House and Garden 
mechanical inventions 
will, when given the lei¬ 
sure for culture, produce 
results as interesting and 
as original as any pro¬ 
duced by the masters of 
the Renaissance. We are 
only at the beginning, and 
these illustrations are chiefly in¬ 
teresting as showing the direction 
of new thought and design. 
But to return to Dreamwold; im¬ 
agine a room capable of seating forty 
guests and still cosy. A farm dining¬ 
room in a house 300 feet long, its cup¬ 
boards filled with the choicest of old cut 
glass and china, its friezes with mural 
decorations of farmyard and corn¬ 
field, while each individual panel 
in the tall dado below has on 
it, burnt and painted in con¬ 
ventional design, an ear of 
corn, a cluster of grapes, or 
other fruit, and so on around the 
room to the great fireplace that 
swallows cords of four-foot wood 
and cries for more. 1 he tile hearth 
shows a grassy bank, and resting on it 
two large golden pumpkins whose ten¬ 
drils climb over the fireplace facing and 
show, now a blossom, now a leaf, in the 
most naturalistic manner. 1 he pumpkin 
gives the key to the room, and so it was again 
taken for a motif in the great central light that 
hangs over the table. A huge golden pumpkin 
with the light inside, it 
glows at night with all 
the mellowness of a Hal¬ 
lowe’en lantern, while 
around it and over it 
cling the vines and leaves 
that, hanging from the 
ceiling, support it and the 
luster of golden pumpkin blos¬ 
soms, each with its little light inside. 
All the colors are those of nature soft¬ 
ened to the tone of the room. 
1 he wall brackets show the same idea, 
the same golden blossoms hiding in their 
pendants the lights within, while in the 
breakfast room the conceit is carried 
still further where a great cluster of 
blossoms hangs like an inverted bou¬ 
quet over the table. 
Sometimes, in an otherwise 
long and monotonous exterior 
wall a quaint freak is pardon¬ 
able, such as the ship’s lantern 
hung over the terrace doors 1 , its 
skeleton resembling the earth’s 
meridians and parallels, while the 
blown glass gives a succession of pec¬ 
uliar bulging forms that seem anything 
rather than stubborn glass. The door 
in the bottom is formed of a large 
turtle-back, while the fixture itself is 
in a soft grey green. 
No form of electric bulb has yet been de¬ 
vised that in its unshaded form is beautiful. 
The imitation candle needs a shade, the 
Breakfast Room 
Chandelier 
“Bubble Blower’’ Lamp 
ordinary bulb a covering 
that will give beauty. The 
shade then becomes a ne¬ 
cessity and its own beau¬ 
ty must be its apology. 
The fixture should then 
be an ornamental piece 
of table sculpture or wall 
or ceiling decoration, but 
it must also always be an 
illuminating fixture. Per¬ 
haps the bubble blowing 
fixtures here illustrated 
are as near an approach 
to perfection as can be 
hoped for. For here the 
“Bubble Blower” Lamp 
205 
