River Falls journal. [volume] (River Falls, Pierce County, Wis.) 1872-2019, 1892-04-07
TABLE ApoRNMENTs.
Beautiful Floral Designs That Are I
markabfy Effective.

Beautiful Floral Designs That Are Re-
marksbiv Effective.
Among those who reap rich harvests
from the giving of many dinners are the
fashionable florists. Flowers have in
these days come to be as essential an
item-nay, not item, but feature-of
dinner as the fillet or the game. Our
fair hostesses vie with one another that
each may have something more novel,
weird and extraordinary than has yet
been achieved by another, and the re-
suit is that our tables bloom like
tropic jungle, and our florists wax fat,
and become landed gentry and mag
mates.
The stage setting and accessories of a
modern dinner would discount the
Babylonian feasts; and Cleopatra's
little spread" with the pearl con-
somme and the garlands of roses, would
cut but sorry figure beside the pink
dinners. green lunches, red. white and
blue suppers, and incandeseent orgies of
our modern society. True, much of the
decorative dining is beautifully done;
some of our dinner tables are artistic
feast through the eye to the mind,
as are the viands that come later
a more material feast to the more ma
terial man; and flowers tastefully used
certainly add more than anything else
to the beauty and artistic effect of the
picture. If one could only always
know where 10 draw the line be-
tween tasteful luxury and mere lavish
display, fewer mistakes in this matter
would be made.
Many of the floral table decorations
of this season are pretty enough to re-
member, and some of them good
enough to copy. At a recent luncheon
to which twelve clever literary women
sat down, the center of the table was
occupied by a fat basket filled with
maiden-hair fern and mignonette; from
this bed sprang twelve gorgeous Amer
lean Beauty roses, each attached to
pink ribbon, which spread out in rosy
trail across the cloth, and indicated, by
a name printed in gold upon its end,
the guest who was to occupy the pleas
ant place to which the ribbon led.
Each guest carried away the ribbon
and rose as souvenir.
At pretty dinner recently given
there was a wreath of pansies tied with
a violet ribbon for each of the women.
The wreaths were massed in the center
of the table until after the dinner,
whan each guest was handed one; to
the men were given boutonnieres of the
same flower. Another pretty fancy is
to drape garlands of flowers from the
chandelier to the four corners of the
table, forming a tent.like decoration
which is extremely pretty. At lavish
dinner where violets were the flower,
the monogram of the hostess was in
scribed in the center of the table in
these odorous purple beauties; wreath
marked the place in which each wom-
ans plate was to find short-lived rest,
while the stems of the wineglasses
were twined each with a tiny wreath
of violets. At another feast the table
was literally bed of tulips, with only
space for plates and glasses, and you
looked across to your vis.a-vis through
cleaning yellows and gorgeous reds.
pretty idea is to confine the aecora-
tons TO one variety of fl over; use roses,
and scatter loose rose petals slong the
cloth toward the guests; or white
hyacinths. tied with GAeen ribbons;
white lilacs are delightful, and extreme
ly decorative as well. After all, it is
the taste in arrangement that counts
for most in resulting effect, and often
the orchids at five dollars each are !ess
graceful and dainty and attractive than
the carnations and mignonette at one
dollar the dozen. 1t is the dinner table
of the clever hostess, whose Gown fair
hands have arranged its flowers, that
one remembers far longer than the
board declIed with the weird architec-
tural construction of some florist, whose
orders are only that he produce that
impossibility- new under
the sun.
Even in flowers it is well to avoid the
prOfusion which is vulgarity. and the
idea of costliness should be kept rigidly
in the background. One does not de-
sire TO impress on a guests mind the
amount of money which has been ex-
peded, but to make rather so delightful
picture that the art which designed
it shall be forgotten.-Frank Chaffee,
in Ladies' Home journal.