THE ART OF FURNISHING

Evening Star, Issue 22895, 1 March 1938, Page 3

THE ART OF FURNISHING

CHOOSE FOR APPEARANCE AND FITNESS Furnishing is an art. ]fc requires (lair. Some house owners need a thousand pounds and eight rooms of elegant proportions to gain effect, while others achieve wonders with orange boxes, plywood, and lots of tin tacks. It is all a question of house sense.

House sense is sometimes inborn. It is more often acquired. If you have it you will not buy furniture to impress

your friends and neighbours or because) it is the fashionabjlo shape. Your cur-* tains will not suggest that they were* originally intended for summer dresses.. Textures and colours will bo used with) discernment. Your furniture will heQ chosen for its good looks, but also for its/ fitness of purpose.

How are we furnishing in 1938 P ATI the signs point to a stylo which for lac'k of a better name we call “ modern*” It is something fresh and different—-a. challenge to dreary imitations and' adaptations. It suits the simple decor of modern, houses and Hats. Carefully chosen, it' will not look out of place with furniture that has been in use for 30 years. You may feel that some of it is hand, but it looks right with radio sets, tele~

phones, and electric fires. It catches the spirit of the twentieth century:. New designs are softer in outline. In furnishing curves have returned. Light woods are popular. They create a sense of light and space, and they cost a lot less than they did a year or two ago. If you are going in for elegance choose sycamore and ash. If you want simplicity in small rooms buy unpolished oak or pale birch. ’ Some who have to bo penny-wise all the Time will appreciate tables and chairs and dressers of unpolished oak which looks good, costs very little, and can he scrubbed.

As with actual furniture, so with carpets, pottery,,and hangings. There are inany new and interesting designs. Home of them are odd, others amusing. Most of them, however, show old ideas handled in a new way.

Show furniture is bad furniture. The desk which looks graceful, hut which will hardly accommodate a notebook, is a sham. The modern trend is all against shams and shoddy good looks. It has banished for good the old, “I’m for Use and you’re for show’ relationships between rooms. Tt combines sound workmanship with good materials and clear designs.