LOOKING-GLASS ROOM

Greymouth Evening Star, 25 May 1935, Page 13

LOOKING-GLASS ROOM

NOVELTY IN PARIS Spring in 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 looking-glass, and is surrounding herself with sets of mirrored

dressing tables, chests of drawers, wardrobes, and such monumental fireplaces made of looking glasses 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 mirrored 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 obtained 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 lough Shantung silk in its colourless tint, and the dressing-table entirely veneered with looking-glasses is to bet set in a Gothic alcove, flanked on either side with silhouetted glass shelves. The hidden light throws up in relief palo amber, and crystal figures of strange gods, humans and beasts set. on these shelves There is a low, and beautiful!?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 lampshade 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 snr face repeats over and over again I bowls and bottles and boxes, them I selves: made of the same madd mine • materi:’!. but they are of the bronze .tint, and almost a re-u cure for the ('VOS. The Whole room s.-oms to b? held in tile- arms of tin- fireplace, which is more mirrored architecture, carrying the eye into iieiH «p.ic >s. 1 perpetuating the outlook into a be- :' vend without end. s Then you are a little startled to find .[that the wood which tradition has es- [ 1 tablished as the stout stuff for tables Laud chairs, Is whittled into ephemeral

covers for glass dishes in table ser-

Tho lounge chair is not traditional < in this new scheme of comfort. It has I no wood to recommend it. and like the > rugs of the boudoir. Hie cushions of I ■ -.t vie and all upholstery and draper-j irs, ii is covered with rough woollen 1 material which looks like a spring spoils suit -almost always in one of the colourless cream or porridge shades. There may be red or black blocks of wood far feet, (.specially if the walls and rugs are of vague cream. 1

l-'ur 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 “gnidened," the French are using linen with a leopard skin

pattern for lounge chairs. If set against white walls, with a contusion of indirect lighting, there is the stage for the second act of a tropical play. Where they dare be so modern, the latest fashion in homes is more theatrical than modern stage decorations.