FURNISHING.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4802, 12 August 1876, Page 1 (Supplement)

FURNISHING.

(From the Saturday Review.) It appears probable that a few years hence we may see a strong reaction of taste in favor of extreme simplicity which will influence both dress and furniture. Materials will naturally be more costly and magnificent, but these qualities will no longer be found in mere trimmings. So many people have been bitten with the present madness for decoration—people, for the most part, who have never paused to think what decoration is—that those who have innate good taste, or who have studied ornament on rational grounds, will presently flee in disgust to whitewashed walls and dimity curtains. Such sensitive spirits deserve sympathy. They have been sorely tried. The man cursed with natural or acquired taste walks through the valley of this world as through a place of torture and humiliation, i His best feelings are made scourges wherewithal to torment him. After preaching for years the mission of art in the regeneration of the uncivilised, he finds all his pet theories turned against him. He may love Japanese screens where any screens are required, but he might be roasted alive in a friend’s drawingroom before he could get one for use. The walls are, so to speak, creeping with Japanese screens, but what cares he how Japanese they be if has no ladder by him to fetch one down ? Blue plates are very well adapted to feed from, and may look very well in the china closet. But, hung on wires in formal rows, they become monotonou . When ladies washed up their own china after a “ dish of tea,” as they replaced it carefully in a corner cupboard or on a miniature dresser, it was quite right that such articles of convenience should be as handsome as the porcelain itself. But when ladies no longer tend their own tea-things, it is ridiculous to see sets of cups and saucers ranged on shelves in the drawing-room with a teapot or two in the middle, none of them ever intended for the unhallowed uses of everyday life. Why should slop basins be studded over the room as thick as spittoons in a bar parlor ? They are matter in the wrong place. A pat of butter is none the better for a splendid device on its unctuous surface. Perhaps our lumps of coal will soon be sent up f. the drawing-room carved and gilt for the In .'fling. One longs t 6 see ornament in its proper place. Candlesticks that hold no candles, flower-vases empty of roses, copper coal-scuttles of antique form on the top of cabinets, beer-jugs filled only with dust, such are the contents of modern rooms. Greek tombs, Oriental pagados, and curiosity shops in Holborn are ransacked to furnish our chambers, and while the shelves are covered with old Worcester and the mantelpiece

groans under brazen chargers, our tea is served in Staffordshire stoneware set out on a Birmingham tray. This is turning domestic arc upside clown and inside out. Though handsomely bound books form the best ornaments for the library shelf, we seldom think of bestowing, even on what we read any but the gaudy cloth of the modern publisher. Yet books can be arranged so as to form as harmonious a wainscoting as Indian matting, and are surely a more satisfactory investment than even old oak, while for the purposes of ordinary decoration there is nothing for a moment to be compared with natural flowers. It is in beautifying the things we use that the most lasting satisfaction is to be found, not in buying rows of greybeard jugs or Italian medicine jars. When a young couple set up house nowadays they are obliged at least to pretend that they wish to furnish artistically. If they have lived outside the circle of art-culture and have no notion whether they like Gothic, Queen Anne, or Rococo, they send for all the manuals they see advertised about tables and chairs, houses and housekeeking. They study them most assiduously, and make copious notes. But strange to say, the more they read the further they are from being able to come to any decision as to the color of the drawingroom paper or the pattern of the diningroom curtains. In the multitude of counsellors there is complete confusion, and they wish in their hearts, though they are ashamed to say so, that they might have the good old mahogany with which their fathers and mothers were happy and comfortable. They do not recognise harmony in color when they see it. A child in a blue frock holding an orange in its hand gives them no delight ; a Greek vase of exquisite proportions has for them no grace. In short, neither by nature nor education have they any taste for art, and they expect to acquire it simply by wishing to be in the fashion. But it is no more possible for a person without natural eye to harmonise color properly, or choose furniture of just proportion, than it would be possible for any one without natural ear to compose an opera. However, as fashion has to be studied in dress, why should it not be studied in furniture ? There are plenty of people who talk glibly about high art and ceramic trade-marks, and are only too ready to give advice. Almost every magazine has its articles on the subject. But with a smattering of knowledge the difficulties become greater than ever, and the poor yonng people, so ready to do what is required of them, become completely mystified and discouraged.