Home Decoration : Part 3

American Woman's Home
by Catharine Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe

(Page 9 of 44)

Or use the mosses of the wood or ocean shells for this purpose. It may be more convenient to get the mat or inner molding from a framer, or have it made by your carpenter, with a groove behind to hold a glass. Here are also picture-frames of pretty effect and very simply made. The one in Fig. 42 is made of either light or dark wood, neat, thin and not very wide, with the ends simply broken, off, or cut so as to resoluble a rough break. The other is white pine, sawn into simple form, well smoothed and marked with a delicate black tracery, as suggested in Fig. 43. This should also be varnished, then it will take a rich, yellow tinge, which harmonizes admirably with chromos and lightens up engravings to singular advantage. Besides the American and the higher range of German and English chromos, there are very many pretty little French chromos, which can be had at prices from $1 to $5, including black walnut frames.

We have been through this calculation merely to show our readers how much beautiful effect may be produced by a wise disposition of color and skill in arrangement. If any of our friends should ever carry it out, they will find that the buff paper, with its dark, narrow border; the green chintz repeated in the lounge, the ottomans and lambrequins; the flowing, white curtains; the broad, generous center-table, draped with its ample green cloth, will, when arranged together, produce an effect of grace and beauty far beyond what any one piece or even half a dozen pieces of expensive cabinet furniture could. The great, simple principle of beauty illustrated in this room is harmony of color.

You can, in the same way, make a red room by using Turkey red for your draperies; or a blue room by using blue chintz. Let your chintz be of a small pattern and one that is decided in color.

We have given the plan of a room with matting on the floor because that is absolutely the cheapest cover. The price of thirty yards plain, good ingrain carpet, at $1.50 per yard, would be forty-five dollars; the difference between forty-five and fifteen dollars would furnish a room with pictures such as we have instanced. However, the same program can be even better carried out with a green ingrain carpet as the foundation of the color of the room.

Our friends, who lived seven years upon matting, contrived to give their parlor in winter an effect of warmth and color by laying down, in front of the fire, a large square of carpeting, say three breadths, four yards long. This covered the gathering-place around the fire where the winter circle generally sits and gave an appearance of warmth to the room.

If we add this piece of carpeting to the estimates for our room, we still leave a margin for a picture and make the program equally adapted to summer and winter.

Besides the chromos, which, when well selected and of the best class, give the charm of color which belongs to expensive paintings, there are engravings which finely reproduce much of the real spirit and beauty of the celebrated pictures of the world. And even this does not exhaust the resources of economical art; for there are few of the renowned statues, whether of antiquity or of modern times, that have not been accurately copied in plaster casts; and a few statuettes, costing perhaps five or six dollars each, will give a really elegant finish to your rooms-providing always that they are selected with discrimination and taste.

The educating influence of these works of art can hardly be over- estimated. Surrounded by such suggestions of the beautiful and such reminders of history and art, children are constantly trained to correctness of tote and refinement of thought and stimulated - sometimes to efforts at artistic imitation, always to the eager and intelligent inquiry about the scenes, the places, the incidents represented. Just here, perhaps, we are met by some who grant all that we say on the subject of decoration by works of art and who yet impatiently exclaim, "But I have no money to spare for any thing of this sort. I am condemned to an absolute bareness and beauty in my case is not to be thought of."

Are you sure, my friend? If you live in the country, or can get into the country and have your eyes opened and your wits about you, your house need not be condemned to an absolute bareness. Not so long as the woods are full of beautiful ferns and mosses, while every swamp shakes and nods with tremulous grasses, need you feel yourself an utterly disinherited child of nature and deprived of its artistic use.

For example: Take an old tin pan condemned to the retired list by reason of holes in the bottom, get twenty-five cents' worth of green paint for this and other purposes and paint it. The holes in the bottom are a recommendation for its new service. If there are no holes, you must drill two or three, as drainage is essential. Now put a layer one inch deep of broken charcoal and potsherds over the bottom and then soil, in the following proportions:

Two fourths wood-soil, such as you find in forests, under trees.

One fourth clean sand.

One fourth meadow-soil, taken from under fresh turf. Mix with this some charcoal dust.

In this soil plant all sorts of ferns, together with some few swamp-grasses; and around the edge put a border of money-plant or periwinkle to hang over. This will need to be watered once or twice a week and it will grow and thrive all summer long in a corner of your room. Should you prefer, you can suspend it by wires and make a hanging-basket. - Ferns and wood-grasses need not have sunshine - they grow well in shadowy places.

About the Author

Catharine Esther Beecher (1800 - 1878) was a noted educator, renowned for her forthright opinions on women's education as well as her vehement support of the many benefits of the incorporation of a kindergarten into children's education.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811 - 1896) was a white American abolitionist and novelist, whose Uncle Tom's Cabin attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain.