
and hung on the wall. 
If the temptation were not quite so 
great to make curtains of it! Which is 
as it should be. Floor length curtains 
lined with wistaria sun-fast, the well¬ 
shaped valance bound with yellow, the 
same color of spun gold. Pull curtains 
of old yellow are used at the windows 
instead of window shades, and are hid¬ 
den between the overdrapes and the 
glass curtains of ivory mull, when not 
in use. 
The wall is satisfactorily painted in a 
light putty, matching the background of 
the hangings. The furniture is of that 
mysterious brown which leaves one so 
satisfactorily in doubt as to whether it 
be mahogany or walnut. And the new 
Italian note is sounded in the smart 
center table, to match which there 
can be found a bookcase and a desk. 
The rug is putty brown; the wing 
arm chair is upholstered in magenta 
velour, with a line of gold; two over¬ 
stuffed chairs are upholstered in the 
cretonne with backs of dark putty-col¬ 
ored velour. There is a walnut desk, 
harmonizing with, though not match¬ 
ing, the table. This is shown in the 
photograph. The bench-thing is up¬ 
holstered in the pheasant material. The 
sofa is covered in a putty velour, em¬ 
broidered by hand in a pheasant’s-eye 
spot design in magenta, black and gold. 
Notes of brilliant rose, purple and green 
are slipped, in the shape of luster ware, 
into the corner cupboard; the lamp¬ 
shades are of black, decorated in color; 
a peacock jar holds converse with vases 
of lavender and candlesticks of pewter 
on the mantel, and the pillows are of 
deep blackish purple and gold. 
You will find that one of the joys of 
using a length of cretonne for the key¬ 
note of the furnishing of a room wilt be 
the achievement of a daring color scheme 
which you could not think of otherwise. 
A Plea for the Wall Fountain 
{Continued from page SO) 
edges with a picturesque floral or archi¬ 
tectural treatment. The artists and 
architects did not disdain to work out 
inconspicuous details in stone and shrub¬ 
bery to complete the effect they wished 
to give to the observer. 
In such gardens the fountain or pool 
played an important part, for it was 
realized that the value of water, with 
its sparkle, its color and light, is great. 
and use was made of it accordingly. 
We in the New World are following, 
though sometimes afar off, these beauti¬ 
ful gardens of the Renaissance, with 
their silent, grass-grown walks, terraced 
pools and wonderful vistas. And be¬ 
cause we love and admire them, in time 
we will equal the masterpieces which 
their creators with the passing years 
have made them. 
Ivory Thrones and Elephants 
{Continued from page 27) 
trust I am valiant, but I can make 
no boast of being a horseman, at least 
not one quite up to Homer’s implied 
prowesses. If I were, I suppose I would 
be quite as content with blue ribbons, 
whereas my soul, my collecting soul, 
yearns for the crimson-dyed check-piece 
of History’s day-dawn! 
You less sympathetic ones—though I 
doubt if your curiosity brings you to 
these lines!—will think that the weather 
may have something to do with the mat¬ 
ter. I assure you—I have told you it is 
a rainy day—that it has, but only be¬ 
cause it evokes a whole band of spirit 
memories of the past. One does not 
like to think of ivories that crumble to 
dust, dry up and pulverize. They get 
thirsty. Do you not recall how the deep 
well under the ivory statue of Asklepios 
was reputed to keep the image in fine 
form, how the Ephesians poured water 
or oil (perhaps both) through hundreds 
of little apertures in the ivory statue of 
Artemis that the wooden framework 
supporting the covering of ivory might 
not shrink and cause the plates to split ? 
And did not the Athenians reserve in 
their theater a special seat for the one 
whose duty it was to clean with rain 
water the ivory statue of Zeus? This, 
Pausanius tells us, was kept in condition 
by olive oil and water. Certain it is 
that ivory can be rendered somewhat 
ductile by various oils and vinegar. Per¬ 
haps some time we shall recover a knowl¬ 
edge of what seems to be the lost art 
of softening ivory to such a state as 
the ancients seem to have been able to 
bring it. Only by some such process 
can it have been possible for such large 
surfaces of unbroken ivory as the an¬ 
cients are credited with having used to 
have been available. It has been sug¬ 
gested that large sections of tusks were 
subjected first to a softening and then 
to a spiral cutting and unwinding, as it 
were, and the matter has furnished seri¬ 
ous savants with wonderful opportuni¬ 
ties for dift’ering with their colleagues. 
As for me, the matter is interesting be¬ 
cause a halo of romance must ever cling 
to the “lost arts.” 
Because I have spoken of rainy days 
and ivories, do not think I would turn 
the world into a humidor for my own 
few treasures of this fictfle sort! Some¬ 
how the drizzling rain outside seems a 
fit setting for the medieval bits, and I 
can even conjure up an elephant hunt, 
or those gloomy days when Alexander 
the Great pushed on into the jungles of 
India and seemed to encounter all the 
elephants on earth that might have fur¬ 
nished enough ivory to stock the world 
of his day, to build such statues as that 
ivory one of Athene Alea with which 
Augustus Caesar ran off to Rome the 
time he took with him the famous tusks 
of the Calydonian Boar, the Athene 
which he later set up near the Forum. 
My own treasures are few, so few 
that I do not spread them before you 
verbally lest you think discouragingly 
of their extent. But this I must tell 
you: collecting ivories is a pursuit 
fraught with keen pleasure. 
In the first place one does not need 
to have “ivory thrones, sceptres and 
couches,” life-size Chryselphantine stat¬ 
ues of Zeus, of Athene, rods of Roman 
Senators and the like to feel that there 
is comfort and delight in what he has 
been able to acquire in the way of ob¬ 
jects of carved ivory. He may chance 
to discover an antique bit, or his acqui¬ 
sitions may not even reach objects of 
the medieval period. Fine ivories have 
been highly prized from immemorial 
times and one may as well disclose the 
fact that a lengthy, unhesitating purse 
is needed for such bits as would cause 
museum curators to rub their eyes, and 
{Continued on page 64) 
