Furnishing The Nursery

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20891, 22 November 1937, Page 14

Furnishing The Nursery

Soft Colours For Baby

furnishing of a nursery offers unique opportunity for the creation of a miniature world of fairy-like proportions and delicate pastel harmonies. Utility is not forgotten by the designers of modern nursery furniture, for most of the pieces are fascinating small-scale replicas of the furniture used by grownups.

Such items as chests of drawers and combination loughboys offer quite sufficient clothing space to make them a useful feature of the nursery furnishing, not only during basinette and cot days, but well into the first years of childhood. Good drawer depth and graded sliding trays are features which make these particularly useful, while many of the loughboys are equipped with special racks for the child’s shoes, as well as a “hat” shelf for the first ventures into post-babyhood wear. Small-sized dressing tables and beds, specially designed for the needs of the miniature occupant of the nursery, are included in nearly all modern nursery suites, and are practicable for many years to come, as are the tiny table and chair sets, which may be bought in conjunction with the usual pieces of furniture. Delicate Baby Colours.

Pale pinks, blues, apple greens, daffodil yellows and cream are popular choices for the enamel in which nursery furniture is most generally finished. If a second colour note is needed, tiny headings can be picked out in a matching shade, or else transfers of animals and flowers or other nursery subjects are shown in the collections. Even the tiny coat hangers in some cases are enamelled to match, and are decorated with the same motif that decorates the furniture.

Curtains should be of a light, easilywashable material that affords no hiding place for germs. Net and hail-spot muslins make up daintily and charmingly, while, if a sturdier material is required, the manufacturers make a variety of specially-suitable cotton weaves, showing wooden soldiers, pet animals and other gay childhood figures. Baby Floor Covers.

The most hard-wearing and hygienic floor-covering is linoleum. Not only can this be washed frequently, but now it is shown in such vastly-improved designs and colours that it is the perfect floor covering for the modem nursery. A linoleum with an all-over design of crazy paving, with flowers growing between the stones, is particularly charming and will fit in admirably with any colour-scheme. If one plain colour is desired, there is now an all-over plain linoleum in pink, blue or green.

An attractive and instructive decorative motif for the walls is a frieze of large alphabet letters; or the same idea may be obtained in a frieze depicting well-known nursery rhyme figures. The idea shown in an illustration, depicting a series of panels representing scenes from familiar lengends and fairy tales, is also a novel and attractive method of wall treatment.

The enclosed playground must sooner or la jr become a feature of the nursery, and in these an enormous improvement has been made during the last few years. The modern playground is an easily collapsible and mobile affair, and as the latest models include a false floor, the child may be left safely, and without worry, to play within its confines, guarded from all possibility of floor draughts and chills.