HOUSE DECORATION

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 36, 13 February 1933, Page 11

HOUSE DECORATION

FASHIONS IN NEW YORK

In New York, the place where tve would expect ultra-modern decoration, th© prevailing mode is for French period furniture. This is the news brought back by Miss Dodie Smith, the wellknown author of "Autumn Crocus" and "Service," who has for some years been connected with, a London furnishing house (states a writer in the "Daily Mail").

Old-fashioned billowing sieevcs are übiquitous in Fifth Avenue, she says, and French furniture ia the rule in. its apartments. The decor is perfectly done, whether the period is genuine or reproduction. Walls arc panelled and painted, satinwood gleams with polish, tapestries occupy just sufficient space and no more.

"I saw no sign of the black and steel table lamp with its shade of heavy paper which lights the modern flat in London," ohe said. "Instead, there were shades of silk stretched on wire frames, shading lights which had for their stand a vase or bowl of very formal shape, the most usual being similar to a Grecian urn.

"This formal note has spread to the dinner table. .tilaborati. lace cloths have superseded the simpler dinner mats. And the dinner party takes place in all the solemnity uj. candle-light." DECORATIVE BLINDS. But among all this that is old Miss Smith found one or two good ideas which might well be Copied in the modern house or flat. One is the decorative uso of Venetian blijds! Not the heavy, dark green blinds which most of us can remember. The new kind have .narrower slats of wood, are lighter in every way, and are usually painted white. Little curtains of net are draped in front of them, probably in some colour to match the decoration of the room. The whole effect is dainty and decorative in. the extreme, and can be varied by .using different colours and by adapting the blinds so that the slats are half open or nearly closed. The cording which connects these slats has many decorative possibilities.