Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-08-03
HOMES FOR SUMNER.
Fancies in Finishings and Furnish
ings Within and Without.
MR. LORILLARD'S MODEL COTTAGE.
Suggestions That May Help Toward Har-
mony in Form and Color.
ANTIQUE OAK NO LONGER THE RAGE



taste or artistic. A house is something per-
manent, and its form and hue should be
studied to please lsstingly. The test of true
art and taste is that they delight forever.
The flaw in the taste will betray itself by
firing the very eye which chose it at first as
soon as the sense grows acquainted with it.
Everyone to bis taste is risky and e1-
pensive rule unless the taste is right, simple
and true in the first choosing. The art
which paints German toy villages must pre-
side over the Long Branch and Jersey
cottages this year, for they glare in amber
and terra cotta-the ground story red, the
upper one amber or a brilliant pumpkin
yellow. with brown trimmings, enhanced by
vivid green Venetian shades, and green
mattings drawn as roofs and enclosures for
! outdoor balconies. The discord of the
three colors among the cool shades of grass
and clustering boughs is fitly closed by
ranks OF scarlet and pink geraniums on the
| lawn-scarlet and pink at which sensitive
eye shrinks. The very god of flies and irri-
tations generally must have studied to find
assortments of color like those of common
place gardening, which make lovely, silken
leayed flowers o vulgar discord in repetition
"a sight one prays to be delivered from.
One sympathizes with the dislike of Will
lam Morris, the poet decorator, for those
harsh red geraniums against the green
grass.
HOUSE ONE NEVER TIRES OF.
If you wish to have the new summer cot
tage or the old one remodeled approve itself
year after year to the artistic eye, as letters
patent OF the owners good sense and culti-
waited taste, choose a dark, strong color and
paint it all over alike. Dark red, the old
Venetian red, with little umber or lamp
black to deepen it, wears longer than any
color in the painters list and has all the
good qualities, being warm, substantial and
giving richness to the landscape, harmonic
ing with the greens of summer, and having
comfortable glow of tone in the gray
autumn days. Deep bronze green is another
artists color for houses, green too sombre
not to be distinct from the foliage about it,
yet blending with them. A red-brown is
good and a russell or deep brownish yellow;
these the list sufices to choose from. But
follow one law that a wooden house needs
no trimmings, either in gingerbread art
work or in color, which lessen its apparent
size and real dignity.
Ornamental work cheapens a wooden
house or cottage, which should depend on
the symmetry of its lines, the slope of its
roofs, the proportion OF its gables and
porches, for Its attractiveness. The best
architects are discarding the steep gables
and twisted roofs OF the Queen Anne style
and the ridiculous pepperbox towers copied
from the French chateau. The Lorillards
and Miss Catherine Wolfe and the Astors
have led in taste among people of wealth in
this country, and their Newport houses, on
h ioh Il e Al \
are simplicity itself beside the quirks and
board fligree OF the Jersey houses costing
$4,000 or $40, 900 and under.
MR.. LoRILLARD's MODEL COTTAGE
There is hardly lovelier country house
in America than Mr.. Louis Lorillard's
Newport cottage, 'Vinland, Z" designed and
built Tor Miss Wolfe, who somehow man
aged TO get as much good out of her money
while she lived as any million heiress in the
Book of Gold. And there is not a stroke of
ornamental work outside the friendly,
ample, becominglY grouped walls. The gay
touches, the relief to your wide gables, are
the square or broad rallied balconies without
root, which are preferred in the latest
studies to the deep hooded porch and
yerandas.
The open balcosy allows the sun when it
is grateful, is shaded by the pull of cord,
and is much airier than the deep rooted
porch when the sun is off and ali delight in
the afternoon shadow. The broad striped
awnings-and these need to be broad, bold
and effective in color-are made in the We
nitian way, without sides, and are much
pleasanter to sit under and to take care OF.
Verandas have their own suits of furniture
in palm and rattan, cushioned with NADIA
gascar mating, fine as jute fabric, with gay
barbaric stripes of crimson and tea colored
rush. The uneasy rattan tables with basket
tops are sensibly replaced by wood tops with
rattan frames, and the heavy round basket
frames for sofa and chairs give way to some
thing lighter in looks. One does not want
a basket chair for summer to suggest a foot
man every time there is need OF moving it.
SUGGESTIONS AS TO FURNITURE.
The best lounges are those of rattan, with
closely woven seat, costing from $40 to S13,
and so light they can be carried all over the
house. A pair Of these, any number of
small rockers and easy chairs, large rattan
table for newspapers and tea, with several
OF the low Arabic tables, elbow high, as one
sits in the lowest of low chairs or Tolls on
the japanese bed mats, furnish q yeranda |
prettily. Beside these wicker screens and |
rice curtains partition off corners writing |
or doing, and big East Indian seats Of |
woven rush, coarse as work in corn husks, |
look well with the huge green pots of palm |
or acacia, which add to the GOODNESS when |
kept we'll sprinkled, as they ought to be.
Of course verands boxes all round full OF |
flowers are the final decoration, but pray let |
us have something in them beside the usual |
assortment OF German ivy, blue lobelia and |
nasturtiums. Try the effect of hardy, white |
jessamine, with starry, sweet scented flow |
ers, and the delicate, luxurious mansandya, |
like miniature Ivy in leaf, blooming end |
lessly in rose, white and purple bells, snap |
dragons, in their velvets, richer in coloring |
than any flower grown, saving the salpiglos-
sis, streaked in its jewelry, flowers which |
bloom into the frost and seem anxious to
crowd as much briliiance as possible into
their lives. Give them liquid fertilizer at
the roots twice a week, soaking the soil well,
and turn the sprinkler on the foliage three
and four times day, when the sun is off, in
hot weather. Florists have to sprinkle their
plants almost hourly on hot days to keep
them fresh and thriving.
WHERE FANCY HAS ROOM FOR PLAY.
Indoors the furnishing q summer or coun-
try house gives play to picturesque fancy.
The new and intelligent design for interiors
procures perfect airiness by large arched
transoms in pierced wood, not only the
varied Japanese fret, but the flower pat
terms, in which rose, lotos and peony are
'ketchily carved and the ground cut away
Or the outlines cut through. The Japanese
panels, square and curved, come in the scented
pine, which is cousin to the sandal-wood,
cedar and mulberry, but the Western State
work copies Oriental models and furnishes
pleasing natural designs of our own forest
leaves and flowers Perforated panels are |