LOOKING-GLASS ROOM

Evening Star, Issue 22106, 13 August 1935, Page 2

LOOKING-GLASS ROOM

NOVELTY IN PARIS Spring iu rainbow pastels is making an opalescent mirror of the curving Seine, and weddings are being arranged at the churches of St. Honore d’Eylau and the Madeleine. Like the Alice of Lewis Carrol, the modern French bride is bewitched by the lure of the lookingglass, and is surrounding herself with sets of mirrored dressing tables, chests of drawers, wardrobes, and such monumental fireplaces made of lookingglasses that it makes a mocking, masquerading circus of the boudoir. The bridal interest in furniture of the Louis and Napoleons is aroused only in so far as the modern designer has adapted its lines in contemporary pieces. Some of them are used in rooms which might be a section of the Crystal Palace or a music hall of the ’eighties. ’The house of glass began as a serious science, a step towards perpetuating health and life, and. we assume, is a fact of the future. But these mirrored rooms, where every piece of furniture and bit of bric-a-brac is prismatic, seem to be fashion’s pagan parody. In Paris the glassy room is so smart that the smart women are restless until they have one such room in their house. In such a retreat from which there is no retreat there can be very little repose. The mifrored room reminds one of oneself from every angle and corner, intrudes the physical across all other reflection; yet it is cold, impersonal, and' as hard and unsympathetic as the Arctic Circle. Colour has blanched before these and other ideas of the modern French decorator, and. reduced it to the pale cereal shades, many tones of cream and parchment, even, ice-white. Effects are obtanied by the multiple use of glass, hidden lighting and light and shade, rather than contrast. In one of the furnishing studios, busy now with furniture for brides of this season, a boudoir is being composed to have walls hung with rough Shantung silk in its colourless tint, and the dressing table entirely veneered with lookingglasses is to be set in a Gothic alcove, flanked on either side with silhouetted glass shelves. The hidden light throws up in relief pale • amber .and crystal figures of strange gods, humans, and ileasts sot on these shelves. There is a low and beautifully shaped chest of drawers, made of bevelled mirrors, and on its surface pool is reflected a puzzling mirrored thing which presently takes the character of a clock. On either side a pair of plinths of the same reflective medium. The tall lamp is a Corinthian column of crystal on a white oak pedestal, and a lamp shade of Shantung, encrusted with nobbly crystal, looks like shagreen. On the wall a vague painting framed with mirror—across a glass screen little prismatic fishes squirm. . ' UNREAL SPACES. The dressing table’s mirrored surface repeats over and over again bowls and bottles and boxes, themselves made of the same maddening material, but they are of the bronze tint and almost a rest cure for the eyes. The whole room seems to be held in the arms of the fireplace, which is more mirrored architecture, carrying the eye into unreal spaces, perpetuating the outlook into a beyond without end. Then you are a little startled to find that the wood which tradition has established as the stout stuff for tables and chairs is whittled into ephemeral covers for glass dishes in table services. The lounge chair is not traditional in this new scheme of comfort. It has no wood to recommend it, and like the rugs of the boudoir, the cushions of style, and all upholstery and draperies, it is covered with rough woollen material which looks like a spring sports suit—almost always in one of the colourless cream or porridge shades. There may be red or black blocks of wood for feet, especially if the walls and rugs are of vague cream. Fur cloth chairs are a vogue among brides—that soft plush used for travel coats, or a copy of one of the pelts which have pattern. In their country cottages, now being aired and “ gardened,” the French are using linen with, a leopard skin pattern for lounge chairs. If set against white walls, with a confusion of indirect lighting, there is the stage for the second act of a tropical play. Where they dare he so modern, the latest fashion' in homes is more theatrical than modern stage decorations."