Suppose you are given some rare and lovely jar, or a wee rug, or a rare
old print, or even a quaint old chair from long ago, and build a room
around it. I have some such point of interest in every room I build, and
I think that is why some people like my rooms--they feel, without quite
knowing why, that I have loved them while making them. Now there is a
little sitting-room and bedroom combined in a certain New York house
that I worked out from a pair of Chinese jars. They were the oddest
things, of a sort of blue-green and mauve and mulberry, with flecks of
black, on a cream porcelain ground.
First I found a wee Oriental rug that repeated the colors of the jugs.
This was to go before the hearth. Then I worked out the shell of the
room: the woodwork white, the walls bluish green, the plain carpet a
soft green. I designed the furniture and had it made by a skilful
carpenter, for I could find none that would harmonize with the room.
The day bed which is forty-two inches wide, is built like a wide roomy
sofa. One would never suspect it of being a plain bed. Still it makes no
pretensions to anything else, for it has the best of springs and the
most comfortable of mattresses, and a dozen soft pillows. The bed is of
wood and is painted a soft green, with a dark-green line running all
around, and little painted festoons of flowers in decoration.
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