68 
House & Garden 
Guaranteed Sunfast 
DRAPERIES & UPHOLSTERIES 
T he welcome sunshine streaming into every room 
in the house is a joy when Orinoka curtains and 
draperies are used. Their most delicate colorings 
never become dim nor the beautiful lustre dull, however 
powerful the sunlight or frequent the tubbings. Every 
color is absolutely guaranteed not to fade. 
To get genuine sunfast insist upon the name "Orinoka. ” 
There is a fine, wide choice of light and heavy textures, 
designs and colorings. Write tor our booklet, “Draping 
the Home.” 
ORINOKA MILLS, 156 Clarendon Building, New York 
yni r/yj j/ n n/i— s xw i v\t. 
Forward to a Home of Your Own? 
Why not build this Spring? Begin now to collect ideas for the home of 
your dreams. 
When the question of woodwork comes up you may want a dark rich 
mahogany in the living room, or a warm brown tone. Or possibly your 
taste runs to dainty white enamel for the down stairs as well as in the 
chambers above. Again you may-favor the popular silver gray for music 
room or boudoir. 
Whatever your choice, the question of “which wood?” for these various 
effects can be convincingly answered with 
ARKANSAS SOFT PINE 
It lias proven its durability and artistic possibilities through twenty-five 
years of service in American homes. 
Our homebuilders boolc, containing eight colonial designs, will give you the 
"why of it" in every detail while our samples and book of finishing direc¬ 
tions, attractively illustrated, will supply the "how of it." We’ll send them 
free. Write today, Ai'chitects should have our Manual—sent on request. 
Arkansas Soft Pine is Trade Marked and 
sold by dealers. Yours can supply it 
ARKANSAS SOFT PINE BUREAU 
616 Bank of Commerce Bldg. LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS 
On Display—National Complete Building Exposition, March 5-11 
Safe-Ilk® 
Jisi!l®ira®!r Tira» 
Antique Desks and Their Appreciation 
(Continued from page 25) 
The commoner design in American desks tons the 
above. Made originally in the late 18f7i Century, 
of mahogany, with reversed serpentine feet 
a composite affaii', 
combining a cabinet, 
a bureau, ^ drawers 
and a writing-table. 
In Ghirlandaio's 
painting, “Saiiy 
J e r o ni e In His 
Study,” a work dat¬ 
ing to 1480, (this is 
found in the collec¬ 
tion of the Ognis- 
santi in Florence), 
we see depicted a 
portable desk of the 
“schoolmaster” type, 
and still another 
showing drawers, 
(of the same date 
and same collec- 
t i o n ) is in the 
“St. Augustine” by 
Sandro Botticelli. 
In other paintings 
by the old masters 
and in very early 
engravings we see 
delineated the vari¬ 
ous pieces of fur¬ 
niture in contemporary use designed 
for writing-purposes, as well as 
others for the account-keeper. All 
these suggest to us the probable units 
which combined to produce the escri¬ 
toire and the secretaire of later cen¬ 
turies, and lend interest to the col¬ 
lector’s enthusiasm for searching out 
pieces of the sort. 
The Old Conditions 
W'hen living was so much less com¬ 
plex in the matter of domestic do¬ 
ings than it is in our own time, there 
was far less need of such objects as 
desks. Whole families, even of the 
prosperous classes, could get along 
without them very well. Your Mona 
Lisa of the Renaissance could have 
carried her household accounts in 
her head, and probably did, while 
Frau klartin Luther or Frau Al¬ 
brecht Diirer had little occasion to 
require a place for keeping quires or 
reams of correspondence paper. Nor 
had they, in all probability, entered 
into the sphere of feminine prowess 
in home banking matters that made 
necessaiy a writing-bureau sacred to 
their personal command. 
The finest examples of the craft 
of the master cabinet-makers of the 
17th and 18th Centuries were orig¬ 
inally produced for wealthy patrons 
who paid well for the master’s skill. 
While such pieces must naturally be 
beyond the reach of the collector of 
moderate means—except in rare in¬ 
stances where complete ignorance of 
their value is combined with a desire 
to part with them—they are still al¬ 
ways interesting to note, and many 
of them have been reproduced with 
wonderful skill by some of the lead¬ 
ing masters of the craft of furniture¬ 
making today. 
Of course, no reputable dealer will 
attempt to pass off a modern copy of 
anything as an original. At the same 
time one may take great pleasure in 
acquiring a truly fine copy of a Queen 
Anne secretaire or a Heppelwhite bu¬ 
reau, if it is knowingly purchased as 
a copy, whereas if deception is prac¬ 
ticed, the result must he a disap¬ 
pointment and discouragement to the 
owner, however fine the piece. 
Antiquing Antiques 
Unfortunately, all dealers are not 
reliable and much fraud is practiced 
in connection with antique furniture. 
Even the metal trimmings,—knobs, 
handles, etc.—are given the appear¬ 
ance of antiquity by all sorts of de¬ 
vices at the com¬ 
mand of the skill¬ 
ful. In this con¬ 
nection it is inter¬ 
esting to see what 
Grace M. Vallois 
has to say in her 
interesting volume, 
“First Steps In Col¬ 
lecting”— “To the 
professional ‘faker’ 
bright new handles 
do not appeal, he 
knows they give him 
away at once, and 
he has many in¬ 
genious devices, 
some simple, some 
complicated, to give 
to the brand new 
Birmingham h a n - 
dies and plates the 
necessary look of 
old-age. Acids are 
largely used, and to 
insure the requisite 
softly rounded 
edges, they are put 
into a cj'linder—a 
large number to¬ 
gether—and the in¬ 
strument is made to 
revohe until by 
constant friction 
(Continued on page 
70) 
A simpler form of American style of Heppelwhite 
tambour desk teas made betioeen 1760 and 1820. 
It is of mahogany inlaid ivith satinwood 
