76 
House & Garden 
281 \iws0ld—and'^.. 
Still a Comfortable Home 
For nearly three centuries this unpainted 
house has stood exposed to the weather. 
Continuously occupied and still almost 
perfectly preserved, it offers convincing 
proof of the enduring qualities of 
White Pine 
Ever since the Pilgrims landed, White Pine has 
been universally recognized as the wood preferred 
above all others in home-building. And hguring 
value in terms of service, it is the most economical. 
White Pine does not shrink, swell, crack, twist, 
warp or rot; and once in place it “stays put,” 
after years of exposure, even in the closest fitting 
mitres and in delicate mouldings and carvings. 
It takes paints and stains perfectly. 
Investigation of the merits of White Pine will well repay 
anyone seeking a wise choice of building materials. 
Send today for our free booklet, “White Pine in Home-Build¬ 
ing." It is beautifully illustrated and full of valuable informa¬ 
tion and suggestions on home-building. If there are children in 
your home, send also for “The Helen Speer Book of Children’s 
White Pine Toys and Furniture,” a fascinating plan book, from 
which a child may build its own toys and toy furniture. 
WHITE PINE BUREAU, 
1219 Merchants Bank Building, St. Paul, Minn. 
Kepresenting 
The Northern I*irie Manufacturers’ 
Association of Minnesota, Wisconsin 
and Michigan, and The Associated 
White I*ine Manufacturers of Idaho 
Walls 
finished with 
Cabot’s Old 
Virginia 
White, Roof 
finished with 
Green 
Cabot’s Cre¬ 
osote Stain. 
Forman & 
Light, 
Architects, 
N. y. 
The New Style in Country Houses 
Our leading architects are now designing a new and dignified type of country- 
house, along fine old Colonial lines. The roof is shingled, and large shingles. 
in single or double courses, cover the sides, 
in moss-green, tile red or slate grey tones of 
The roof shingles are stained 
Cabot’s Creosote Stains 
and the sides 
finished with 
Cabot’s Old Virginia White 
which is as cool and brilliant and soft as new whitewash, and as lasting as paint. 
The stains are rich and handsome, and the combination is harmonious and 
appropriate. 
You can get Cabot’s Stains all over the country. Send 
for stained wood samples and name of nearest agent. 
SAMUEL CABOT, Inc., Manfg. Chemists, 11 Oliver Street, Boston, Mass. 
24 W. Kinzie St.. Chicago S23 Market St., San Francisco 
Celebrating the Downfall of Golden Oak 
{Continued from page 74) 
do occasionally meet with a buxom 
egg and dart moulding, a determined 
looking rosette or an emphatic 
acanthus leaf. All of these devices 
were well wrought but there was a 
certain rotundity and vigour of line 
about them that are absent in the more 
attenuated renderings of the latter 
part of the century. Their round and 
positive character merely indicated 
the current conception of line that 
also made possible the delightfully 
chubby contemporary cherubs. 
From 1740 or 1745 onward there is 
greater variety and quantity of carved 
ornament. Acanthus leaves, rosettes, 
flowing conventional foliage, urns, 
fretwork, cockle shells, masques, 
pineapples, swags and drops of 
drapery or laurel, wreaths of fruit and 
flowers, and various other motifs ap¬ 
peared with steadily increasing fre¬ 
quency. For excellent instances of 
this phase of interior wood carving 
in America, the reader may be re¬ 
ferred to the ball room and stairway 
of the Lee house in Alarblehead, 
Alassachusetts; the State House, 
Whitby Hall and Mount Pleasant in 
Philadelphia; the staircase of Tucka- 
hoe in Virginia or some of the old 
houses in Annapolis. In this period, 
too, heraldic carving was practised 
to some degree. 
In the latter part of the century 
when the spirit of Adam refinement 
had taken a firm hold upon popular 
taste, we find more delicate and at¬ 
tenuated renderings, less vigorous 
relief, a tendency to smaller scale and 
finer detail and a greater variety of 
decorative motifs as well as greater 
fiexibility in making use of them. 
There were the customary urns and 
arabesques, the swags and drops, the 
vases and paterae, the spandrel fans 
and sundry others that one always 
associates with the elegance and 
polish of the age of the Brothers 
Adam. The Adam type met with 
high favor and found abundant ex¬ 
pression in America at the hands of 
architects and craftsmen who drew 
inspiration for their work directly 
from England. 
