60 
House & Garden 
iJQ/i an 
ADAM INTERIOR 
Rooms correctly decorated in Period 
Styles must have harmonious and 
rightly designed Lighting Fixtures. 
Their thoughtless selection will rerv 
der commonplace an otherwise 
distinctive interior. 
Our catalogue of beautiful designs is 
a decided aid to the proper selection 
of SEMLINDIKECT LIGHTING 
FIXTURES for all interiors. We 
shall be glad to send it on request. 
McKENNEY WATERBURY CO. 
LIGHTING SPECIALISTS 
Franklin and Congress Streets, Boston, Mass. 
Wrinkle mottle is 
one of the most 
curious forms of 
this figure. The 
example here is of 
mahogany 
The Decorative Value of Wood 
(Continued from page 25) 
yellow or yellowish brown, but it is 
claimed that this can be overcome by a 
bleaching process. 
In some woods the natural color is 
comparatively uniform; in others the 
variations in different specimens of the 
same kind are so great that it is diffi¬ 
cult to believe that they are the same. 
Cypress ranges from straw to nearly 
black, with some pieces showing all the 
colors of the rainbow. Whitewood, tulip 
or yellow poplar, as it is variously called, 
may be gray, greenish, canary or pur¬ 
plish. Some mahogany is pale brown 
and some is reddish black. The wood 
of Douglas fir is often graded according 
to color—the red called red fir and the 
lighter-colored, yellow fir. Commercially, 
red birch and white birch are heart and 
sap, respectively, of the same tree; the 
same distinction is made in the case 
of hickory and beech. When a uniform 
floor of heart beech or birch is wanted 
the lumber is “selected for colors;” that 
is, all pieces showing sapwood are re¬ 
jected. In the making of furniture the 
sapwood is either stained to match the 
heart or is left natural to afford variety. 
A common instance of the latter is in the 
use of red cedar for chests with a show¬ 
ing of the white sap intermingled with 
the red or purplish heartwood. 
Color and Figure 
Variations in color in a specimen are 
often responsible for prominent and 
pleasing figure in wood. In red gum 
or “hazel” there are irregular deposits of 
black pigment similar to that found in 
Circassian walnut. Although only oc¬ 
casional logs are highly figured, the re¬ 
sultant soft effects justify classing such 
material with the fancy woods. Red 
gum has not been very highly prized in 
this country until recently because of its 
disagreeable tendency to warp unless 
properly treated. When this difficulty 
was once fully realized and the necessary 
step taken to overcome it, red gum began 
to come into general use for interior 
finish, window trim, furniture and cabi¬ 
network and is giving good satisfaction. 
The Angle of Vision 
Some woods show apparent color vari¬ 
ations which are due to irregularities of 
grain and vary with the angle at which 
they are viewed or at which the light is 
reflected. This is very common in cer¬ 
tain specimens of mahogany and other 
tropical woods where the fibers are ar¬ 
ranged in alternating bands of varying 
width. In sawing a board or slicing a 
veneer these fiber bands are cut at 
different angles and show as light and 
dark stripes. Now if a finished panel 
of such wood is held in the hand and 
slowly revolved a gradual shift in the 
figure will result and the dark stripes 
will become light and vice versa. This 
effect, which cannot be imparted to wood 
artificially, is present in greater or less 
extent in every figured wood and re¬ 
sponds to every change in the lighting or 
the angle of vision. No work in paint 
or pigment can imitate successfully this 
attractive property of “life.” 
W'oods like the soft pines, basswood, 
the light-colored cedars, spruce, balsam, 
and cottonwood are so nearly devoid of 
distinctive color or figure that they are 
not used for decorative purposes. On 
the other hand the hard pines, Douglas 
fir, and the ring-porous hardwoods such 
as oak, ash and chestnut can always be 
(Continued on page 62) 
An example of the apparent 
change in figure due to 
different direction of light 
These photographs are of 
the same piece of mahogany 
seen from different angles 
