56 
House & Garden 
THE MEANING OF 
" GOOD TASTE ” IN THE HOME 
“Good Taste in home furnishing does 
not begin and end with the selection of 
artistic furniture and decorations, but de¬ 
pends finally upon the related beauty of 
each individual part to the whole. 
A single discordant detail will mar the 
harmony of an entire room. 
Our early showing of FALL and WIN¬ 
TER STYLES offers many excellent sugges¬ 
tions, both economic and practical, at values 
below competition. 
ORIENTAL AND DOMESTIC RUGS 
AND DRAPERIES 
FLINT & HORNER CO., inc. 
20-26 WEST 36th STREET 
NEW YORK 
Southern 
Mine 
and 
Interior 
Beauty. 
T HE interior beauty 
of any home de¬ 
pends largely 
upon the kind of wood 
yW selected for the trim, 
pr Jr woodwork, and floor- 
Jj/jr ing. These three are 
r .necessary to properly set 
off the home furnishings— 
to make a successful interior. 
Southern Pine 
IS SUlldUlU 1U1 rf-ll illlCllUl Hmn utvauoi- vjm . -.” _ 
and soft, beautiful texture. No other wood that grows oners 
a wider range of choice in figure—there is no monotonous 
sameness—some of it is large and bold, some fairly uniform, 
and some delicately engraved. 
Southern Pine is bright and attractive, and its general 
beauty and utility are not surpassed by the most expensiv'e 
hardwoods. It takes and holds perfectly and permanently, 
paints, varnishes, and stains. 
No effect of richness and beauty in color and tone is 
bevond the possibilities of the builder with Southern I me 
and all at small cost when quality is considered. 
Send to-day for free booklet — “Direc¬ 
tions for Finishing Southern Yellow Pine” 
Address Department C-5 
£>ou t h e r n Pine 
A $ sf o Ci a t i on 
New Orleans, La./JL 
Eighteenth Century Italian Wall Furniture 
(Continued from page 54) 
point of design and decoration, the 
rectangular console cabinets or chests 
of drawers with straight, tapered legs, 
corresponding to Louis XVI and 
Sheraton influences, were decidedly 
more successful. In connection with 
these pieces, it is worth noting that 
the Italian straight tapered leg is 
nearly always shorter, more robust 
and more abruptly tapered than the 
legs of corresponding English and 
French pieces. It should also be 
noted that the Italian drawer front 
frequently lapped over the rail sup¬ 
porting it, so that the eye would see 
only the single line of division be¬ 
tween the top of one drawer and the 
bottom of the one above it. These 
console cabinets with straight tapered 
legs occasionally occurred in lacquer, 
but were more frequently either en¬ 
riched with inlay and marquetry or 
else painted with vivid polychrome 
decorations, in the form of scenes set 
in panels or in free Renaissance 
arabesques. In the modes prevailing 
at the very end of the 18th Century, 
consoles were no less prominent. 
Considerations of symmetry in furn¬ 
ishing led to the common making of 
consoles in pairs and generally dic¬ 
tated the placing of mirrors or other 
appropriate articles above them. 
Writing Furniture 
Types of writing furniture were 
many, ranging from the tall bureau- 
bookcase, to the small, low secretary 
that was really more of an ornament 
than a practical adjunct in the actual 
furnishing of a room. 
An interesting type is the cabinet 
secretary dated by the maker and 
containing an inscription of dedica¬ 
tion to the personage for whom it 
was made. An example of this pat¬ 
tern is shown in the illustration of 
the piece by Riccardo. The whole 
body of the piece is painted and 
covered with polychrome decorations, 
all the drawer fronts bearing land¬ 
scapes or other scenes of most minute 
workmanship. Although painted dec¬ 
oration was fully developed in the 
other countries of Europe, it was left 
to the Italians to specialize in the 
painting of panels, and the Italian 
furniture maker brought this species 
of decoration to a higher state of per¬ 
fection than the furniture decorators 
of any other country. Of course, in 
England we see the wonderfully 
painted panel decorations of Angelica 
Kauffmann, of Cipriani, and of Per- 
golesi, but it must be remembered 
that they are working in an essentially 
Italian mode. The use of numeraus 
panels given over to architectural and 
landscape subjects was a common fea¬ 
ture of polychrome decoration. 
