October, 1915 
11 
WITH THIS NUMBER BEGINS — 
The combination of HOUSE & GARDEN and AMERICAN HOMES AND CARDENS —an amalgamation of 
forces, devoted to better houses and better gardens, to all life indoors and out, and to a wider scope of service and interest 
for readers. 
<J A larger magazine both in page size and number of editorial pages, this issue is an earnest of even better things to come. 
Its presentation artistically enhanced, its practical element made more lucid, and its service developed along lines of greater 
efficiency, we take pleasure in presenting the new HOUSE & GARDEN. 
CONDE NAST , Publisher. 
THE TRADITION AND PURPOSE OF PAINTED 
FURNITURE 
The Various Types and the Sorts of Life that Originally Produced Them—Why Paint Was Used — 
What to Look for in Peasant Reproductions—The Secret of Their Use in the Modern 
Room—Suitability Applied to the Finer Sorts 
ELSIE DE WOLFE 
O F the many mediums of modern decoration few are so 
sane, so easily used and so easily lived with when prop¬ 
erly used as painted furniture. Its popularity is more than a 
fad, for, while its ultra expressions may pass, I venture to say 
that when many things considered less ephemeral shall have 
slid into the limbo of the forgotten, painted furniture will 
still be with us. 
By this I do not mean that 
painted furniture is anything new. 
It may be said to have always ex¬ 
isted in some form or another. The 
present vogue is a vogue of peasant 
and Colonial farmhouse furniture, 
although it is also true that many 
pieces which ten years back were 
made up in mahogany and walnut 
are now being constructed of 
woods that lend themselves to 
paint, and in many instances the 
lines are the same. 
There are reasons for the pres¬ 
ent vogue: painted furniture fur¬ 
nishes a splendid opportunity to 
introduce a vigorous color note into 
an interior for the sake of added 
interest and enlivening contrast; 
and it is comparatively inexpen¬ 
sive. 
We need this vigor in our decora¬ 
tions. We need the wholesomeness, 
above all, the livableness. And 
nothing is easier to live with than 
painted furniture when it has been 
decorated in harmony or pleasing 
contrast to its surroundings. 
Besides these reasons, painted 
furniture has a tradition, albeit that 
tradition comes through two chan¬ 
nels ; the finer work executed for 
wealthy patrons, and the rougher, 
crude, but solidly substantial work 
fashioned and decorated by peas¬ 
ant owners’ own hands. Thus it 
boasts on one side the heritage of 
a multifarious peasantry and of the 
American farmhouse; on the other, the heritage of Adam, 
Hepplewhite and Sheraton, and of Englishmen before them, 
and of Italian and French artists. 
The fashion for painted furniture did not last long in Eng¬ 
land. It began about 1770 and ended with the departure of 
Angelica Kauffman to Italy in 1781 and the death of Cipriani 
in London in 1785. Such painted 
furniture as Adam used was un¬ 
doubtedly due to the influence of 
Angelica Kauffman, who was em¬ 
ployed by Adam. In England the 
paint was applied directly on the 
wood or on the ground paint. On 
the Continent, transparent lacquer 
and varnish were used over it. 
Although the more recent ex¬ 
pressions came out of Vienna and 
Paris from the studios of Hoffman 
and Iribe, painted furniture had its 
own history before those gentlemen 
descended upon us with their ex¬ 
traordinary clashes of color. The 
value of their work is disputable; 
the value of the other has been 
proven. 
Paint was used in the days of the 
Stuarts to enrich carved ornament. 
It was used by Biedermeyer in the 
creation of those medallions for 
which his cabinet was justly famous 
in the early Nineteenth Century, by 
the Italians and French in their 
fashioning in white and gold, by 
peasants in many lands, and, lastly, 
in New England and the Pennsyl¬ 
vania Dutch regions, where paint 
enhanced the poor line and carving 
resulting from crude workmanship. 
And that, frankly, is one of the 
reasons for using paint on furni¬ 
ture—and often the secret of its 
economy. Paint covers a multi¬ 
tude of faults. So long as the lines 
of the original undecorated pieces 
are good, so long as the pieces are 
An example of the sort of painted furniture of which 
the structural lines were those of a leading vogue 
in its day. Obviously a piece that requires an 
elegant setting 
