March, 1923 
73 
BRINGING THE COUNTRY TO TOWN 
Make One Interior In The City House Or Apartment Delightfully 
Informal And Gay And Let It Be Called The Morning Room 
DIANE TATE AND MARIAN HALL 
T HE Morning Room! Surely a 
room never had a more delightful 
name. At once you think of an in¬ 
formal, intimate sort of room in a country 
house, one with the sun pouring in through 
wide windows, many bowls of flowers, pots 
of growing plants, a low comfortable sofa, 
usually covered in gay chintz, convenient 
little tables, many, many books, and over 
all an air of intimacy and charm. 
Effective as your living 
room may be, it probably 
has to be shared with a good 
many people and there is 
never a great feeling of pri¬ 
vacy in it. For this reason, 
when you are planning your 
house or doing it over, 
whether it be in the city or 
country, pick out a room 
that is not very large and 
one that will have the morn¬ 
ing sun streaming in, and 
make it into a delightful 
morning room. There is no 
other room that has such a 
pleasant combination of 
uses. First of all, you start 
your day by breakfasting in 
it, which is a pleasant mid¬ 
dle course between break¬ 
fasting in bed and break¬ 
fasting in the dining room. It 
is a quiet place to write or 
read without being inter¬ 
rupted and a delightful 
place to have tea when you 
are tired and want to be 
alone. 
We have stolen the idea 
of the morning room from 
the English who know so 
well how to live comfortably 
and easily. Practically 
every English house con¬ 
tains a room of this kind, 
an interior quite different 
in feeling from the dignified 
living room; one in which 
there is a certain informality and evidence 
of the owners tastes and interests, a room 
with a lightness of touch in its decoration, 
a sense of gaiety. 
The room we have photographed on 
the opposite page is a good illustration of 
this for it is decidedly English in feeling 
in spite of a few Italian chairs, the Ameri¬ 
can hook rug and needlework cushion. A 
morning room to be really successful must be 
intimate, very formal and rather gay. For 
this reason when you go about furnishing it, 
you can mix the nationalities of your 
things if you wish, especially if they were 
made about the same time and have the 
same sort of feeling. 
This room is in a New York apartment 
on a corner. It is fortunate in having a 
bay window, for the sun streams in all 
day. Because of this it makes a delightful 
spot to breakfast in, so we used a quaint 
old-fashioned table with a barrel chair, low 
and chintz covered, next to it where one 
can sit comfortablv and read one's morn¬ 
ing paper and mail. 
The walls of 
chairs are in 
the little Victorian room, above are painted cool green. The 
green brocade and the amusing chandelier is of green and 
white Bristol glass 
The walls here are a yellow pink, the 
color the villagers in Sussex paint the out¬ 
side of their houses. It makes a flattering 
background for any wood and harmonizes 
with almost any color you could choose for 
curtains and furniture. The curtains in this 
room are peculiarly effective and a delight¬ 
ful contrast to the softly colored walls. They 
are a deep greenish-blue, trimmed with box 
pleating one and one-half inches wide, the 
pleating faced with pink the color of the 
walls. The overstuffed chair by the fire¬ 
place is covered in the same material as the 
curtains and to introduce a contrasting 
fabric, the sofa was done in a glazed chintz 
with a neutral color background and a 
design of flowers in yellow, salmon pink, 
blue and mauve. The hook rug tones in with 
all of this as it has flowers of the same 
colors a little different in tone. 
Lamps and shades are such an impor¬ 
tant part of a room that they should be 
studied quite as carefully as the hangings 
or upholstery. Because there was so much 
color in this room we thought cool, white 
alabaster lamps would be 
effective and in charming 
contrast to the colorful walls 
and curtains. The tone 
chosen for the lamp shades 
was salmon pink. Those on 
a pair of lamps on the 
Queen Anne tables were 
made of gauze, trimmed 
with tiny ruffles. A larger 
shade on the lamp on the 
book table is of pleated 
linen the same tone. The 
effect of a room is more 
restful and harmonious if 
the lights are all one color. 
Practically all the furni¬ 
ture in this room is walnut. 
A charming contrasting note 
of color is provided by the 
graceful secretary which is 
painted a soft greenish blue. 
One piece of furniture of 
this kind rather keys up a 
room, gives it snap and in¬ 
dividuality and is especially 
effective in an informal type 
of interior. 
The quaint barrel chair 
provides another interesting 
note for it is covered in an 
old chintz, different in de¬ 
sign from the one used on 
the sofa. The background 
is rather a dead, plum color 
with the pattern in lovely 
soft and faded tones that in 
no way conflict with the 
design of the other chintz. 
This bit of old stuff helps enormously in 
giving the room distinction and is especially 
effective against the soft, gun metal colored 
carpet. 
Needless to say you must have a fire¬ 
place if possible in a morning room for a 
blazing fire adds immeasurably to the in¬ 
timacy of the tea hour and it is difficult 
to make any room really cheerful and com¬ 
fortable without one. Finally, flowers, al¬ 
most more than anything else, go far to¬ 
wards softening and giving a room of this 
kind charm. To us they seem almost in¬ 
dispensable. 
(Continued on page 96) 
