SO beautiful are the fine pieces of furniture and the wonderful fabrics provided both in Europe and America where price is not of the first consideration, that, with perhaps some aid from the carpenter and painter, the householder may provide by his own tasteful exertion a most attractive, individual, and luxurious home. In this chapter advantage will be taken of these elements in the production of an elegance hardly if at all inferior to that of the best period furnishing; while, nevertheless, spaciousness and the direct simplicity characteristic of the method will be maintained.

As the writer is carrying this phase of decoration further than has before been attempted, it may be said at once that he is indeed encroaching to a slight extent upon period work, but no more so than when well-recognised period cottage-types are employed in the simpler and more usual degrees of furnishing: it is merely a matter of to what we have been accustomed, and this style will be found fully justifiable and quite sufficiently Modern.

If such pieces of fine furniture as those designed by the late Mr. Gimson (Plates 64 and 65) which were scarcely at all dependent upon historic precedent, were generally available, even this degree of likeness would be unnecessary; but we are here dealing with purchasable materials.