Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1900-08-17
BILLIARD TABLE CLOTHS,
Green the Prevailing Color, but Cloths
of Various Other COIors Used.
From he New Work

ffoIi llie new 1Ork SUM-
Green is the color commonly used the
world over for billiard table cloths: it is a
color that is grateful to the eye, it looks
well by daylight, and lights up handsomely
by artificial light, and does not easily show
dirt. The green cloths are made in vari-
Gus shades. In this country the shade al
most universally used is one of a clear,
bright, beautiful tint called indigo green;
in England there is used to considerable
extent cloth of an olive green. But
wherever billiard table was encountered
in Europe or America, in Egypt or Aus
tralia, it would in all probability be covered
with cloth in green of some shade.
Billiard cloths, however, are made in
various colors other than green, these
cloths OF other colors being used almost ex-
clusively for tables in private billiard
rooms. There are more billiard tables sold
nowadays for private houses than ever be-
fore, and with the growth of wealth and
the spread of luxury a greater proportion
OF these tables are made or finished
to order, to harmonic in design, ornamen-
tation and coloring, with the rooms in
which they are placed. Even in such tables
green is the color most commonly used: If
none Is found in a shade precisely suitable,
cloths are dyed of the required hue.
Other colors used in billiard cloths are
blue, maroon, red, gray and yellow; Ii is
possible, either from stock or to order, to
get cloths in any color any shade of it.
or these unusual colors maroon is the one
oftenest used, and blue next. Yellow is
rarely used, for it spots and shows marks
almost as plainly as white cloth would.
The larger number of the tables sold for
private houses are combination ables, that
can be used for either pool or billiards.
They are. of course, finished in keeping
with themselves that is, blue table would
have all its trimmings to match pockets of
silk netting of the color and shade of the
cloth.
Whatever the color of the cloth, the balls
used on all these tables are the standard
balls commonly used on the green cloth
and cues are the same for all tables,
though there are made fine cues in great
variety in various woods, including carved
cues, and SO on, suited to any table.
These fine billiard tables such would
be found in stock or made to order, many
of them elaborate in design and beautifully
carved. cost from $500 up. Probably from
$500 to $500 would be the cost of most of
private houses, but tables costing $1,000
would not be very unusual. and they are
occasionally made costing up to 81, 500.
For private billiard rooms specially de-
signed cue racks are made, many of them
being made to stand on the floor instead of
being attached to the wall. Cue racks
also are made to order upon occasion, OF
suitable woods and in appropriate designs
to match the rooms in which they are
placed. Markers are strung on wires at
tached to the cue rack, whose conStruc-
ton is carried up at the sides to support
the wires between, at convenient height.
On the costliest of such cue racks the
white buttons on the strings of markers
are of ivory and the black buttons of ebony.
The cue rack itself may easily be hand
some well as appropriate piece of fur
niture; of fine woods and beautifully carved.
Cue racks are made at various prices, up
to, for the most costly, $500.
Billiard tables in public billiard rooms
have to a very limited extent been covered
with cloths of colors other than green.
One establishment in Boston some years
ago, had its tables. placed in three rooms,
covered respectively with red, blue and
gray, but still, virtually, the only color
used in public billiard rooms is green. And
while in private billiard rooms the other
colors have come into use, and their use
in the circumstances mentioned is Increas-
ing, yet the proportion of private tables
thus covered is. after all, small: in these,
as in the public tables, the prevailing color
is still green