Another way to obtain the required colour value at your windows is the revival of glazed linens, with beautiful coloured designs, made up into shades.  These are very attractive in a sunny room where the strong light brings out the design of flowers, fruits or foliage.  Plate X shows a room in which this style of shade is used with great success.  It is to be especially commended in such a case as Plate X, where no curtains are used at windows.  Here the figured linen shade is a deliberate contribution to the decorative scheme of the room and completes it as no other material could.

Awnings can make or mar a house, give it style or keep it in the class of the commonplace.  So choose carefully with reference to the colour of your house.  The fact that awnings show up at a great distance and never “in the hand,” as it were, argues in favour of clear stripes, in two colours and of even size, with as few extra threads of other colours as possible.

PLATE XI

Shows a part of a fine, old Italian refectory table, and one of the chairs, also antiques, which are beautifully proportioned and made comfortable with cushions of dark red velvet, in colour like curtains at window, which are of silk brocade.

     The standard electric lamps throw the light up only.  There are
     four, one in each corner of the room, and candles light the
     table.

     The wall decoration here is a flower picture.

[Illustration:  Corner of Dining-room in New York Apartment, Showing Section of Italian Refectory Table and Italian Chairs, Both Antique and Renaissance]

All awnings fade, even in one season; green is, perhaps, the least durable in the sun, yellows and browns look well the longest.  Fortunately an awning, a discouraging sight when taken down and in a collapsed mass of faded canvas, will often look well when up and stretched, because the strong light brings out the fresh colour of the inside.  Hence one finds these rather expensive necessities of summer homes may be used for several seasons.

CHAPTER VII

TREATMENT OF PICTURES AND PICTURE FRAMES

Strive to have the subject of your pictures appropriate to the room in which they are to be hung.

It is impossible to state a rule for this, however, because while there are many styles of pictures which all are able to classify, such as old paintings which are antique in colouring, method and subject, portraits, figure pictures, architectural pictures, flower and fruit pictures, modern oil paintings of various subjects (modern in subject, method and colouring), water colours, etchings, sporting prints, fashion prints, etc., there is, also, a subtle relationship between them seen and felt only by the connoisseur, which leads him to hang in the same room, portraits, architectural pictures and flower pictures, with beautiful and successful results.  Often the relationship hangs on similarity in period, style of painting or colour scheme.  Your expert will see decorative value in a painting which has no individual beauty nor intrinsic worth when taken out of a particular setting.