HOUSE AND GARDEN 
July, 1913 
An electric lamp standard of hand-painted 
wood with metal shade 
effect of this lining is that of gun-metal. 
The bowl is handsome for fruit as well as 
salad, and the tray is easily seen to be of 
use as well as beauty. As wedding gifts, 
or as personal possessions, these unique 
articles cannot fail to make their appeal. 
Painted Furniture 
HE revival of hand-painted furniture, 
while not of particularly recent date, 
seems to have been so successful that just 
at present its use amounts almost to a fad. 
For several years there have been shown 
in the more exclusive interior decorating 
establishments beautiful reproductions of 
painted furniture of the Seventeenth and 
Eighteenth Centuries. At that period in 
England, particularly in the time of the 
brothers Adam, the art of painting on 
wood was at its height, and many of the 
most noteworthy pieces were done by no 
less an artist than Angelica Kauffman, 
who was considered the most famous 
decorator of furniture of the Eighteenth 
Century. Her work consisted principally 
in the ornamentation of ceilings, table tops, 
and panels for various pieces of furniture. 
Chairs, it seems, were by far the most 
common articles of furniture decorated in 
this way by lesser artists, although there 
were elaborately ornamented drawing¬ 
room and bedroom suites, as well as odd 
pieces of various sorts. Copies of some of 
these pieces, with an occasional original, 
have been brought to this country in the 
last few years and have found a ready sale 
among the lovers of the antique, and those 
to whom the latest fad makes a distinct 
appeal. Quaint old settees that may be 
used as odd pieces in rooms of almost any 
description have been perfectly repro¬ 
duced, and so have tables and chairs and 
cabinets, and the lovely satin-wood suites, 
that are decorated in the daintiest of 
colors, and in their way are real works 
of art. 
While painted furniture is, of course, 
primarily associated with the drawing¬ 
room of stately proportions, the fashion 
has been adapted to less conventional uses, 
and furniture for country houses decorated 
in this way is becoming wonderfully popu¬ 
lar. Bedroom suites in old white or ivory, 
some of them having panels of cane, are 
charmingly decorated with garlands of 
flowers and ribbons, painted in delicate 
shades. 
For the living-room or hall there are 
rush seat chairs in comfortable and at¬ 
tractive shapes, done in French gray, or 
black, or even red, with the old-fashioned 
conventional ornamentations, arabesques, 
festoons, urns, the much used honeysuckle 
motif, dragons, or medallions. Odd pieces 
in the shape of little octagonal tip-top 
tables, muffin stands and tea-tables, that 
will go well with furnishings of almost any 
sort, are done in black with decorations in 
dull gold in conventionalized designs, or 
in Chinese figures suggestive of the Chin¬ 
ese lacquer pieces, and a strange combina¬ 
tion of the old and the new is a radiator 
screen of tin, painted black, with a dis¬ 
tinctive Eighteenth Century design in 
faded gold, so cleverly put on that it has 
the appearance of real age. 
Nor is the fad content to remain in¬ 
41 
For living-room or hall there are rush-bottomed 
chairs of sensible design 
doors. If anything it has taken hold more 
firmly on porch and garden furnishings 
and accessories than on pieces for the 
house, and coming as it does with the craze 
for bright color it gives all sorts of op¬ 
portunities for the picturesque. Tables 
and chairs and settees for use on the porch 
or lawn are painted in gay colors and effec¬ 
tively decorated with floral designs in still 
gayer colors, or in more conventional fig¬ 
ures in black or gold. Even watering pots 
and waste paper receptacles made of tin 
are ornamented in order to lend more 
color to the general scheme, and for out¬ 
door living-rooms there are electric lamps 
with wooden standards and shades made 
of tin. 
It may seem a far cry from a satinwood 
table with exquisitely colored medallions 
to a decorated watering pot or an electric 
lamp standard, but one has led to the 
other, and the latter is only an up-to-date 
method of utilizing a particularly effective 
Eighteenth Century idea. 
A radiator screen of tin, with 
black and gold 
When well done, the hand-painted work is decorative and gives the furniture 
an air of distinction 
A good design for a small 
fire screen 
