The Salt Lake herald. [volume] (Salt Lake City [Utah]) 1870-1909, 1899-09-17
MRS. E. F. shepard,s HOUSE.


In Mrs. Elliot f. shepard's New
York house, only recently completed,
there is a small Jacobean library that
desiring a similar room to. copy. The
walls are hung in murrey colored
leather. and the woodwork is, carved
cedar: the floor is stained black, then
waXed, highly polished. and ON it are
laid red rugs. All the furniture and
this motif in decoration come from an
ancient manor house on the border be-
tween England and Scotland. Carved
fumed oak, SO called from being BACKED
by age and the smoke from slow
peat fires forms the presses that hold
the books, and the wooden portion of
the quaint, uncomfortable, long-legged,
low-backed conversation chairs, the
window stools and the settees. Murrey
colored leather upholsters these, and
in corners against the walls there are
carved locked chests for holding valued
manuscripts and family papers, and
one long tapestry curtain hangs at
each deeply recessed window.
The effect of the Jacobean room is, in
spite of it's absence of mirrors, gilt and
loose bric-a-brac, wonderfully rich,
stately and cosy. and in those houses
where no such liberal expenditure as
in Mrs. Shepard's could be INDUCED,
the decorators have pursued the King
James style with wonderful cheapnesS
and success. They copy the quaint
furniture forms in. carved black Ameri-
can walnut. or use an oak that by ar
tifice is given the worn, dusky tone OF
great age BurlapS is laid on walls
and painted murrey red, and walnut is
used for woodwork or door facings,
ETC.. painted black. Where in any room
this early sixteenth century idea OF
decoration is followed, the bric-a-brac
is carefully boarded up in open-fronted
eupboards, or shallow presses with half
glass doors. and the very newest idea
in dining-rooms is a great plate side
board.
The Plate Boy.
Whenever a. dinner party is given
nowadays it is in the code of fashion
for the hostess to order on view all her
beautiful plate gold and silver, not so
much for actual table use as for dis
play and the characterization of her din
ing-room. Now the ordinary long, low
Georgian. or what we call colonial,
sideboard of mahogany is not well SUIT
ed for this, SO that some women VINO
do not only own splendid silver serv-
ices. but whose husbands have won
with their yachts and received from
corporations beautiful gifts of plate,
require special sideboards on which to
exhibit their glittering boards.
For this purpose in black carved oak
Jacobean plate boys. with shelves us
ing nearly to the ceiling, are being es-
pecially built and so placed in hand
some drawing rooms that the light from
rnany-branched 'candelabrum can ran
effectively on the tiers of almost NlDe-
Iungen richness. Mrs. Bradley Martln
was one of the first women in America
to use a plate boy, and she introduced
one at her dinner parties last winter
Hers was, of richly carved fumed oak,
a genuine King James or Charles piece,
and it's top shelf nearly, touched the
dining room ceiling Those of her veal
thv friends who this winter viii follow
her Initiative are some of them having
their plate boys built of any simple
wood and then entirely covered in ruby
red velvet, against which the plate Will
show as effectively and certainly at
much less expense, than on the lofty
oak shelves.
Red Drawing Rooms.
Sang de boeuf, or bulls blood red, is
the approved tint in which the draw
ing rooms are being done over, and the
decorators say that it is the most be-
coming background possible for women
of all colorings. and especially when in
evening dress. 1t appears that IN draw
ing room decoration, as in the femi-
nine wardrobe. fabrics go in and out
of fashion about every FIVE years, and
now, after the brocades and damasks
of the French influence; velvet has
come to its own again. 1t is used as
wall hanging, for portieres and cur
tains, arras fashion. Our modern SILK
velvet is not approved. Venetian, Ut
recht and Flanders velvet are the kinds