NOVELTY GROUPS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume 48, Issue 2923, 3 July 1939, Page 3

NOVELTY GROUPS

FLOWERS IN RESTAURANTS INTERIOR DECORATION IDEA Flowers to-day are almost as important" in. a restaurant as the food. Not the old idea of a small vase with two or three roses on each table, but a few large groups in keeping with the general decor of the room, writes Mrs Richard Dreyer in the Sydney Sun.

If you must have flowers on each table have something novel, which will awaken the interest of the res-

taurant patrons. Such a novelty has been introduced at Romano’s (Sydney’s night club), where on each, table is an airtight glass bowl called an aquaflorium, in which is a large rose, a few fuchsias, some pansies or a giant dahlia completely immersed in water. The water magnifies the flowers and thus creates a very intriguing effect.

The latest idea for interior decorating restaurants abroad is modern baroque, which is colourful and more in time than the plain interiors, which were so. fashionable a while ago. Mirrors are greatly used, and the warmer colours, such as magenta, also cyclamen and most shades of green. That background is ideal for large groups of scarlet, magenta, and pale pink flowers. In my flower decorations at Romano’s I have striven for the unusual.

In the largest groups, which are arranged in neutral wood containers built in with the panelling, I have used many weird things to get an unusual effect.

For weight I have brown man’s spears, flax and strelitzia leaves lacquered red and pale pink. The contrast of the spade shaped strelitzias with the tapering of the other two is good.

The giant red flower of the flax is like a torch and is a very grand thing to use. Bougainvillea I have used to get my magenta toning, and, to relieve the whole, scarlet poinsettias, which are so decorative when completely stripped of leaves, allowing their intense colour to show to its best advantage. In a red group poinsettias seem to glow with a Joie de vivre that no other flower has. Masses of dark red magenta and pink chrysanthemums form the base, shading gradually from one to the other. Groups of red roses and gerberas break up any possible hard effect, and, with giant dahlias, give me my “flowers with faces,” which are so essential to give character to a group. Heath I have also used for cyclamen tone, and gladiolus from vivid reds to pale pinks give me their sword-shaped beauty. The smaller groups in the foyer are arranged in real shells from the Barrier Reef. A giant clam filled with pink stocks, deeper pink dahlias, cherry coloured gladiolus and dark red roses strike an extremely light and delicate note. Drooping over the edge are some scarlet pomegranates, which I find amusing. Another pointed shell is filled with pink hyacinths and tulips, low in the middle and long at one end, in keeping with the shape of the shell.