1939-01-14 — Page 3

THE CHINA MAIL, JANUARY 14, 1989.

We've brought Grandma's ideas..

HAVE my favourite

I furnishing shops. I

make a tour of them when its time to col- lect new ideas.

In one of them, es- pecially, I can find out all about decoration for the day after to- morrow, and furniture fashions for next year. This shop used to look like a clinic. It WBS bare and shin- ing. It might have a single piece of bronze on a plate glass shelf or three flowers ar- ranged in a very pure white vase.

I remember com- plaining about its lack of warm, living, home- ly details and being snubbed for.such "or- dinary" ideas,

I went there last week to say "I told you 80." Grace and

or-

nament has returned to modern rooms.

Time Court

UP TO DATE!

PATRICIA BECK'S

page about the home

an- A petticoat dressing-table is char-and keep your head. Wallpaper can in-ming and feminine, but

We have curves instead of gles, and rich, vibrant colours stead of acres of porridge-coloured off-white.

* * *

The door of the shop was festoon- ed with fringed curtains and there were wrought iron plant pots in the hall.

Page

stripes were silver and two shades

of green..

:

· Looping a length of your curtain. material over a rod, instead-of-hav- ing a pelmet, is one of the easiest ways of making your room look more decorative.

I have seen it done along a row of old, panited hat pegs in a very bare hall. If you tire of the idea ima twelve months' time, you still have your length of material uncut to use again.

#

*

New textures can make a very plain room luxurious.

Think of white walls, white paint, darkbrown fitted carpet, brown and belge hessian upholstery. There are thousands of rooms looking some- thing like that, and their owners are tired of them.

Leave the walls and the carpet as they are.

Have two of the chairs

cover-

ed in shiny copper-coloured satin or corded fabric.

Use the same material for long side curtains.

Have the third chair or the settee covered in same material, but a dif- ferent colour.

Make or buy two low

footstools

to match your chairs, and trim them with braid or fringe.

If you like a pattern on your de- coration, choose a big leaf design for the loose cover of your sofa, but Juse plain linen for the smaller chairs. and applique one or two of the leaves. on the backs and arms.

.

Trimming like that can always come off.

Leave, your smooth-lined, simply- designed furniture alone. It is mo- dern and right.

Dress it up with small, inexpen- windows work. miracles. I have just seen a sive gaieties

dreary stripped oak room, narrow striped paper transform a tain arrangement with a scatter of with a vivid cur- The 'ornaments on a low shelf.

are

and beds muzzled in muslin, weak and affected in the room of a woman who can hike twenty miles and understand football scores.

** * *

I like the new vigour in decora- A fearsome looking plaster negro tion. A length of cherry coloured supported a lamp and there was some kind of bracket in every cor-

ner.

satin against pale walls... a daring piece of drapery at an uninteresting window... a different kind of wall vase or lamp.

I saw a what-not. It was called something else and was modern in colour and finish, but it was a what-sake. not just the same.

I hate trimming for trimming's

Rows of gimp which

pro- bably hide bad seams. .fringe

+

I saw armchairs tufted, fringed and tassels on working chairs. and buttoned to such, an extent flamboyant overstuffed sofas-suf--- they looked dangerous to sit on.

A clock and a group of

fering from a rash of buttons or china tufts figures under funereal glass cases with chenille... bows on anything. fancy lamp shades heavy, were seriously described to me as "so distinguished in modern rooms.'

The square, bare room

all angles and minus life and colour

modern decoration.

marks the awkward age

*

.* **

I see danger ahead in this return to trimming.

Decoration might easily go mad and land us back in the Victorian doldrums.

·

It took twenty-years to rid our rooms of plush and silver tables and the indescribable clutter of posses- sions,

We have gone through the growing pains and seen the mistakes of what is called "modern" furnish- ing and decoration.

It would be a pity to go back to rooms which are not ... and can

never be

way of living.

a reflection of our

For A Natural Wave

Done the Sommer's Machineless Way

Telephone 26824

Ahana Beauty Parlor

Alexandra Building, Room 5,* Zad; floor.

It

of

maturity, if you spend a little money can blossom into charming

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