The Golden State: Where & How to Live, Secure, Visit, Enjoy and Thrive in California

Theory Of Decoration

4. How would you treat a silk lamp shade to soften the light?
5. What were the favorite materials used for lighting fixtures in the Italian and French styles?
6. Where would you use carved wood or wrought iron fixtures?
7. What can you say of the use of indirect lighting fixtures?
8. What are the best metals for lighting fixtures? How are they finished?
9. Trace the plans and furniture of the three rooms in Figs. A, B, and D of Lesson VI, and locate the lighting fixtures thereon. Indicate each fixture by a small circle. Describe the fixtures for each place. Assume the living room to be Colonial in character, the dining room to be Sheraton and the bedroom Louis XVI.
10. What are the various treatments for hanging sash curtains at double hung windows?
11. Name some of the materials used to trim curtains.
12. What would you suggest as a complete curtain treatment for French windows opening in.
13. When is it advisable, in hanging window curtains or portieres, to cover the wood trim of the opening?
14. When is it advisable to use a valance and when not?
15. If you were asked to develop an attractive curtain treatment for a window in a small kitchen, what kind of material would you select and how would it be hung?
10. When should curtains only come to the sill? When should they reach to the floor?
17. A double hung window is 3 feet wide and 4 feet 6 inches high. The sill is 2 feet 6 inches from the ground. Sketch roughly, at a scale of 1/4 inch to 1 foot, a window treatment for the living room of a summer cottage and describe the fabrics and colors.

Mantels and Pictures

Mantels and Their Accessories

Although mantels have been spoken of in Lesson 5, so far as their structural use is concerned, they are so important that we may now consider them further with reference to their style and decorative setting. Mantels do not exist in all styles of architecture. In the Orient and in ancient times they were unknown, rooms being heated by ovens, brasiers, or otherwise. The early Middle Ages had also no mantels, the source of heat being a tire in the center of the great hall, the smoke escaping through a vent in the roof. This primitive arrangement was found unsatisfactory, and a crude type of fireplace was introduced, consisting of a hood, built against a wall or in a corner, with a chimney leading up from it. The hood was often supported by brackets. Later jambs were added, to improve the draught, and the height of the opening was reduced.

The Italian Renaissance departed but little, in general, from the Gothic type. The typical Italian mantel had a tapering hood, with no shelf or a very narrow one, supported by brackets or pilasters.