MADE OF BEADS

Evening Post, Volume CXIII, Issue 1, 2 January 1932, Page 6

MADE OF BEADS

DECORATIVE TABLE MATS

The table mat only yields slowly to the big cloth, and in the meantime efforts are mads to give the archipelago of the dinner- table some charm of form or colour (states a writer in the "Daily Telegraph"). Tho small lace mat is the obvious way of dealing with the underlying cork, but it is tiresome and very easily look? less fresh than is advisable. Sometimes the cork mat is enamelled .in a bright colour. This lasts for some time, but it still marks and has a rather harsh, bare appearance. Aleo it provides a certain feeling •of discomfort, as though the plate-owner were trying-all the time t6 keep on dry. land. . ■

Some pretty mats for unclothed tables are made of large, beads.- These began by being white, and to the white was added some rather crude colouring which recalled tho Victorian conservatory- Gradually the patterns improved, and some charming colourings can now be- seen, such as appear in some of the best cross-stitch or in the prettier old patterns of china. This colouring gave rise to the idea that the mats should be linked up with the plates.

Dinner plates at the moment are inclined towards great severity of colouring. Two or three rims of colour can, therefore, be picked up in the mat, but in the form perhaps of a conventional flower to which the beads give a filletliko convention. Where the plate itself is flowered the colouring may be carried out simply on the mat in lines or squares. In any case, the pattern must not attempt ■to match, as that would overdo the effect, but must approximate the plate. Where monograms are used, for instance, there can be a spot of colour in the middle of the bead mat, which merely carries out the same colouring.