Studio: international art (10.1897)

The Choice of Simple Furniture

room furniture are shown among the illustrations ness of the stitches and the general neatness and
to this article. The side-board in plain oak on page accuracy of the work.

155, and the rush-bottomed chair, on page 156, Perhaps one of the most curious manifestations
would be suitable in a small house ; while the up- of the art of the drawing-room is to be found in the
holstered chair on the same page would be ap- hand-painted mirrors in plush frames, which have
propriate to a rather more ambitious establishment, been so much in vogue.

In the average drawing-room we find Art in It would be difficult to find anything more
capital letters everywhere, and the use here of
this prefix may be generally taken to signify the
absence of any real artistic merit.

The art of the drawing-room ! What a medley of
painted milking stools, and mirrors,chip-carved tables,
trays and photograph frames the term suggests,
what a fatal tendency to decorate the most in-
appropriate things in the most inappropriate places
with the most inappropriate designs. To carve the
surfaces of tea-trays and tables and to paint on
mirrors and chairs ! There seems a great need for
some kind of directing intelligence to the enor-
mous amount of industry displayed in the various
minor arts which are now so much practised. If
we take art needlework alone and examine the
numerous specimens to be found in such profusion
in the average drawing-room, will not the result-
ing impression be a feeling of sadness that so
much industry has been so much misapplied ?
And then, on looking closer, we find everywhere

, ... , . , .. ' , , . , . cabinet, stained green, with white metal mounts

under the silk the blue lines of the bought design— designed by m. ii. baillie scott

hopelessly illogical than this
mode of decoration, because
if we wish to look at the
painting we are dazzled by
the mirror, while the mirror
itself entirely loses its raison
d'etre, so that painting and
mirror contrive to frustrate
and neutralise each other in
the most charming way.
Amongst the drawing-room
furniture which is illustrated
in this article mention must
be made first of the cottage
piano on this page which has
been carried out by Messrs.
Broadwood.

cottage tiano designed by m. ii. baillie scott

This represents an attempt
to realise something more

the naturalistic spray of flowers or fruit. The artistic than the ordinary type of case, in which
importance and possibilities of design are quite the keyboard projects as an excrescence from
underrated or ignored. A " design " is something the main body of the piano. It was felt that
bought at a shop which may or may not be in order to obtain a satisfactory result the keyboard
"pretty," and that is all. On the other hand, an should be incorporated in the case, and with this
immense reverence is paid to technique, the fine- object the sides and top of the piano have been
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