Another type of writing furniture 
was the low secretary with slant top 
and occasionally with shaped cresting. 
One of the examples illustrated shows 
a member of this family of Louis XV 
guise, while another shows a larger 
North Italian piece of considerably 
earlier date. In the latter part of 
the century, contemporaneously with 
Louis XVI and Sheraton phases in 
France and England, we have the flat 
top table with straight tapered legs. 
Cupboards and Cabinets 
When we come to cupboards, cabi¬ 
nets and wardrobes, we find an almost 
endless diversity of forms, many of 
which are instinct with grace and 
charm. None of them perhaps is 
more interesting than the corner cup¬ 
board with quarter circle front, meant 
to stand either upon a corner console 
or else upon a lower cupboard of the 
same contour in front. Akin to it 
was the corner wardrobe or hanging 
cupboard, whose front consisted of 
one solid paneled door. Then, again, 
there were corner cupboards with a 
series of small receding brackets 
forming a super-structure, doubtless 
intended for the display of bric-a- 
brac. Another form of cupboard was 
meant to stand against a flat wall, 
and had a straight front, whose mold¬ 
ings and curves supplied opportunity 
for lavish decorations. Very much 
more useful and substantial was the 
large wardrobe of rectangular contour 
with two full length doors in front. 
Several examples of these are illus¬ 
trated, the one a Venetian piece of 
the mid- 18th Century with light body 
color and Renaissance arabesque dec¬ 
orations, the other a late Venetian 
piece covered with landscape panels, 
a form of embellishment sometimes 
executed on detached pieces of can¬ 
vas which were afterwards applied 
to the cabinetwork. 
The credenza was altogether too 
useful a piece of furniture to be 
abandoned for newer modes and we 
find it persisting through the 18th 
Century in an ornate form very much 
decorated after the Venetian manner. 
Beds and Dressing Tables 
Among bedsteads there is no less 
variety than in the other pieces of the 
period. ^ The painted bedstead of 
Louis XV pattern from the collection 
in the Cooper Museum shows how 
charmingly the Venetian draftsmen 
could interpret the style of their Gal¬ 
lic models. Then, again, the little 
bedstead with high posts and tester, 
decorated wherever there was a free 
surface, exemplifies a type common 
in the latter part of the 18th Century. 
The large double bedstead with rec¬ 
tangular headboard and lower rec¬ 
tangular footboard is indicative of a 
type prevalent in the last years of the 
18th Century and in the fore part of 
the 19th Century. A prie-dieu, of a 
style corresponding with the bedsteads 
was an almost indispensable item of 
bedroom furniture. 
Dressing stands and the mirrors 
that went with them likewise reg¬ 
istered all the changes in current 
styles, and were not seldom objects 
of both grace and dignity. In many 
instances entire dressing sets con¬ 
sisting of small mirror, hand glasses, 
trays, powder boxes and all the other 
accessories for the feminine toilet 
were made in a style to correspond 
exactly with the dressing stand. 
The Woods Used 
The instances cited by no means 
exhaust the varieties of the 18th Cen¬ 
tury Italian furniture to be met with, 
but they are sufficient to indicate to 
the reader the general trend of style 
and enable him to recognize, without 
difficulty, the dominant characteristics 
when seen in other pieces of a cor¬ 
responding date. The material used 
in the early and in the middle part 
of the century was walnut, and, from 
the middle of the century onward, 
mahogany in conjunction with wal¬ 
nut, which was never so fully super¬ 
seded as in England. In addition to 
walnut and mahogany other woods 
were also employed and for purposes 
of veneer, inlay and marquetry, the 
assortment of woods was quite as 
full as those used in England. At 
the present time so much painted 
Italian furniture of the Venetian 
school is to be seen that many people 
fancy the 18th Century was altogether 
a polychrome decoration period in 
Italy. It is, therefore, necessary to 
remind the reader that, while poly¬ 
chrome decoration enjoyed tremend¬ 
ous vogue, the 18th Century Italian 
cabinet-makers were in no wise blind 
to the many fascinating possibilities 
of other materials. 
(Continued on page 58) 
