September, 1913 
HOUSE AND GARDEN 
147 
windows. That she has done it to perfection no one who has 
visited the house can deny. 
The walls in this room and in the dining-room are covered 
with a novel paper, which might be called impressionistic. The 
general effect is of yellow and buff and orange all shot together, 
and it was secured by applying to a plain yellow paper a sponge 
wet first with light brown, 
then with orange. The 
color is just dabbed on 
carelessly with the sponge; 
the yellow paper being 
thus transformed into a 
neutral tint which bright¬ 
ens with its yellows, 
orange and yellow, and 
tones down the woodwork 
with its brown. All of the 
woodwork is painted a 
bright yellow, including 
the built-in mantel, over 
which is an old-time ob¬ 
long, gilt mirror with 
three divisions. The floor, 
which was of old boards 
too worn to appear well, 
is covered with heavy, 
plain brown linoleum, 
shellacked and waxed. 
The effect is much the 
same as wood, and very 
satisfactory from the 
housekeeper’s point of 
view, as it needs only to be waxed occasionally and dusted. 
The reception-room rugs are the cheap blue and white Chinese 
cotton rugs — or rather they were at buying, but they were dyed 
a neutral brown to harmonize with the walls and linoleum. The 
furniture is all suggestive of the Italian, and made by the local 
carpenter under Mrs. Rice's direction, of white wood, stained 
English walnut color, as in the living-room. The chairs are 
rush bottomed, like those our great-grandmothers had. Yellow 
cotton curtains, sunproof material, hang loose at the windows; 
the cushions are of brown velveteen, and the two large lamps 
have home-made shades of plain brown paper, yellowed with 
water color paint, and bands of color in splashes, bluish and 
purplish, the colors being stolen from the marigolds and calen¬ 
dulas. 
The living-room and the reception-room seem oddly artistic as 
described, but the dining-room, while a trifle startling at first, 
charms immediately, and one wonders how anyone ever evolved 
the clever plan which produced so unusual an effect. 
In the first place, the 
dining-room is about the 
narrowest room in the 
house — so narrow that to 
have the regulation dining- 
table was out of the ques¬ 
tion, the room being only 
eight feet wide. So a re¬ 
fectory table was intro¬ 
duced. 
Mrs. Rice desired to pa¬ 
per the wall so that it 
looked like the waters of 
the Mediterranean. No pa¬ 
per house could produce a 
wall paper answering the 
requirements, so, with a 
sponge and Italian colors, a 
medium shade of grayish- 
blue paper was stippled 
with dark blue paint first, 
by means of the sponge, 
and on top of that a light 
green. The result is not a 
hard, cold, dead wall as 
produced by most papers. 
The colors give a sense of atmosphere and space, the eye mingling 
them and forming the pure color. As one comes down the tiny 
stairway that rises from one end of this tiny room, one can fairly 
see the sun sparkling on the blue-green waters and almost hear 
the plash of the waves. > 
All the woodwork is painted light apple-green with ordinary 
house-paint, several Italian greens being blended together to give 
a very bright, light color, which has the softness as well as the 
brightness of the spring leaves. 
The 8x 12 floor is covered with brown linoleum, as in the re¬ 
ception-room, a long, deep-sea blue runner going the length of the 
(Continued on page 166) 
The green lattice is echoed by green tones in the India print upholstery and 
pillows. The floor is stained brown and the rugs are neutral, brownish gray 
The dining-room was of necessity very narrow. It was made to serve by placing the table along the wall in ancient style. This is desirable in that 
the single great window which the diners face commands a wonderful view. The wall is a Mediterranean blue-green, the table lacquered green 
