94 
House & Garden 
itest 
Ask for free copy of 
“The White Spot” 
booklet. 
Samples of either 
Enamolin or Nam- 
lac Floor Finish 
sent for 10c. 
Address Home Dept. 
“There 
that Room is Done 
—Finished with Enamolin!'* 
Finished to stay finished. Finished so that it 
can be kept fresh and immaculately clean for 
years and years, merely by washing its wood¬ 
work, doors and furniture with soap and water, 
or Sapolio. 
Enamolin looks like porcelain—wears like iron. 
As for the floors of the Enamolin finished room, there 
is Namlac Floor Finish—as beautiful in its way as 
Enamolin —the most durable varnish you can put on 
a floor. 
Enamolin and Namlac Floor Finish are on sale at 
the better paint and hardware stores. If you cannot 
secure them, write to us. 
Length —6' 6" 
Width—2' 10" 
Height 2' 11" 
"The Windsor”—one of The Barto Day Bed family—will harmon¬ 
ize beautifully with the interior furnishings of your country home. 
Of tlie best materials and workmanship, finished in mahogany or 
painted any color. It can be upholstered in styles of cretonne to 
match the liangings. 
During the day a couch for the boudoir, living room, alcove, or 
fireside, it is a comfortable bed at night, wthout converting. Price, 
$35. Box Spring and Mattress, $32. Many other styles. Immedi¬ 
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The New 
BARTO 
DAY BED 
for the 
Country Home 
iiiiiiiiiiMiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiM 
We specialize In 
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will call. 
EDWARD R. BARTO & CO., 
45 West 39th St., New York 
Specialists in Interior Furnishings 
What Is Modern Decoration 
(Continued from page 92) 
American decorators. This number 
includes an array of young men here 
and there about the country, and espe¬ 
cially a still larger number of young 
women, some of them pupils of Mr. 
Heilman himself, who have grown to 
care very little for period interiors, 
and whose study of the antique has 
j given place to a keener interest in 
the furnishing of the homelike room, 
I in harmonious, and sometimes novel 
color combinations. They do not, 
from my -standpoint, attempt any 
wholly creative production; they do 
not design any furniture, but they em¬ 
ploy reproductions of historic furni¬ 
ture, with distributions of color for 
which there is often no historic 
foundation or precedent. 
Members of this school contend 
that it has thus far been impossible 
for us to create any furniture , as 
attractive as-that produced by previ¬ 
ous generations. They are somewhat 
fearsome radicals, even though they 
have abandoned the ranks of the con¬ 
servatives. They believe themselves, 
and therefore others, to be incapable 
of creating new forms. 
Undoubtedly there were thousands 
of their forebears at the time of 
Chippendale and at every earlier great 
period. They are right to this extent: 
that we have not as yet produced the 
finished beauty of the finest Adam 
interiors, nor the marvelous excel¬ 
lence of design attained by the master 
craftsmen who worked for Louis 
XVI. But our critics must not forget 
that we are laboring and living in a 
bourgeois environment, that we are 
working in the main for middle class 
people with limited funds and limited 
leisure, and that only a very small 
percentage of our clientele has been 
awakened to even the slightest inter¬ 
est in genuine artistic creation. We 
have not as yet been able to stimulate 
any widespread desire to have us go 
further into the uncharted domain of 
the new art. If we do Insist upon ex¬ 
perimenting, it is at our peril, and 
many of us have lost first rate con¬ 
tracts by suggesting to the wrong 
people color schemes on which we 
had set heart and soul. 
A New Americanism 
The new art is like the new life, 
buoyant, still too superficial, extrava¬ 
gant, materialistic, quick and confi¬ 
dent. Our nation, which has mastered 
a continent, will certainly be able to 
control a few academicians. And' 
when once we have achieved an art, 
it will be time enough to civilize it. 
