Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1886-12-02
THE IDEAL HOME.
tpriter who IL Severe on Some
Decorations.


Decorations.
Beck's journal of DecOrGti0s Art says;
The ideal no ne beautiful is attained
rather by avoiding errors of taste than by
the adoption of special dogmas Of art.
For my own part, If have any dogmas
TO preach they may fairly be condemned
in this one rule; Avoid hams and
Offectations Of all kinds"
DON'T mistake mere prettiness for
beauty. Millinery, for instance, is out Of
place in the home beautiful.
Don't attach to your chairs and sofa
cushions meaningless bows of ribbon
which tie nothing.
Don't dress up your toilet tables in
muslin petticoats stiffened with crinoline
or calico.
Don't scatter startling white "tidies"
about chairs and sofas as on 20 many
bushes, as if You were hanging out the
wash to dry.
Don't display on your walls china
plates and dishes. They were never
meant to go there. An exception may be
made now and then in favor of piece OF
fine color to help light up the room, or
where delicate China painting is worthy
of careful examination. But hang up
ordinary domestic chinnl DON'T
Don't hang small pictures SO that their
beauty is lost to any one under eight feet
high. If picture is not seen from the
same position that the artist saw it when
he painted it, the drawing will appear
foreshortened and the general effect con-
sequently falsifed.
Don't hang any picture in the home
which has not the impress Of elegance,
purity and cheerfulness.
Don't give place to representation OF
corpses, tortured saints or anything coca
sioning painful emotions. And above all
having such pictures and not wanting
them downstairs, don't Danish them to
the nursery, school-room or bedroom.
Some things l would relegate to the
bed room-out of the way somewhere
in locked drawers, for instance. / NEAR
mementoes Of seawood and dried ferns
or flowers, and wretched daubs on china
canvas or paper, the crude efforts o.
youthful members of the family. NJ
true lover Of the home beautiful will in
flict these on his family and friends an(
compel them TO violate truth by pretend
ing TO like them.
Don't buy your carpet or your wal
paper because il looks pretty in the rol
when you see it in the store. But thinl
OF the fitness of each with itR ultimate
surroundings Remember that the csrpe
is to be a background for your furniture
and the wall paper-unless it is TO be tb,
actual decoration of the walls--is to b
merely background for your pictures
Don't admit into the home beautifu
any piece of furniture or implement o.
everyday life which does not honestly
serve its purposa-no light, tiimsy chair
which an able-bodied man dare not si
upon no pnfly, debilitated sofas, al
wind aud springs; no FURNISHED brass
sheeted fre-irons, bought only to bt
,, looked at, and give place to the ugly
little black poker and shovel when coal il
: to he broken or pstes arc TO be removed
There il 10 rtp4Un why an ubjec
should not be nsefui as weilas ornamental
liidee,,, there can i've no beauty without tit
! ness. Nature everywhere teaches us tn
I compatibility of the highest utility wit
the greatest beauty
And so with beauty and truth. Their
: may be truth without beauty but ther
s is no bealty without truth. Truth, beaut
r and utility are tie inseparabie trinity Q
the ideal home Let us then write thel
T upon the portals OF the house ~ the epi
: tome Of all that is most admirable in re
G iigion, in art, end in everyday life