Evening Republican, Volume 17, Number 29, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 February 1913 — THE BOUDOIR [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

THE BOUDOIR

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HOW TO USE FLOWERS ■■ 1 ’ STUDY OF PLANT HABITS AND GROWTH ESSENTIAL. ■ ■ ■ *v: b Keynote of an Artistic Floral Decoration Now Is Irregularity and the Burface Space Must Be Well Balanced. The wopaan who essays to employ flowers for decorative purposes should delve deeply into the study of plant life to become familiar with their habits and growth. Flowers of a stiff, upright growth do not lend themselves readily for decoration. When they are used, their natural tendencies must be humored, if the effect is at all artistic. The erstwhile popular custom of banking cut flowers or growing plants and festooning with heavy ropes of evergreens no longer obtains. The more artistic and natural, loose, graceful arrangement of flowers and plants is now used, and bare stretches of wall are bridged over with delicate trailing vines, supplemented by generous sprays and branches of foliage. Receptacles for cut flowers Bhould be neutral in color, and In shape follow the main lines of the flower. When highly colored, fanciful shapes are used the beauty or harmony is destroyed. The keynote of an artißtic floral decoration is irregularity.;',There must be no geometric arrangement to tire the eye; no repeats to pall the senses. Instead, each portion of the decorative scheme must have a distinctive charin of Its own. . Surface space must be well balanced. There must be no overcrowding at one point and bare stretches at another. * Flowers employed for decorating should be seasonable. The flower that in midsummer would compel admiration for its appropriateness as well as in a midwinter decorative scheme. Nor must blooming plants or cyt flowers and evergreens be combined in a decorative scheme. The most artistic effect is produced by employing flowers of one color, with the setting of green that, nature uses in all her color schemes. Two colors may be combined, sometimes, with pleasing effect, provided they blend naturally or form a harmonious contrast. When a number of rooms in a house are to be decorated for some such an occasion as a reception or similar function, the treatment depends upon the arrangement of the rooms. When they may be thrown together, as may be done in modern houses of any pretensions, the same scheme should be. carried out in all. If this is not the case, an individual scheme may prevail, if desirable, in each room.