For we have still to complete the 
Americanization of the JModern Art 
Movement. Thus far its motive 
power has been European, but there 
are indications that henceforth the 
centre of Modern Art, and perhaps 
of all art, will be on this side of the 
Atlantic. First of all, our benevolent 
millionaires are beginning to show 
signs of adopting some other exer¬ 
cise for their leisure hours than the 
sole one attributed to them, with 
some justice, by Mr. Arnold Daly; 
that of going down to Battery Park 
to see whether the incoming steamers 
contain any passengers from Europe 
who can help thern to spend their 
money. That is to say, there are 
signs that Americans are commencing 
to patronize American music, to buy 
American pictures, to encourage 
American plays, and even to engage 
American decorators. They have 
generally permitted us to paint their 
walls, to stain their floors and make 
their sofa cushions, but when they 
had elaborate and expensive work to 
give they generally prided them¬ 
selves on turning it over to aliens. 
These firms wrest the much valued 
walls of old wood paneling from their 
owners abroad, and the old tapestry 
furniture and objets dart, and in¬ 
stall them for fabulous considera¬ 
tions in the newly acquired mansions 
of American magnates. I have per¬ 
sonally examined a set of ten pieces 
on which a dealer made a profit of 
over $100,000. But we may hope 
that the chance of such things is no 
more. And not being able to waste 
their fortunes on antiques, Americans 
must begin to he influenced by origi¬ 
nality, effectiveness and artistic ideas 
in the true sense. 
And besides this, there is the war. 
The ultimate effect of this is not to 
be foretold in regard either to art 
or to life. Both may receive a new 
stimulus, a renewed vigor, or both 
may be in abeyance, in a state of quie¬ 
tude, for a generation. But of one 
thing we may feel fairly certain, and 
that is that at the end of the war 
the peoples of Europe will have to 
settle down to a sterner existence, 
a more economical regime than has 
characterized them for centuries. 
Their governments are on the road 
to bankruptcy, and they themselves 
are undergoing such hardships that 
they will look with little tolerance on 
very great extravagance cloaked un¬ 
der the name of Art. 
Decay and Art 
We, on the other hand, are piling 
up a new list of multi-millionaires, 
which threatens to increase continu¬ 
ously as long as the war lasts. This 
new access of wealth must inevitably 
bring with it increased demands for 
variety and novelty, new stimulation, 
new excesses. We may perhaps wit¬ 
ness in this country an age of de¬ 
bauchery, undreamt of under the 
Roman Empire; and our effeteness 
may be accompanied by a Renais¬ 
sance of all the arts. A moralistic 
people does not like to imagine such 
a condition. We prefer to think of 
art as the consequence of sturdiness 
and strength, hut our own history, 
as well as that of Europe, proves 
the reverse. It is an old common¬ 
place that a people such as we have 
been from the first, a virtuous people 
struggling for existence and material 
growth, can never produce a great 
art. Wealth, leisure, the beginning 
of decay, are the basis for the finest 
artistic achievement. 
The Future’s Promise 
Thus far our accomplishments in 
decoration have been in part imita¬ 
tive, and in part crude, tentative and 
experimental. We have had insuf¬ 
ficient opportunity for original ex¬ 
pression ; there has been but little 
encouragement, except in the last 
couple of years, and then more par¬ 
ticularly in the designing of interiors 
for the stage. 
Artists, perceiving in decoration 
the most untouched and hopeful of 
the arts, have gone to it from paint¬ 
ing and sculpture, and architects 
whose interest lay primarily in color 
and design, rather than in construc¬ 
tion, have seen new possibilities in 
the specialization in interior work. 
It is unbelievable, inconceivable, 
that these influences, this quickened 
energy, this new stimulus, should 
lead to nothing but a knowledge of 
the historic periods, and the willing¬ 
ness to draw from them an endless 
series of satisfactory and mildly 
pleasing schemes of line and color. 
Something new will come, must 
come, if art is to live; and this will 
be Modern Decoration. 
