August, 191 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
105 
Blue and White Furnishings 
M UCH as it has been exploited and 
in a way done to death, it is really 
hard to find a more satisfactory combi¬ 
nation of colors than blue and white for 
the furnishings of the summer cottage, 
the piazza or even certain rooms that are 
in use all the year round. New ideas in 
furnishings of this sort are being brought 
out constantly by importers and manu¬ 
facturers, and it is a scheme so compara¬ 
tively inexpensive that one need have no 
hesitation on the chance of its growing 
tiresome with long and enforced associa¬ 
tion. 
The blue and white Japanese toweling 
that has been put to so many different 
decorative uses is now being made up 
into lamp shades with most satisfactory 
results. A large wire frame covered with 
the fabric makes a charming shade for 
a blue and white porcelain lamp, and 
these shades can be bought ready for use, 
or it ought not to be a very difficult mat¬ 
ter to make them oneself. Blue and 
white rugs, too, are being shown at rea¬ 
sonable prices and in greater variety just 
now than ever before. For the piazza 
there are Chinese mats made of grass, 
warranted rain and sun proof, with 
checked or plain centers and blue and 
white borders. These come in sizes up 
to nine by twelve feet. 
Cotton rugs in blue and white are dis¬ 
tinctively Japanese in design, and can be 
had in an even greater variety of sizes, 
all the way from little two by four foot 
mats up to the twelve by fifteen foot size, 
while the wool rugs in this combination 
of colors are made in Tien-Tsin, China, 
and are decorated with Chinese designs 
quite suggestive of the enormously ex¬ 
pensive Chinese rugs. Both the cotton 
and wool rugs are washable, and the lat¬ 
ter are wonderfully artistic in design and 
Velvety rugs of soft, creamy tints are obtain¬ 
able, their designs being in blue 
need not be limited to the uses of the 
summer cottage alone. 
Of course for summer and outdoor 
use furniture of wicker or willow seems 
most suitable with these imported rugs 
and fabrics, and the new shapes in the 
willow pieces from China and Japan go 
to prove that the Oriental manufacturers 
are keeping up well with the procession 
of new ideas. Where the assortment was 
formerly limited to the familiar hour¬ 
glass chair with perhaps an odd table or 
two, there are now tabourets of willow in 
various sizes, foot-stools, tea-tables that 
are light in weight and serviceable in 
shape, and even a Chinese Morris chair 
that looks like a very distant relative of 
its English prototype, but is at least thor¬ 
oughly comfortable as a lounging chair. 
Among the newer pieces this season are 
tables and small stands made of strips of 
bamboo with closely woven tops. The 
bamboo is treated in such a way that the 
strips are flat and quite thin and they are 
interlaced to form substantial and effec¬ 
tive looking pieces of furniture. 
Door Porters 
A USEFUL addition to the furnish¬ 
ings of the hall in a country house 
where it is not always necessary to be 
barred and locked in, is a door porter, 
that serves the purpose of holding open 
the front door and at the same time im¬ 
parts an air of hospitality. It is, no 
doubt, a distinguished version of the 
worthy brick covered with an old piece 
of carpet that propped open the doors of 
preceding generations, and while rather 
more ornamental than the brick, it does 
its duty in exactly the same way. It is 
necessary for it to be quite heavy as a 
matter of course. The less expensive 
door porters are made of cast iron in dif¬ 
ferent ornamental designs and the weight 
of the iron is sufficient to resist any 
amount of force from the door, but the 
more elaborate varieties, which are made 
of brass, must be heavily weighted at the 
bottom in order to be of service. 
They are all made so that there is a 
definite, loop-shaped handle at the top, or 
the design is such that there is a knob 
or excresence of some sort by which it 
is easily picked up and moved about. The 
two shown in the illustrations are of 
brass, the plain one being of polished 
brass, the other a dull finish. 
1 
The porter is a convenient 
means of preventing door 
slamming 
An interesting scheme for summer cottage use, combining hour-glass chairs, soft blue 
and white rug, and a new form of tabouret. Lamp shade and pillows are in 
blue and white toweling, while the lamp is a gray pottery with blue figures 
An attractive dull finished 
porter of pineapple de¬ 
sign 
