82 
House & Garde 1 
iil 1 
What We Mean by 
“Good” Furniture 
ATHAWAY’S is a store devoted 
exclusively to good Furniture. It 
the kind of Furniture suited to 
good homes, to rooms of the livable sort. 
It is the kind of Furniture that is best 
liked by those whose surroundings 
mean much to them, whose preferences 
are definite and discerning. 
Hathaway Furniture comprises every 
desirable style, each suite and piece a 
chosen example ol the best work ol 
leading designers and craftsmen, past 
and present. 
Yet its cost is low, often no more than 
that of ordinary Furniture, always less 
than you would expect for Furniture of 
such excellence. 
+ + 
VCe will be glad to send you without charge 
a copy of our new book on Hathaway Col- 
onial Furniture. Though it confines itself 
to Early American styles, it suggests the 
character of Hathaway Furniture as a 
whole. VFrite for it. 
Department C-l 
WA'HATHAW^T 
• COMPANY • 
62 “WEST 4ATH STREET 
NEW 
YORK 
i ~-:— • - 
Contrasting with Tudor ceilings is this 
delicate handling oj plaster in the New 
York home oj the late H. P. Davison, 
Walker & Gillette, architects 
The Roof of the Room 
(Continued j 
mained in any palace over which the 
taste of this effete royal lover pre¬ 
vailed. 
Fortunately for the beauty of these 
French periods of architecture and dec¬ 
oration, the taste of Louis Seize was 
somewhat more subtle and fanciful. 
A finer type of ornamentation was em¬ 
ployed during his elegant reign and a 
more playful spirit entered into the 
paintings and frescoes. 
Of course, simplicity never reigns 
very long in lands where there is a 
combination of kings and slaves, and 
power makes for elaboration in a De¬ 
mocracy as well as in a Monarchy. It 
was so in the time of Francis the First 
with those gorgeous decorated gold 
and blue and red ceilings like illumin¬ 
ated manuscripts. It was so in the 
time of Henri Quatre, and it is so to¬ 
day in some of the most gorgeous 
homes in America where we have 
copied royal beauty, and where we live 
like royal beauties. Perhaps no ceil¬ 
ings have been more widely copied in 
the elaborate American house than 
these geometrical surfaces with their 
elaboration of gold and colors. 
Italy and Spain moved through 
ceiling “periods” similar to those in 
France and England, the Renaissance 
■om page 61) 
in Italy over-topping all others in its 
expression of magnificence and its col¬ 
ossal expense. To decorate a ceiling 
in Rome or in Florence became a life¬ 
time occupation of serious artists and 
the greatest among them became work¬ 
ers in plaster and mural decorators for 
families like the de Medicis. 
It seems inevitable that a civiliza¬ 
tion which included all the people in 
its scheme of progress and well being 
should unquestionably, at the begin¬ 
ning at least, evoke a simpler scale of 
living. Palaces can only be for the 
favored, or perhaps the unfortunate 
few. Magnificent dwellings hypothe- 
tate poorly paid workers. And people 
can only really enjoy luxury when 
workers supply it. 
The spell of the sky in the ceiling 
vanished with the over-ornamentation 
of the Middle Ages as architectural 
magnificence vanished in France with 
the Revolution. In America we began 
much too humbly around Plymouth 
Rock to pray up to vaulted ceilings or 
dine under golden timbers or rest at 
night under mighty canopies of mille- 
fleurs. The elaborate ceiling in Amer¬ 
ica remains exotic, must remain so, 
however desirable at times. 
Back in those earliest exciting, Colo- 
In one room of the Veering house the 
ceiling is finished in Adam panels. Paul 
Chalfiin & H. B. Hoffman, architects 
Carved beams rich 
in color form the 
ceiling in one of 
the rooms of the 
Deering house at 
Miami, Florida 
