York 
/IN entire installation of 
Riddle Fitments makes a most 
effective lighting scheme, but 
even a single Riddle piece is a 
pleasing addition to any room. 
The Riddle Fitment Booklet 
will interest you with its plates in 
full color visualizing the rich Esto- 
fado Decoration. Nearly fifty 
pieces, wall and ceiling fitments, 
lamps, torcheres, luminors, shades, 
novelties, are illustrated, and our 
free Planning Service is described. 
Copy sent on request. 
The Edward N. Riddle Company 
243 Riddle Building, Toledo, Ohio 
Torcheres illustrated. No. 639, $100 Pair 
Comporte illustrated , No. 7208, $10 
V/ \ / W V/A / W \ r\J V / V/A / VM7'AVwA M /A7AV-W-W W 
The Three L ouis In New 
(Continued from page 61) 
said to have begun with the birth of 
the French national character—the 
result of a happy fusion of Celtic and 
Romano elements. 
Do we want the three old Louis in 
the American home? What will they 
do—what can't they do to the common, 
every day American room? Is the 
room to be an American room as we are 
beginning to sense what that nomen¬ 
clature, American room means? 
The simple furniture, fashioned by 
cur forefathers on native soil from 
goodly oak, maple, elm and pine trees 
in plantations or virgin forests, breathes 
of a simple life where industry alone 
conquered the wolf of poverty, and 
the luxury of courts was a dream as un¬ 
attainable as a fairy tale. The American 
room under the shadow of the Pilgrim 
Fathers will frown at any Louis how¬ 
ever thick his red, white and blue 
disguise, but the American room of a 
later period that contains furniture that 
would not have outraged the Father 
of his Country, might open a door for 
a tiptoeing Frenchman. Of course the 
Louis must be in a chastened mood and 
not bring too many convexities and 
undulations suggesting the frivolous and 
voluptuous. Louis Seize pieces in the 
reserved Greek style are apt to pass 
muster and fraternize quite cheerfully 
with 18th Century London purchases 
and the achievements of Colonial cab¬ 
inet-makers who kept longing eyes on 
foreign elegance. We all know that 
flippancy, “good Americans go to Paris 
when they die”, and we are well aware 
that a tide of sublunary visitors will 
bring back always a little of Paris to 
America. 
For the average gracious New York 
home whose furnishings charm the eye 
and speak of harmony no artist in 
creating interiors would stop the intru¬ 
sion of certain pieces of French furni¬ 
ture. 
Louis the Grand, tottering under the 
shadow of Le Brun, swathed in Gobe¬ 
lins and sneering at any room that can¬ 
not rival the proportions of a famed 
Versailles, Saint Germain and Marly, 
had better choose the right house in the 
right street. 
Louis the Well Beloved will be loved 
always, for as Michelet has said, the 
furniture of his reign was a return to a 
sense of life and humanity. Who can 
resist the wooing of a delicious cushiony 
bergere holding out arms as it were to 
the pleasant amenities? In any room it 
enters it rests peacefully like some smil¬ 
ing old great lady sure of her past 
and sure of her future. Even the most 
rigid atmosphere cannot put her out of 
countenance, for the stiffer the chairs 
about her the more eloquent is her 
allure. 
Collectors of the exquisite and disci¬ 
ples of the aesthetic have known for a 
long time—and the army of decorators 
is following them—that the most beau¬ 
tiful rooms—the rooms that invite and 
ask one to linger, are made up of pieces 
of old furniture from many countries. 
In the little salon de compagnie of a 
great hotel d’Eureaux, or a hermitage 
like Brimborian, English furniture 
came to bow to the French. In Paris 
through the wave of Anglomania in 
the glittering years of Marie Antoinette 
the noblesse journeyed to London for 
pieces by the Adam Brothers, Heppel- 
white and Sheraton. The furniture 
catalogues of these overlords of taste 
show the return of the Channel com¬ 
pliment with many English designs— 
slightly French, pointing to the effect 
of French patronage. There is a sort 
of cousinship between the furniture 
of England and France, and even Italy, 
toward the end of the 18th Century. 
The French furniture of this period 
is distinctly the web and woof, the 
heart and soul of France, but the 
English sometimes may have caught 
a French air, and the Italian, especially 
in walnut pieces, an English or French 
feeling. Those chaises longues, duch¬ 
esses and veilleuses could have never 
come to life anywhere but in the land 
of a Pompadour where even a lady's 
panniers were an artistic triumph. 
I remember Francis Harper, a famous 
London decorator, saying once, ‘‘Do 
not be afraid of French things in your 
schemes of decoration. They bring a 
graceful femininity into a room that an 
all-English grouping has made decided¬ 
ly masculine.” This, of course, does 
not mean that Riesener should stand 
beside Chippendale. There must be 
bridges or quietudes of less distinctive 
and unobtrusive pieces between them. 
In many a well-known English 
house there are morning rooms and 
boudoirs made delightful by marriages 
of English painted furniture and French 
furniture. This is true also of the 
houses of the cosmopolitan New 
Yorker. Most of us want some en¬ 
dearing French tilings about us and 
the wisest of us are willing to smile 
at the absurdly narrow boundary be¬ 
tween good and bad taste. 
After all, what is good taste in fur¬ 
nishing but a knowledge of form and 
color and an imaginative quality that 
impels us to reach out eager hands to 
the never-quite-captured romance of 
these, our aged wooden servants? 
We Americans do not want French 
period rooms, for they flowered best 
in their periods. Museums can dig 
them out of tumble-down dusty places 
and Croesus with a magic wand of 
gold may command them to appear in 
Gotham. The man of parts—parts 
which include a knowledge of old 
furniture, a love of home and an inti¬ 
mate knowledge of each of his posses¬ 
sions, inherited or acquired—will beware 
how the Louis creep into his domicile. 
He is sure to be a trifle afraid of them, 
but some little concrete expression of 
their taste will conquer him in the 
end. 
A writing chair of almost rhythmic 
lines brings back the memory of Julie 
Lespinasse pouring out her classics of 
passion to de Guilbert. . .A tulip wood 
table inlaid with begarlanded doves 
(or are they phoenixes?) labeled in a 
faded writing “Cirey,” whispers of 
Voltaire and Mme. du Chatelet. 
Over that delicate Greek-looking chif- 
fonniere some fair creature may have 
leaned to gaze from a window as the 
tumbrils passed. On its grey marble 
top where the alabaster vase holds 
opening roses her tears may have fallen 
. . .Who knows? 
