WALL TREATMENTS.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 19852, 13 February 1930, Page 4

WALL TREATMENTS.

SILVER THE VOGUE. One of the most successful wall treatments intoduced by modernist decorators is to be 4>een in the use of silver. Wall." and ceilings may be treated in silver leal, silver uronze, or aluminium paint, and if the surface is then given a coat of lacquer it will have a richer tone, resembling pale gold. Silver is a rattier cold colour, but none the leas it is fashionable. Recently several interiors have been decorated in silver and various shades ot purple, silver and jade green, silver and coral red, silver and black. If the silver clement is introduced in the decorative details or in the upholstery, instead of covering the extensive surfaces of ceiling and walls, an impression of greater vitality is obtainable. The effect it is possible to obtain in interior decorations by means of different tones of silver harmonised with other colours have not, as yet, been comprehensively developed, or even nearly so, for silver in decoration could be used with much more subtlety and a corresponding increase of charm. —"Town and Country Homes."

REMOVING STAINS. PATCHES ON CHIMNEY BREAST. It often happens that a chimney breast shows unsightly stains and these can ir.variably be traced to one or more of three causes, namely: rising damp, soaking damp from above, and oil stains.

There should never be rising damp if the builder has included that absolute essential, the damp-proof course. Driving rain will penetrate the thin brickwork of a stack, and if the bricus are unusually porous, the damp wi'll be absorbed by the breast itself and show up. A damp-proof course above the roof helps considerably to mitigate this, but good bricks should be used ana at least nine inches of brickwork should he built round the flues.

The oil stains are invariably the result of grease in the soot, and every flue should be "pargetitea" with a grease-resisting substance.

LINES AND BREAKS. INTERESTING DECORATIONS. The lining fitch is one of the handiest and most accommodating of the painter's weapons, and is capable of much wider uses than it is generally put to nowadays. It is possible to work out quite interesting schemes by means of lines alone; narrow lines arc a handy means of introducing a telling colour note, and an arrangement of narrow lines and broader bands can be very interesting in the hands of a clever decorator.

Lines alone, however, have obvious limitations, and their decorative qualities are enormously increased by the use of simple decorative ornaments in the form of corners and breaks. The corner is the more useful form of relief to the plain line, and perhaps for that reason the Use now and again of the break or stop only, without a decorative corner, can be very attractive. Where the lines are used for a veiling the simplest stop serves the purpose of breaking the monotonv of the 1 plain line, and has the added virtue that a quick pencil hand can Pounce it and pencil it in with very little expenditure of time.