The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1885-11-06

How Decorative Traps Are Laid 20 Catch
the UnwarY Dry Goods Purchaser.
[St Paul Pioneer Press.l
So thoroughly is window decoration
recognized as one of the necessary
methods of advertising that every large
dry goods establishment employs a pro-
fessional window dresser, and experts
earn from 81 500 tos$8s 1000 per year for
this york A Kansas City window
dresser is regularly paid the latter sum,
and New York dreSsers average from
81, 900 to So, 900. The northwest has a
veritable artist one of the born-not-
made kind-in this popular branch of
decoration, in a gentleman having
the good fortune at an early
period of his career to be the possessor
of grandmother who devoted
herself to the cultivation of flower
garden and his aesthetic taste in the
matter of colors at one and the same
time. So both by inheritance and in
struction he came into perception of
the refined beauties of color cOmbina-
ton which is the basis of his skill in
decoration. Eks
One of his earlier exhibitions of this
gift was during the visit of the Willard
party, when, being given carte blanche
by his employer, he put about $50, 900
that cost 12 per yard and laces worth
$50 per yard into a triple window dis
play that opened the eyes of the visitors
very wide indeed, and gave them in
creased respect for a community able to
encourage such lavish expenditure on
its account. During a subsequent visit
to Paris and other European capitals
he made a special study of win
dow decoration as an art. There was
a modiste's window in the Boulevard
Hausmann, he said where the displays
were changed every day, and have
spent hours before it, studying color
harmonies that seemed little short of in
SEPARATION.
This artist thinks that the secret Of
the art is congruity. There must be
not only a harmony of colors and pro
portion of parts, but, as well, accord IN
the nature and uses of the articles dis
played and relation to the season or
Special occasion For instance, in the
spring he would make his windows airy
and light with the dainty fabrics to be
worn in warm weather, summer silks,
.cambrieS, percales. and the trimmings
to be used Herewith; but with the ad-
vent of frosty days he greets the1seye-
with the comfortable woolens and
darker colors thereto suitable, while
e
into luxurious richness with furs, heavy
silks and brocades, cut velvet, plushes,
etc. 1t harroWs up his aesthetic soul to
be forced to put in juxtaposition arti-
cles which could not be worn together
or not in some way related.
''ThOse embroideries and .laces scream
at each Other" he said, pointing to the
airy festooned canopy over one of his
displays, ''but 1 didn't have enough
laces of the right width He has
method of his own to make these fes-
icons of lace hang right, rolling them
up in a bundle and lacking his strips at
either end in an ingenious way. While
these canopies are hardly consciously
noted by the average window gazer,
they have an effect in giving a finish
and setting on the main display not
otherwise obtainable. Every artist
knows that the accessories are Of almost
AS much Importance as the central fig
ures in his picture. Asked how he
went about doing" a window, the
gentleman declared that he honestly
couldn't tell-he Just went in and began
moving things around, and by the
time he had his material we'll in hand
the design had begun to work itseif
out. %s'