DECORATIVE TASTE.

Globe, Volume XXI, Issue 1749, 27 September 1879, Page 4

DECORATIVE TASTE.

Anyone who has lived half a century must observe how fast the taste for decorative art is developing in town and country. Time was when the parlour, or 11 best room,” especially in the rural districts, was a thing to be dreaded and shunned; its stiff, angular furniture, its bare walls, its highest mantelpieces, garnished with a pair of candlesticks and a tray-and-sr.uffers, held out no invitation to intimate acquaintance. It was not dirty or dingy, for it was cared for with reverent particularity ; hut it was cold, bald, dim, unventilated, and forbidding. It was seldom used, and therefore did not take kindly to use; it was kept for exhibition, yet offered nothing pleasant to the eye or suggestive to the mind, In accordance with its nature, it died “hard.” It presented a stern front to the demands of comfort and the gentle advances of taste. Possibly it still lingers in some fastness of the mountain or in the wilderness—something like it in spirit, if not in detail, is yet to be seen in city boarding-houses—but, for the most part, it is a thing of the past. Now, the parlour is the pleasantest room in the house. The furniture is divtree in form and use, and skilfully arranged to minister to comfort and convenience. Pictures, chromes, engravings, and {holographs adorn the walls; here and there a bracket holds up a statuette or a vase of flowers to view. In such a room entertainment is easy ; things to talk about, without degenerating into gossip, are always at hand ; thought flows freely, and conversation is not quite a “ lost art.” Nor has the parlour alono undergone this pleasant change. The library, the dining-room, the bed-rooms, even the kitchen, have all felt the touch of taste, and been brightened and beautified thereby. Certainly this cbance may come under the head of that “ progress ” about which we are little apt to boast.