THE FIREPLACE IN SUMMER

Dominion, Volume 20, Issue 45, 17 November 1926, Page 17

THE FIREPLACE IN SUMMER

What to do with the fireplace when its services are no longer required has always been a rather difficult problem. The empty hearth has a cold and desolate air. It seems to speak of warm and cosy evenings by the ’fireside that ca„ no longer be enjoyed, and the imaginative might even feel sorry for the bare fireplace! A way is needed of transforming the fireplace into a thing of beauty that will add brightness instead of discomfort to the various rooms of the house. The most difficult hearth to treat artistically is the ordinary dining-room type with the small upright bars. With the small modern well-grate that is being used extensively at the present time, there is a way of decorating it in the summer time so that it brings into the house a breath of the great outdoors. The old idea of placing inside the fender a bowl of flowers or a flowering shrub is not at all artistic unless it is particularly well arranged, but the idea of using flowers in the hearth is, in itself, a good idea. The small well grate can be filled with good soil. In it can

be planted primroses, violets, small ferns, or whichever of the smaller flowers or plants are in season. A little nest of actually-growing flowers in the unused hearth has a quaint appearance, and transforms the grate into a little garden.

Again, a bowl of growing flowers — the bowl being entirely hidden by moss, which is kept freshyand green by moistening—is effective, while a decorative gilded basket filled with gaily blooming flowers - invariably adds a picturesque air.