The chair is a good example of Italian Louis XV.

[Illustration:  Example of a Perfect Mantel, Ornaments and Mirror]

If you decide upon a very brilliant chintz use it only in one chair, a screen, or in a valance over plain curtains with straps to hold them back, or perhaps a sofa cushion.  Whether a chintz is bright or dull, its pattern is important.  As with silks, brocaded in different colours, therefore never use chintz where a chair or sofa calls for tufting.  A tufted piece of furniture always looks best done in plain materials.

In using a chintz in which both colour and design are indefinite, the kind which gives more or less an impression of faded tapestry, you will find that the very indefiniteness of the pattern makes it possible to use the chintz with more freedom, being always sure of a harmonious background.  The one thing to guard against is that on entering a room you must not be conscious either of several colours, or of any set design.

CHAPTER IV

THE STORY OF TEXTILES

The story of the evolution of textiles (any woven material) is fascinating, and like the history of every art, runs parallel with the history of culture and progress in the art of living,—­physical, mental and spiritual.

To those who feel they would enjoy an exhaustive history of textiles we recommend a descriptive catalogue relating to the collection of textiles in the South Kensington Museum, prepared by the Very Rev. Daniel Rock, D.D. (1870).

In the introduction to that catalogue one gets the story of woven linens, cottons, silks, paper, gold and silver threads, interspersed with precious jewels and glass beads—­all materials woven by hand or machine.

The story of textiles includes:  1st, woven materials; 2nd, embroidered materials; 3rd, a combination of the two, known as “tapestry.”  If one reads their wonderful story, starting in Assyria, then progressing to Egypt, the Orient, Greece, Rome and Western Europe, in any history of textiles, one may obtain quickly and easily a clear idea of this department of interior decoration from the very earliest times.

The first European silk is said to have been in the form of transparent gauze, dyed lovely tones for women of the Greek islands, a form of costume later condemned by Greek philosophers.

We know that embroidery was an art three thousand years ago, in fact the figured garments seen on the Assyrian and Egyptian bas-reliefs are supposed to represent materials with embroidered figures—­not woven patterns—­whereas in the Bible, when we read of embroidery, according to the translators, this sometimes means woven stripes.

PLATE IX

     An ideal dining-room of its kind, modern painted furniture,
     Empire in design.  In this case yellow with decoration in white. 
     Curtains, thin yellow silk.