McIntire The Master 
At the same time, America had its 
own adequate exponent of the decora¬ 
tive spirit of the age in Samuel 
McIntire of Salem, who was first and 
foremost a carver of wood and was 
never so happy as when working in 
that medium. His fame as an archi¬ 
tect is undoubtedly great but the 
greatness of his architectural work 
and its quality of satisfying perman¬ 
ency are due to his consummate good 
taste in wood carving and his good 
judgment in its use more than to 
anything else—indeed, more than to 
all other elements put together. A 
McIntire room often possesses the 
exquisite delicacy of a cameo. The 
best and most convincing specimens 
of Meintire’s work are, of course, to 
be found in his native town of Salem, 
although examples of it are to be 
found elsewhere, also. 
The other contemporary wood 
carvers never developed as much 
individuality in their work, but while 
they drew more directly from English 
precedents, their performances were 
almost without exception highly 
creditable to any place or age. Hun¬ 
dreds of old mantel pieces throughout 
the Atlantic States attest the skill 
and taste of their designers and 
carvers. More extensive manifesta¬ 
tions of Adam interior wood carving 
are to be seen in various old city 
houses in Boston, New York and 
Philadelphia among which may be 
particularly mentioned The Wood¬ 
lands in the last named city. 
All through the 18th Century, both 
in its earlier robust types and in its 
later types of greater refinement, the 
enrichment of wood carving was be¬ 
stowed upon mantels and overdoor 
ornaments, door and window trims, 
cornices, the capitals of pilasters and 
pillars, the brackets beneath the 
treads of steps and sundry other 
places where carved embellishment 
was appropriate. The only difference 
in points of elaboration between the 
first and second phases was that in the 
first the overmantel panel and attend¬ 
ant decoration constituted an im¬ 
portant consideration; in the second, 
all adornment was lavished upon the 
mantel itself and the overmantel 
feature had virtually disappeared so 
far as any fixed architectural treat¬ 
ment was concerned. 
During the period of the Classic 
Revival much the same general condi¬ 
tions continued save that delicacy of 
design disappeared entirely and in its 
place came a conspicuous and insistent 
ponderosity. Nevertheless, the Classic 
Revival carving is not without a 
certain dignity and charm. 
The Charm of English Carving 
Going back to an earlier date we 
find the exquisite creations that 
graced English houses during the 
reigns of Queen Anne and her prede¬ 
cessors William and Mary, a time 
when the American Colonists had not 
yet become sufficiently well to do to 
indulge in the luxury of carved orna¬ 
mentation _ in their dwellings. This 
carving, directly proceeding from the 
inspiration of Grinling Gibbon and 
his school was both opulent and virile. 
It was wrought in high relief and 
often displayed remarkable under¬ 
cutting and was the very thing needed 
to correspond with the rotund swell¬ 
ing contours of the mouldings and 
the broad bevel flush panels. It was 
perfectly in scale with all of these 
details and properly balanced them; 
with lighter and more refined details 
it would have been overpowering 
while they, in turn, would have been 
completely dwarfed and 'lost. Not¬ 
withstanding all their boldness of line 
and bigness of scale, an examination 
shows these carvings to possess the 
utmost nicety of finish and dexterity 
of execution. 
The best examples of this type of 
carving are to be seen in England, in 
our museums, in panelled rooms 
brought bodily from the other side 
and in the works of reproduction by 
our own architects. The motifs em¬ 
ployed were almost wholly fruits, 
flowers and leafage with occasional 
birds, human figures or mythological 
creatures. Swags and drops seemed 
to be the favorite form of composi¬ 
tion. For mouldings the egg and dart 
device or a succession of acanthus of 
other leafage were general favorites. 
Through rooms brought hither 
from England and through recent 
reproductions, the public has become 
fairly familiar with the interior wood 
carving of Tudor and Stuart days, 
with its masses of enrichment 
centered about the fireplace and over- 
rnantel, and with the designs some¬ 
times carried around the top of the 
roorn or the head of the panelling as 
a kind of frieze. Owing to our 
present familiarity with this phase, it 
is scarcely necessary to dwell upon it 
further than to observe that closely 
akin to the subject of carving is the 
subject of turnings and mouldings. 
Not a few of the old houses of this 
period owe the entire charm of their 
ha'lls and staircases to the well con¬ 
sidered turnings of the balusters and 
newel-posts. _ The question of turn- 
(Continued on page 78) 
