HOUSE FURNISHING.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XX, Issue 3923, 4 June 1877, Page 2

HOUSE FURNISHING.

(Condensed from the " Spectator.") First, then, as to the dining-room. Perhaps of all the rooms in an English house, this one is most uniformly the same. A dark paper and heavy curtains ; an oblong table, highly polished ; an oak or mahogany sideboard, with a claret- jug or a biscuit-box on it ; a black slate mantelpiece, with a black marble or bronze clock and ornaments ; and a few pictures, of which generally the most noticeable thing is the elaborate darkness of the painting, and heaviness of the frame ; such articles, with a thick carpet and a row of chairs against the wall, constitute the main points of an ordinary Avell-off person's dining-room. Now, if you are bent iipon giving large, mixed dinners, perhaps you can have nothing better for the purpose than this oblong table, which practically fills up the room ; but if so, you must quite give up the idea of making your guests really comfortable. Suppose we make a bold innovation, and instead of having a square table in the middle of the room, we have a round table at one end. You will lose, of course, in extent of accommodation, but just see what you would gain in comfort. First, you won't have the door opening upon two or three unfortunate persons, including the host, and interrupting their talk with the clatter of dishes and the whispei'ed converse of the footman and maids, and none of your guests will have their spinal marrow wasted by sitting with their back to the fire You will be able to talk to every one at your table with ease, and the conversation, instead of languishing in duets, may be made general, — no small advantage. Besides, the gain in comfort and cosiness is very considerable, and that should be one of your greatest aims in a dining-room. Another thing not generally understood, or at all events not generally attended to, is the lighting, and yet, perhaps, it is the most important of all details. The usiial way is to have a largo chandelier hung high up, and illuminating chiefly the pictures. It was such an arrangement, by the way, that inspired Sydney Smith's sarcasm, when he observed to his host, that " above all was light and beauty, and below,

darkness and gnashing of teeth." Remember that however good your pictures are, you don't want people to look at ) them at dinner-time, and so concentrate your light upon the table itself. To this end, hang your light low, and surround it with a crimson shade, so that whatever light penetrates to the upper part of the room, may do so in a soft glow of color, just sufficient to give an effect of wiirm obscurity. And if you have your sideboard at the other end of the room lighted, manage it in the same manner, whether it be with candles or a lamp, always keeping the actual flame invisible. And on your table, do not commit the vulgarity of one of those silver gilt epergnes, with looking-glass platiorms and badly-cast flowers or camels, or something of that sort, supporting a basket, and huge round with crystal balls ; don't have anything of that kind, but plain glass or pottery, made in the most graceful shapes you can meet with, and let your real ornaments be the flowers themselves. Of the bed-rooms I shall not speak, save that there seems to be a great deal of unnecessary reserve in the way we English regard them, and that the French is really the more sensible plan. Why, for instance, in a large bed-room \. there should not be a comfortable table r and two chairs, where the husband and wife might have breakfast, or sit and. chat, does not seem easily explicable ; but the fact remains, and it is beyond my province to do more than notice it in passing. As to the drawing-room, or rather, as it is more sensibly called, the living-room, for the former name always seems to convey a somewhat pretentious, Cockney sort of idea, and is at the root of the reason why so many people make this room one for company, I wish I could drum into everybody's head that it is absurdity to furnish for any one but yourself and your family, but I have no time to dilate on this subject. Don't ¥-" haye the^ chairs and sofas covered with chintz, — it has always a nasty, glazy, Tincomfortable looli. Choose rather any soft, dark-hued stuff, and try to make it lead up to your walls, so that they do not seem — "To stand alone, Like Adam's recollection of his Fall." — Lastly, as to the color of this room and the color of the room and decorations generally, I find myself utterly at fault. I could tell you the color I like myself, I could perhaps even go farther, and say, with little fear of contradiction, that green and crimson and gold form a beautiful chord of color, or that black and amber or blue and greyish green go well together, and still I should tell you nothing, or at least nothing worth the telling. The ordinary designs for gas-illumina-tion are so unutterably base and degraded, that it is much better to have a hanging lamp at once. Those doublewicked kerosene lamps give a capital light, and if you put a thick porcelain shade over and under it, you have as soft and diffused an illumination as you could wish. Of course you will not commit the extravagance, and also folly, of having a carpet extending as far as the walls of the room, and cut out to fit every angle or recess. It is far better, as well as cheaper, to have an oblong or square carpet (according to the shape of your room), and to let it extend to within about two feet of the wainscoting. 'If you have a good floor, it is best to stain the board for this space, but if not, the common bamboo matting, so much in use in Japan, is as good a thing as can be had, and it can be scrubbed clean almost like boards.