LONDON FURNISHINGS GO ANTI-GLOOM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 120, 24 May 1939, Page 14

LONDON FURNISHINGS GO ANTI-GLOOM.

iVeu; Display Shows

Cheerful Colour Trend.

(By ROSE PATTERSON.)

London is not only following Paris, but positively overtaking it in the matter of brightness in the home. All this talk of anti-gas chambers for the past months has made it necessary for manufacturers to fill the public demand for something cheerful at least in between crises. Writers have remarked before on the vogue for light woods and painted furniture in Parie. In London the trend is even stronger, where there is a run on light painted suites, sycamore and blonde walnut. A charming little exhibition at Hnrrode of Knightebridge has lately provided the brightest of antidote? to war jitter*. Here, for example, are one or two bedrooms almost guaranteed to start your day in good spiritrt for you. A bedroom suite of palest blue, hand-painted and decorated with tiny posies, lias a deep powder blue car[K.'t for it* netting and ivory wheepekin rugs. I'pliolstery of comfy tub chair and dressing table stool carries in the material same colours in flower sprigs as are painted on the wardrobe dooif". bed end*, etc. Window curtain* are of ivory iiinon, bed has palest blue linen* and blue watin quilt, and you may see from the picture of this room that *uch surroundings are calculated to make one both cosy and lighthearted.

White Birch. Another such bedroom is of white birch in its furnishings, with delicate green carpet and green and primroee bed, tub chairs in quilted cuberline of pale green with flower spray pattern*, a chair-lounge with cream eheepskin cover and palest green ninon curtains. Those ninon curtains in pale pastels are very dainty and cool for eummer weather.

Brightness goes on into the dining room with a carved blonde walnut suite, the chairs covered in washable hide, or with one of the modern washable-top painted ■ unites. invariably in pale colours, however.

For the garden there are painted wroug-ht-iron chairs in red and white, their backs being made of the spreadout stalk* and petal* of red and white flowers. Or the chair* may be in blue or green and white, with leather cushions in the name bright shades and coloured glaes-topped tables. Blonde walnut or sycamore are again frequently used in the lounge, or what ie called modern blonde mahogany.

These blonde woods, it has been found, can easily be harmonised with either modern or period backgrounds and period rooms are brought up-to-date everywhere so far as their comfort w»concerned. Jiist as fashion has gone back to panniers and crinolines, ribbons and. laces, so the home, where it seeks a change from ultra-modernity, looks away from the explosive future to the more peaceful past and this retrospection, generally means "period ,, in some form. So if you have a cream and white morning room or lounge you mav be attracted to one of the fashionable period "Reproduction" dining rooms.

Ladder Back Chairs. You can have a reproduction oak dresser, seventeenth century model, ringmarks and scratches giving ,i genuine antique appearance to it. a reproduction oak gate-leg table and rush-seated lad-der-back chairs with chintz cushions in keeping. A standard lamp in natural iron with a shade imprinted with old maps, and a bell stand in wrought iron with a brase bell. Wing chairs and settees and corner cupboards give finish to euch rooms, and an excellent touch I saw was a Gothic stool in oak, with uneven lines and cross bar.

If you have a preference for period bedrooms, there is a lovely old reproduction walnut and this , looks rich with pale blue linen on the bed and cut glass on the dressing table.

Among the new wood* is African Okoumi, which can be used well with sycamore. Latest modern comfort in deep and springy chairs and settees goes with this, but design is fairl v severe and patterning of tapestry very neat. An African Okoumi lounge looke well with writing table and display cabinet in that wood, stools and occasional tables in sycamore, massive pewter silvered mirror and coffee table of silvered wrought iron with glass shelves.— ( -3J .*i,.N .A. )