SCREENS AND EASELS

Screens and easels are decorative accessories to a parlor or sitting room. A screen may be large enough to form a line of division in a room, concealing an exit or an entrance. The frames are made in ebony, or ebonized cherry wood, rather, and mahogany. They are decorated in various ways ; sometimes with Japanese paper, hand painted designs on silk, Japanese embroidery on silk, plush, painted velvet, or by shingles of ash gilded and painted in some pretty picturesque design. This last mentioned is the latest novelty in screen decoration, and is all the rage. The grain of the wood shows through the gilding, and it is always acceptable because refreshing to get a glimpse of nature. Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Turkish embroidery or painting, crewel- work on silk or satin, stamped leather, embossed velvet, and gorgeous Oriental brocades all take their place in giving variety. The six-foot high screen with three, four, or six leaves has usually reversible hinges, so that it may be opened in any direction. The frame-work is wood, painted black, red or green, to suit the colors in the panels. In embroi- dering or painting a screen, the flowers, etc., selected should be of uni- form size — that is, not one panel of small and another of large flowers. Brier, rose, myrtle and jasmine go together, or gladiolus, iris and tiger- lily. Storks, cranes, kingfishers, with water, bulrushes, and so on, make very effective screens. An unique one is painted thus in white, gray, and black on yellow Japanese matting, with black wood frame, and is very odd and pretty.

Sz'lk Painted Fire-Scree7ts are very ornamental. A strip of silk of a color which will harmonize in tone with the room it is intended to deco- rate, is first painted with a desirable pattern, Japanese designs being particularly effective. This strip is then lined with silk of the same or a contrasting color and mounted upon a willow, black-walnut or ebony standard. Or one can be made, inexpensively, by taking black satin

182 HOUSE FURNISHING.

and decorating- it with flowers cut from cretonne and pasted artistically on its surface ; or the shiny side of black cambric may be used and then varnished. Pretty ones can be made of the scroll and column wall papers now in use. And when one is boarding and has not much room, these large folding screens can be made useful as well as ornamental. Any carpenter can make a cheap wood frame, and then it can be painted or stained. One can be made of walnut, or lighter wood, forty inches high and twenty-seven inches broad ; the five-inch feet are included in the height. The frame is of the walnut or light wood, the center is a slab of pine. The frame, if of walnut, is simply polished ; if of other wood it should be painted or ebonized. Both sides of the pine center are covered, on one side with tapestry or crimson silk, tacked on with brass nails, and on the other with crimson cambric ; over this Japanese pictures painted on silk. This size will require nine. On the side covered with silk or tapestry there can be driven at intervals little brass nails, on which to hang cabinet (imperial size) photographs, framed in brass or crimson velvet. They may be arranged in a square, an oval or a lozenge, and should be portraits of literary, theatrical or musical cele- brities, or any beautiful face may aid in making this a bright group. The arrangement of choice tapestry or silk may be superseded by beau- tiful paper or a painting, or chintz in applique, and both sides may be Japanese or the reverse. If the Japanese pictures are used on both sides the frame had better be ebonized, the black being near the color of the favorite Japanese teak wood. This screen is not incongruous, even though its sides a

Smaller fire-screens are sometimes made of hand-painted tiles, squares of quarry glass like the window-screens of which we spoke in a late article, Venetian leather, silk-embroidered velvet, and peacocks' feathers. They may be of the same style as the larger screens, two and a half or three feet high, and two or three leaves only, or may be but a three-foot square resting on two supports Hke a towel-horse.

A movable screen is a great convenience in a bed-room, and a hand- some three-fold one may be worked in crewels on dull-blue English serge. Upon one panel may be used a design of oranges, their leaves, fruit and blossoms ; upon the next, a branch of foliage holding a bird's nest, with a few butterflies floating around it ; the third may have honey- suckles, either the coral variety or the creamy fragrant kind, so popular, as adapted to the art works of the period. Mount this in a frame of ebonized wood. The side and top piece can be made round like the bamboo frames, or with square corners, and the bottom support or standard to match. If the frame is of pine it wants to be stained to imitate walnut, and then oiled or varnished, or else painted black. Or if you want to put some dainty, light colored design on it, have the

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frame painted white, light blue or pink ; whatever the color of the screen is to be, have this a contrast, as light blue wood, with the screen a pale blue Watteau design, or light blue or cream ground with pale pink roses or buds. If the wood is painted with the paints that are glossy, it will look like enameled wood. Some of the paints have a gloss that gives a finish called '* China paint." The frame is very pretty if left in the natural wood and simply oiled, using the dark wood for a screen that has a dark background, and the light wood for a light background. The cretonnes come in Watteau designs, with fair ladies and gallant knights disporting on flowery grounds or leaning from pagodas, or row- ing in boats after water lilies ; again beautiful vases with bouquets of flowers and trailing vines drooping down to the base ; Japanese fans of all sizes and shapes — all these come in cretonne patterns for screens, and have only to be tacked on with a narrow upholstering heading and tiny tacks. They are then ready to be " toted " around and made to believe they are the most convenient article in the house. The new wall-papers that come for dadoes and friezes have panels of just the right size and shape for screens ; if put on a back ground of cambric, after being stretched and varnished, they are as durable as cloth and much richer in effect. Beautiful easels made of the same wood, and in the way mentioned above, can be used for music, pictures or engravings.