88 
House & Garden 
What To Know About Furniture 
UffttS 
IMPORTERS OF 
ENGLISH—FRENCH—ITALIAN—SPANISH 
ANTIQUES 
YOU ARE INVITED TO VIEW SOME RARE EXAMPLES 
OF ITALIAN CABINETS, TABLES, CHAIRS AND 
CHESTS NOW ON VIEW AT THE LANS STUDIOS 
554 Madison Ave., New York 
CORNER OF 55th STREET 
Branch: 406 Madison Ave., Bet. 47th and 48th Sts. 
i 
Danersk Decorative Furniture 
Dignified Reproductions of Old English dining furni¬ 
ture finished with rich patina as though from years 
of use. 
Charming Sets of Sheraton and Chippendale hand¬ 
made and finished to order in the true “French Polish" 
dulled, or the beautiful DANERSK colors that 
harmonize with a specific scheme of draperies and 
rugs without added cost. 
You can obtain the same individuality as in the days 
| of long ago with DANERSK FURNITURE. 
| We are furnishing some of the most beautiful homes 
| and apartments of the present day. 
Charming sets on exhibition at 
ERSKINE-DANFORTH CORPORATION 
I SEND FOR valuable 2 West 47th Street, New York 
BOOK “A- 10 ” First Door West of Fifth Avenue—4th floor 
(Continued from page 86) 
forth. It is upon these,things that the 
comfort as well as the wearing qualities 
of the piece depend. Yet very often 
one is apt to be thoughtlessly capti¬ 
vated by an attractive cover fabric, and 
forget the essential “insides,” of the 
piece. “Inside information,” or the im¬ 
plied guarantee of a well-known maker 
is a very necessary aspect of buying 
overstuffed furniture. 
Bargains and Sales 
A word, now, about “Bargains,” lead¬ 
ing the topics, in item No. 9. 
There are perfectly legitimate “furni¬ 
ture” sales, offering real opportunities to 
the house furnisher. There are, of 
course, plenty of bogus “sales,” in which 
the furniture, even purporting to be 
“sacrificed” at a 50% reduction, is still 
selling at 50% (or over) more than it is 
worth. 
Furniture occupies considerable floor- 
space, and at certain seasons has to be 
cleared out. The same is true of manu¬ 
facturers’ samples, as it is equally true 
that there are a great many bogus “sam¬ 
ple sales.” If you can be sure that the 
furniture shown is actually made up of 
discarded manufacturers’ samples or of 
discontinued patterns, you may be rea¬ 
sonably certain of getting good values 
at low cost. 
The purchase of furniture demands no 
mysterious gift. From another angle, 
of course, there are all the questions in¬ 
volved in style and substyle, historic 
accuracy and the like, and the gift of 
good taste governs everything. 
From our present angle, however, we 
need mostly to be increasingly observant 
of good furniture seen around us; we 
need to cultivate insistence on the points 
brought out in this article, to learn to 
be exacting without being captious, or 
requiring more than we are paying for. 
Collecting the Outsides of a Book 
(Continued from page 27) 
more common—devised for the utili¬ 
tarian purpose of protection. Of course 
manuscripts had been bound for at least 
a thousand years preceding the inven¬ 
tion of printing, and from these the 
bindings of the printed book took hint. 
What beauty they possessed was that 
derived, for the main part, from the 
inherent taste of those of that day who 
were responsible for them. They were 
honestly contrived and free from the 
machine-madeness of the later era’s 
book-casings. It remained for succeed¬ 
ing centuries to set about to make the 
book externally attractive and to the 
19th Century and to our own to make 
it, through commercial purpose, when 
in the form of the modern book-casing, 
attract those who otherwise might leave 
it severely alone! 
Much modern book-casing is atro¬ 
cious. Some of it is excellent. There 
are few authors, I fancy, who would, 
if put to oath, profess approval of the 
covers their books have been given by 
their publishers. I do not see why an 
ugly good book should not be made a 
beautiful good book. I feel about books 
of this sort somewhat as Jean Grolier 
must, I think, have felt about the books 
that came his way and led him to send 
them to be bound in immortality. 
Perhaps when I tell you this, you will 
wonder what sacrilege Poe’s precious 
Tamerlane might meet with, were it to 
come my astonished way! But hold, 
dear reader; I would reverently leave 
it in all its early external plainness (I 
use the word plainness for generosity's 
sake!), although I would undoubtedly 
peep into my purse to see if it would 
not be possible for Master Maroc, the 
bookbinder, to devise me a proper finely 
made leather slip-case for it, suitably 
lined with silk of quality that no scratch 
should be added to the abuse of decades. 
Leather and silk should harmonize, and 
the case be suitably lettered, that my 
treasure might rest in a manner befit¬ 
ting its excessive rarity. 
Just why, it may not be possible for 
me to make those who are not book- 
lovers understand, unless they can feel 
in common with me the thrill one ex¬ 
periences when, for instance, he be¬ 
holds the single soldier who has sur¬ 
vived out of the regiment that plunged 
into the fatal thick of battle against all 
odds. That soldier may have few other 
attributes to command attention. It is 
enough that he is a hero. And so I 
should feel about my Tamerlane—were 
another to appear, meteor-like in the 
(Continued on page 90) 
A binding of a Pliny, printed 
at Basle in 1545 and showing 
an interesting interwoven 
decoration 
Embroidered binding of the 
Prayers of Queen Katherine 
Parr, in the handwriting of 
Princess Elizabeth. 1545 
