20 
'January, 1920 
ental to use instead in the dining room. 
A gentleman from the Back Bay of Bos¬ 
ton asked me only }'esterday what is the 
price per square foot for Orientals. I wish 
I’d had a good answer. It was such a 
chance, and they are so aggravating up there. 
I dumbly answered, “It varies,” and the 
point was closed. This is the sort of absurd 
question that is constanuy asked about Ori¬ 
entals. They can’t be figured by the square 
foot as they vary in texture and value from 
a museum piece to the glaringly colored, 
cheap, modem rugs bought at a third rate 
department store. \Mien you shop for your 
dining room Oriental, go to a good reliable 
house, or an auction sale held by a reliable 
concern, and get the nearest size to what you 
want. You’ll never get just the size. If one 
color offends your eye, blot it out. Stop on 
the way home and get a little tube of paint, 
dilute it well and with a stiff brush paint 
out, or subdue the patches of color that do 
not go in with your color scheme. 
Floors for Orientals 
Another thing that helps the Oriental is 
a dull floor for a background. Put a garish 
modern Oriental on a highly varnished yel¬ 
low oak floor, and the room' has absolutely 
no chance in the world to be nice. Remove 
your varnish, stain the floor a good walnut 
color, put on a light coat of shellac and then 
wax it every week and see what a fine rich 
floor you have to lay your rugs on, or even 
do without rugs. 
hi a bedroom the braided mat or pulled rug 
can be given an excellent ground by using an 
all-over ingrain carpet. Colors for the designs 
in the rugs are taken from the cretonnes. 
Agnes Foster Wright, decorator 
When Orientals of 
great distinction are 
used, as in this foy¬ 
er, they should be 
given the deserved 
display — placed at 
regular intervals. 
The hangings should 
be plain so that no 
other design clashes 
with the design of 
the rugs. Courtesy 
of Costikyan & Co. 
The tile floor is suit¬ 
able for breakfast 
rooms and porches. 
Laid in wide white 
bond, the red or 
green tiles are suf¬ 
ficiently decorative 
in themselves. An 
oval or an oblong 
rush mat should be 
used if rugs are de¬ 
sirable. Julius Greg¬ 
ory, architect 
In old houses, where the floors are uneven 
but the boards are wide, fill up the cracks 
and paint the floor a warm brown. Use a 
large stipple brush and then put on a coat of 
antique, shellac and wax. The effect will be 
excellent. If the floors are hopelessly bad, 
get a cheap oil cloth, turn it upside down, and 
use this as a surface which can be treated the 
same way. Use a dark bottle green for a 
floor where early English or cottage furniture 
is to be used, a nice deep leaf green for a hall 
floor. Paint the spindles white and sand 
paper the hand-rail smooth, give it three coats 
of dull black and wax, so that the finish has 
the appearance of ebony. The treads of the 
stairs could be painted black and also a 
band, four inches from the wall, could be 
painted black around the floor, before the an¬ 
tiquing is put on so that it will be pulled 
together. 
There are lots of good color schemes for 
])ainted floors. On a deep orchid colored 
floor, antiqued, use a sea-green very deep 
napped rug, made of three strips of carpeting. 
The seams can be so well brushed as hardly to 
show. A dull black floor can have a similar 
rug of gold color, toning in with a room of 
blue and yellow. One can generally 
pick up short lengths of unusual col¬ 
ored carpeting at a dealer’s, and by tak¬ 
ing the end length get a good price on it. 
Felting and Ingrain 
English so” felting makes an excel¬ 
lent rug, in fact, a complete floor cov¬ 
ering. It comes in soft tones, and 
wears well. A rug 50” wide and any 
desired length could have a border of 
black or deeper toned felting attached 
under it, so that it would lie flat. A 
very striking mg is made by having the 
felting embroidered in the corners with 
heavy worsted. The felting may be cut 
to fringe or not. 
A carpeting that, in my judgment, 
meets the High Cost of Rugging bet¬ 
ter than anything else is old fashioned 
ingrain. It is hard to find today, 
{Conlinued on page 76) 
