ELEGANCE IN THE SMALL HOUSE 
Is Produced Not By Lavish Expenditure But By the Exercise of Discriminating 
Taste In the Selection of Furnishings and Colors 
AGNES FOSTER WRIGHT 
F URNISHING the small house with ele¬ 
gance does not necessarily mean furnish¬ 
ing it with lavishness. Elegance should 
be the result of fastidious discrimination; it 
should create the sort of rooms in which re¬ 
fined, cultured family life finds a sympathetic 
background. 
Nor does elegance mean furnishing in the 
style of the French periods, which were essen¬ 
tially elegant in detail. An English 18th Cen¬ 
tury room can have elegance, so can a Colonial 
room, so can a room of no period style at all; 
although, as a rule, the very traditions of a 
period room give it more associations of ele¬ 
gance—elegant ladies and gentlemen who 
lived formal and dignified lives—than a room 
in which we cannot recognize a single piece 
of period furniture. Like the proverbial wo¬ 
man of good breeding who is always at home 
anywhere, so is furniture of good lines. A 
heavy oak arts and crafts chair lacks elegance 
because there is no fineness to its lines and it 
finds no suitable place except in a camp or 
bungalow; but a comfortable, over-upholstered 
chair of traditional contour can have elegance 
and be at home in almost any surroundings. 
How can you apply these general principles 
of elegance to the furnishing of a small house? 
When you have only a limited amount of 
money to spend, you are pulled between quan¬ 
tity and quality. Choose quality every time. 
Consider your mode of living and the surround¬ 
ings in which you want that living to be placed. 
Furnish for the future. Look ahead, with the 
assurance that, five years hence, your rooms 
will still be standing up well, your tables and 
chairs giving good service and your curtains 
still usable. 
You can't buy furniture with the same view¬ 
point as you do clothes—for only one season’s 
service. Good furnishings cost good money, 
but they warrant the expenditure. Before you 
start to furnish, decide what is the most you 
can afford to spend—not easily afford, but 
afford with effort and the sacrifice of other 
Fastidious taste is shown by every piece used in the decoration of 
this living room. The background is sulphur colored: walls paneled 
and painted and hung ivith old kakomonos and French embroid¬ 
ered pictures on satin. The rugs are Chinese, in yellow and blue. 
Some of the chairs are covered in petit-point. Curtains are plain 
blue silk with painted valance boards. Miss Gheen, Inc., decorators 
