72 
House & Garden 
BOOK "A-g' 
Avenue 
X-JAVE one of the finest collections of peonies in theU. S. 
* 1 The very best French and English varieties. Soulange, 
La France, Lady Alex Duff, Victor de La Marne, Therese, 
etc. Brands, Varieties in good supply. Martha Bulloch, 
Francis Willard, Phoebe Cary, Mary Brand, are all described 
in our Catalogue of Peonies, Iris, Narcissus, Lillies, etc. 
Send for your copy today. 
To become acquainted we will send you: 
8 fine roots, Peonies, all different - $2.00 
12 fine roots, Iris, all different - - 1.00 
25 fine bulbs, Daffodils, mixed - - 1.00 
25 fine bulbs, Darwin Tulips - - 1.00 
If you order all the above we will send you free 12 bulbs of 
Lillies Superburn—Free 
Babcock Peony Gardens 
Jamestown, N. Y. 
Danersk Decorative Furniture 
In all the beautiful homes and apartments 
illustrated in our high grade magazines, there 
is not one but that DANERSK FURNI¬ 
TURE would be appropriate for, in one or 
more rooms. The variety and charm are liter¬ 
ally unlimited because we finish each selection 
specifically for the room in which it is to go. 
Send us your plans for single rooms or the 
entire house. We specialize in unusual pieces 
for Sun Rooms, Loggias and Living Rooms. 
Charming sets on exhibition at 
ERSKINE-DANFORTH CORPORATION 
SEND FOR valuable 2 West 47 th Street, New York 
Prairie Dec-oration 
( Continued, from page 70) 
chest of drawers, mirror, two chairs 
and a writing table was painted white. 
The cretonne was blue and white with 
bunches of pink roses in it. This cov¬ 
ered the bed, and made curtains for the 
wardrobe and windows. We painted 
the floor white and got a blue rag rug. 
At the windows in all the bedrooms 
were dotted-swiss muslin ruffled cur¬ 
tains. 
Another room was done in plain blue 
linen. The dressing table was made out 
of an old kitchen table and covered 
with dotted-swiss muslin over blue. The 
hangings and bed covering were of blue 
linen and two chairs were covered in 
yellow and blue cretonne. The rugs 
were gray and the lamps plain yellow 
jars with deeper yellow shades. 
The other room had pale green walls 
and all the furniture, including the iron 
bed, was painted a pale gray. We found 
some cretonne in which the coloring 
was pale green and mulberry. This we 
used for hangings and covered the bed 
and one chair in plain green linen. A 
dull purplish jar made a lovely lamp 
with a cream colored parchment shade. 
All this work took us three weeks. 
We spent five months certainly not 
amidst luxury, but surrounded by things 
that didn’t jar and made life a little 
easier to live. 
Margaret McElroy. 
French Wall Furniture of the 
16 th and 17 th Centuries 
(Continued jrom page 17) 
size to the wardrobe of a much later 
date. They were set on a base, usually 
with feet, and had full length doors. 
There might or might not be one tier 
of drawers in the base. In some cases 
the base was higher and contained sev¬ 
eral tiers of drawers, thus making a 
piece of furniture resembling the British 
and American wardrobe or press of the 
late 17th and early 18th Centuries. 
(7) Bedsteads were imposing struc¬ 
tures with high posts and testers. In 
some cases the posts were slender and 
supported a carved tester whose fretted 
frieze took the place of a valance. 
Towards the end of the century the 
posts became heavier. Headboards, 
commonly extending about half way to 
the tester, were elaborately carved and 
there was sometimes a carved or molded 
balustrade at the foot. Hangings, of 
course, were deemed indispensable. 
There were also bedsteads whose wood¬ 
work was entirely concealed by the 
hangings and by fabric strained over 
the wood. The cupboard bedsteads built 
in recesses, and having carved sliding 
doors like cupboards, are interesting 
archaeologically but were not at all 
sanatory and could now be used only 
as cupboards or as bookcases. 
The materials of which furniture was 
chiefly made were oak, walnut and 
chestnut, although at times other woods 
also were used, especially towards the 
end of the century when the Portu¬ 
guese and Spaniards were fetching 
ebony, mahogany and other rare woods 
from the East Indies and America. 
During all this period gorgeous textiles 
were freely used and towards the end 
of the century they assumed greater 
and greater decorative prominence, but 
the only article of wall furniture af¬ 
fected by them was the bedstead. 
In structure the 16th Century wall 
furniture was altogether straightforward, 
obvious and robust, although in the 
last named respect there was little ap¬ 
proach to clumsiness or undue ponder¬ 
osity. The emphasis of contour was 
thoroughly rectilinear. In the majority 
of pieces, especially the pieces a deux 
corps as cabinets, presses and other ob¬ 
jects with distinctly defined upper and 
lower parts were called, projecting mold¬ 
ings and other lines of division gave a 
pronounced horizontal aspect and 
breadth was sought rather than height. 
Carving was the chief decorative 
process employed but, besides this uni¬ 
versal resource, painting, gilding and 
inlay played a part by no means con¬ 
temptible in the embellishment of cabi¬ 
network. Painting and gilding were 
frequently used only partially and for 
the purpose of giving emphasis or life 
in connection with certain portions of 
carving or molding. The inlay might 
be of wood, stone, bone, shell or com¬ 
position. 
During this whole period the char¬ 
acteristic Renaissance decorative motifs 
were employed in all the various proc¬ 
esses. After the first quarter of the 
century the lingering traces of Gothic 
feeling disappeared and thereafter the 
(Continued on page 74) 
