66 
House & Garden 
texctf 1 
S'U «au»r 
The Secret of Beautiful Floors 
is to put them in perfect condition — and then 
keep them that way. Doorways, stair-treads 
and other parts receiving hard usage should be 
polished frequently. This requires no great 
amount of time or effort if the proper polish is 
used. 
Johnson’s Prepared Wax Paste is the proper 
finish and polish for all floors — wood, tile, mar¬ 
ble and linoleum. 
Johnson’s Prepared Wax does not show scratches 
or heel-prints — and floors polished with it can 
easily be kept in perfect condition. Worn spots 
can be re-waxed without going over entire floor. 
FREE—This Book on 
Home Beautifying 
T HIS book contains practical suggestions on how to 
make your home artistic, cheery and inviting— 
explains how you can easily and economically refinish 
and keep furniture, woodwork and floors in perfect 
condition. Tells just what materials to use and how to 
apply them. 
This book gives full directions on the care of floors— 
tells how you can easily make and keep them beautiful 
with 
JOHNSON’S 
Paste 'Liquid -Powdered 
PREPARED WAX 
This book is the work of experts—illustrated in color. 
It contains complete instructions for finishing all wood 
—hard or soft—old or new. Tells how inexpensive, 
soft wood may be finished so it is as beautiful and 
artistic as hardwood. Includes color card—gives cover¬ 
ing capacities, etc. 
We will gladly send this book free and postpaid for the 
name of your best dealer in paints. And for 10c we 
will also send you a can of Johnson’s Prepared Wax, the 
dustproof polish for floors, woodwork, furniture, etc. 
S. C. JOHNSON & SON 
“The Wood Finishing Authorities” 
Dept. HG1 Racine, Wisconsin 
Canadian Factory: Brantford 
I 
I 
I 
I 
S. C. JOHNSON & SON, Dept. HG1, Racine, Wis. 
Please send me, free and postpaid, your Instruction Book on Home Beauti¬ 
fying and Wood Finishing. 
Name . 
Address . 
City and State. 
Paint Dealer’s Name . 
If you wish a sample can of Johnson's Prepared Wax, enclose 10c. 
Cupboards of Olden Times 
(Continued from page 64) 
board was, in reality, a sort of sideboard 
with a superstructure of recesses resting 
on a substructure closed in with two 
square doors. Examples of these court 
cupboards are illustrated here. 
Then came what were known as livery 
cupboards, not, as one might imagine 
from the name, cupboards in which to 
hang up livery. Instead we are told by 
Spencer’s “Account of the State of Ire¬ 
land,” “What livery is were by common 
use in England know well enough, name¬ 
ly, that it is an allowance of horse-meat, 
as they commonly use the word stabling, 
as to keep horses at livery; the which 
word I guess is derived from livering or 
delivering forth this nightly food; so in 
great houses the livery is said to be 
served up for all night—that is, their 
evening allowance for drink.” Sometimes 
very small livery cupboards (of a size 
that would stand on a sideboard or a 
cabinet) were placed in the sleeping 
chamber. In the Abbey of St. Albans, 
England, is to be found a livery cup¬ 
board for holding loaves of bread doled 
out in ancient charity. 
The 18th Century has been called the 
“Golden Age of Cupboards” and so it 
was. Corner cupboards do not seem to 
have been devised until Queen Anne’s 
reign, nor glass doors to have come in 
until the latter part of the 18th Century. 
The cupboard follows, of course, the 
materials used in all furniture from 
period to period, oak, walnut, mahog¬ 
any and other woods. As with cabinets, 
cupboards of the close of the 16th Cen¬ 
tury were elaborately inlaid with colored 
woods, marbles, agate, lapis lazuli, ivory, 
metal and tortoise-shell. The elegance 
acquired by the 16th Century cupboards 
met with deterioration in the 17th, when 
cupboards became, for the most part, 
exceedingly clumsy affairs. 
The first quarter of the 18th Century 
found built-in cupboards greatly in 
vogue. In America the built-in cup¬ 
board was likewise popular. Here, too, 
were to be found many Dutch cupboards 
brought over by the Hollanders in the 
New Amsterdam period. Maple, elm, 
poplar, pine, walnut, cherry and red ce¬ 
dar were the woods most used in early 
American cupboards. Oak, and later 
mahogany, were, of course, also em¬ 
ployed. For inlaying various woods such 
as tulip, yew and maple were used. Be¬ 
fore the year 1700 I suppose Boston 
boasted of at least thirty cabinetmakers 
while every town probably had its furni¬ 
ture maker and so American cupboards 
received ample attention in the Colonial 
period. America has, in consequence, 
proved a somewhat happy hunting- 
ground for the cupboard collector, who 
well knows (having a house in which to 
put them) that the joy of acquiring cup¬ 
boards is only to be equaled by the pas¬ 
time of filling them when once they are 
acquired, the one deserving a “curtsey,” 
the other a “bow”! 
Decorating Our Four Walls 
(Continued from page 48) 
rockets. It is told of Berenson, the 
famous art critic, that he agreed to have 
his villa in Italy Futuristically dec¬ 
orated and when he came home and 
saw it he merely exclaimed, “My God 1” 
and had the whole thing canvassed over. 
Modified Futurism, however, made some 
good decoration in London drawing 
rooms, in that the color was amusing— 
and the rest didn’t matter. 
It still remained to find something 
that satisfied the Anglo-Saxon as well 
as Latin tendency. The problem has 
been solved in a rather interesting 
fashion. 
In the house of Mrs. H. O. Wittpenn 
at Jersey City, the walls of the dining 
room have been painted in low tones 
with studies of houses that have be¬ 
longed to the family in the past. In 
the home of her sister-in-law, Mrs. 
Robert Stevens at Bernardsville, N. J., 
the walls of one of the bedrooms are 
covered with views of a former gar¬ 
den made by Mrs. Stevens on another 
estate and now copied on her Bernards¬ 
ville place. 
The low tones of these paintings make 
them entirely unobtrusive and the whole 
effect is that of pleasant coloring at 
which you have to look twice in order to 
make out the design, and against which 
dark furniture stands out in relief. These 
same low tones also allow for plenty of 
color elsewhere, whether in the form of 
flowers, hangings, rugs or pictures. 
This is really one of the most satisfy¬ 
ing of wall decorations. The coloring 
can be adapted to individual taste, and 
the houses and garden painted can be 
conventionalized sufficiently to be rest¬ 
ful. There is a sense of permanence in 
the subject itself, which is quite pleasing. 
It is, as it were, a summary of the house 
and garden and the part they played in 
family history, which can never fail to 
be of interest to the owner. On the 
whole, it solves the problem of color and 
design and of interest respectively. It is 
a picture without too markedly com¬ 
manding the eye to the exclusion of any 
general decorative scheme. It is a vehi¬ 
cle for color which has none of the aim¬ 
lessness of the plain wall. In a sense it 
most resembles the Egyptian mural 
paintings. 
For homes, the Egyptians substituted 
pictures of daily life, when daily life con¬ 
sisted of well-marked routine that every¬ 
one could understand. To paint persons 
on one’s wall today would be to compel 
too much choice of the insignificant. To 
paint places, places rich with the remem¬ 
brance of having been inhabited by you, 
puts the matter on a much broader basis 
and, besides being artistically pleasing, 
has all the interest of a story with an 
absorbing plot, which you can take up 
at almost any point and recapture its 
first fine flavor. 
