Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 December 1885 — Furniture for Millionaires. [ARTICLE]

Furniture for Millionaires.

There is some wonderful furniture that I have seen. The suite consists of two very large couches, a piano, music cabinet, tables, chairs, footstools and curtains. They are designed and made for a New York millionaire, who has given no limit so far as price is concerned, so that the very finest material and the most skilled work have been secured. The designs are by Alma Tadema, whose picture, “A Reading from Homer,” now in the Academy, is to be hung in the drawing-room for which the furniture is intended. 1 hear rumors of friezes and panels by Sir Frederick Leighton, of Roman sculptors at work upon the marble for the same fortunate room, and of other details, which lead me to the conclusion that if money is the root of all evil, it is also the root of all art. The couches, chairs, and stools are upholstered iu silk of a beautiful shade of pure gray, traversed by bands of exquisite embroidery in colors which are rich, but carefully subdued, as one sees them iu Mr. Tadema’s pictures. The ground of this embroidery is also silk, the color being precisely that of the, bloom of a ripe plum. Upon this the tints of gold and orange, blue, red and brown, with slender curved lines of pure white, giving a peculiar delicacy to the whole, form a beautiful scroll, pattern. A rich trellis fringe of mingled gray and gold runs along the edges of the couches, and beneath it is a deep silk fringe of the plum-bloom color, which does not show, except in the effect of depth and richness it imparts to the upper fringe. The woodwork of all this is simply incomparable, being a mixture of cedar wood, ebony, ivory and boxwood, inlaid With the finest mother-o’-pearl to be had. Wherever there is a corner, a . swan’s head is carved out of the ebony, large carbuncles forming the eyes. The labor of bending the ivory has been immense, for it is essentially a brittle substance. On the arms of the couches there are long, curved lines of tapering ivory, which gradually approach each other closely at the base, but gradually increase the interval of width as they rise. The piano is not yet completed. The upper part of the musical cabinet is a copy of an Asiatic temple. The pillars are of fluted cedar-wood, the delicious red-brown Of that beautiful wood coming out with great effect by reason of the carving. The capitals are carved ivory in a mellow tint of warm cream color. The rest is ebony inlaid with various woods and with exquisite mother-o’-pearl, which glitters like jewels. The curtains that veil the recesses intended for holding the music are of gray silk embroidered iu soft, rich colors, a lyre occupying the center. A large curtain is also of gray silk, with a curious embroidered dado,, the ground of which is plum-bloom silk with a quaint design in sections, in each of which is a straight niece in blue and red. The round tables are too lovely. The woodwork matches that of the other furniture, but is not a repetition. In fact, no two designs are precisely alike, There is something to study in each back of a chair, each side of a stool, each arm of a couch. The tops of the tables are of Algerian onyx, and they are like bits of golden sunsets caught and fixed to be a joy forever. So delicately, purely, transparently, effulgently pink is 'the ground of one of these, that it looks as soft as a rose leaf, though marble cold. Dashes of yellow and orange are splashed upon this ground and have a cloudy, dreamy look that makes one think of summer skyscapes. —London Truth.