ALL-BRITISH SHOPPING.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1125, 12 May 1911, Page 9

ALL-BRITISH SHOPPING.

A MENPES HOUSE. We arc just concluding the mueh-talkcd-of All-Wntish Shopping Week (says an English writer). The shops have been brilliant with bunting, and really the windows have made a brave show ot what the Mother Country, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales can turn out in the way o"' manufactures generally. I think almost pride of'place should be given to the chintzes and cretonnes, the designs and colourings being to beautiful. Printing on cotton has risen to a- very high plane, for the colouring is so wonderful you would think only hand block printing would have been ctjual to the demands put upon the printing of the furniture coverings displayed on nil sides. There is, however, a note in house decoration that I do not like to see becoming so general. Black carpets and black chintz with a florid design upon it are only fit for very largo rooms, and are merely a freak in decoration at that. Tho black backgrounds give deep shadows in our melancholy climate. A black carpel, with a border of green laurel leaves, such as I saw at Story's yesterday, is only admissible with a bright green wall or old rose, hung with quantities of old engravings in black frames. I remember how beautifully Mrs. Campbell Praed used to decorate her rooms with her collection of old engravings framed in white, as it happened, on old rose walls. If you want black and white things on your walls, then have an old roso background. The dull parchment tints of the paper on which the etchings or mezzotints or wood engravings are printed harmonise beautifully with old roso wall papers. If, on the other hand, you like to hang in colour, a grey or -a biscuit background suits water colour and oils alike, 'i'hev give values to the green, make purples) and do not clash with the flesh tones of your pictures. Mr. Mortimer Menpes, an artist of whom Australia may well Ik proud, always had some relation between his pictures and their backgrounds. He it was, in conjunction with Whistler, who brought in tho cult of lemon-yellow and the touches of black that were fashionable in tho nineties. Mrs. Campbell Praed had a house decorated by Mr. Menpes some years ago, which was much thought of, and which I always remember as being in such excellent taste. The drawingroom was in lemon-yellow, with white paint and a great deal of blue and white, china. Her dining-room is always worth thinking of when people are up country, and have not. many appliances for decoration. It was suitably done with a touch of savagery about it. The walls were painted in sealing wax red, and, lowdown, like a dado, Mrs. Praed had hung great, pieces of Tapp.n, the blactc and brown and white of this stuff being delightful against the full red wall/ Above this, like a chexau." de frise, rose tall native spears of all' kinds, and other native weapons, making a most effective decoration, the brown of the weapons softening the brilliancy of the sealing waxred. The chairs were upholstered in crimson Morocco, and on her table I remember she used to put flowers m barbaric brass bowls. I brought her one myself of pierced metal on my return from British. North Borneo.