Don’t litter your drawing-room with bric-a-brac.  Who hasn’t seen what I can best describe as a souvenir drawing-room, a room filled with curiosities from everywhere!  I shall never forget doing a drawing-room for a woman of no taste.  I persuaded her to put away her heavy velvets and gilt fringes and to have one light and spacious room in the house.  She agreed.  We worked out a chintz drawing-room that was delicious.  I was very happy over it and you can imagine my amazement when she came to me and said, “But Miss de Wolfe, what am I to do with my blue satin tidies?”

In my own drawing-room I have so many objects of art, and yet I think you will agree with me that the room has a great serenity.  Over the little desk in one corner I have my collection of old miniatures and fans of the golden days of the French court.  There are ever so many vases and bowls for flowers, but they are used.  There are dozens of lighting-fixtures, brackets, and lamps, and a chandelier, and many candlesticks, and they are used, also.  Somehow, when a beautiful object becomes a useful object, it takes its place in the general scheme of things and does not disturb the eye.

The ideal drawing-room has a real fireplace, with a wood fire when there is excuse for it.  An open fire is almost as great an attribute to a drawing-room as a tactful hostess; it puts you at ease, instantly, and gives you poise.  And just as an open fire and sunshine make for ease, so do well placed mirrors make for elegance.  Use your mirrors as decorative panels, not only for the purpose of looking at yourself in them, and you will multiply the pleasures of your room.  I have the wall space between mantel and frieze-line filled with a large mirror, in my New York drawing-room, and the two narrow panels between the front windows are filled with long narrow mirrors that reflect the color and charm of the room.  Whenever you can manage it, place your mirror so that it will reflect some particularly nice object.

Given plenty of chairs and sofas, and a few small tables to hold lights and flowers, you will need very little other furniture in the drawing-room.  You will need a writing-table, but a very small and orderly one.  The drawing room desk may be very elegant in design and equipment, for it must be a part of the decoration of the room, and it must be always immaculate for the visitor who wants to write a note.  The members of the family are supposed to use their own desks, leaving this one for social emergencies.  A good desk is a godsend in a drawing-room, it makes a room that is usually cold and formal at once more livable and more intimate.  In my own drawing-room I have a small French writing-table placed near a window, so that the light falls over one’s left shoulder.  The small black lacquer desks that are now being reproduced from old models would be excellent desks for drawing-rooms, because they not only offer service, as all furniture should, but are beautiful in themselves.  Many of the small tables of walnut and mahogany that are sold as dressing-tables might be used as writing-tables in formal rooms, if the mirrors were eliminated.