Beauty in Your Home

Southland Times, Issue 20111, 23 February 1927, Page 13

Beauty in Your Home

In the evening, the most important thing about your room is the way you have chosen to light it. That lighting can make or mar a room is proved by the fact that many rooms which are rather dull and unattractive in the daylight, become cosy and inviting by artificial light. The best scheme for most living-rooms is a hanging centre light to light the room generally, and as many table-lamps as are wanted at other points. Wall-lights are necessary in a large room, but in a small one they look pretentious, and are almost useless, as they are generally too far away for reading or work.

I like the shallow alabaster bowls for a centre light fitting better than anything else—they diffuse the light beautifully, and a reflected light is better than a direct one when it’s a question of lighting the whole room. They should be fitted quite close to the ceiling, unless the room is extremely high. There are dozens of kinds of table-lamps, but I know of none prettier than the coloured pottery or china ones, unless you can run to the heavenly lacquer or malachite vases one sees sometimes. With pottery or painted w’ooden lampstands, vellum or parchment shades look well, or those useful Japanese wicker ones. These wear for ever, and the silk linings are detachable for washing purposes. For china or more elaborate lamp-stands, silk shades are better. The new w’ide, almost flat, silk lampshades with a deep silk fringe are quite lovely for a room you want to make look luxurious and restful.

If you have a spare corner for it, a standard lamp can be a most delightful piece of decoration, but don’t crowd it; it needs a space to itself. Choose a wooden stand, painted black or some bright colour, rather than a metal one, and let the shade be of a simple shape without much decoration.

The most original lampshades I ever saw, by the way, were made out of old coloured prints of London street scenes. The windows of the houses had been cut out and replaced by very thin vellum, and w'hen the lamplight shone through these tiny panes it looked as if the scene were illuminated at night. It wouldn’t be at all difficult to get prints similar to these, mount them on thin card-board and cut out the window panes in the same way, and the effect is adorable.

MUSHROOMS AND SAUSAGE CAKES. Sent in by “Joan.” 11b sausages, 41b tomatoes, 3 mushrooms for each sausage, loz butter. Remove the skins of the sausages, and form the meat into little round cakes about the size of an Osborne biscuit and half an inch thick. .Heat a very small piece of dripping in a frying pan and dry the cakes a nice brown on each side. Put them on a dish and keep them hot. Stalk and peel the mushrooms and fry them until tender. Put them on the same dish, peel and slice the tomatoes, and put them and the butter into the same pan and cook until they are in a soft puree. Arrange the sausages around a hot dish, the mushrooms in the centre, and the tomato mixture, nicely seasoned with salt and pepper, around. For three persons. Time, 30 minutes*