Colour, Furnishings Make Difference

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30715, 2 April 1965, Page 2

Colour, Furnishings Make Difference

What makes one house interesting and another dull? It is the colour scheme and the furnishings. It is up to the housewife to make her home interesting with imaginative decoration, flower arrangements, table settings, and colourful meals.

An expert in the field of home decoration and entertaining, Miss Valerie Scott, of Wellington, will conduct a “hostess course” in the Farmers’ furnishing department next week to show women how to decorate their homes and give them ideas on more colourful and imaginative entertaining. “To understand why a home is attractive and to understand how you can make your own place interesting, satisfying, and a source of personal pride, you must have a knowledge of design and colour,” said Miss Scott in Christchurch yesterday. Relationships

Miss Scott will demonstrate how to relate colour in the home with combinations of wallpaper, paint, flooring, curtains and upholstery with colour charts and sample lengths of suggested fabrics. She will also show slides of rooms decorated from these charts and- samples. “When you are considering colours for decorating you need to start with something that looks attractive to you something you like,” said Miss Scott. “It may be a picture in a magazine or an asparagus stalk.”

One of Miss Scott’s examples of colour for interior decoration is based on the colours of an asparagus stalk sprite green, light larch green, white, damson, tuscan red, and pale amethyst. Miss Scott will also ,use dis-

plays to show how to use colour and themes in table settings for children’s parties, formal dinners, morning coffee parties, wine and cheese evenings, and light meals. “You don't need elaborate things for decorative table settings, it just needs imagination in using what you have,” said Miss Scott. Recipes of the menus, cakes and biscuits used in the displays, and illustrated instructions of different ways of folding table napkins will be given to women attending the courses which will be held each afternoon next week. Miss Scott will be assisted by Miss Judith Kelsey, of Wellington.

TV Series

Miss Scott has had much experience in home decorating. She has conducted a series of television programmes entitled “House or Home,” and her film strip, Colour and Interior Decorating,” is widely used in secondary schools both in New Zealand and Australia. Miss Scott has attended art school in New Zealand and studied industrial exhibition and display design, and typography at the Central School of Arts. London. She is an approved adult education tutor for the Regional Council of Adult Education Victoria University, Wellington, and has conducted classes in colour and interior decorating and advanced classes in decorative design.