NOTHING breaks up the stiffness of a room, and nothing serves so many odd purposes, as a folding screen. A lady, assisted by a carpenter, constructed a large one of four panels to make a dressing-room in one corner of a large bed-room. Since then it has served to conceal the bed from sight in a small hotel room, to hide a Christmas tree from sharp little eyes, and as a background for the model in a studio.

The smaller banner and lamp screens are often very useful and always graceful and pretty. The frame for a panel screen may be constructed by any good carpenter who has well-seasoned wood to work with. The wood should be about two and one-half inches in width for a large screen. The two uprights of each panel look well reaching about two inches below the cross-piece at [266] the bottom. A screen of three panels, each five feet high and twenty inches wide, is perhaps the best balanced. The illustration here given will furnish all necessary details better than a description.

Fig. 59.

Ebonized wood is undoubtedly the favorite wood, as it enhances the beauty of all sorts of decoration. The following is an excellent recipe for

Ebonizing Wood

Though a good carriage-maker can do better than any amateur workman: Put a quarter of a pound of best size in a stone pot, with sufficient water to cover it. Set it on the stove to melt, but do not let it boil. Then three cents' worth of lamp-black, and a little blue black to improve the color, should be made to the consistency of paste with oil. Upon this is poured the melted size, and the two mixed thoroughly together. Apply this while warm to the wood, and paint thickly enough to look solid. When quite dry. varnish with two coats of oil-copal varnish. This should be done in a warm room free from dust. The varnish is put on with a large brush, boldly, rapidly, and evenly.

If the article is to have a polished appearance, two coats of varnish will answer, but three or four varnishings will be needed to give it a dull finish. The rubbing down is done with the finest pulverized pumice-stone, mixed with water to make it about the thickness of cream, and rubbed on with a piece of rag. The rubbing must continue till all inequalities disappear and the surface is as smooth as glass. It has then to be dried with a cloth and polished again with tripoli and sweet oil. After drying a second time with soft linen, rub it with starch powder, and finish it with a clean, soft linen cloth until you can see your face in the polished surface. A single grain of sand or grit on any of the cloths would injure the surface.

Bamboo Screens

Bamboo screens and easels are very popular. We have known them to be made from fishing rods, but suppose the bamboo must now be imported on purpose.

Tripods And Fire-Screens

The handsome stands are made of gilded iron, having a solid base, a slender upright, and a cross-piece from which the banner screen is suspended. In England, where an open fire is in almost every room, fire-screens are much in use. Modern ones are of gilded iron, and screwed to the mantel, the banner protecting the eyes of those sitting before the fire.

An Old Clothes-Horse

This frame-work needs but slight explanation, and can often be found in a somewhat dilapidated condition in the kitchen garret. From thence it can be brought, ebonized or painted in successive coats of Venetian or Indian red, and covered to suit the taste.