Page 85

OF DOORS, WINDOWS, AND CHINTZ
How fine they are, how imposing, how honest, and
how well they compose!
Of course, if your house has been built with open
archways, you will need heavy curtains for them, but
there are curtains and curtains. If you need portieres
at all, you need them to cut off one room from an-
other, and so they should hang in straight folds.
They should be just what they pretend to be-honest
curtains with a duty to fulfil. For the simple house
they may be made of velvet or velveteen in some
neutral tone that is in harmony with the rugs and
furnishings of the rooms that are to be divided. They
should be double, usually, and a faded gilt gimp may
be used as an outline or as a binding. There are also
excellent fabrics reproducing old brocades and even
old tapestries, but it is well to be careful about using
these fabrics. There are machine-made "tapestries"
of foliage designs in soft greens and tans and browns
on a dark blue ground that are very pleasing. Many
of these stuffs copy in color and design the verdure
tapestries, and some of them have fine blues and greens
suggestive of Gobelin. These stuffs are very wide and
comparatively inexpensive. I thoroughly advise a
stuff of this kind, but I heartily condemn the imita-
tions of the old tapestries that are covered with large
figures and intricate designs. These old tapestries are
as distinguished for their colors, their textures, and
their very crudities as for their supreme beauty of
coloring. It would be foolish to imitate them.