54 
DISTINCTIVE FURNITURE 
From Berkey Gay 
S eldom can you find enamel furniture 
so individual, so smart as this at¬ 
tractive suite from Berkey & Gay. 
The interlacing ovals and graceful curves 
are interestingly conceived. In dark 
green, blue or yellow, with enlivening 
touches of other colors, this suite makes a 
gay little room where any woman would 
feel youthful. 
Another pleasant bit of news—it is not 
expensive! But like every Berkey & Gay 
piece this furniture is so excellently 
Such a comfortable little 
rocking chair for you to 
sit in while you knit or 
do a bit of fine sewing 
made that it may be treasured for a life¬ 
time, even for generations. The best 
furniture shops have Berkey & Gay Fur¬ 
niture. If you have any difficulty in 
finding it, write to,us and we will gladly 
tell you where you can see our new styles. 
Berkey & Gay Furniture Company, 186 
Monroe Ave., Grand Rapids, Mich. 
It is fun to wake up in the 
morning when you find 
yourself in a dainty and 
beautiful bed like this one 
Our artists decorate every 
piece by hand 
The Bookplates of Book Lovers 
( Continued, from page 52) 
ignorant drawing, and incoherent com¬ 
position. . . . Every form of art has 
peculiarities which more or less control 
its technique, and heraldry no less than 
others; but that is all. Artistic weak¬ 
ness is no less weak because it is 
heraldic.” 
With the revival of bookplates, book- 
lovers who possessed them came to take 
an interest in exchanging copies of their 
own ex libris slips for copies of other 
bookplates that particularly interested 
them. That was the beginning. As 
some of the foremost modern artists 
turned their hand to bookplate design¬ 
ing, and as some of the most noted en¬ 
gravers and etchers of the day did not 
consider the ex libris too little for their 
attention, some very remarkable book¬ 
plates, truly works of art in themselves, 
came into being. I recall with what 
pleasure I regarded one by Edwin Abbey 
for Brander Matthews and Walter 
Crane’s by himself, which the owners 
had the kindness to send me. Is it 
any wonder I started to collect other 
examples? Soon followed bookplates by 
Laurence Housman, Gordon Craig 
(Ellen Terry’s gifted son), D. Y. Cam¬ 
eron, the famous English etcher, Max 
Klinger (whom the Germans regard as 
their greatest etcher), Aubrey Beards¬ 
ley, Felix Bracquemond, Evert van 
Muyden, Gavarni’s bookplate for the 
brothers De Goncourt, and so on. Be¬ 
fore long I was discovering early Ameri¬ 
can Colonial bookplates, but the fever 
of omnivorousness never, fortunately, 
threw the pursuit out of just propor¬ 
tions to other things. That is why I 
think I have always enjoyed and always 
will continue to enjoy my collection of 
bookplates of booklovers. It is eclectic 
in scope but contains nothing unworthy, 
much that is historically interesting, 
and so much that is intrinsically beauti¬ 
ful that I should miss communion with 
it. That, I think, is as any private 
collection should be. 
Preserving a Collection 
As bookplates take up so very little 
room—even thousands of them—and are 
easily displayed, the subject is one that 
has a practical side to its appeal. Then 
every bookplate tells its own story, and 
twenty bookplates represent a collec¬ 
tion as truly as twenty thousand; so 
one need not think of the collecting of 
ex libris as a hobby beyond either one’s 
income or one’s patience. Even the 
prices a bookplate collector has to pay 
when purchasing specimens from any 
of the very many dealers both in Amer¬ 
ica and in Europe are really insignifi¬ 
cant as compared to the prices which 
collectors of other things have to pay 
to acquire even their “finds.” Of 
course, extremely rare bookplates com¬ 
mand good prices, but bookplates of 
even great interest usually have their 
prices in cents, against dollars asked for 
other collectable things. 
The annual exhibitions of the Ameri¬ 
can Bookplates Society at Columbia 
University, New York, and other ex 
libris exhibitions taking place else¬ 
where from time to time, are doing much 
to keep before the public mind the in¬ 
terest inherent in the bookplate and the 
place it steadily maintains in the af¬ 
fections of collector and booklover alike. 
Begin the Day in a Breakfast Room 
(Continued from page 15) 
tion, perhaps, of a narrow serving 
table or a small built-in buffet fitted 
into a shallow recess below a group of 
diamond paned windows, and a hanging 
cupboard in peasant style to hold the 
breakfast service of English cottage 
china bordered with bright, old-fash¬ 
ioned posies. There usually is space, 
however, for a few of the minor deco¬ 
rative accessories in the way of flower 
boxes, bowls and wall holders of wood, 
pottery or painted metal, Chinese bird 
cages of lacquered wood resplendent 
with silk tassels, beads and carved 
ivory ornaments, or fish globes and 
aquaria of tinted or painted glass with 
ornate pedestals enriched with carving 
or chinoiserie, which impart just the 
touch of color and novelty which some¬ 
times is needed to redeem a room from 
the commonplace. 
The lighting fixtures, too—for there 
will be dark winter mornings when 
artificial light is necessary—may be as 
decorative as one chooses, and are 
available in designs to harmonize with 
every period and scheme of furnish¬ 
ing. Thus, to accompany Windsor or 
ladder-back chairs, gate-leg tables and 
rag rugs, excellent reproductions of 
Colonial sconces may be had in brass 
and wrought iron; or for the garden 
room, effective wall brackets are made 
in the form of enameled flower pots 
whence arise clusters of flower shaped 
electric bulbs in various colors. 
Novelty a Necessity 
Of course the effort to achieve novel¬ 
ty must not be carried to the point of 
freakish absurdity, although with such 
a wealth of material at hand it often 
is difficult to practice self-restraint. To 
make the breakfast room different from 
any other, to make it unconventional, 
to make it animated and glowing, and 
yet to keep it well within the bounds 
of artistic propriety and good taste, 
seems a paradoxical injunction. 
However, if art, as we are told, is 
“the reflection of a personality,” there 
is after all but slight danger so long as 
the directing spirit of the endeavor is 
sane and sweet. And the truant joy 
of experimenting with original theories 
of line and color, and of giving free and 
open expression to one’s personal 
preferences without regard to the cut 
and dried conventions of decorative sci¬ 
ence, is richly worth the risk. 
The Care of Leather Furniture 
(Continued from page 42) 
strength and grain of good leather in 
it. It will wear. You can keep it 
dressed up with a damp cloth and at 
the end of five or six years, if it begins 
to show signs of wear, you can send it 
back where you bought it. Or if they’ve 
gone out of business from trying to 
cater to the kind of customers who 
would rather go down to X’s and get 
something not nearly as good for ‘ever 
so much less,’ why you can send it to 
a leather manufacturer to be refinished. 
It will come back looking five years 
younger and ready to withstand once 
more the ravages of Betty’s feet or the 
attempts of Junior to convert it into 
a high class, exclusive sliding pond 
whenever Mademoiselle has her back 
turned. 
“But there isn’t any Hereafter for 
machine buffed leather nor for splits. 
They can’t be refinished satisfactorily. 
So I should say the way to keep your 
leather furniture good, is to buy it good. 
See?” 
“Yes,” said I meekly, “I see.” 
