Your decoration, flowers, fruit, character of bowl or dish which holds them, or objet d’art used in place of either; linen or lace, china, glass and silver,—­each and all must be in keeping.  The money value has nothing whatever to do with this question of appropriateness, when considered by an artist decorator.  Remember that in decorating, things are classified according to their colour value, their lines and the purpose for which they are intended.  The dining-table is to eat at, therefore it should primarily hold only such things as are required for the serving of the meal.  So your real decoration should be your silver, glass and china, with its background of linen or lace.  The central decoration, if of flowers or fruit, must be in a bowl or dish decorative in the same sense that the rest of the tableware is.

Flowers should be kept in the same key as your room.  One may do this and yet have infinite variety.  Tall stately lilies, American Beauty roses, great bowls of gardenias and orchids are for stately rooms.  Your small house, flat or bungalow require modest garden flowers such as daffodils, jonquils, tulips, lilies-of-the-valley, snapdragons, one long-stemmed rose in a vase, or a cluster of shy moss-buds or nodding tea-roses.

A table set with art in the key of a small menage and on a scale of simple living, often strikes the note of perfection from the expert’s point of view because perfect of its kind and suitable for the occasion.  This appropriateness is what makes your “smart” table quite as it makes your “smart” woman.

Wedgwood cream colour ware “C.C.” is beautiful and always good form.  For those wanting colour, the same famous makers of England have an infinite variety, showing lovely designs.

Unless you are a collector in the museum sense, press into service all of your beautiful possessions.  If you have to go without them, let it be when you no longer own them, and not because they are hoarded out of sight.  You know the story of the man who bought a barrel of apples and each day carefully selected and ate those that were rotten, feeling the necessity of not being wasteful.  When the barrel was empty he realised that be had deliberately wasted all his good apples by not eating one!  Let this be a warning to him who would save his treasures.  If you love antiques and have joyously hunted them down and, perhaps, denied yourself other things to obtain them, you are the person to use them, even though the joy be transient and they perish at the hand of a careless man or maid-servant.  Remember, posterity will have its own “fads” and prefer adding the pleasure of pursuit to that of mere ownership.  So bring out your treasures and use them!